RAJASTHAN, India — At 10, Ritu knew exactly what to get when her father got one of his coughing fits: water, medicines, nebulizer. If that didn’t work, she’d panic-dial her uncle next door, who would then hire a vehicle and rush his brother off to a hospital, around 60 kilometers away from their home in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan.
Her father sometimes spends a week at the hospital. So Ritu stays home to send her younger brothers off to school, bathe the cows, fetch the grass, clean up the house, cook everyone’s meals, and tend to the corn, wheat, and taro that the family grows on a small patch of land. In between, she sneaks in an hour or two to study or rest.
Her father, Nand Kishore Prajapat, has silicosis, a deadly lung disease caused by prolonged exposure to fine silica dust present in sand, rocks, and clay. He gets breathless even when he walks a few steps, as the disease has caused irreparable damage to his lungs. “It looks like there’s a hole in my lungs,” he said, talking about his X-ray and sonography reports stacked at his home.
About the author
Romita Saluja@RomitaSaluja
Romita Saluja is an independent journalist in India, mostly writing about gender, development, migration, labor, health, and human rights. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, BBC, Undark Magazine, Ms. Magazine, South China Morning Post, Al Jazeera, and other publications around the world. She has also been a fellow at the Population Reference Bureau, One World Media, Journalism Centre on Global Trafficking, and others. Write to her at romitasaluja@gmail.
