Days of rain wash away Mariam's only source of income
She has an umbrella but it offers little protection as rainwater seeps through its gaps. Around her, pedestrians hurry past without stopping.
Mariam Begum sits beside a roadside stall selling cigarettes and betel leaves on a wooden stool on a narrow pavement opposite Canadian University in Merul Badda.
She has an umbrella but it offers little protection as rainwater seeps through its gaps. Around her, pedestrians hurry past without stopping. Hours pass without a single sale.
For Sixty-year-old Mariam, the relentless monsoon rain has become more than a seasonal inconvenience. It has brought her family's only source of income to a near standstill.
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Mariam has been running the stall for the past decade after her husband died, leaving her with no other means of earning a living. The modest business now supports not only herself but also her speech-impaired daughter and two granddaughters.
Her daughter was married about 20 years ago, but her husband abandoned the family after the birth of their two daughters. Since then, the three generations have depended entirely on the earnings from the small roadside shop.
Until recently, the stall generated daily sales of around Tk1,000 to Tk1,200, enough to keep the household afloat. However, several days of continuous heavy rainfall in the capital have slashed sales dramatically.
"Now I can hardly sell goods worth Tk100 or Tk150 in an entire day," Mariam tells The Business Standard yesterday afternoon as heavy rain lashed the area.
Despite the lack of business, she continues to open the shop every day. "I have no option other than this shop. I'm too old to work as a domestic help," she says.
She adds, "The money I earn pays for our daily food. I bought most of the items in my shop on credit from nearby grocery stores and have fallen into debt."
Mariam owns no property. She rents a tin-shed room for Tk2,200 a month, where she lives with her daughter and two granddaughters.
Her financial burden has grown further after borrowing from an NGO to pay for medical treatment for her elder granddaughter, a Class VI student.
"I have to pay an instalment of Tk1,200 on Thursday, but I have no idea where the money will come from," she says.
Mariam said rain has always affected her business, but she cannot remember facing such a prolonged spell of heavy rainfall in recent years.
Even so, she continues to sit beneath the leaking umbrella each day, hoping the skies will soon clear and customers will return, allowing her family's fragile livelihood to recover.
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