Our new maid

A twinge of sadness gripped at my heart when I saw our old maid sleeping on the floor in the drawing room. Has she ever slept on a bed? I thought. I know everything in our lives happens for one reason or another but sometimes things are just not in our control. What has she done to deserve this perpetual poverty? Take birth in a poor family? Seeing people like her re-affirms my belief that all of us should get an equal chance to break this vicious circle because nobody should have to spend an entire life in poverty. That’s why when I saw our cook’s daughter trying to study (well, seemingly) I felt exhilarated, and Alka and I went out of our ways to help her study.

Urmila (our substitute maid) must be over fifty. In West Bengal she used to work in a rice field and was earning Rs. 40 (less than a dollar) per day. Then her son and the daughter-in-law threw her out and an agent brought her to Delhi. From there my mom brought her home because our regular maid has gone on a two-month leave. She mostly understands Bengali, and what a world of change it must be for her. People were not nice to her there in West Bengal, but at least they weren’t alien. Even if they abused her she could understand the abuses and act (or cringe) accordingly. Here she is trapped with a loud-mouthed Punjabi family where almost everybody seems to be yelling at her (without meaning to, most of the times). Alka and I try to be gentle to her but she doesn’t serve us most of the time — she’s mostly serving my parents and the continuous stream of guests who’ll keep coming until my parents leave for Abu Dhabi.

Seeing her on the floor really made me feel sad. I wish we could give her a bed, but there is often not enough space for our own beds. Ok, time for some soul-searching: when everybody is gone and with just Alka and I left in the house, there’ll be plenty of space. In fact there’ll be a whole bedroom empty. Will we allow her to sleep on the double-bed? I’ll be frank: the thought of her sleeping on the bed we’ve been using disturbs me. But why does the idea disturb me? There are many lousy, undeserving (even dirtier than her, I suppose) guests who have used the bed with great fanfare, sleeping and drooling on its pillows. Seeing them sleeping on that bed never disturbed me. Prejudice? I think so. Can I break its shackles? I don’t know. Am I open to the idea? Again, I don’t know.

On another thought, we have a comfy arrangement for the 24-hour maids that sometimes we have to keep. There’s a jute-mat that can be spread on the floor (floor?); there is a comfortable cotton-stuffed mattress that can be spread over the jute-mat; and then there is a bed sheet that can be spread over the cotton-stuffed mattress. For winter there is a combination of a quilt and a fluffy blanket. So short of a bed, nothing is lacking. So may be because of the terrible heat she prefers to sleep on the floor without the mattress and all.

I digressed for a while; the point is not that. It’s not about sleeping on the floor or a bed. The point is the perpetual poverty she has to live in for all her life. Although not her entire life is gone, a major portion of it has been withered under the burning rays of poverty. My thoughts are frozen at the moment…I’ll try visiting the topic again.