A lemonade seller turns sub-inspector in Kerala: As an 18-year-old, she was abandoned by her husband and her own family and had to take to the streets with her six-month-old baby. Now, 31-year-old Anie Siva is prepared to begin a new chapter of her life, having just taken charge as a sub-inspector at the Varkala police station in Kerala on Saturday.
Anie is a native of Kanjiramkulam in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram district. Very early in her marriage, she separated from her husband and her parents refused to take her in. A newborn son to provide for, she never compromised on education in the face of adversity.
Anie Siva initially took shelter in her grandmother’s house and for ten years she ran a lemonade stand in Varkala town. She also worked as a door-to-door salesperson, selling lemonade to tourists, ice cream at festival grounds and insurance policies at banks. As a single mother, Annie often found it difficult to get houses on rent and had to move constantly. Hence, she decided to chop off her hair, saying the “boy cut” saved her a lot of unwanted stares. “I realised that I can live and sleep anywhere with that haircut,” she told The Indian Express. Anie never let obstacles come in the way of her dreams and continued her education by finishing her graduate degree and later did a post-graduate degree through distance learning. But despite her commitment, she struggled to land regular employment.
She was later encouraged by a relative to apply to the police as an officer and received a loan for the examination.
“It was my father’s dream to make me an IPS officer," Anie recalled. She said she committed to studying very hard and made it her life's mission to get a job. "It’s no use crying over the circumstances of our life. We have to make a leap. It’s not a defeat until we decide that we have lost.”
After cracking the examination, the single mother became a civil police officer in 2016. Three years later, she cleared the sub-inspector’s examination and following a 18-month training course, she returned to the same place where she used to sell lemonade as a probationary sub-inspector.
Anie had married her husband against the will of her family. She was a first-year student at KNM Government College in Kanjiramkulam then. Her husband abandoned her after she delivered her baby and she has been on her own since. She said she got to know about her posting only a few days back. "This is a place I shed many tears with my small child with no one to support me," she told ANI.
She also took to her Facebook and wrote, “Ten years ago, I sold lemonade and ice cream to people coming for the Varkala Sivagiri pilgrimage. Today, I return to the same place as a sub-inspector of police. How better can I take revenge on my past?”
The official Twitter account of the Kerala Police shared her story with a note: “A true model of will power and confidence...”
Feature Image Credit: Indian Express
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