The power women – 39 : Her nerves of steel

She is unyielding, but bent on reforming society. Mulla Ashraf Adam has set up six educational centres and is aiming for more.

Begum Ashraf Mulla. Photo: Special Arrangement

She may just pass off for a commoner, one in a crowd. Rural, rustic in manners, ever clad in a sari, pallu over head, Mulla Ashraf Adam has no urban air about herself. Till two decades ago, she was just a teacher in a Government Urdu Primary School. Hung in a three-room society apartment in Pune's Kondhwa area, Ashraf went about balancing her daily life between teaching at the school and raising a family at home.

But precisely those were the years her nerves got that steely twirl. Passion was building up within her to transform society. But being a school teacher and a family woman, she knew her limitations. She started in a small way, setting up a stitching class, then a primary school and on to a high school. Today she is a household name in Pune. She has already set up half a dozen educational and skill imparting centres and does not feel tired of pursuing her objective of the light of education to the lowliest of the low.

Simply determined

Ashraf is a simple woman. Her plain looks obscure much of her persona and the difference she has brought about in lives of people around herself. She talks without frills, often disarming her subjects with practical logic.

Ashraf did not look far enough to identify problem areas. She knew the illiteracy and ill-health existed in Muslim pockets of her own city, Pune. She selected Syednagar, a settlement of labourers, petty merchants and menial workers.

Lack ofeducation, paucity of resources, and absence of a vision of life had all combined to make life hell for the people of the teeming slums. These pained her. But she spurred into action when her mother died. She wanted to do something in her memory. That is how she organised a crafts workshop in 1985 and trained women in tailoring,

papad and

shikakai powder making.

Her good work was soon recognised and a kind soul from the village donated 3,000 sq.ft. of land for her Muslim Samaj Prabodhan Sanstha. A primary school came up in 1990. Since then Ashraf — Ashrafi Mulla to people close to her — has not looked back. She created a stir in 2003 when all the 11 girls from her Rehmani Foundation High School passed the SSC Board exam. Never before from Syednagar village had so many girls taken the school leaving certificate.

Today, altogether 1,200 students study in the three schools set up by her. Looking at her zeal, several organisations like Rehmani Foundation, Mumbai, Muslim Cooperative Bank, Pune and Rotary Club chipped in to help her build a 5,400 sq. ft. complex. But this has become inadequate for the work which is expanding in all directions.

All these urged her to set up “Home for the Girls” in 1993. Mumbai philanthropist Abdul Qadir Supariwala turned it into a concrete reality in 2003. Today 100 destitute girls live, eat, study, play and receive vocational training in the elegant building called Yasmin Iqbal Aashiyana (building named after Sopariwala's wife).

Retirement from Government school had set her free for social work. A philanthropist donated her a plot of land next to Aashiyana to build a junior college in order that girls could continue their education.

Currently, she is setting up a polyclinic in the same complex complete with x-ray machine, diagnostic lab and dental chair. Her ITI started classes last June.

Relentlessly mobile, she has hardly anything by way of a cogent vision. But she acts at the spur of the moment, configuring the needs of society and knows no rest till her plans are realised.