I became the first woman to row passengers on this ghat, and my sons never once had to stop school

My husband rowed this same boat for eighteen years before a heart attack took him one winter morning. I was thirty-six, with two sons still in school, and every relative I had told me to sell the boat and move in with my brother.

I didn’t sell it. I’d sat in that boat since I was a girl, watching him row, and I knew the current better than most of the men who worked this stretch of the river. The first few months, passengers would hesitate before stepping in — a woman rowing was not something anyone here had seen. Word travels slowly on the ghats and quickly once it starts moving; within a year, people were asking for me by name.

Both my sons finished school without a single term missed. One is at college now, studying to be an engineer. I still row every sunrise, the same stretch of the Ganga my husband once rowed, and there are three other women on this ghat with oars in their hands now because they watched me first.