How this 87-year-old tells her village every day she's alive

DHARAMSHALA: Kaushalya Devi could just be the loneliest old woman in the country.
Every day at dusk, the 87-year-old sticks a sheet of blank paper, painstakingly and neatly folded, in the window of her crumbling house in Jaladi village, 20km from Shahpur town in Kangra. At dawn, the first thing she does is remove it. Her neighbours then get to know that she has survived the night.

It is not an easy life in Jaladi.Nestled in the lower reaches of the Himalayas at an elevation over 600 metres, the days are doubly hard for Kaushalya, a widow who lives alone. Through the bitter cold that autumn nights have already heralded, the piece of white paper has become her signal that she has made it to another day. It's a poignant habit that makes the whole village sad, but also alerts them if all is well with her or not. "If she has removed the paper from the window at dawn, we know she has survived," said Darshan Singh, a neighbour who works as an insurance agent. His family is among six in the neighbourhood that keeps an eye on Kaushalya's house and on the piece of paper. "We occasionally call her daughter from Chamba when Kaushalya falls seriously ill," he added.
Kaushalya lost her husband, a daily wage labourer, about eight years ago. Her 47-year-old son, Budhi Singh, left home about three years later and has not been seen since. She passes most of her time alone in her house with its slate tiles and cracked, walls. Weakened with age, she said in a frail voice, "All I worry about is my son. I keep inquiring about him from passers-by."
The practice of using the blank, A4 size sheet of paper folded into a rectangle as a signal for life or death was started after Kaushalya fell ill one day and was unable to even reach out to her nearest neighbours. It was only by chance that one of them happened to drop by and found out about her condition.
"Kaushalya's house is in very bad shape. The neighbours are her only permanent support," said Sanjay Sharma, a social worker who had in early August shared the old woman's helplessness in a social media post. He had also mentioned the ritual with the blank sheet of paper. The post was widely shared almost immediately. "I am hoping that the attention she got will help her get some financial support," he said.
It may just have. In Mumbai, the post caught the attention of filmmaker Vivek Mohan, who now plans to make a short film on her. "The film has been titled 'The Bus Stop'. It will be shot in Mumbai and will be based on Kaushalya's story. What amazed me was that all she wants is a dignified death. She is isolated from the world, living in that little village, but has found such a method to show, every morning, that she is still alive," said Mohan, winner of a National Award for the critically acclaimed documentary "Malana - In Search Of..." in 1998.