Rich servants of poor mistresses

bangalore: brothers and sisters, it is time for us to unite and use our minds. every day of our life we are worked to exhaustion, and by the time night comes we can barely breathe. even dogs in the homes we serve have a better life. we are servants, we dare not think of life for we were created only to be slaves, at least that is what our masters believe.i ask all the servants in this city to unite, so that we can get a better life for ourselves. this was a speech being prepared some 15 years ago. by mala, who worked as a servant in an affluent household in mumbai. however, within a few minutes of conversation, one realised she was not born into servitude but circumstances had brought her to that station. and circumstances cannot clamp down a bright mind. mala was smart, capital s and within six months of working in a working parents-with-small-children household, she'd figured out a lot of things. memsaab would not be able to go to work if it were not for me. her children are only 4 and 6 years old; it is left to me to take them to school and bring them back, feed them, bathe them, plus do all the housework and cooking. and memsaab thinks she is doing me a great favour by paying me rs 150 each month. she herself is earning rs 9,000 in her job, a job she would not be able to keep if it were not for me. so my pay is not enough, she should give me 10 per cent of what she earns since it is only because of me that she gets that rs 9,000. when it was pointed out to mala that she was receiving free food and a roof over her head which costs aplenty, she said reasonably, i do not mean to sound ungrateful; but you must remember that most of the time, the food i eat is what is leftover, what would otherwise be thrown out, and i sleep in a small passage near the kitchen, with people stepping over me if they want to make a cup of coffee at night. and with a single disagreement i can so easily be thrown out, it is so simple for saab or memsaab to say, pack your clothes and get out, then what happens to the roof? keeping in mind the uncertainty of the job, mala felt it was all the more imperative that servants construct their own security. mala dressed well, and a guest once asked the master of the home who she was; he said, "oh, she is our servant." mala took great umbrage, and the next day, she politely told the memsaab, "i did not like the way i was called a servant, i would prefer to be called a `mother's help'." mala insisted she was not into rebellion, that all she wanted was a better life for servants. she tried to get other servants to unite; at the park where she took the children to play each evening, she contacted and befriended other male and female servants and suggested they should have a meeting where they could discuss all the above-mentioned issues and form some kind of support association through which they could protect their interests. she told us, "since you are paper-wallahs, you are welcome to attend the meeting so that you can write about it and other servants would come to know about us and join the group." they planned to meet the coming monday at an enclosed place in front of mumbai's sachivalaya. however, on the appointed day and time no one turned up for the meeting, not even mala, and we can only presume that before the servants could, the memsaabs united and ensured the slaves were unable to attend the meeting. with apologies to al pacino, if i may play devil's advocate, while it is true that on the whole the servants are a pampered, lazy, moody lot who look at convenience before service, there is also a lot of content in what mala says. working and non-working housewives would be miserable without those that help them. communicator pam ninan says, i never grumble about servants; i think that in whatever little way they do help they are a blessing. a couple with three children says, "let us always remember that it is because of our servants that we have smiles on our faces; otherwise our lives would be knotted with chores and we would be snapping at one another." the relationship between husband and wife would be altered dramatically in a society sans servants. regarding the possibility of theft, the ebullient, practical rita david puts the onus on the owners who should not leave temptation lying around; remember many of these persons come from impoverished backgrounds. calls for a lot of revaluation doesn't it? i have a meeting with a potential maid __ oops, sorry, mother's help! __ today. and i don't think i'd waited with so much anticipation, prayer and yearning even for the original date with my very first boyfriend!