100 Homes

No Transportation

$6.83 / ₹123.98
Per day
Home 77
Erode, Tamil Nadu
Erode location map

N told us not to startle his cow, which was pregnant, as the family was looking forward to a new addition to their assets. Like most other families in his village, N took on multiple jobs to support his family: those of a farmer, farm labourer, and non-agricultural labourer. He owned a small tract of agricultural land, one cow, and a few goats and chickens. Every morning he milked his cow and then sold the milk to the local co-op. This year, however, he had had to sow groundnuts instead of his usual crop because of the low levels of rainfall, which had also left him with no extra work as a farm labourer. He had taken on work at a stone quarry instead, while his wife picks flowers at a farm and then comes home to take care of their cattle before departing for her second shift of work.

N and his wife had two children, and both had high hopes for the younger son, who had just started work teaching fashion design at a textile hub a few hours away. They said that their older son suffered from alcoholism and did not send them any money.

N was born only a few feet away from where he lives today, where his father and grandfather had both grown up before him and the family still used the showering apparatus used by his parents - a makeshift arrangement with palm tree branches for walls. They did not have an indoor toilet. The ruins of what used to be his grandfather’s house stood next to his parent’s mud house and then his house, made from bricks and mortar where he lived with his wife, cows, goats and hens.