On a completely different note though I revisited a part of my childhood this morning.
There was this maid ( domestic help) called Savitri- di who used to work at our place when I was very young. She had a daughter named ' Pushpa' who would help my mom with all the household chores. For the knowledge of all my non- Indian friends and blog followers, a domestic help, coming from a socially, economically deprived and never developed strata of society is a very common thing in Indian middle and upper class families.They are human labourers who would do the dish washing, room cleaning for many socially and economically better off households for a better living. Pushpa, was one. When she came to our house, she herself was probabaly 9-10 years old. I wrote 'probably' because neither she nor her mother could tell me the actual age. They had no birthdays, forget about the thought of celebration, they had no record of date, time or month when they were born so that the Astrologers could map their progression of future. I had spent many Sunday afternoons questioning her about her life, when does she start for work, what does she eat, why does she not go to school like me, and at times during the course of conversation I would find her fast asleep.
Pushpa and her mother came from Laxmikantapur , a village down southern West Bengal. They would report to work around 7' o clock in the morning at our place for which they would start at 3:30 in the morning even before the Sun rose. Pushpa's dad did not go to work, and I do not remember the reason, and she and her mother would work in many household like ours to arrange for a square meals for themselves, the father and the young brother. One day, when I was still in school, I heard Pushpa got married. Her mother continued to work in our house till the time I was in college first grade.
Years went by...... One day I asked Savitri di about Pushpa. She happily replied that Pushpa was then a mother of two children. I asked about Pushpa's young brother. She happily said that he was studying a major in Sanskrit at a college near our place. Just as I was moving up the ladder of academics, Savitri-di's son was also stepping ahead , scaling one after another, the unsurmountable peaks of his life. From school, to high school to college.....what a journey it was, he only knew.
Years went by..we moved away from a domestic - helped household to a self helped one where I clean my own clothes, wash my own dishes and mom does hers.
This morning while I was busy doing something at my PC, there was a knock at the gate and my mom uttered a sigh of disbelief at the ushering of the guest. Pushpa! it was. After 20-25 years she was back, with the only noticeable change being that she was a saree clad lady from a red frock clad ( that was her uniform to work) girl. Her complexion has not changed. Unlike me she has not put on weight and was well built with no sign of obesity or necessity to visit the gym. She was smiling with her white teeth and her hair still dark and oily. I asked her what were her children doing. Pushpa's son was studying at a college under the guidence of Pushpa's brother and her daughter already got married at the age of fifteen. Pushpa is back in her family business of offering domestic help because in a bid to get her daughter married off they incurred a few loans and she needed to work to pay that money. I heard that Pushpa's brother did not attend the marriage of his neice because he did not approve a child getting married. Pushpa's youngest son (kid number three) was at the sixth grade. She said, she starts off for work early morning, but ensures that she gets home by 4'o clock in the afternoon because the youngest son would come home from school and his food should be ready. Pushpa did not work therefore 'Fulltime.'
My mother asked, now that there were so much emphasis laid by the government on restructuring the social sector, so many crores of money spent on rural employment generation and rural education, could Pushpa not get some help from those? She said, at their village, they did not get any of those. For that matter, the text books for schools, which were supposed to be had from the school were not given and she has to spent a considereble amount of her income in buying books for her youngest son.
Pushpa left after a few minutes of revisiting the past, leaving me write this blog after a lull of two months.
Change is the most unchangeable happening in our life, however, the pattern of change brings back the bygone.
Here was the dress materials, the style of the seventies that made a comeback in the fashion arena, and there was Savitri and her daughter Pushpa working as domestic helps so that their sons could study in colleges and yet another little girl getting married even before she knew what marriage was!
