Lakshman's wife overwhelmed by turn of events

Dubai: "I have never harmed anybody in my life so I don't know why I am suffering like this," says Lakshmi, barely able to keep her emotions in check.

The last 24 hours have been traumatic for her. Relief and despair hit her as twin forces on Wednesday when she was informed that her husband, Lakshman alias Neralla Lachaiah, was alive in Dubai, but has a problem with his memory after he had an accident.

"It's been more than nine years since we saw him," she says, sobbing. "We knew he had been unemployed for years. The money had stopped coming long ago." What compounded the family's grief was the lack of communication in all these years.

According to Lakshmi, her husband did not own a mobile phone. Once in a while, he would speak to them from a borrowed phone.

"We would plead with him to come home but he would go silent on that subject," she says. "For years now we have been managing on our own."

A washer woman by profession, she has been managing on the meagre income this allows her in her village of Ramnagar in the Karimnagar district of India's Andhra Pradesh state.

"It's been a long period of struggle for me and my children."

Despite the despair that has settled on them like black dust, the family has been braving the odds. After taking a loan — which she is still paying off — Lakshmi recently got her eldest daughter, Padma, 24, married.

"How long can I keep waiting?" she says, her voice cracking. Her other two daughters, Mamata, 22, and Jyoti, 20, live with her as does her son, Madhu, 18, who is in his first year at college.

Still reeling under the new blows of fate, she says: "Every day I would wonder if I would ever see him again. Today, whatever his condition, all we want is for him to return to us. After that, whatever life has in store, we will face it together."