Maidless in Mumbai

by Payal Kapadia

  Mom’s old maid Jannabai introduces us to her daughter. ‘If young Deepu works for you, I can keep an eye on her,’ she says.

  And Deepu can keep an eye on Tara. I love symbiotic relationships.

  Deepu wins Tara’s heart right away. ‘Kook!’ she says, springing out from behind the sofa. Tara giggles. ‘Kook!’ she says, playing peek-a-boo from behind the kitchen door. Tara smiles. ‘Kook!’ she says from under the dining table. Tara rolls over on the floor, laughing hard.

  Thank you, Santa, thank you!

  10 Jan

  We’re ten days into the new year, and Deepu is already a one-man army, my choice for prime minister. She can do anything and everything. She bathes, feeds and dresses Tara. She takes Tara out in the stroller. She sterilizes the breast pump and the teether. She bottle-feeds Tara and puts her to sleep. She irons and washes her clothes and arranges them colour-wise in the cupboard. Everything is a cinch for her.

  ‘Will Tara be happy with me when you return to work, Didi?’ asks Deepu, displaying that vulnerability that makes me adore her. ‘Will she love me?’

  ‘She already loves you,’ I say, ‘and I do, too!’

  ‘Don’t go overboard with the maid loving,’ snipes Sonia when we meet up for coffee. ‘They’re here today, gone tomorrow.’

  Sonia is such a cynic. Deepu is family. I know she’ll stick around like Janaki. One day she’ll look after Tara’s children and we’ll be like the Indian version of Downton Abbey.

  17 Jan

  I am free, free, FREE! I pound the treadmill with a heady sense of my own invincibility. My bum is smaller already. Zara jeans halfway up my thighs now! Tummy flatter. Less convex, anyway. I go for long walks while Deepu doddles Tara on the grass. I get back on Facebook where I have 267 posts waiting to be answered. I find the time to take pictures of Tara. I find the time to put on makeup, and do my hair, and squeeze into those pictures with Tara. I am enjoying motherhood for the first time.

  The cable television is back. MIL is not. She has threatened to visit us on long weekends (oh no) and Mom will be dropping by daily (gulp). But on March 1, when I return to work, that won’t be my problem.

  I resume email ties with Michelle. I even recommend Gina Ford to my cousin, who is about to have a baby. I buy her a fresh copy, gift wrap it and send it to her.

  ‘Read Gina Ford, but be realistic when you set your goals,’ I tell her sagely when she calls up to thank me. ‘It’s a baby you have there, not a robot!’

  ‘You are such a calm and confident mother,’ she tells me. ‘I want to be just like you.’

  Of course, she’ll find out soon enough what I’m not telling her now. What the secret to calm and confident parenting really is.

  Getting the perfect maid.

  ***

  MAID-DAY! MAID-DAY!

  3 March

  Liberty! Freedom! Back to work!

  But first, to get into those sleek skinnies I wore before I got pregnant. I lay them out on the bed and subject them to journalistic scepticism. Legs: pipe cleaners. Waist: unreal. Seat: non-existent.

  One can’t be expected to casually accept that the work skinnies are a few sizes too small, toss them in the bin and welcome the wardrobe change. The rational side of my brain says there’s no way I’m getting into those skinnies. But the emotional side has turned getting skinnies on into a goal, even if I have to deploy certain devious means. Such as:

  1. Lying on my back, flailing legs in the air, shimmying hips, nudging skinnies down, inch by inch. Think caterpillar moulting its skin in reverse.

  2. Achieving three complex movements in one easy swipe. Holding breath, zipping skinnies, nailing button.

  3. Rolling over to a standing position in case sitting up directly pops button. Still holding breath.

  4. Jumping up and down to create breathing space.

  5. Squatting up and down to create bum space. Next breath unavoidable.

  6. Button pops. So much better! Why didn’t I think of this first?

  7. Cheating with a long top that conceals popped button and half-open zip.

  8. Resolving to shallow-breathe through the rest of the day.

  That’s the thing. Once you get skinnies on, by hook or by crook, you feel all skinny. I savour the moment. I am a working mom now. Only three kilos shy of my original self. Living proof that Tara is just a blip on my career graph.

  ‘Good luck!’ says Mom. What’s luck got to do with anything? I’ve come this far because I had a plan: have a baby; get a maid; return to work.

  I behave like I’ve done this having-a-baby-and-returning-to-work business a gazillion times before. Issuing last-minute commands to Deepu in brisk shorthand. Running through every item on Tara’s daily schedule. And reminding Deepu that a copy is up on the fridge, just as a backup. Also up in my room.

  Business as usual. Up until Mom hugs me. What is it about a maternal embrace that weakens the hardest resolve? I thought our goodwill had run out like water from an unplugged bath. Could it be that Mom (last seen before Tara was born) is back? That MIL’s spirit has left her in peace at last and floated off to find another body to haunt?

  I blink back tears. (Although they could just as well be corneal secretions from wearing contact lenses after nine months of looking like the cover girl on Hausfrau magazine.)

  The gravitational pull of home weakens as Sameer and I drive off to work together. All the worn out cornerstones of conversation evaporate—maids, moms and babies. Instead, Sameer and I bitch out the slow traffic, the slow economy, the slow people we work with. It’s like the old days again.

  ‘Joining us at last, Anu?’ says Eddy as I slip into the monthly meeting.

  OK, so I said I’d return to work and didn’t. More than once. But Eddy’s bon mots are like a punch to the solar plexus first thing in the morning.

  ‘Don’t mind him, Supermom!’ whispers Poor Pia, sitting next to me as always. Catch her telling me not to mind this man I’ve known for a decade! Sometimes she can be so cute.

  Monthly meetings are crucial. I pitch a few well-aimed thoughts and glance at the sheet of paper Poor Pia slips into my hand. Three ideas this time. Not bad at all for a girl who once struggled to come up with a single credible idea to work on.

  ‘What do you think?’ she says, a familiar twinge of doubt in her voice. She hasn’t changed at all while I’ve been away.

  ‘Great ideas!’ I jot in the margin.

  Poor Pia’s chair protests weakly as she pushes it back and stands. She looks barely out of her teens, all skin and bones, with mussed-up hair that gets in her eyes all the time. ‘Uhh, I have an idea . . .’ she begins, turning back to me in that hopelessly dependent way she has. Go on, Pia!

  She stutters unintelligibly through her first idea when Eddy puts his hand up. ‘Enough, we don’t have all day.’

  I know that she has two more ideas, but Eddy’s face has congealed into a mask of displeasure. I give Eddy a long, hard look. Would a little encouragement hurt?

  ‘Give us a photo feature,’ Eddy says. ‘Four pages. For the next issue.’

  I squeeze Poor Pia’s arm proudly.

  ‘Anu?’ Eddy taps his pen against the palm of his hand. ‘Any ideas you had while you were away?’ He makes it sound like I nipped out for the weekend and came back inspired.

  ‘No.’ Because I’m not Poor Pia, the newest hire down in Features, out to impress him.

  Eddy raises a disbelieving eyebrow.

  I know, it’s not like me to not be thinking of the next story. Even if I’ve just had a baby. But I still have to work on my Big Dam Story and I don’t want Eddy breathing down my neck till it’s a certainty. You don’t bandy such a story at an editorial meeting. You keep it top secret, you build it up rock solid, and you run with it. Timing, as every seasoned journalist knows, is everything.

  I dial home after the meeting. ‘Hello, Deepu, how is Tara?’

  Timing is everything. Tara said ‘ta-ta’. Her first real word. Suddenly I feel shaky. I should have
been there to hear it. But I’ve missed it.

  5 March

  Tara has officially found something other than my breasts to chew on: food.

  In a synchronised move across continents, Michelle sends me pictures of her son. He is perched in his high chair, fork pointed purposefully downward, making the same discovery. There are no maternal relatives in any of the pictures, though Michelle is in one of them. She looks thin and happy. I torture myself by looking at the pictures again and again.

  Feeding Tara breakfast is a less straightforward exercise. Mom lures Tara to her lap with a singsong voice designed to win the trust of her quarry. She diverts her quarry from the trap she has just walked into by jangling a fat bunch of keys. Deepu springs the trap: a plate of food and a well-aimed spoon.

  The fair-minded quarry metes out equal treatment to house keys and food—a single, square swat.

  Deepu does some shadow boxing. Going in with the melon; pulling back; slipping in some orange; ducking flying melon; shoving in some apple; deftly parrying regurgitated orange.

  ‘Maybe she’s not hungry?’ My stating the obvious is met with vigorous opposition.

  ‘How can she not be hungry?’ retorts Mom, clanging a spoon against a tumbler as an accompaniment to some 1940s Hindi film song in which the heroine is about to end her life. Like I am this close to doing now.

  ‘Tempted to feed her?’ asks Mom brightly.

  Tempted? Not when the simple act of eating has been bloated into the national employment guarantee scheme for every female member of this house.

  Deepu gives me a discreet wave as if it’s OK to bail. If I stay, Tara will cling to me and Deepu’s newfound confidence will suffer. Besides, I’m late for work. Behind me, I can hear the whole noisy exercise resume as Tara takes another bite.

  So this is what it means when they say it takes a village to raise a child.

  8 March

  Tara has moved out of our room and into her own. I have my breasts back, my bed back, my mind back. Six hours of uninterrupted sleep is like a shot of caffeine to the unaccustomed system.

  I am a juggernaut at work: tearing about the office, hurtling out to press meets, working the phones. I am a juggernaut at home: putting the final touches on Tara’s new room, filling the missing gaps in the baby book, documenting every precious minute of Tara’s life.

  Basically, I am an unstoppable force of workingmomness.

  I get on the weighing scale butt naked. The needle is still stuck where it was last week. Maybe I’ll take off my glasses. Exhale. Climb on again. Alas, being a juggernaut has not burned any calories.

  11 March

  For some reason, people at work are treating me differently. They think that because I’m a working mom now, I’ll ask for special favours. Pass up on tough assignments and duck out of office engagements. But they’re wrong.

  ‘You can come in late, or leave early,’ says Eddy, ‘if it makes things easier.’ See what I mean?

  ‘Taken any new pics of the baby?’ says Sonam as though we can’t talk about falling GDP any more.

  ‘What’s up, Supermom?’ Why does Poor Pia have to make me feel like I’ve flown in through the window in a red spandex catsuit with SM emblazoned on my chest?

  I’ll lecture her on addressing her seniors appropriately after I’ve made this early head start count for something. For now, I’ll steam through every little story about the Big Story while I’m caffeinated. No word from my whistle-blower, Sanmitra, but the newspapers are gushing about how the dam project will bring cheap power to CM Khandu’s state. And how he’s some sort of messiah. Like hell he is. Why is Pia here so early anyway?

  Two smaller stories are breathing down my neck and begging for attention. One is a follow-up on another civic body scam, I’ll work on that first. Make calls and wait for call-backs. I should also set up an appointment with the geologist about the dam story and swing by the BMC on my way home. If I pace myself, I could be home by six. Halfway through Tara’s park outing.

  My head is swimming when Pia pops by. ‘Busy, Supermom?’ I grit my teeth. ‘Pia, I’m not Super—’ when Eddy ambles up, too: ‘A word, Anu?’

  I wave Pia away: ‘Later?’ and grab the ringing desk phone. It’s Mom.

  ‘Tara isn’t eating . . . she must be sick . . . call the paediatrician.’ Mom’s voice is so shrill, I’m sure Eddy can hear everything.

  ‘Call you back,’ I say because it’s my cell phone’s turn to ring. It’s Deepu. ‘Tara is eating fine . . . just one of those days . . . she’s not sick.’

  ‘Everything OK at home?’ Eddy asks.

  ‘Of course. My mother is there, and the maid, too.’ I make it sound like it’s some great advantage to have both of them around.

  Eddy wants a story about Dalit unrest along the state border. Will it involve travelling? My blood turns cold at that unannounced thought. Am I shirking fieldwork just because I’ve had a baby and want to be close to home? Didn’t I once sneer at armchair reporters . . .

  ‘If you can’t manage this, Anu . . .’ Since when has Eddy become such a model of compassion? Has he forgotten what he said when I got pregnant? Another one bites the dust. No one ever comes back after having a baby.

  Well, I’m back—and motherhood hasn’t softened me into baby mush. ‘I’ll do it!’ I trill, even though I’m thinking of the extra calls I’ll have to make. How I’ll never make it home for park time. And how I hate missing bath time with Tara, though that’s likely, too.

  Another call home. ‘Tara is playing happily,’ says Deepu, sounding calm and collected. ‘If there’s anything, I’ll call you.’

  I feel a rush of gratitude for this godsend of a girl. If I’d left this to Mom, she’d call me every minute of every day in a Tara-induced panic.

  Damn, just like that, I’ve lost an entire hour! Nose to the grindstone now. I’ll skip the press con at one, the packed lunch I brought in, and the informal huddle around the telly where everyone’s swapping high fives because India just beat Pakistan. Instead I’ll chase down the geologist . . .

  Is it really seven already? The geologist hasn’t returned my calls, and it’s too late to stop at the BMC. At least I’ve set the tone by outlasting every person here.

  ‘See you tomorrow, Supermom!’ Poor Pia shouts across the empty newsroom. Almost every person.

  15 March

  This is Sameer’s third working Saturday in a row. Being on the partnership fast track has knocked the breath out of him. ‘Sorry, Anu,’ he says, sounding tired. ‘I know I haven’t been around to help, but you have Deepu . . .’

  I could mope briefly for the missing spouse, but Deepu switches on the music. Tara bounces her diapered bottom. I’ll party now and mope later—when the doorbell rings.

  It’s Mom. With Jannabai. Did I speak too soon?

  Deepu looks as ambivalent about seeing her mom as I am about seeing mine. But it is quite clear who both our moms are here to see. They converge upon Tara.

  ‘Doesn’t Deepu comb your hair?’ Jannabai puts a hairclip on for Tara.

  ‘Isn’t Anu feeding you, you puny thing?’ Mom pats her cheeks.

  Deepu and I exchange looks. The only way we’ll survive this maternal onslaught is if we stick together.

  ‘She’s due for a nap,’ says Deepu, reading my mind.

  But Jannabai is tickling Tara silly and flinging her in the air. ‘Nonsense, Deepu, what do you know? This is how you play with a baby!’

  Or stress her out. The coddling and cuddling has triggered the hiccups, and the hiccups trigger a tantrum.

  ‘Does she want to play with Pee and Poo?’ cries Mom. As though what Tara needs right now are a pair of stuffed toys shaped like excrement that some cheap guest picked off the clearance rack.

  There is panic and pandemonium now. Imagine one of those medieval film scenes: a rampaging army approaches; the travellers stampede to the castle gates, but alas, they close. Now replace those travellers from the Middle Ages with our middle-aged moms.

&n
bsp; I signal Deepu with my eyes. She carts the rampaging baby to the bedroom. I let the stampeding moms out and pull up the drawbridge.

  We brew two cups of tea, savouring the silence. Alone in our castle at last.

  20 March

  Motherhood has focused me to a red-hot pinpoint of raw energy. I will work harder than everyone else at the Sceptic. Like a worm in a pit, I will munch through rough clods of data and compost them into rich stories. If I work without pause, I’ll be home at six. For park time.

  Across from me, Sonam is punting on stocks. Two cubicles over, the photographers are updating their Facebook pages. Pia has nipped out for lunch with another young female colleague who has nowhere to be this evening. Unlike me. And from where I’m sitting, it looks like the office accountant is surfing for porn . . .

  The to-do list for the day is all checked off because of the overtime I pulled yesterday. Good. Now I can turn to the dam story. Sanmitra hasn’t called, but CM Khandu is becoming a political heavyweight on the national scene. He’s one to watch out for, that’s the big whisper.

  There are a few scattered voices of dissent from environmentalists and locals, but they’re lost on page 22 of the local paper. If these dams are built, there will be no looking back for him. The votes will come in. Money, too. Follow the money. That’s what I should do.

  I drop in at Poor Pia’s desk with the perfectly honourable intention of checking on how her story is going (and slipping in a mention of that annoying Supermom thing she does). But her story is falling through. Maybe I should bring up that Supermom thing when she’s less fragile.

  The geologist returns my call at last. ‘The dam is being built along a seismic fault line, Ms Narain,’ he says. ‘I’d call it a ticking time bomb!’

  My blood freezes. I think of Sanmitra’s family. I think of all the villages downstream that would be wiped out if that dam were to trigger an earthquake. It has never felt more pressing to tell a story.

  Calls. More calls. Reading. More reading. I squeeze in two Tara update calls and order lunch in at the desk, where it grows cold waiting. Somewhere in all this, a few reporters cluster around Sonam’s desk. A heated discussion breaks out over what the Speaker said in Parliament today. Maybe I could sidle over, pitch in my opinion, eat my cold lunch while I’m at it . . .