A Life Less Ordinary (19 page)

The next day Bhajan got ready to go home. He was only waiting to get paid, but our employers were not very forthcoming with his salary and once again he began to cry. At around two o'clock, the sahib came and talked to him and asked if Bhajan would give him an assurance that he would return. Bhajan said he would go home and see how things were and would then phone them. So sahib gave him the money he was owed, plus some extra, and told him that if he came back in a month, he would also get paid for that month. As he was leaving, Anjali and I advised him to make sure he came back within a month. And then our sahib drove him to the train station.

Anjali and I were the only ones left in that house now.
They will all go away and I will be the only one left
, I thought. But then, I don't have anywhere to go either. Who can I ask to find me another job? Anjali said, “Why don't you ask Nitai? At least try to
talk to him once.” After a couple of days I did, but I got the sense that he had lost interest in trying to help me any further. Also, he was married now and was living in his in-laws' home. I had gotten to know a few of the people working in other places nearby, so I thought I would ask if any of them could find me another job.

One day, Anjali went to Delhi with memsahib. They went to the office through which memsahib had located and employed Anjali. There were some people there from Anjali's village who had originally suggested her to memsahib. When she'd been employed, it had been agreed that she would get two days off a month, when she would be able to go back to this office to spend time with her people. That day, the moment she got a chance, Anjali began to complain and told the people in the office all sorts of things about our memsahib—how she felt the memsahib had no kindness in her soul and thought that if she paid you to work, she owned you: all this and more. Memsahib did not utter a word and despite this she kept Anjali on, perhaps because not many workers stayed long in her home. But then who would, given the way she treated them?

The next time she took Anjali there, Anjali did not return.

One day memsahib brought another woman to work in the house—she was a good worker, but she spoke only Bengali, no Hindi, so she couldn't understand what memsahib said to her, so I had to serve as a translator between the two of them. In this interim, Bhajan came back and took over the work in the kitchen, along with many other responsibilities. Now, suddenly, she began to turn on me: I became the bad one. Nothing I did would please her, and she'd criticize everything…she even began to shout at my children. The poor little things, they were locked up on the roof of the house all day and would die to see me just the same way as all the time I was dying to see them. Sometimes they'd come down the stairs and wait for me, but if the memsahib or her
daughter saw them, they'd shout at them and shoo them away. The other girl who was working there kept telling me I should find work elsewhere. “Why do you continue to stand for this?” she asked me. I also began to think that if I moved out of that house, at least my children would be able to breathe the air of the outside world.

So one day I took my children and left. I did not ask memsahib or wait for her permission, or take my things. I just left. The only thought in my mind as I left was that I had enough money with me to last us two months and during that time I would find work somewhere else.

 

A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER, MY ELDER SON AND I WENT
and put a deposit on a room. It was in an area where there were no other Bengalis. The rent was a thousand rupees a month, and we paid some of it—I thought at least we would have a place to stay for the time being: then I would look around for something else. I left the children with the Bengali woman who was working in memsahib's house—she lived in her own home—and I took a rickshaw to go and collect my things. I went to the house and rang the bell, and the dog started barking and came running out. I stroked his head through the bars of the gate and we waited. In a short while sahib came and opened the gate. The dog jumped up at me and began whimpering. I felt terrible: I'd only been gone two days and this was how he felt. What would happen to him when I went away for good?

I was a little nervous about telling memsahib that I was leaving, but I needn't have worried. She came out and took me by the hand and sat me down. Putting her hand on my back, she said, “Listen, if I have said anything to you in anger, please don't be upset by it. The door of this home is always open for you, when
ever you want.” I thought it better not to waste any more time, so, without answering her, I quickly went in to fetch my things. I was putting them together when memsahib came up the stairs, slightly out of breath, and I understood that she wanted to see what I was taking away. She stood there as I packed, and then I took my things down to the rickshaw. I thought I would say good-bye to the dog but he was nowhere to be seen—perhaps they had kept him away because they did not want me making him unhappy. Then, without further ado, I left.

Slowly, I settled into my new house. The one thing that preyed on my mind all the time was how to find work—what would I do if I didn't manage to find a job? And so, once again, I began the same old treadmill: running from pillar to post in search of work. As well as this, I also tried to see if I could find a cheaper place to live. Would I be able to? I wasn't sure, but I was worried about having to pay the rent for the next month. A week and a half passed and I had not found anything. Meanwhile, my neighbors started to ask all sorts of questions: Why was I living alone? Did it not worry me? Where was my husband? Would I be able to manage? and so on…When they started asking me all these things, my instinct was always to run away and not talk to them. So I'd take the kids and run off, saying that I had to go out and find a job. But then I had to face endless questions about whether I had managed to find work or not! At those times my defense tactic was to start talking about the children.

There was a young man named Sunil who worked as a driver in the house opposite memsahib's. He was another one whom I'd asked to look for work for me, and one day I met him somewhere and he asked if I was still working in the house across the road. When I told him I had left that job a week and a half ago and was looking for work, he offered to help. He promised to keep his ear to the ground and let me know if anything came up. One after
noon, I was sleeping with the children when Sunil turned up and asked if I had found work. I said no. So he said, “Come with me, then.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“Just come. If you need work, and once you've seen what there is to do, you can do the rest of the negotiations yourself.”

So I went with him. He took me to a house and rang the bell and the sahib came out. Sunil said to him, “Here you are, sir, I have brought someone as you instructed me to.”

“Are you Bengali?” the sahib asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, then,” he said, “the woman who works here is paid 800 rupees. I will see how you work and then decide on what to pay you.”

“All right,” I said, and asked what my hours would be.

“As early as possible, because I am an early riser.”

“I have to cook and feed my children, so the earliest I can make it is around six or seven o'clock.” I had the feeling the sahib wanted to talk a little more about money, so I hesitated as I was turning to leave but he just said, “All right, you can start tomorrow.”

The next day when I came to work I saw a thirty-five-to forty-year-old widow heading into the same house to work. Sahib was outside watering the plants. The moment he saw me he went into the house and told the woman that she would have to leave, he had found someone else. She came out and started abusing me. I told her: “Look, I know nothing about all this. Had I known that there was someone already here, I wouldn't have said yes to the job. It's no use shouting at me like this. If you want, you go and tell the sahib that I am not willing to work like this, and then you can have your old job back.”

But she did not do as I suggested and just went away, cursing
and screaming at me. Sahib then took me in and explained my tasks to me. I worked hard and everyone in the house was surprised at my work. One day the sahib asked me how I managed to squeeze in so much work in such little time and to do it so well. “Where did you learn?” he asked. So I told him that I have no problem doing domestic work because that's what I had done since I was a child—with no mother at home, I was forced to take on all the household tasks.

So this became my routine. I would go in the morning, finish all my work by the afternoon, and come back home. One day the sahib asked me about my children and whether they went to school or not. I told him that I wanted them to study and was constantly on the lookout for something, but so much depended on having the money to send them to school. I hadn't given up hope, though, and I hoped that I would be able to do so. Then one day he called me and said he wanted me to bring my son and daughter to him. “There's a small school nearby, I'll see what I can do there,” he said, “Bring the children with you in the morning, when you come, and leave them in the school. Then they can go back with you when you go.” So I began to do this, and the children started to go to school. I'd leave them there, come and work in the house, and in the afternoon, when they came back to the house, the sahib always gave them something to eat.

Now I began to think about getting some extra work because the money I was earning was not enough for all three of us. So I asked sahib if he could help me, and he said he would look out for work for me but that I should not go out looking for it myself. But in any case, I needed a new place to live, and with this in mind, I went to the neighborhood where my brother lived to see if there were any places to rent there. I managed to find a place where the rent was only five hundred rupees—the only trouble
was that there was no toilet in the house. But I thought,
If others can live like that, why can't I?
As usual, people had a lot of questions about me, and several of them tried to find out why I was alone, where I had come from, all the same things. Some of them were good to me, but many others said all kinds of things about me. Anyway, none of this concerned me and basically I kept myself a bit apart, waking in the morning and getting the children ready for school, after which I would lock up the house and go to work. Many people gossiped about how I would manage with only one house to work in, and to be honest, I was a bit concerned about this, too. Every day I would ask sahib if he had any news about possible work and he would say something or the other. I got the impression that he did not want me to work elsewhere. Perhaps he thought I would not be able to manage to do more than one job and if I did, my children would be neglected. Perhaps that was why one day he asked me, quite out of the blue, “Baby, how much do you spend in a month?” I was so embarrassed I did not say anything and he did not ask me again.

My routine was that I would wake in the morning and go more or less straight to work. There was no time to eat anything. At sahib's house, I would finish all the work and then go home to cook and clean. Sahib did not say anything, but I felt that he had compassion in his heart for me and sometimes in the morning when I went to his house he would be washing the dishes or sweeping the floor. I really liked working there. They appreciated my work, and no one ever scolded me or checked up on me. In the mornings, sahib always seemed happy to see me, and although he never said anything, I always felt that he was thinking: “What has this poor woman done that she had to leave her home and live alone like this?” He was concerned that I did not suffer anymore, and I felt sometimes that he wanted to say that to me, but that he hesitated to.

One day suddenly he asked me, “
Accha
, Baby, tell me what you do when you go home from here.”

I said, “I cook for the children. Then I feed them and put them to sleep. In the evening, I take them out for a while and then when we come back I make them study and do their homework. Then they have to be fed again and put to bed, and then I get to sleep. In the morning, I get up and come here. That's my daily routine.”

“So then how will you find time to do the other work you are looking for?”

“I'll have to manage it somehow, because without doing extra work I can't really survive.”

“Well, what if I help you out, and you don't work anywhere else?”

I was very touched by his concern for me. I was thinking about this when he said, “What's the matter? You have not answered my question. What are you thinking about?”

I was silent: I just could not say anything.

He said, “Look, Baby: think of me as your father, brother, mother, friend, anything. Don't think you don't have anyone in the world. You can tell me anything you like.” Then, after a moment, he added, “My children call me Tatush. You can also call me by that name.” So I began to call him Tatush and he was very happy. He would say, “You're like my daughter, and you are now the daughter of this house. Don't ever think that you don't belong here.” And indeed, everyone treated me like I was one of the family.

 

TATUSH HAD THREE CHILDREN, ALL YOUNG MEN, AND I
had met only one of them, the youngest. If I was working in the
kitchen and he wanted tea, he would come in and make his own and never ask me to do it for him. He spoke very little—not only with me, but with everyone. One day Tatush told me that his elder son was coming: “My elder son,” he said, “meaning your older brother.” I was really happy to hear this.

A few days later I was busy at work when Tatush called out to me. “Baby?” he said, “have you moved house yet?” I said yes. “But why did you not tell me? This is not right: you should have told me.” And I thought:
He's right.
I don't know how or why I forgot, but I did. I realized that he was upset, but I could not understand how he had come to know that I had moved. Then he told me that Sunil had told him. And I was wondering how Sunil would have gotten to know, when Tatush said, “Sunil went to your old home to see you and found out that you had moved.” He had met Sunil on his way to buy milk in the morning, which is how he had heard. “If Sunil had not told me, I would not have gotten to know,” Tatush said. I felt really terrible. Then, a little later, Tatush asked: “When I called you just now, what were you doing?”