Maidless in Mumbai

by Payal Kapadia

  ‘Two days, Sameer, that’s all. Deepu will be here, Mom, too. Just be on call in the unlikely event that everyone else who watches Tara suddenly dies.’

  He looks half-convinced. After all, it is highly unlikely, everyone else dying.

  ‘Why don’t you pretend that looking after Tara is only my job and that you’re doing me a favour?’ I mutter under my breath.

  ‘Let it go, Anu, I’m busting my chops after this partnership—’

  ‘—you didn’t look like you were busting your chops at the brewery with that woman from work, what’s her name again?’

  Sameer throws me a withering look. ‘Seriously, Anu? It was a work meeting, that’s all. The truth is, I’ve been thinking of nothing but work because—’

  ‘—because of your ambition!’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he says. ‘If I made partner, we’d have choices . . .’

  ‘We already have choices.’ My voice sounds unusually quiet. I could kill the man right this minute, but where would that leave me? I’ll keep my eyes on the Big Story and breathe evenly. The rest is noise.

  23 May

  I find Deepu in the kitchen early this morning, crying. The cell phone is face down on the ground. ‘Take it away, Didi, I don’t want it.’

  She needn’t say more, I know what the problem is. ‘You’ve gone and told her something!’

  ‘I haven’t!’ Mom shakes her head in a well-coordinated denial of guilt, but I know better.

  ‘She doesn’t want the phone.’

  ‘Take it back, then,’ says Mom.

  ‘What if she leaves, Mom? Have you thought of that?’ I can barely say the word. Leaves.

  ‘Ha, because you took away a phone that she said she didn’t want in the first place!’ This is Mom trying to be clever. ‘If she leaves, she leaves.’

  It isn’t that simple. If Deepu leaves, MIL will give up on Igatpuri and move in here forever. Her spirit will inhabit Mom’s body again. They’ll spoil Tara rotten and drive all the maids out. This can’t be happening. Did I claw my way up the career ladder only to fall off the maternal footstool?

  I say many things now, things that I can’t take back. It’s cathartic, I tell myself, I’ll feel better when I’m done.

  But I don’t.

  Mom’s face is drawn. ‘Anything more?’

  Yes, there’s more. But Mom has gathered her things and walked out.

  24 May

  Mom hasn’t come today. Deepu is a teary mess. Tara clings to her like a barnacle. I’ll just go on a guilt trip—what should I pack?

  1. To-do lists that never get done

  2. Miscellaneous items that have fallen through the cracks

  3. A self-replenishing inbox

  4. Many sets of stepped-upon toes

  5. A virtuous maid

  6. A child with a giant crush on the virtuous maid

  7. Moms with wounded feelings

  8. Discarded advice

  9. Dropped balls

  Of course, I’ll fit all of the above into suitably heavy emotional baggage meant to weigh me down.

  25 May

  ‘Could I have the day off tomorrow?’

  Deepu’s question catches me off guard. My knee-jerk reaction is to say no. Not now. Mom isn’t here, and I’m four days away from the Big Story that has eluded me for so long. Her eyes are red and puffy . . .

  ‘Let her go, Anu,’ says Sonia. ‘When maids ask for leave, they’re not really asking, they’re telling.’

  I call the office to ask Eddy if he’ll mind me working from home tomorrow. (See? I’m asking, not telling.) It’s just one day. I’ll spend quality time with my child and be productive. How long can one day without Deepu really get?

  26 May

  Really long. As soon as Deepu goes on leave, so does everyone else. Motibai is struck down by a curious contagion and doesn’t answer my calls; Jyotibai has cleaned neither invisible nor visible floor space; Sameer is at work with a sign that says ‘Sameer for Partner’ around his neck; and Mom is having a sulk.

  I have not been productive. I have not spent quality time with Tara. I have not cleared my inbox while Tara naps like it happens in the movies; or taken calls with my phone crooked against my shoulder and Tara on my lap.

  I am a stirring example of valiant futility, like the band on the Titanic, squirreling away on my violin till the ship sinks—and sinking with it.

  27 May

  Day two. Still no sign of Deepu. Mild panic setting in. Jyotibai has taken a quick-inspection-of-work-premises option and kept the real cleaning for an undecided date in the future. No question of Sameer staying at home, not with a partnership about to be doled out to the most-seen employee. ‘Call your mom to help?’ he says, passing the buck without compunction.

  But I can’t. Not after all the things I’ve said to her. Instead, I call Eddy. This is the end of the month. A die-if-you-must-but-after-filing-your-story crunch time. I can imagine how my absence is going to look. Eyeballs will roll. There’ll be widespread groaning and moaning. Some under-the-breath muttering too. Maybe they’ll imagine me curled up under the duvet, reading a book and sipping on green tea. Playing the working mom card.

  Could the truth be any further from this? Bathing bedlam, feeding fits and sleeping sagas are vying for my attention. Tara won’t sit in a highchair and she won’t have a lie-down. We finally agree on a mutually agreeable position: in front of the telly; an iPad on her right; a bowl of French fries on her left. If this won’t keep her quiet, nothing will.

  ‘Are you in a position to file that quick one-pager, Anu, or should we postpone it?’ asks Eddy.

  ‘You’ll have it.’ My voice is an impregnable fortress.

  I slip into the toilet for a final fact-check. Tara is screaming outside my door now. ‘Do you mind if I call you back in five minutes?’ Unfortunately, the petty woman on the other end of the line does mind. There goes the final fact-check.

  God, why do we raise the sort of children that we are scared to be with alone?

  28 May

  There is a critical point when a mother’s brain loses all contact with reality. I’m there today.

  Sameer is panicking at the thought of me flying out in a few hours. ‘Anu, there’s a major deal on the table! Is Tara coming down with something? Have you tried reaching Deepu again? And will you stop being so stubborn about calling your mom?’

  ‘Deepu will be back, Sameer, and it’s only a sniffle.’ I love how reasonable I appear from the outside.

  Two hours down, Tara’s sniffle is a galloping cold. Motibai pulls a sickie again, Deepu is about to become a missing person, and I’m on the verge of abandoning all hope, when the unannounced appearance of Jyotibai makes me rally. Surely, this is a sign that the tide is turning?

  But when Jyotibai realizes she is the only employee who has shown up, she leaves. I slip on soapsuds while dragging Tara in for a bath. My back creaks like vertebral trouble is afoot. I’m about to presume that it can’t get worse—when Mom calls.

  ‘Anu, there’s some bad news . . .’

  Maid-day! May Day! Turns out that Deepu has a bit of a boy-history that her mother glossed over. ‘Why did you give her a phone?’ Deepu’s mother sobs. ‘He told her he’d end his life if she didn’t elope with him, and now she’s gone!’

  Gone! That has such a finality to it. Now it all makes sense, Deepu’s crying and her not wanting the phone any more. I feel close to hysterical—or past it?

  ‘I’ll be over,’ says Mom as though she can sense what I’m not telling her. I don’t make any pointless protests about managing fine on my own. Tara is unusually quiet—does she sense that Deepu isn’t coming back? I pick her up to cuddle her . . . but wait, what’s this? Tara is burning up.

  The thermometer says 102. ‘Go!’ says Mom. But my feet feel leaden. I can’t move, not when this child’s clammy forehead is pressed against my arm. Or when her hand is wrapped around my finger. She looks up at me and whimpers ‘Mummy’ and every last shred of doub
t gets blown away. I pick up the phone and call the only person I can think of.

  ‘Pia, can you hop on a plane for me?’

  30 May

  ‘No one saw you?’ Tara’s fever is on the wane, and I’ve nipped into work for an hour.

  ‘No one,’ says Poor Pia, handing me a sealed manila envelope. ‘This turned up under the door. What’s inside?’

  ‘The Big Story, the one I told you about.’

  I’d have liked to talk to Eddy, but he’s out and I have no time. ‘Tell Eddy to hold the pages for me, I’ll file early tomorrow, tell him it’s big . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ says Poor Pia.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I owe you big time.’

  May 31

  Pulled an all-nighter, but I’m finally ready to file. There isn’t a single thing missing. All that’s left to do, really, is to hit Send. I get Eddy on the line. ‘I’ve got something for you—’ I begin, but he cuts me off.

  ‘Something? Anu, this is huge!’

  Wait, what’s huge?

  ‘—It’ll shatter Chief Minister Khandu’s chances altogether—’ Who told him? ‘We’ve put everything else on hold to run a special issue around Pia’s brilliant expose!’ Why is my face red-hot? Why am I dizzy?

  ‘It’s already out on our website, by the way! Have you seen it?’

  The rest is a raging wind inside my head and the sound of my blood in my ears and a vein in my neck throbbing.

  ‘She’s told everyone how you helped and what a debt she owes you.’

  I mumble something about needing a few more days to get myself together. I hang up and call Pia.

  ‘You stole the story.’ My words sound so hollow. So weak. So unlike me. But the story is out already for the world to see. It’s hers now. And if I tell Eddy the truth, it won’t bring my story back.

  Her voice sounds shaky, as always. ‘I only wanted to be like you.’

  Feeling strangely philosophical. I am drowning and the weight of this Big Story is pulling me under. All I can do to save myself is to let go.

  ‘I’m not a thief.’ I say, hanging up. On not so poor Pia.

  1 June

  The story ran with Pia’s name on it. It was a skeletal version of mine, minus the context and the depth that I spent months slaving over. But explosive enough to get the wires singing and the phones ringing. I got a tiny credit at the bottom.

  Great work, Anu! messages Sonam.

  ‘Poor Pia has made you proud,’ says Eddy.

  While Poor Pia is courting next year’s journalism award, and Deepu is cavorting with the boy of her dreams in a field of tulips, I’m heading into an apocalypse. And I can’t stop it.

  ***

  MAIDOMANIA

  4 June

  The perfect maid is gone. If I were to die this moment and float up to the box seats reserved for spirit types, I’m sure I’d see things differently from above. In the larger scheme of things, we are just tiny blips of carbon on a tiny blip of a planet in a tiny blip of a galaxy. Crying over a lost maid is like sobbing over a skin cell sloughed off during a facial.

  Not that I have the time to crawl about sobbing, toss myself at the nearest sofa and bury my tearful face in something absorbent. I have a bucket list to work through first:

  Make get-your-ass-to-work calls to Motibai and Jyotibai

  Buy groceries

  Cajole Tara to make a potty

  Cajole self to make lunch (as GYAW calls have gone unanswered)

  Clean Tara post-potty (‘Wait, Tara, wash your hands!’)

  Make lunch (Wait, did I wash my hands? Gross.)

  Discover, halfway through making lunch, that gas cylinder is empty

  Order lunch in because global fuel crisis has come home

  Sidestep Tara on floor, screaming ‘Fuckit!’ (Where did she learn to speak like that?)

  Oh, it’s ‘chocit!’ (Why did Deepu give Tara so much chocolate?)

  Prise Tara off my leg, still screaming for chocit

  Remind self not to give in to tantrums

  Pop chocit in Tara’s mouth

  Savour the silence

  Pop chocit in own mouth

  Torment self by watching Pia’s interview on telly

  Torment self by thinking of Deepu

  Wonder where Tara got another chocit from

  It’s not a chocit!

  Do the Heimlich manoeuvre on Tara

  Answer ringing doorbell

  Answer ringing phone (No, just ears ringing where Tara bawled right into them)

  If I could see the larger scheme of things, I’d give long and serious thought to life’s burning questions. Is the world heating up? Are we running out of fuel? Is Deepu gone forever?

  6 June

  9 a.m. She probably is, but there’s always the Internet. Bookmarked every parenting blog/rant/whine this side of the Milky Way. Ordered enough parenting books off Amazon to build my own Amazon.

  10 a.m. Can’t help feeling joyful as I put The Secret to Joyful Parenting on the bookshelf. Or feeling wondrous as The Wondrous Mom comes in the mail. The salutary effects of self-help books can be felt instantaneously. You just touch the pages and all that knowledge seeps through your skin. Like a nicotine patch.

  10.15 a.m. My exemplary goal of self-edification will have to stand by till real life has come and gone. By real life, I mean Tara, who used to be like a pair of glasses that could be found where you last left them, and has now sprouted legs. We play Now You See Her, Now Where Did She Just Go? every waking hour. And where she just went to is usually no place good.

  10.25 a.m. Found Tara pulling herself up to the table, reaching for a vase. As I have not yet read what the parenting bibles on the shelf have to say about the fine art of persuading a child to unhand the china, I shout, ‘TARA, LET GO OF THE VASE!’

  10.30 a.m. I should have added: ‘Gently.’

  11.15 a.m. After the mess has been cleared, Tara and I engage in a few more friendly tugs-of-war over wearing shoes on the sofa . . .

  11.45 a.m. Eating crayons . . .

  12.40 p.m. Throwing lipsticks in the potty . . .

  1.30 p.m. Casting wistful looks in the general direction of the bookshelf. At Motherhood: A Blessing and How to Survive Your Kids. The only way I’ll feel blessed or survive this is when Tara naps. If she naps.

  2 p.m. Tara awake. Which is a mystery, because I have reconstructed Deepu’s bedtime rituals with the accuracy of a crime scene.

  2.10 p.m. Must be the angle at which I’ve propped Tara on my lap—off by a few degrees?

  2.15 p.m. Awake still? Has to be the faulty syncopation of the right knee bouncing her head up and down.

  2.20 p.m. ‘Ouch! No smacking Mummy!’

  2.30 p.m. Figured out what the real problem is. It’s my face. Tara would like it more if it looked like Deepu’s.

  2.40 p.m. Not to worry. She’ll sleep when she can’t stay awake any longer.

  2.50 p.m. Sometime in the foreseeable future.

  3 p.m. Sometime before me.

  3.10 p.m. Yawn.

  3.40 p.m. How did this happen? Crawling version of P.T. Usha has sped off after putting Mummy to sleep. The giggle gives her away. ‘What are you doing down there?’

  4 p.m. My baby girl, last seen on cot/play mat, is under the bed.

  4.30 p.m. Haven’t been down here since I was Tara’s age. Who’d have thought this could be such fun? Or that I’d find things I thought I’d lost forever? A pair of slippers; a connection with my child; and a birth control pill that rolled out of sight, just as Sonia had suggested, and that I’m glad I didn’t bother looking for.

  7 June

  Two weeks down. Grief has many stages, and my favourite one is denial. This is where you get to dodge reality, and entertain wild and reckless possibilities. Such as, maybe Deepu’s beau will ditch her and she’ll come back? Such as, when she does, I’ll turn her away because I’ve discovered the joys of raising my child on my own?

  Denial is better than acceptance. What’s so g
reat about accepting that you had a perfect maid and that she’s gone?

  Pia is on every channel, giving interviews. I can’t bear to watch. I also can’t bear not to watch how this cub reporter who couldn’t propose a story without stuttering has transformed into star journalist Pia Prakash, with her sleek new bob and her impeccable make-up.

  ‘What was it like, working quietly on a story for more than a year with no guarantees that it would ever see the light of day?’ The young interviewer could be a stand-in for how Poor Pia used to be, with her mussed-up hair and her breathless first-date voice.

  ‘It had its trying moments . . .’ says Pia. That voice belongs to someone for whom everything is easy. Even betrayal.

  I switch channels and find another interview titled The Sting of the Sceptic. What is Poor Pia saying now? ‘—you have to believe in your story and yourself . . .’ Like she would know.

  ‘. . . And there were so many people who believed in me.’ I can swear Pia is looking directly through the screen at me. Our eyes meet. Why do I do this to myself?

  Great, Tara’s up. She’s been grieving for Deepu, too. This means toddling about the house with Poo, that turd-shaped stuffed toy that Deepu gave pride of place on the shelf because she thought it was a modak.

  She wants to be carried all the time. ‘Mummy!’ she hammers on the door when I step into the bathroom to pee, cry, whatever. At least she knows who her mummy is now. Isn’t that what I wanted?

  12 June

  The wild and reckless possibility of Deepu returning has been replaced by the wild and reckless possibility of sacking both Motibai and Jyotibai. Jyotibai has extorted a pay hike again. Motibai has asked for a week off in a tone that places her question clearly in the rhetorical category.

  Serves me right for counting my chickens before they hatch and making Five Year Plans based on Deepu. I was stupid, stupid, stupid to stack successful career, happy baby and clean home like eggs in the Deepu basket. (For now, there are no eggs in the refrigerator. No chicken either.)

  13 June

  When the perfect maid leaves, you find out who your friends are.