Thiruvananthapuram | Dhanuja Kumari spends her days walking through the narrow streets of Ravi Nagar in Ambalamukku here, calling out to the residents: "Chechi, we've come to collect plastic waste." Dressed in a green overcoat over a pale yellow churidar, she carries a plastic sack as she visits each doorstep.
At 48 years, Dhanuja looks much older with stress marks etched on her face, but she always wears a happy smile.
Dhanuja dropped out of school in the 9th standard when her parents married her off to a 19-year-old 'Chenda' (a famous Kerala percussion instrument) artist.
She spent years living in Chengalchoola, a slum in Thiruvananthapuram, facing many struggles. But these challenges would later shape her journey as a writer.
She penned a book recounting her struggles as a slum dweller, and it is now part of the curriculum for BA students at Kannur University and MA students at Calicut University.
The book, "Chengalchoolayile Ente Jeevitham" ("My Life in Chengalchoola"), is now in its fifth edition.
"I am not an imaginative writer. What I have written is what life gave me in Chengalchoola. I do not think it is literature, but my life," Dhanuja Kumari told PTI, sitting in her one-room house in Rajaji Nagar, earlier known as Chengalchoola.
Her house is built using tin sheets erected on four rows of cement hollow bricks, with a roof made of similar tin sheets.
The house has no windows and has a small area for cooking and washing.
An automatic top-loading washing machine is the most expensive piece of equipment in her house.
Sitting on her queen coat, which occupies almost 90 per cent of the space in her one-room house, Dhanuja recalled how she became a writer.
"Our colony was notorious at that time, and we will be writing police petitions almost every day. They used to call me to write petitions, as I used to write them elaborately. That is what helped me sharpen my language," Dhanuja said, with a smiling face as always.
Dhanuja had a troubled childhood, with her parents quarrelling between them regularly.
"They had small issues, but sometimes they stopped seeing each other for a year or more. So they had sent me to a Christian convent, where I stayed and studied," she said, recalling that a practice the convent insisted all students follow was her introduction to writing.
"The convent teachers asked us to write down whatever we had done during the day in a small notebook. The bad things we did and the good things we did. Those were my first writings," Dhanuja said.
She continued doing the same when she moved into the present single room house along with her husband at the age of 14.
"My husband was just 19, and we were not mature enough to run a family. There were so many problems, and the discrimination we faced on the basis of caste and our life in the colony was too difficult to bear. I wrote all my pains, experiences, and little happiness we had in between," Dhanuja said.
As she grew up, she continued to be active in society and wanted people to have a different view of her colony and its people.
She fought fiercely for the rights of the colony people to have a dignified life.
"I used to tell everyone--the social workers, the researchers who visited our colony--that they were only interested in their study materials and not in our lives. I used to give public speeches. Hearing this, a noted writer, Vijila, prompted me to compile my writings as a book." She published the book when she was 38 years old, which was very well accepted by the readers, and the universities have now included it in their curricula.
Dhanuja is writing the second part of her book.
"This book again would be my experiences. I do not know how to write in the language of literature," Dhanuja said.
Apart from newspapers and children's books, Dhanuja never got a chance to read Malayalam literature.
"I had no opportunity to get those books, and my language is still the language of a class 9 dropout," she said.
Now Dhanuja is heading a women's collective in Rajaji Nagar called 'Wings of Women', where they have their own library and engage in social activities.
Dhanuja, though now known to many as a writer, has no issues in her profession as a 'Haritha Karma Sena' worker, who collects waste from houses.
"It is my profession, and I do it with passion. It is my livelihood. There are different kinds of people, and their attitudes would also be different. I go to their houses as a worker, so I behave accordingly," Dhanuja said as she continuously directed her team members at work.
Dhanuja, though happy that many now accept her as a writer, still believes that her caste and her upbringing may not let people treat her equally to other well-known writers in Malayalam.
"The most painful experience I had was when my son Nidheesh was discriminated against, humiliated, and ousted from Kerala Kala Mandalam. They called him names and treated him very badly," Dhanuja said.
Nidheesh, who was a Chenda student at the prestigious Kalamandalam, later got a reappointment with the intervention of former Minister K Radhakrishnan, but he could not complete his education.
"What I want is to let the people know that there are many talents in our colony who, if nurtured, could reach great heights. I want people to stop discriminating against them on the basis of caste and the place they live," Dhanuja said.
