THE MATRIARCH OF MAYURBHANJ

The remarkable story of Droupadi Murmu's rise from rural Rairangpur to the Rashtrapati Bhavan is one of resilience, pain and hope

- RAHUL DEVULAPALLI

It was a routine morning for Tarani Tudu.

Indeed, his elder sister, Droupadi Murmu, had just been named the presidential candidate of the ruling National Democratic Alliance. She would become the next resident of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi, the Rashtrapati Nilayam in Secunderabad and The Retreat Building in Shimla. Within the Commonwealth she would be The Honourable Droupadi Murmu, and elsewhere abroad, Her Excellency.

But Tarani had pressing domestic matters at hand. He had bought a bag of vegetables from the market, and he had to steer clear of journalists camped in his hometown —Rairangpur in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district—to get it to the kitchen on time. He manoeuvred his gearless scooter through the group of guards outside his house, parked it in a corner, turned the engine off, and lugged the bag into the kitchen, where his wife was cooking lunch. “She cleans the house and washes the dishes. I get the groceries,” Tarani quipped.

A similar scene was playing out 20km away in Dungarsahi, a sparsely populated tribal hamlet on the edge of a thick forest. The road leading to Dungarsahi—scenic, but usually desolate—was witnessing unusual traffic. A dozen employees of the electricity department, complete with yellow hard hats, were hooking up a small mud-and-straw house to the grid.