JOIN USEvery time 58-year-old Shashi Devi talks about her three sons, she breaks down in tears. On a cot laid out on the first floor of her small house in Maqbolpura village in the holy city of Amritsar, her eyes long to see her sons. But that may not happen. Shashi lost all her sons to drugs.
One of her sons, Rajwinder Singh, was married when he died. He left behind his two sons, and memories a mother finds hard to forget.
Rajwinder’s 12-year-old son Gautam, pulls out a photograph of his father. Gautam’s mother left to remarry after her husband died, Shashi said. “I have to bring up my two small grandchildren. We don’t have the money. There’s no help coming our way, only assurances,” she said. Unfortunately, Shashi’s daughter also fell out of her marriage and is divorced. But Gautam’s eyes beam up with hope as he declares, “I’ll end all this.
I will be pilot one day.” Maqbolpura demonstrates why drugs is a raging issue in Punjab.
A majority of the households in this settlement have lost at least one member to drugs. There are widows and orphans almost everywhere.
DH News Service