Just as there is no doubting her integrity, there is no faulting her work. Her work needs no supervision.
My domestic help is a bigger social networker than anyone else I know
of. No, Muniyamma isn’t on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Orkut, MySpace
or GooglePlus. Yet, her social circle is so vast and the obligations to
it are so demanding that I am often put to great inconvenience.
She is supposed to report for work at 2 p.m. but she will waltz in
anytime between noon and 4 p.m. Instead of starting her work right away,
she will insist on giving a detailed account of what delayed her. When I
impatiently tell her to get down to work, she will counter me with, “
Isn’t it common courtesy to explain why I am late?” (or early, as the
case may be.) She will embark on an involved, none-too-original tale of a
friend’s cousin’s uncle’s grand child who fell sick and was
hospitalised. “All I can give is moral support,” she will add with a sad
shake of the head.
It isn’t always a sad story. Sometimes, the reason is celebratory. Once,
she arrived in all her finery and said, “I had to go to my
sister-in-law’s aunt’s niece’s first birthday lunch.” I asked,
sarcastically, “Couldn’t you have given the function a miss?” Her eyes
widened in holy horror. “How could I do that?” She sat down, to explain
better. “My sister-in-law saved my son from the clutches of an
unscrupulous scoundrel. I am indebted to her. It is only proper that I
discharge my duty.”
I was so exasperated one day, when subjected to another anecdote on the
matter of honour, that I said, “It will take you a life-time to fulfil
all your obligations.” Pat came the answer: “Not even if I take seven
times seven lives!”
Where absenteeism is concerned, she is a law unto herself. She isn’t in
the habit of bumping off hale and healthy friends and relatives. Neither
will she quote illness as an excuse for gaining my sympathy. She will
state blandly that it was important business for which she had to take
the day or days off. It could be renewal of her son’s driving licence,
some complication with the ration card or to arrange for funds for a
family function. Why then do I tolerate her? It is her mystique.
She is trustworthy. She will not help herself to anything — not even a
flower from the garden or an empty jam bottle or an old issue of a
magazine. As a matter of fact, quite a few times she has taken out
currency from shirt pockets and handed it back together with a lecture
on carelessness. She guards my property like the proverbial dragon.
Once a plastic spoon was missing. She was most upset. She went on and on
bugging me till I was so irritated that I said, “It is only a plastic
spoon. Leave it.” Undeterred, she lectured me. “Today it is a plastic
spoon. Tomorrow it may be something valuable. What happens then?” she
challenged. An unassailable argument!
And she didn’t rest until she had ferretted out the dratted plastic
spoon. Sometimes, unable to bear her nagging, I say I have given the
item away. I have suspicion that she doesn’t believe me.
Just as there is no doubting her integrity, there is no faulting her
work. She is neither a shirker nor slapdash worker. Her work never needs
any supervision. Whether she is watched or not she does a thorough job.
I just need to ‘adjust’ a little bit! And pamper her — which I do!
(The writer’s email is padma_ganapati@yahoo.co.in)
काला रंग दासता, ग़रीबी और ईमानदारी का प्रतीक है.
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kale to shree krishan bhi the............................
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