Helplessness

courtesy Indian Express

Looking out of the window of my friend's car,               

At the grey march of the mountains in the distance,                                    

The green vines planted in long  straight rows,                                  

Wind ruffling my hair, soft music on the radio,                                               

A hard -bound  book of Ondatje’s poetry in hand                           

The lines like the delicate gait of a black wood stork                    

Leaving claw prints of blood and loss, on creamy pages                                             

When the news reader  announces  on the French radio,                         

In the bland, matter-of -fact voice of a news reader:                                  

¨Twenty children in Bihar, dead due to food -poisoning                                              

And thirty others hospitalized. The free lunch served                                  

In the canteen suspected of containing insecticide.¨                                      

There is no poetry here, no rhythm or rhyme                                                

Just a blunt statement  of the ultimate betrayal ;                                         

Death meted out through the promise of life,                                               

To the innocent, needy and powerless.                                                    

I exclaim in blind anger to my friend,                                                                   

"This is the difference between your country and mine                              

In ours, people’s lives  are counted in numbers                                                            

Twenty, a hundred, what difference does it make ?                                   

In yours an accident on the highway is announced                                      

Over and over, as if it’s of primordial importance !"

                                      

Who am I angry with ? Him the son of  a rich country ?                            

Myself  'cause I am exiled in one 'n enjoy the privielege ?                        

I have never been an activist, here or back home                                        

Never taken part in rallies, nor raised my voice in anger.

Is that why I am angry ? At my self-imposed impotence ?

Arunima Choudhury

The Lakshman Rekha

I have recently caught myself thinking about the Lakshman Rekha. When Lakshman went to look for Ram, he drew a boundary line in front of the hut and expressly asked Sita not to cross it. Staying within the boundary line would keep her within the circle of protection created  by her husband and brother-in-law and stepping outside it would expose her to the dangers of the  wild. Unfortunately, Sita urged by the kindness of her heart does step out of the Lakshman Rekha and is abducted by the evil Ravana, which sets the ball rolling for the great war that follows. So if Sita had not disobeyed her brother-in-law, we would have had another, maybe less thrilling version of  the Ramayana, watered down to Ram  spending fourteen years wandering around the forest with Sita and Lakshman, and eventually returning to Ayodhya to claim his throne. The fabulous leap of Hanumana over the ocean from Rameshwaram to Sri Lanka, the bridge of stones built by an army of monkeys and bears, the magical plant that Hanuman finds to restore Lakshman to life, all would have been unwritten story.

Now just for fun what if we imagine that Sita out of sheer curiosity wanted to step out of the circle of protection created by Ram and Lakshman and explore the dangerous world which lay beyond home and hearth? What if that is why she sent Ram to bring her a golden deer in spite of him telling her again and again that golden deers were unnatural and that he feared the trickery of a black magician? ? What if she chose to disbelieve Lakshman, who along with her heard Ram crying out in distress from afar, but unlike her had complete faith in Ram's invincibility and was convinced that it was an illusion, while Sita prodded Lakshman to go after Ram accusing him of being a coward and coveting her in secret. Of course, she had not bargained for Ravana.  But she had stepped out of the limits imposed by the patriarchy and had to pay her due. And she keeps on paying even when Ram eventually rescues her from Ravana’s clutches fourteen long years later.

To quote Valmiki, the author of Ramayana: “The heart of King Rama, as he saw Sita, (the beloved of his heart) near him, was torn for fear of public scandal.” (Book VI : Yuddha Kanda - Book Of War.) So Rama, God incarnate who was so heart-broken at losing his wife that even the animal world moved by the intensity of his distress joined ranks with him against Ravana, addressed the beloved of his heart thus:

"Let it be known to you that this endeavor in the shape of war, which has been successfully carried through, due to the strength of my friends was not undertaken for your sake. … This was done by me in order to keep up my good conduct and to wipe off the evil-speaking from all sides as well as the insinuation on my own illustrious dynasty." (Book VI : Yuddha Kanda - Book Of War.)

and

"You, with  suspicion arisen on your character, standing in front of me, are extremely disagreeable to me, even as  light is to one suffering from  poor eye-sight." (Book VI : Yuddha Kanda - Book Of War.)

and

"O Sita! That is why, I am permitting you now to go wherever you like. All the ten directions are open to you, my dear lady! ....(Book VI : Yuddha Kanda - Book Of War.)

Poor Sita! What didn’t she do when she stepped out of the Lakshman Rekha? Now I wonder why Sita is presented to us as the model of an Indian  woman’s aspirations when the major part of her life was a series of misfortunes. Though she is not weak, because resisting Ravana for fourteen years must have taken enormous passive strength, she never rebels against the role allotted to her,  that of a perfect wife, except at the end when she commits suicide by asking mother  earth to swallow her up. After having proved her mettle for fourteen years, she has to prove her authenticity and chastity as a model wife again by stepping into fire and emerging unscathed. And even that does not earn her her husband’s protection and esteem for long . When she is the queen of Ayodhya and pregnant, a washerman abuses his wife who did not come home at night saying that  that he is not like Lord Ram who took back Sita even though she had stayed with another man for fourteen years. This incident reaches Ram’s ears who instead of defending Sita’s honour asks Lakshman to take Sita and abandon her in a hermitage. This is apparently to maintain the morality of the kingdom.  What morality can there be  in a kingdom where a woman’s position is so insignificant that an illiterate washerman’s unthinking words can be the cause of banishing one’s pregnant wife. 

So why right from our childhood are Ram and Sita presented to us as the model couple and Sita as the perfect woman? What can be more ignominious than Ram’s treatment of Sita? And why does Sita accept and keep on accepting being humiliated and abandoned with such meekness?   The answer could be, “But if she had not stepped out of the Lakshman Rekha, none of all this would have happened. Or, the Ramayana is after all just a story, or, it was another era, you cannot apply all your new-fangled ideas in that context.” And I would counter-question these answers by asking, “If the Ramayana is just a story why is it presented as an eternal truth, existing out of time and space? Why have we deified imperfect mythological figures as beings  we have to emulate? Why is such a big deception being perpetuated through the ages and by whom? 

Many modern women and men may say that Sita as a role model is outdated, outmoded. But that is not true because the Ramayana holds as much sway over our imagination as it did a hundred years ago, otherwise why would a Bombay High Court Judge in the year 2012, in the context of a divorce case, opinionate that married women should follow the example of Goddess Sita and give up everything to follow their husbands as  Sita did. That a panchayat leader says this would be  understandable, but a High Court Judge!

As women we have choices either to stay within the Lakshman Rekha or not. Many women in spite of being enclosed in suffocating boundaries do not step out for various reasons;  perhaps because they do not have a choice, or perhaps  because the known is infinitely more reassuring than the unknown. Others do and face retribution and   are scathed in the process. But there are   others who confront and vanquish the multi-headed Ravana who is an apt metaphor indeed of the dangers of the world. So this Lakshman Rekha instead of being a circle of protection is actually a circle of restriction. And stepping out of it is stepping into freedom, though that freedom may be fraught with dangers. Now is it worth it, is a question, which, of course, every woman  who wants to step out must ask herself and the answer is not always obvious. 

Arunima Choudhury

---

Motherhood

 




MOTHERHOOD

Our children tame us,
Bind us to our wiser selves.
As young girls we are boats,
Virgin sails unfurled
Ready to catch the slightest breeze,
And hop, skim o'er the waves,
Frail barks braving unknown seas.

On the way we fill our hulls;
Corals and moon snails,
Anemones and electric eels,
Inky snakes and flying fish,
Crimson crabs and laughing seals
Writhe and mate,
Spawning incandescent dreams.

We steer, our heads
in clouds, crowned with stars,
Guided by the ocean's song,
The call of migrating birds,
The ebb and flow
Of menstrual blood.

We mate,
With the sun, the rain,
With sharks and whales,
It matters not.We mate.
In our wombs life,
Pushes outwards
Straining against skin and flesh
We swell like the waxing moon.

We leave behind,
The sea surge, the keening winds,
And make for bays, creeks,
Rivers calm, shaded banks
We change our skiffs for barges.

We birth, we breathe,
We mend our nets,
We guard our young
Then, it's time to leave.
We scan the sky, taste the wind,
Set out at a steady space.
Our eyes keep straying to the hold
We have precious cargo there.
We want to bear them
Safe and sound
To the farthest shore.

Arunima Choudhury

Words

Words are an attempt

To hold on.

You hammer a word,

Or several in a row,

Through skin and bones,

Nailing air to density.

They are brittle though

And splinter,

Unable to bear,

Your anguished weight,

Your desperate grip

Onto meaning.

The O in love breaks apart

The T in hate is wrenched out

The F in life begins to crack

P's head in hope is fractured.

In breathless haste

You set to work,

You glue, you tape,

You mend, you fix,

It's almost done!

Before putting the final touch,

You pause to breathe.

And idly think,

What if you stopped?

Let the fissures grow,

Let your fingers slip,

And gently drift into

meaninglessness.

Arunima Choudhury

A fun way to gain viewership for your blog

 I came across Adite's post during one of the innumerable hours spent browsing  the net where she  invites writers and bloggers to participate in the Liebster Blog Award Challenge.. It is an interesting way to get acquainted with the creative spaces of others, and encourage others to do the same with yours. The result is more blog visibility and readership

 It is like the ripple effect. Adite for example has nominated my blog and tagged my blog along with the blog of ten others.  Now it is my turn to write 11 little known facts about myself, answer 11 questions which Adite has set for her nominees,  and frame 11 questions for the 11 bloggers  out there who would like me to nominate them and provide links to their blogs. Please leave your blog address in the comments box. To keep the ball rolling, you will have to do the same thing that I am about to do now. So read on

Here are hopefully  11 interesting, little known  about myself:

1.  I am currently living in Béziers, a name my father finds difficult to remember and even harder to pronounce.  "Where the hell is Béziers," my French friends ask me. "Is it on the map of France?" They are just being ultra-metropolitan because Béziers is a biggish town in the South of France, near the Spanish border. A few kilometers away from the Mediterranean sea , it is  one of the oldest towns in France. I frankly hated it when I came here one year ago. But it has grown on me and now that summer is round the corner I often scooter down to one of the attractions of the town;  the neuf écluses or the nine water gates built in a staircase pattern. It's incredible to see water gushing down from one level to another, filling up basins, and defying the laws of gravity hitching up boats step by step  to a level of 21.5 m,  within a distance of about 300 m. Once the boats are lifted up in this manner, they can cross the river Orb and rejoin the Canal Du Midi

2. I lived the first nine years of my life in Berhampore, another biggish, historical town in the north of West Bengal. A two film-hall town filled with winding alleys leading to the Ganges, black-faced monkeys jumping from one mossy terrace to another, and temple spires etched against the skyline. Berhampore to Béziers has indeed been a long journey.

3. Having spent most of my adult life in Pondicherry, a coastal town in South India where the climate can be described as hot, hotter and hottest, I fantasized about settling down in a colder place, Kashmir, the Nilgiris, the Himalayas. Now that I have tasted the cold how I can say without any doubt I opt for heat.

4. I have this unclassical look, short hair, eternally trouser clad even when I was in India. But my taste in music belies my looks. I am a fan of Indian classical vocal music. It pierces through all the layers of my being and appeals to the most vulnerable and quiet part of myself. My companion sometimes tries to imitate Indian vocalists and ends up sounding like a goat trying to clear its throat. 

courtesey Nate's Cartoons

5. I love bati chocchori which is a Bengali speciality; shrimps cooked with potatoes and ridge gourd in mustard oil, and magur macher jhol; a kind of watery catfish curry cooked with plantain and aubergines. My mother inevitably made it for me when I was down with a stomach upset.

6. I am a word freak. Just like some people like collecting stamps, shells, post-cards, I like collecting words. When I come across a new word I feel like a child opening the wrapper of a toffee to see what is inside.

7. I have a son. Now that is not very novel, though there are not many like Gandhari who can boast of being the mother of a hundred sons! But for me one son is enough. He is a source of happiness and worry and heartache and mystery. I don't know how I manage bringing him up but I do. Of course much of the credit goes to him too.

8. I am very bad at numbers. I can remember the line of a poem or a dialogue, hum the melody of a song after having heard it once. However I cannot remember my son's and my friend's and my own mobile number even though I have seen them a hundred times. I had this maths teacher, a sweetie, who still remembers me. You can guess why.

9. When I was a child I had this habit of picking my nose for which I was teased unmercifully by my classmates. I don't blame them. It's an unsavoury habit! But not that uncommon. I have seen people doing it when they think they are not being watched.

10. My mother was the first woman from our family to go out and work. I have a black and white group photo of hers from the 1950s taken with her office colleagues. You see a young, frail, sari-clad woman with owlish glasses and a long thick braid, flanked on either side by rows of unsmiling men. She was also the first woman to be recruited in that office.

11. The bulbous white domes of mosques, the delicate minaret spires rising against the sky is to me   visual poetry. How difficult it is to achieve this balance between mass and delicacy.

The next step is to answer the 11 questions.

1. What’s your favourite time to write or do creative work? And why? 
My favourite time to write is the morning, because that's when my mind is uncluttered and my batteries are recharged. However I can write all throughout the day if I get into the mood, and of course if I have the time.


2. What’s the first thing that crossed your mind when you woke up this morning? 
I wish I could sleep some more.

3. What’s the one thing that drives you batshit crazy? 
When I am in front of a situation over which I have no control. It keeps happening more and more with my teenager son.

4. Describe briefly any one unforgettable moment in your life.
Waking up early in the morning in my apartment and making two cups of tea one for myself and another for my lover who would be coming in a couple of minutes. The coolness of the morning, the feeling of being in my own space, the delightful sense of waiting for the person who had transformed my life will always remain fresh in my heart.

5. Which is your must-do dream vacation?
It keeps changing all the time. At the moment it's the Orient, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia...

6. Fill this blank: At age 10 you dreamt of “being _____ when I grow up.” 
At age 10 I dreamt of being a vet.


7. If you could travel back in time which “period” would you visit? 
I think I would perhaps go back to the time of the Chola dynasty (9th century-13th century) in South India. They were builders of magnificent temples and patrons of literature, architecture, fine arts. I would not mind being invisible and flitting from a dance performance to a musical soirée to a meeting of poets and writers and have a peek into the queens' quarters.

8. If you could transform yourself into a celebrity for one day, who would you pick?
I would be Gangubai Hangal, a musical legend descending from a lineage of courtesans. She had a unique voice, deep and powerful and sang with such poise and mastery that she transported you into her universe. I would like to sing like her even it is for one day

9. Complete this sentence. Fun is ________
Fun is improvising on the spot what I want to do and having the means and energy to put it into effect.


10. If you could change any one of your (bad) habits what would that be? (You’re not allowed to say you don’t have any bad habits!!)
I would like to be more decisive. My indecisiveness drives everyone , including myself, crazy.

11. Tell us something that excites you about your current project. 
My current project or my companion's and my current project is shifting to Bamako next year. Imagine going to Africa and being plunged in the whirlpool of African culture.  It's an incredible chance for a middle class Indian girl like myself. It's again going to be hot, hotter, hottest.

Courtesy: Critical thinking website

And finally here are my questions for you. 

 1. What are you passionate about?

2. How much do you enjoy your own company?

3. What was your favourite childhood read?

4.What is your reaction to unexpected changes in your life?

5. Do you believe in life after death or extra-terrestrials?

6. If you could be an animal what animal would you be and why?

7. When you are feeling low what brings a smile to your face?

8. How much time do you spend in the morning in front of your mirror before you feel ready to step out.

9. What sort of music do you like listening to?

10. Do you believe in destiny or in free will?

11. At the moment what kind of writing are you into?

                                                  

 Now it's your turn.

I need to find 11 bloggers. If you are interested leave your name and your blog address either in linked in or in the comments box below using the anonymous option since that's the easiest way  do it.  Your name will appear in this post with links to your blogs.

List of Bloggers

Welcome Shilpi to the Liebster blog award. Here's the link to your website: http://whenyoucomeundone.blogspot.in. Looking forward to reading your answers and questions. 

The Maid Saga

I had always been warned by NRIs and westerners about the lack of maids in Europe or America or any of the "first world countries."  And I who must have seen my nanny who also doubled as maid , in the next fifteen minutes after I opened my eyes to gaze upon the world, and who has since then  watched a procession of maids, old  and young, tall and short, thin and fat,  pass through my life,  did find this rather worrisome. It's been a year now that I have shifted to the South of France and am confronted with a maidless universe.  There are maids or house help available over here too but not for the middle class. It's either the privilege of the rich, or families in difficulty with numerous children who get aid from the government.  However I found that I was quite comfortable in this maidless world and the reason behind this is because I had at last earned my freedom from maids . In fact it was not I who managed  my maids but they who managed me. I have always had problems with superior-subordinate relationships and moreover I am not the mistress of the house material.  And they much cleverer in the ways of the world than I am and used to gauging the characters of their future employers soon sensed this,  and probably passed on the word along the grapevines for all future recruits. But here I am extrapolating.

Recently I had a bad case of flu and bronchitis along with my son. Both of us were bed-ridden with our taste buds which had gone on strike faced with the onslaught of fever and antibiotics. I could see the house growing dirtier day by day, unfolded clothes, dirty dishes, dust gathering in corners and I was just too weak to do anything about it. And while I longed for simple, home cooked meals to coax back my appetite all my companion could manage was food heated out of boxes and tins. Though I was grateful for his efforts, I found myself thinking fondly of those days when household chores were taken care of and reviving the bitter-sweet memories of my experiences with women who had been so much a part of my life. 

First of all there was the process of hiring house help. I always began in all seriousness by conducting an interview, laying down conditions amongst which the trial period was one, "You will work for  two weeks at the end of which we will see if I am happy with your work and if you are happy working here, before hiring you for good." However not once has it happened that a maid has stepped into my house and stepped out after a two week trial period. Why? Perhaps because I always felt so overwhelmed and  guilty by the fact that somebody was cleaning my house and cooking for me  for an entire month,  at the price I would pay if I ate out in a chic restaurant with friends, that I was willing to overlook all shortcomings. Or simply because they were on their best behaviour till they felt that they had now carved out a niche for themselves from where it would be difficult to oust them. And once they were inside the house they soon saw that I  did not have shelves with identical spice filled bottles, that I often failed to replenish things in time even after I had been reminded,  so either there was no milk in the fridge or the sugar bottle with a crust of sugar around its rim stayed empty for a week, or the most essential element rice was absent when it was time to cook. It also so happened that when they came to work instead of staying put and seeing that  the work got done,  I scooted out of the house on the pretext of some work or other , or shut myself up in my room behind a computer until they had finished and I had the house to myself again. None of these things you will agree makes for a competent householder. And since they saw incompetency it was perhaps only natural that they were influenced.

DOLCE MALATI

I must say that I have had one or two rare gems whom I would  call collaborators rather than  maids  . There was Malati, a pretty, intelligent, vivacious, warm-hearted young woman who looked after the house, the kitchen, shopped, cooked, fed my son while I was free to concentrate on my work and bring in  money.  My son loved her and his love was reciprocated. She was the one who gave him cold lemon juice in hiding when he got back from school though according the the rules of the house cold water was a no, no, bought him candy floss and oily bhajis and water pistols while I was busy taking classes or answering the phone.  She stayed with us for a long time. We had our ups and downs of course because she had a strong character and was given to sulking when she wanted to manifest her discontent. At these times she would move around the house her face as dark as a thundercloud and I would make myself as small as I could or stay out of the house as long as I could. But since my office was separated from the house by just a screen  this was hard, and I could feel the waves of her discontent lap at my feet. Beuh! that was hard!

Malati also had a string of suitors  and the temperature  of the ambience of our house could be guaged by the success and failures of her adventures. I had a student, an Australian whose wife had left him for another and whose wounded heart was soothed by the charms of our nubile Malati. She too flirted with him shamelessly,  smiling at him demurely when she served us a cup of tea during the short break, going out of the house to do shopping just when he   was on his way out from the classes. Unfortunately my student got a phone call from his wife asking him to come back and off he went leaving the disconsolate Malati on our hands. It took a month for things to get back to normal. Finally she set her sight on a shy, strapping carpenter who had  come to our house to make some chairs. The chairs which should have been made in a week got made in three at the end of which he was hooked..The last time I went to see her I had to squeeze past the king size bed which occupied most of the room space and in the middle of which her new born baby lay sleeping besides her contented mother. Malati proudly showed me her baby and the bed which was a present from her carpenter husband.

INCREDIBLE KASTURI

The one who trained me though for life in France was Kasturi. This was years after Malati, much water had passed under the bridge and I thought I had become more mature, more experienced in my dealings with the world.  I had shifted into a new flat and had spread the word that I was looking for a maid. One had worked for a few days then stopped without letting me know why, others had come, said that they will surely  come the next day and then done the disappearing act. I was seriously starting to doubt my credentials as an employer and think about how I could improve my image with out being a total walk over when Kasturi appeared at my doorstep. My son had left for school and I was fighting my daily battle with  a line of red ants which had insinuated themselves under the dhurrie foraging for crumbs when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to see Sindhu, the cook cum driver cum man for all tasks, from the flat downstairs accompanied by  a broad, short, overweight woman, rivulets of sweat running down her neck, swathed in a bluish-green sari.
¨Yes?"¨I asked?"
Madam you were looking for a servant. Here is Kasturi,  very good woman.
"Well I said I am looking for someone to clean the house and cook."
"Very good cook, can make Bengali food .She used to work in the apartment in front of your house. They are Bengalis. But they have gone away to Calcutta so she is looking for work. And madam she is very honest and kind . You can go out to work and leave the house in her charge."
 "How do you know that?"
"She used to work  for my madam but then she fell ill and stopped working so madam took someone else. You can ask her when she comes back day after tomorrow from Orissa".  
If Kasturi had hired him to promote her she had done a good job. He had found all my weak points;  a maid who can cook mooger dal (golden gram seasoned with ginger and green chillies and sprinkled with fresh coriander),  poshto (ground poppy seeds mixed with mustard oil and chopped onions and green chillies) and macher jhol (fish curry) , and to whom I could leave the house and go out. However I looked at her doubtfully, she seemed rather grumpy and I found it hard to imagine her bending down and passing the broom under the bed, or lifting the dhurrie and getting rid of the ants hidden below it.  But my need for help was stronger than my qualms and when she agreed to the price I proposed I put forth the famous trial period condition and asked her to come from the following day.

It all started out fine. Kasturi came as convened at 9 o'clock sharp in the morning. She was less grumpy and indeed knew to cook delicious Bengali food. The woman she had worked for previously must have revealed to her all the little tricks that gives Bengali cooking its distinctive flavour. She knew in which dish to use mustard oil, when to season vegetables with the famous panch phoron, or five spices filling the apartment with scents of my childhood, roast moong dal till it turned golden and cook it with the head of a rohu fish. As I had guessed bending down to sweep under the bed was not her forte but what was a little dust under the bed compared to such culinary wonders. So I started spending some time each day cleaning nooks and corners and all the other places which Kasturi consciously or unconsciously overlooked, and I was quite happy to do so. However such perfection did not last for long. After a month or so the nine o'clock clause seemed to have completely slipped from her mind and no amount of wheedling or scolding could make her come back to it. She came at ten, half past ten, eleven and when I got furious she placated me by saying, ¨Madam, don't worry. Lunch will be ready by half past twelve.¨ Since that was after all the most important I could not say much. So, I gave up a losing battle and handed her an extra key so that I would not be housebound because of her.

However the days I stayed home working on my computer I was continuously disturbed by the doorbell. There was her two year old granddaughter who came with her daughter to greet her beloved grandmother, the fisher-woman who squatted at the doorstep and assailed our senses with the stench of fish and prawns, the vegetable-woman who used to hawking her wares had forgotten that any other pitch of voice exists. Kasturi chatted, haggled and bought vegetables and fish for my house as well as hers. She could have walked down the two flights of stairs to do so but  it was obviously too much trouble.  It seemed churlish to refuse her the company of her granddaughter for a couple of minutes and though I resented being invaded by vendors, it did save me trips to the market. It's just a wonder that she got any work done! However there were days when she came earlier than usual, the doorbell was silent, she made some mouth watering delicacy, served me a cup of tea spiced with ginger and cardamom, and all was forgotten and forgiven.

Then began the famous leaves; accidents, deaths, illnesses, marriages, births, not all hers of course but of her entire network of family, friends, neighbours and accquaintances. Two days, half a week, one week, one and a half,  sometimes interrupted by a phone call with  kasturi's feeble voice floating down the line informing me that she has just got back from the hospital,  and making me feel guilty for all the unkind thoughts I had been harbouring against her. Her husband ringing my bell at eight in the morning with the news that Kasturi has gone to bring back her alcoholic brother from Cuddalore where he was last spotted two days ago. Kasturi coming back with some lugubrious tale about how the  neighbour's son, or the neigbour's neighbour's son had died in an accident, and so she had gone to attend the funeral. Perhaps some of these stories were false but how to check and anyway the statistics of road accidents in India is seventeen per hour.  As a result though I started saying my prayers before taking out my scooter and driving down the road at a snail's pace. However I could never get an answer as to why it was always she who was involved in disaster management, and not any other member of her family.

Meanwhile my son had got hooked to her cooking and asked me to make such and such a dish when she was absent. So in addition to cleaning I started going into the kitchen when she was there and noting down recipes and cooking them for him. And gradually I found that I was managing to cook and clean and work.Of course I was  more laid back about dust and dishes waiting to be cleaned. Many meals were take aways. My sister and father invited me for lunch or dinner and Kasturi appeared intermittently to give me a few glorious days of carefreeness. I could have replaced her with another maid but by the time the situation got impossible I was seriously thinking about moving to France and did not have the time or energy to invest into another attempt. So finally when I asked her to quit, she did without arguing because she too realized that she had gone overboard.

When I arrived in France the change thus was only minor. Kasturi had trained me well. The vacuum cleaner, dish washer, canned food , no sweating while standing beside the gas were a bonus.!And since I was not working I had the time. With time the novelty has worn off  I do wish at times that I didn't have to take care of all the details which makes a household function. I am grateful to those women who made my life easier. When I  think of their lives fraught with difficulties and penury;  alcoholic and sometimes violent husbands, children to look after and a constant battle to make ends meet I wonder how they come to work with smiles on their faces and have the energy to argue, gossip and banter. They truly are a race apart, the backbone of Indian households! By freeing myself of them, I have learnt to appreciate them even more.

Arunima Choudhury