Women's day special: She worked as brick-layer and maid to build hospital for the poor

On woman's day. My tribute to the determination of women.
Kolkata: Subhasini Mistry toiled for years as a manual labourer, a housemaid and a vegetable-seller. At 70, she can look back with satisfaction at a two-storeyed, whitewashed building, the realisation of her dream to build a hospital for the poor - all because she couldn't afford proper medical treatment for her husband and became a widow at 23.

Her younger son Ajoy is a doctor at the hospital which has 12 doctors and over 25 beds and runs on donations.

Mistry was grief-stricken after her husband died, but she resolved to build a hospital for the needy so that others would not have to suffer the same fate as her husband. What followed was a life of abject poverty and extreme physical labour as the mother of four soldiered on with the single-minded pursuit of setting up the hospital.

Over time, she managed to save enough to buy a one-bigha (one-third of an acre) plot.

Now 47 years down the line, Humanity Hospital, in Hanspukur village near Kolkata, stands tall and proud, serving the poor free of cost since 1996, a testimony to a single woman's grit, determination and never-say-die spirit against all possible odds.

As Mistry, a pygmy of a woman in girth but an extraordinary woman in deed, looks back at her past, and says in a firm voice: "This is all I could do on my own. I don't regret that I had to put two of my children in an orphanage, that I couldn't educate them. There were things needed to be done for the greater good."

Mistry told IANS: "When my husband passed away, I was in shock initially. Then I realised I had four hungry mouths to feed. My oldest child, a son, was four-and-a-half-years old at the time. My youngest, a daughter, was one-and-a-half.

"I had no education and couldn't even tell the time. So I decided I would do whatever work that was available. I started out as an aayah (domestic help) in the nearby houses."

During that period, she made a silent promise to herself: she would set up a hospital for the needy that would provide treatment free of cost.

Gradually she realised that house work alone would not suffice; so she took to brick-laying and other physically demanding chores to supplement her meager income. Her two sons would lend a hand at work. Early on, she had made up her mind that come what may, she would educate one of her sons to be a doctor.

Now the younger son Ajoy, a doctor, carries on her mother's mission at the hospital.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/she-worked-as-brick-layer-and-maid-to-build-hospital-for-the-poor-339955?pfrom=home-otherstories