I Cook In Gujarat And Eat In Maharashtra: Tale Of One Woman & Two States

Tapi : On ground, one may not notice anything strikingly different, but try taking a drone shot or looking from a height and you would see a house, on the very edge of the Gujarat-Maharashtra border, split almost surgically between the two states. Strange, no?

And at the centre of this strange play of geography is 70-year-old Maganiben Gamit, a tribal woman who has been living in this house alone for nearly two decades, ever since her husband passed.

I Cook In Gujarat And Eat In Maharashtra: Tale Of One Woman & Two States (ETV Bharat)

Poke Maganiben about her daily routine and she chuckles jokingly, “I cook in Gujarat and eat in Maharashtra.” Speaking in her local tribal dialect, she immediately clears that, "I vote in Gujarat though.” While her kitchen falls in the territory that is in Gaiswar village in Gujarat’s Songadh taluka, her main door opens into Khokarwala village of Maharashtra’s Nandurbar district.

I Cook In Gujarat And Eat In Maharashtra: Tale Of One Woman & Two States (ETV Bharat)

The house is on a gochar land (grazing land) which makes it legally impossible to be made into permanent structure. But the villagers have assured that they will support her and ensure she does not face any problem in at least getting an electricity connection. However, she is not too keen on changing anything about the house.

Since the rooms gets darker with time, Maganiben prefers to have her meals in the well-lit portion of her house that lies on Maharashtra side. But she says from ration to government welfare schemes, and voting, she does it and gets it all in Gujarat.

I Cook In Gujarat And Eat In Maharashtra: Tale Of One Woman & Two States (ETV Bharat)

“I have been voting in Gujarat," says she with a sense of pride. Even she pays house tax in Gujarat and her sister helps her in paperwork. Though her house is split amid two states, she is clearly aligned with Gujarat. The Gaiswar villagers have always considered her one among them and behave with her as family.

I Cook In Gujarat And Eat In Maharashtra: Tale Of One Woman & Two States (ETV Bharat)

There are times when visitors reach Maganiben's house out of curiosity to watch the divide between two states. But Maganiben is unmoved. She thinks borders blur when humans see no difference. Her story is not limited to being a part of geography, but of belonging that refuses to be categorized by lines on a map.

“I stay alone but I have people of two states as neighbours for the past 20 years. I enjoy this as a privilege,” she says, with a sense of pride.

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