Their bodies are bent with age. Illness has taken away the strength to move about normally, and even a few steps inside the house now need a stick. At the end of their lives, the childless Bhabesh Chandra Roy and Niru Rani Roy are passing their days in want, sickness and uncertainty.
Both husband and wife, who live in Ishanpur village in Ramchandrapur union, number 6, of Kaharol upazila in Dinajpur, are ill. Leaning on sticks they manage somehow to move about inside the house, but they do not have the physical strength to go out and earn. Arranging two meals a day is now a great challenge for them.
To keep the household going they grow a few vegetables in their small yard. Niru Rani picks them, and her ailing husband weighs them on a hand scale with trembling hands and passes them to local people to buy. The little money that comes from selling vegetables is not enough to buy rice properly, let alone meet the household’s daily needs.
Sometimes neighbours hold out a helping hand. Some give food, some give things they need. With that help there is food on some days, but they have no lasting way out of their long poverty.
It is not only food. The way they live is also pitiful. With money saved with difficulty they managed to repair the house, but they have to keep the cow in the same room, and they live beside it on the earthen floor. The elderly couple spend their days and nights in these conditions with their ailing bodies.
Being childless, they have no one to look after them. They get through each day somehow, fighting old age, illness and poverty.
Bhabesh Chandra said: “We get through our days with great hardship. If people of the neighbourhood bring food we can eat; otherwise we often go hungry.”
Niru Rani said: “I have not been able to work for a long time because of illness. Now there is no food in the house either. I cannot think how we will get by. We are living with great difficulty.”
A neighbour, Arati Rani, said: “It has come to this, that if we do not bring them food they often go without. They cannot do any work. They have no son or daughter, and no one to look after them.”
Another neighbour, Dinesh, said they used to work in other people’s houses when their health was good. Now both are physically ill and can no longer work, and their condition is very bad.
A local correspondent, Rashidul Islam, said he learned of the couple’s plight on social media. “They are childless. On learning of their hardship I gave them a month’s shopping money. I appeal to the government to arrange a state allowance or assistance for them,” he said.
Md Ataur Rahman, chairman of Ramchandrapur union parishad, said: “I took the couple a sack of rice a few days ago. When government benefits come they will be given every kind of help according to their need. I have also spoken to the union parishad member concerned about them. When old-age allowance cards are allotted, arrangements will be made to give them cards on a priority basis.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report