by Baby Halder
Barely had a few days gone by when one day the memsahib called out to me, “Baby, come here.” I hurried to her, worried that something had happened for her to call out to me like that. “Go and pack your belongings,” she said, “and get your children and come here.” But how could I do that? Just pack up everything on their say-so and bring it all there? Apart from anything, I would have to bathe the children, wash and dry the clothes…so I said to her, “I can’t manage this today. I will come after two days. I’ve lived with discomfort for so many days, a few more won’t matter. I’ll finish everything that needs to be done in the house and get the children’s hair cut and do all the other things I need to do.” But this made the memsahib very angry. “When you did not have a place to stay you were begging for one, and now that I am giving you one, you don’t seem to want it!” Why should I object? What could be better for me? I wondered. At the moment, I have to leave my small children behind and come this far to work and who knows what they have to listen to in my absence. Then when I get back after work, they come running to me, crying out “Ma, Ma!” in such pathetic voices that I feel terrible, and every day they ask me why I am so late. How can I tell them that if you are working for someone else, you can only be free when they give you their permission?
But the memsahib was not mollified. So I said, “All right. I’ll go tonight and fetch my children and bring everything.”
“Not tonight, go right now. Leave aside what you are doing and bring your things right away.”
I did as I was told and quickly made my way home. My elder brother saw me and was surprised. “So early today? Is something wrong?”
“I’ve come to fetch the children,” I said. “The memsahib has told me to bring everything at once…”
“Go, go!” he said “That’s excellent. Go quickly.”
I thought, They’ll all be relieved to see me go. My brother had found my elder son a job in some house, but he hadn’t told me where it was and I had no idea how to find him. So I asked him to keep an eye out for him and I collected my things, took my younger son and my daughter with me, and rushed back to the memsahib’s house. By the time we arrived, it was around eight or nine at night. I rang the bell and the memsahib and the Bengali servant girl came out at once. The memsahib said, “What took you so long? Go now, go and sleep. There’s no need to do any work right now.” I thought, She hasn’t even asked if we have eaten anything or not. Luckily I had bought the children some things to eat from the shop because I thought there wouldn’t be time to cook.
We managed to get through the night somehow. From the next day, the burden of work increased so much that sometimes I barely had time to breathe. I couldn’t understand why, but people were always after me: do this, do that, there’s work to be done here, and here…and because they had given me a place to stay, I couldn’t even say anything. Sometimes I did not even have the time to cook proper food for the children, and no one seemed to be concerned. Often I’d be working till eleven at night and there was no concern that my children might be hungry or that I needed to go and check on them. So I had to cook for the next day before I went to bed at night and this would often mean that it would get very late. In the morning I had to be up before six—memsahib called for me every morning. I’m a light sleeper, so I’d wake at the first call but even so, she’d keep calling out until she saw me.
Memsahib’s daughter worked in an office in Delhi and had to leave home by eight, before which I had to get her breakfast ready. In the evenings, she came back around six. I was required to wait at the gate for her bus to arrive and as soon as she got down, I’d take her bag and anything else she had and walk her into the house. Some days, if I was late, I would get a shouting. I also had to keep some fruit ready for her to eat, and as soon as she sat down I’d offer her tea, water, sherbet, whatever she wanted. Then, if she wanted, I had to massage her head or her feet or whatever: the work was never-ending.
Sometimes the sahib told his wife, “Look, this girl also needs some rest. Why don’t you give her a bit of time off? I’m sure she’d like to spend a little time with her children…” But his wife did not like this. I could understand all this, but I kept my silence—after all, I had my children. If she threw me out where would I go? There was no way I could live with my brothers, but I couldn’t manage without going to their homes, either, because that was the only way I could get news of my elder son—and then there was my memsahib, who would not let me go anywhere. If I ever asked her if I could go and get some news about my son, she’d say no, not right now, there’s too much work. If I said I had to go and buy provisions, she’d tell me to go and come back by a certain time. If I was late she would shout at me. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, or to talk to anyone. It was really difficult to stay there like this. But I did not know anyone whom I could ask to help me find some other work. There were other people working in that house, but somehow she did not get at them in quite the same way as she did with me. I was the one who was made to work the hardest—perhaps she thought that since she had given me room to live with my children, she had a greater claim on my time.
In some ways, things were not so bad. I lived in a large house. We ate reasonably well. I was getting paid regularly, and I had even managed to save a little bit. But I missed my son, and often I would just sit and weep thinking of him. The Bengali girl encouraged me to ask our memsahib for time off to go and look for my son. “Go on, ask her,” she said, “what’s the use of crying like this? I don’t know how you cope, not knowing what has happened to your son.” Yes, I thought, only I knew how I was managing.
One day, on the way back from the market, I decided to go to my brother’s house. My son was sitting outside. It was terrible. He seemed to have all kinds of cuts and bruises on his hands and feet and he couldn’t walk properly. His foot was bleeding. I was so upset to see him, I wondered if he even got fed where he was working. I decided to take him to the doctor—my brother saw him as I was leaving and came and said, “Why don’t you send the boy home? If you don’t want to go back don’t go, but send the boy back to his father. Or else, take him away from here.”
I said, “Brother, I live in someone’s house. I already have two children with me there. They won’t let me have another child with me. Please let him stay on with you for a while until I can find another job or a house and I will come back and take him away.” Then I turned to leave.
Back at the house, memsahib gave me job after job: do this, no, do that, finish this first…I realized that she was annoyed with me for being late. Finally she asked, “Why were you so late?” So I told her. “I stopped by at my brother’s house. I wanted to see my son. He’s not well and I had to take him to the doctor. I will go again tomorrow.”
She was furious. “Yes, yes, go. Go every day, why don’t you? Leave your work and go off, wander about outside.”
I thought, I had hardly been wandering about—when had I ever had a chance to even take a leisurely walk? I did not like her attitude to me at all. She wouldn’t let me go to see my son, and if ever he came to the house to see me, she would not let him enter. I had to go outside to speak to him and even that was only allowed for a limited period of time. I was starved for my son, and I thought, surely he wanted sometimes to talk to his mother and his brother and sister? My Bengali friend sympathized with me, and she encouraged me to leave and look for another job. How will you manage like this? she kept asking me. And she was right, concern for my son was killing me. I was worried about what he was eating, how he was living…and because of this I couldn’t eat properly, either. My heart wasn’t in my work…and I had to listen to recriminations all the time.
The family I worked with had a dog called Kesfo. He gave me much more love and attention than that family ever did. When I was sad, he would come and cuddle up to me, lick my feet, nuzzle me with his nose. He understood my sadness. And if I responded by stroking him a little, his tail would begin to wag. Soon we became such good friends that he refused to be looke
d after by anyone else. I was the one who had to feed him—he would refuse to eat if someone else got his food. I had to take him out for a walk so he could relieve himself. And if I left my door open, he would run into my room, jump on my bed, and settle down there. If I was asleep, he would try to wake me and I understood that he needed to go out. I was also happy to take him out, for when I went out with him, I felt completely safe: no one dared to trouble me whether it was morning or night when I was with him.
Memsahib and sahib often went out and came back very late, sometimes around two or three in the morning, and I had to stay awake for them and let them in when they came. The other servants, including the Bengali girl, Anjali, were usually asleep by this time. Anjali and the cook, Bhajan, had an odd relationship. Suddenly she would stop talking to him, and he would come to me and say, “Baby, tell her to speak to me.” They’d fight and bicker all the time, and then they’d come running to me for help. But if I tried to tell them not to fight, it made no difference. All this came to an end the day Bhajan heard that his mother was very ill. He had a letter from his father and was so upset to hear about his mother that he began to cry. He told me his news, and also that he had asked memsahib to give him some time off so he could go and see his mother and she had refused. I felt very sorry for him. “Go and show her the letter,” I urged him, “it may help to change her mind.” Instead, he showed the letter to the sahib and he agreed to give him time off. Sahib treated us much better than memsahib, and sometimes when she was angry with me, he would step in and placate her.
The next day Bhajan got ready to go home. He was only waiting to get paid, but our employers were not very forthcoming with his salary and once again he began to cry. At around two o’clock, the sahib came and talked to him and asked if Bhajan would give him an assurance that he would return. Bhajan said he would go home and see how things were and would then phone them. So sahib gave him the money he was owed, plus some extra, and told him that if he came back in a month, he would also get paid for that month. As he was leaving, Anjali and I advised him to make sure he came back within a month. And then our sahib drove him to the train station.
Anjali and I were the only ones left in that house now. They will all go away and I will be the only one left, I thought. But then, I don’t have anywhere to go either. Who can I ask to find me another job? Anjali said, “Why don’t you ask Nitai? At least try to talk to him once.” After a couple of days I did, but I got the sense that he had lost interest in trying to help me any further. Also, he was married now and was living in his in-laws’ home. I had gotten to know a few of the people working in other places nearby, so I thought I would ask if any of them could find me another job.
One day, Anjali went to Delhi with memsahib. They went to the office through which memsahib had located and employed Anjali. There were some people there from Anjali’s village who had originally suggested her to memsahib. When she’d been employed, it had been agreed that she would get two days off a month, when she would be able to go back to this office to spend time with her people. That day, the moment she got a chance, Anjali began to complain and told the people in the office all sorts of things about our memsahib—how she felt the memsahib had no kindness in her soul and thought that if she paid you to work, she owned you: all this and more. Memsahib did not utter a word and despite this she kept Anjali on, perhaps because not many workers stayed long in her home. But then who would, given the way she treated them?
The next time she took Anjali there, Anjali did not return.
One day memsahib brought another woman to work in the house—she was a good worker, but she spoke only Bengali, no Hindi, so she couldn’t understand what memsahib said to her, so I had to serve as a translator between the two of them. In this interim, Bhajan came back and took over the work in the kitchen, along with many other responsibilities. Now, suddenly, she began to turn on me: I became the bad one. Nothing I did would please her, and she’d criticize everything…she even began to shout at my children. The poor little things, they were locked up on the roof of the house all day and would die to see me just the same way as all the time I was dying to see them. Sometimes they’d come down the stairs and wait for me, but if the memsahib or her daughter saw them, they’d shout at them and shoo them away. The other girl who was working there kept telling me I should find work elsewhere. “Why do you continue to stand for this?” she asked me. I also began to think that if I moved out of that house, at least my children would be able to breathe the air of the outside world.
So one day I took my children and left. I did not ask memsahib or wait for her permission, or take my things. I just left. The only thought in my mind as I left was that I had enough money with me to last us two months and during that time I would find work somewhere else.
A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER, MY ELDER SON AND I WENT and put a deposit on a room. It was in an area where there were no other Bengalis. The rent was a thousand rupees a month, and we paid some of it—I thought at least we would have a place to stay for the time being: then I would look around for something else. I left the children with the Bengali woman who was working in memsahib’s house—she lived in her own home—and I took a rickshaw to go and collect my things. I went to the house and rang the bell, and the dog started barking and came running out. I stroked his head through the bars of the gate and we waited. In a short while sahib came and opened the gate. The dog jumped up at me and began whimpering. I felt terrible: I’d only been gone two days and this was how he felt. What would happen to him when I went away for good?
I was a little nervous about telling memsahib that I was leaving, but I needn’t have worried. She came out and took me by the hand and sat me down. Putting her hand on my back, she said, “Listen, if I have said anything to you in anger, please don’t be upset by it. The door of this home is always open for you, whenever you want.” I thought it better not to waste any more time, so, without answering her, I quickly went in to fetch my things. I was putting them together when memsahib came up the stairs, slightly out of breath, and I understood that she wanted to see what I was taking away. She stood there as I packed, and then I took my things down to the rickshaw. I thought I would say good-bye to the dog but he was nowhere to be seen—perhaps they had kept him away because they did not want me making him unhappy. Then, without further ado, I left.
Slowly, I settled into my new house. The one thing that preyed on my mind all the time was how to find work—what would I do if I didn’t manage to find a job? And so, once again, I began the same old treadmill: running from pillar to post in search of work. As well as this, I also tried to see if I could find a cheaper place to live. Would I be able to? I wasn’t sure, but I was worried about having to pay the rent for the next month. A week and a half passed and I had not found anything. Meanwhile, my neighbors started to ask all sorts of questions: Why was I living alone? Did it not worry me? Where was my husband? Would I be able to manage? and so on…When they started asking me all these things, my instinct was always to run away and not talk to them. So I’d take the kids and run off, saying that I had to go out and find a job. But then I had to face endless questions about whether I had managed to find work or not! At those times my defense tactic was to start talking about the children.
There was a young man named Sunil who worked as a driver in the house opposite memsahib’s. He was another one whom I’d asked to look for work for me, and one day I met him somewhere and he asked if I was still working in the house across the road. When I told him I had left that job a week and a half ago and was looking for work, he offered to help. He promised to keep his ear to the ground and let me know if anything came up. One afternoon, I was sleeping with the children when Sunil turned up and asked if I had found work. I said no. So he said, “Come with me, then.”
“Where to?” I asked.
“Just come. If you need work, and once you’ve seen what there is to do, you can do the rest of the negotiations yourself.”
So I went with him. He
took me to a house and rang the bell and the sahib came out. Sunil said to him, “Here you are, sir, I have brought someone as you instructed me to.”
“Are you Bengali?” the sahib asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, then,” he said, “the woman who works here is paid 800 rupees. I will see how you work and then decide on what to pay you.”
“All right,” I said, and asked what my hours would be.
“As early as possible, because I am an early riser.”
“I have to cook and feed my children, so the earliest I can make it is around six or seven o’clock.” I had the feeling the sahib wanted to talk a little more about money, so I hesitated as I was turning to leave but he just said, “All right, you can start tomorrow.”
The next day when I came to work I saw a thirty-five-to forty-year-old widow heading into the same house to work. Sahib was outside watering the plants. The moment he saw me he went into the house and told the woman that she would have to leave, he had found someone else. She came out and started abusing me. I told her: “Look, I know nothing about all this. Had I known that there was someone already here, I wouldn’t have said yes to the job. It’s no use shouting at me like this. If you want, you go and tell the sahib that I am not willing to work like this, and then you can have your old job back.”