JALKA (YAVATMAL): Forty-year-old Ramdas Bonde and his family peeped incongruously out of his hut to see the commotion outside his neighbour Kalavati Bandurkar's house.

Thanks to Rahul Gandhi and his speech in Parliament on Tuesday, Kalavati has become a celebrity as the media hung around for her reactions.

The AICC general secretary visited the Bandurkar household on a whistlestop tour of Vidarbha last week and then pegged his 'nuclear speech' on Kalavati. Gandhi, however, did not visit Bonde's hut.

While Kalavati is coming to terms with life after her husband's suicide, Bonde, who lives exactly opposite her house, and his family are still struggling to come to terms with a botched suicide attempt. In debt for over Rs 2 lakh, Bonde tried to end his life in March.

He had borrowed some money from a relative to build a house and also from a bank for farming. After Kalavati's husband Parashuram ended his life three years ago, Bonde's was the second suicide attempt in the village. Though quick action by villagers saw that he stayed alive, Bonde appears to be depressed, not knowing how he would be able to repay the huge debt.

It has been nearly four months since he made the suicide attempt, but Bonde's family is detached from the reality. "He owed a huge debt so he did it," says Bonde's wife Ashabai matter-of-factly.

Bonde, who has just returned from the fields to witness the commotion outside Kalavati's house, says with a blank face, "The crop was not good last year and I was worried that I would not be able to repay the loan. I thought it is better to end my life to get rid of the trouble." He is the lone bread earner in the family of five, which includes two sons, an ageing mother and his wife.

Bonde went to Karanji village, which is 4 km from here, to buy 'corn feeder'—a pesticide used on cotton crops. He, then, drank it at his field. Luckily, his 15-year old son found out and alerted the villagers.

Nitin Khadse took him to a primary health centre 15km away after he was given first aid in the village. "I made him swallow egg yolk and coconut oil, which made him vomit. This helped," says Khadse.

Bonde is fit and back to work. "The thought of repaying the debt is still worrying me," he says. Bonde tills a nine-acre farm jointly owned with his brother and says he doesn't earn more than Rs 25,000-30,000 a year after growing cotton and soyabean. Perhaps it will take another trust vote to bring his case into focus.