Monday, July 30, 2007

Saroj...

I want to start with something that I have been meaning to write about for awhile now, my maid, Saroj.
Saroj is this bubbly woman, vivacious and talkative, smart and sharp though illiterate, small, slim and attractive. All of 24, she is the mother of three children, the oldest of them eight years of age. Which would mean that she had her first child when she was 16. I think back to the time when I was that age, and all I can remember are my little fears and insecurities. What were my concerns then? Clearing exams, waxing my legs, not looking too fat, and ofcourse boys. The idea of marriage or sex had not crossed my mind yet. I belonged after all to a typical respectable middle class family. But this isn’t about me, this is about this child woman, a good seven years younger than me, who seems already to have lived a life a whole lot more substantial than mine.
What would have been her concerns then? Husband, in laws, taking care of the house and then the newborn child. I see her now, she is so slight in build that I wonder how she ever managed to bear three healthy children. But then she tells me that she had no milk in her breasts for the third child, and he had to be bottle-fed. It doesn’t surprise me.
She lives with her husband and children in a one room shack in a basti near my house. Her husband is a painter, who works on a freelance basis, which means mostly not. When he does work, he drinks away most of what he earns. Drinking is in fact the only regular activity in his life. He beats his wife and children though not too hard any more, ever since Saroj complained to the police. That is an interesting story in itself. Apparently, one day, after she had been beaten mercilessly by him, she lost her cool and registered a complaint in the police station. The police came and took him away and kept him in lock up for a day or two, gave him a warning and released him. The day he got back home he gave her another thrashing for having complained to the police. Off she went again to complain. This time he was taken to the Thane jail and kept there for a week. This is probably when he realized that she was to be taken seriously. He still hits her of course, but as she admits herself, never too much or too hard. For he knows that if she complains a third time, they will put him away for three years.
Then there is the matter of him keeping constant tabs on her. He keeps track of where she goes, how long she stays away, waits for her at the nearby baori, the hangout for the bastiwallahs, till she comes back and sometimes doesn’t even let her go for work.
The intriguing part, at least for me, is that the entire time she tells me these stories, she’s always laughing. It doesn’t seem the least bit strange or out of the ordinary to her that she is only 23 and has three children, that she works hard to keep the house going while her husband whiles away his time for the most part, that he beats her and her children almost everyday, and bosses over her even though it is clearly because of her work and her efforts and her goodwill among the local people, that they have a roof to live under, get two square meals a day, and her children are getting an education.
In fact, in spite of her situation, which to me seems oppressive, she almost seems happy.
It almost makes me wonder if I have it all wrong…

2 comments:

Unknown said...

this post seems incomplete somehow .. as if only one side of the coin has been seen .. you still have to link it back to yourself .. only then can this piece conclude .. nahin ? ..

poosha said...

do I? :-) Will it suffice for now, to say that this is not the end of the piece... that I have a feeling that my writings on Saroj and her daughter Kajal will continue...