When Covid-19 claims your sole breadwinner

When Anjuara came to Rashid's house in Tala, Satkhira, as a bride, she was around 12. At an age when you play gollachut or play with dolls, she became a wife. 

"Arriving here as a child, I developed a habit of following him (Rashid). I used to follow him like a shadow," Anjuara told The Business Standard.

Over the years, she had grown into an ideal housewife many in Bangladesh admire. She would cook food, take care of the children and do regular household chores. So, as much as Rashid Sardar was her husband, he was also her refuge, safety, security and the provider for her children. 

Rashid Sardar died of coronavirus last month.

Rashid's grave was just 100 feet away from the yard where we were talking. He rests on the edge of their mango orchard. 

"I cannot come out of my room at night. I get scared," Anjuara said. She feels something follows her, like she would follow her husband. 

This bereaved woman now has two children to take care of. Her son, Mukul Sardar, a young man in his early twenty, is far from completing his college education. Daughter Ria Khatun waits for her HSC examination that was supposed to be held in March of this year. 

Photo: Salahuddin Ahmed/TBS

Rashid Sardar was a poor farmer. He didn't have a decent house to live in when he married. Through hard work over the years, Rashid built a house. He bought some cultivable land that only he would take care of. His children were always into studies and his wife into homemaking. 

Early in July, Rashid went to feed the people of Tablighi Jamaat in the local mosque. Son Mukul said somebody abruptly touched his father from behind at the mosque and Rashid became horrified. He was somehow startled and got a fever that night. 

Rashid's fever diminished in two days so he went to work in the field. But it rained on that fateful day. He got soaked in rain, got his fever back and this time, it became critical with worsening breathing complications. 

"The doctors told us of his damaged lung, but we never thought for a moment that he would die," Anjuara told us. Rashid too was confident, as he was breathing better with oxygen support – but not for long. 

When his older cousin, also his neighbour, who was hospitalised with coronavirus, died just a few days before he died, Rashid gradually became restless. 

"We didn't give him the news of his brother's death, but he realised what had happened." 

His breathing complications deteriorated drastically, and on a fateful morning in late July, Rashid breathed his last. 

Mukul Sardar, son of deceased Rashid Sardar, standing beside the grave of his father. Photo: Salahuddin Ahmed/TBS

In his last days, Rashid would ask his son, repeatedly – "look after your mother and sister," Anjuara told us. Son Mukul would not move even an inch away from his father. Rashid knew well how helpless Anjuara could be without him. 

Back in the home, it was daughter Ria alone – waiting for her father to return home safely. 

"We (Ria and father) talked about the day I will step into college for graduation. He was looking forward to that day. But here I am – couldn't even talk to him for one last time," Ria told us. Rashid feared for his daughter, that she would get infected, so he asked his wife and son not to bring her to the hospital.

We sat there motionless, stoned-faced, as mother and daughter went on sobbing. We realised that the moment of silence, grief and sobbing that gripped us for merely a moment, cloaked this household forever. 

Have you planned on how to look after your family now?

A clueless Anjuara looked at us for a moment. Not sure what to say, she muttered, "God will".  Looking at the mother and daughter, we regretted the question. 

Rashid Sardar was a farmer. He was not very educated. But he sure didn't want his son to drop out of college and to marry off his daughter early on, like his wife Anjuara was, so many years back. 

Can Anjuara take charge, hold her own and put everything back in order? Will she be able to fight an uphill battle created by the coronavirus by claiming the role of the sole breadwinner? We do not know. 

But we do know Anjuara is not alone, there are scores and scores of households in several districts across the country who are fighting similar uphill battles. 

For instance, like Anjuara's husband, Moalana Maruf of Nalta, Sathkhira, also died of the coronavirus last month. Maruf was a young Muslim scholar who had a two and a half month old baby. 

There are countless lives that have been upended by the coronavirus in Dhaka's neighbouring districts. They are the people and faces behind the statistics we read every day, and in this series, we strive to bring their stories to you.