A Hard Day's Work

The maid, Usha who used to work as a domestic help at our house till few weeks ago has now won the local body election. She will now represent our ward at the municipality and will have a seat there along with other councillors. I motivated her to try and contest the election because recently this constituency has been made reserved for women candidates who are from the backward category . It was easy for her to win as there was no other candidate contesting. 
As an experienced government official working with the poor and deprived urban slum dwellers, it has been my aim to ameliorate the living conditions of as many women as possible. Being myself a woman, I knew the trials and tribulations faced by the women folk in the society. 
After becoming a councillor, I told Usha to stop all the work she was doing as domestic help and focus on her local area development. From the salary as a councillor she would be able to make her ends meet, I told her. 
But she out of sheer gratitude and happiness, visited our house and voluntarily helped me in my household work. Also her objective of the visit was to get valuable tips from me to do her day to day work at the municipality. Then the next job I told her to join the evening classes conducted by the municipality to help educate the elderly who had attained different levels of knowledge and were still challenged in facing basic needs like writing application and filling up forms etc. Because now Usha would need more expertise in formal way of communication so her skill development was mandatory. 
Recently, Usha has been hugely applauded for her two types of work for the neighbourhood which has had direct impact on the lives and livelihood of women folk. 
Incidentally , the number of motor vehicles on the road has increased substantially. The fuel needs of the vehicles have also multiplied. The oil companies have started installing more refuelling stations as a direct fallout. To do the fuelling work in these pumps human resources fulfilment became a major challenge all of a sudden. Usually men do the labour work in these stations. Filling the vacancies by employing unemployed men was becoming difficult to do in a short time. 
Usha came up with the idea of employing women at these stations so the job vacancies will be fulfilled and simultaneously the women would become financially independent. She shared the idea with me and I supported her. 
Very soon public notification was issued and women were employed in these pumps and given necessary training to do the work. In a few months time this had a very positive development in the society which was easily observable. Usha was much lauded for this initiative. 
The next was to refrain young girls from getting married at an early age before completing their basic education. This was very challenging as education is costly and very few parents saw benefit of educating a girl when their future is in marriage and become housewives. 
Madhu was an adolescent girl harbouring numerous dreams. But her parents were not interested in continuing with her education. Madhu, a distant relative of Usha banked her hopes on her new to politics aunt Usha. But there was real challenge ahead for Madhu. She knew it so she was mentally steeling herself to ward off any adversary. Usha and Madhu would meet periodically and discuss strategies. But situations turned more grim. Her parents were adamant and were finalising her marriage at any cost. Madhu had come upon an idea. She had befriended a Gen Z like her, a boy named Pratik. 
Pratik knew the dilemma Madhu was in and empathised with her. Pratik and Madhu had no such plans for the future as such jointly but sudden impulsive thought had brought the two together. Without thinking too deeply over the consequences, they just wanted to challenge the society and it's age old dogmatic ideas.
 When marriage was the issue and the cost was the factor, they both took a bold decision to marry each other. They told Usha about it. Initially, Usha was little reluctant with so much brazenness but later gave in thinking that change also comes through opposition and overcoming obstacles. 
As usual both the groom and bride's families didn't accept such a relationship. They both went to the Police with their complaints. But the Police refused saying both being adults were capable of taking independent decisions. Seeing no help from the law the families decided to take the law into their own hands. Both families hired goons to kidnap the newly weds. Even termination of life was contemplated. Pratik escaped a bid on his life. He ran away to another city to avoid falling into a trap. Then there was attack on Madhu also. She got a call from an unknown number threatening her with dire consequences if she did not consent to marriage as per family's choice of candidate. The threat could be rape or even murder or both. Madhu became very perturbed hearing all this and finally told Usha what all was going around her. 
Usha gave Madhu a patient hearing and told her she was following all these events very closely. She said she even knew of the attempt on the life of Pratik and his running away. 
Usha told Madhu to be quiet and unobtrusive for the next couple of weeks till the heat cooled off. She was monitoring the events and was finding a way out.
Then finally after a hard day's work of meetings between the Police force and other social organisations, Usha came out determined with few strong decisions. She first sent Police forces seperately to oversee both families of Madhu and Pratik and issue them warnings of cooling their activities on both of them otherwise everyone of both families will be put behind bars for an indefinite period. 
Then Usha invited both Pratik and Madhu to a public event at the Municipal Hall one evening. There they were felicitated. A new youth wing was floated at the behest of the municipality and both Pratik and Madhu were made civic volunteers in the wing. This youth wing would function under the Police force and the volunteers would draw their salary from them. The job of the youth wing would be to look after the welfare of the local area youth. This was the second project work of Usha that was given critical acclaim.