Ramabai quit school after Class VII. We don’t know what her life was like, what her parents were like, her childhood. We know she married and had two daughters with her husband—Aarti and Pooja. We know that her husband died in an accident fourteen years back. We don’t know what kind of an accident? Road? Industrial? There is no information.
We know that Pooja had to work in a farm at one point as a manual labourer and right now is at a Dnyandeep Academy, a private organisation which trains people for police recruitment exams. We know that Aarti, who is 20 years of age, currently lives away from her and is studying B.Sc in Computer Science.
Ramabai works as a cook at the same academy. She makes two hundred rotis every day, six thousand a month, for Rs 9,000. We know that she never takes any holiday.
We know that Aarti did not have money for food or rent and one evening called her mother to tell her as much. We know that things were so bad that Ramabai could not sleep all night. Next morning, Ramabai found that her employer was taking students for a 3 km run which had a cash prize of Rs 3,000. She expressed willingness to run the same race and won it.
We know everyone except her was wearing sports shoes. We know that she was initially wearing slippers and running in a saari but that it was difficult to run with slippers so she ran most of the race barefeet, on a coal tar road. We know her feet were bleeding by the end of it.