The Mother of Orphans

The train pulled into the station, and a young woman with a baby in her arms began to sing.

She sang devotional songs and folk songs in Marathi, in a strong, clear voice. Passengers leaned out of the windows. Some tossed her a coin, or a piece of bread. When the train left, she sat down on the platform and shared the bread with her daughter.

Her name was Sindhutai. She had no home, no money and no family who would take her in. And within a few years, she would become a mother to more than a thousand children.

The girl called Chindi

She was born in 1948 in a small village in the Wardha district of Maharashtra, into a poor family that herded cattle. According to her own story, her family called her Chindi, a word that means a scrap of torn cloth. A girl, many people believed then, was not worth much.

Her father wanted her to learn, and she went to school when she could. But she was married very young, while she was still only a child, to a man many years older. She had to leave school after the fourth standard. She went to live in her husband's village and worked hard in the house and fields.

Even as a young wife, she spoke up. She is said to have joined a protest against local men who were cheating village women of their wages for collecting cow dung. Her outspokenness made her powerful enemies.

The cowshed

When she was about twenty and pregnant with her fourth child, her husband beat her and threw her out of the house. In her own accounts, she gave birth to a daughter alone, that same night, in a cowshed.

She walked to her mother's home, hoping for shelter. Her mother turned her away.

With nowhere left to go, Sindhutai and her baby lived wherever they could. She begged and sang on trains and at railway stations. At night, she sometimes slept in a cremation ground, because nobody else wanted to be there, and so nobody would harm her.

There were times, she later said, when she was so hopeless that she thought of ending her life. But she kept going, for the sake of her daughter.

The children at the station

Living on the platforms, Sindhutai noticed something. She was not the only one with nowhere to go. There were children there too, orphaned or abandoned, sleeping under benches and begging for scraps.

She began sharing what little she had with them. Then she began looking after them. A hungry child would come to her, and she would feed him. A crying child would come, and she would hold her.

Soon there were many children around her, and she sang and begged for all of them.

She made a decision that many people found hard to understand. She sent her own daughter, Mamta, to be raised at a trust in Pune. She said she did not want to love one child more than the others, and that every abandoned child had to feel like her own.

Mai

Slowly, people began to notice the singing woman with all the children. She started speaking at gatherings, telling her story and asking for help. She was a powerful speaker, plain-spoken and funny and fierce, and audiences often wept. They gave food, clothes and money.

With these gifts, she founded homes for orphaned children in Maharashtra. The children called her Mai, which means mother. She raised them, sent them to school and college, and arranged their weddings. Many grew up to become teachers, doctors and lawyers. Some came back to run the homes alongside her.

Over the years, the family grew to more than a thousand children. Grown-up children brought their own children to meet her, and she counted those too. She also worked for the tribal communities in the Melghat forest area, campaigning for their rights.

Forgiveness

Many years later, when he was old and alone, her husband came back to her. She took him in. But, she said, she accepted him not as a husband but as one more of her children.

She often said that her suffering had taught her to understand others' pain, and that if her life had been easy, she would never have found her work.

She received a great many awards. In 2010 a Marathi film about her life was made, called Mee Sindhutai Sapkal. In 2021, the Government of India honoured her with the Padma Shri.

She died in Pune in January 2022. The homes she founded continue her work.

Want to read more?

The Marathi film Mee Sindhutai Sapkal (2010) tells her life story, and many recorded interviews and speeches by her can be found online. Indian newspapers published full obituaries when she died in January 2022, and the Padma Awards website records her 2021 award.