Birthdays and Biryanis

Sometimes I think Oprah should interview her.  My household help, S, that is.

Hitherto the subject of many blog posts here, and who now actually has a kind of following.

For one thing, she is much more interesting. Than Aishwarya Rai  or Parmeshwar Godrej.

Has tolerated a lot in her life, struggled a lot, found solutions on her own,  kept her family together.  Is greatly popular with her daughters-in-law,  and she also supports her only daughter who returned home after a fraud marriage. In an area where every alternate house has someone addicted to drinking and beating, and fighting, she, by popular demand, is the president of the local womens' association.  She is also the treasurer, despite being unable to read and write. She also knows about Google, and that it gives some answers to things, and often asks me to check out stuff for her,  when someone tries to mislead her. 

Last evening my daughter and I attended the first birthday party of one of her grandsons.  We had attended that of her eldest grandson 5 years ago, and this was the 3rd grandson. He was born last year and I had blogged about it here. 

S. kind of checks out her plans with me, whenever there is to be some kind of get together.  Now that she, her 3 sons, her daughter and a daughter-in-law were working, time was at a premium, and the money situation was better.  She said her sons had decided to order out for some Chicken Biryani from a local eatery.  She knows I am a vegetarian, but she also knows the daughter eats everything, and loves chicken.  

My daughter and S go along way back.  S has been  with us, since the last 25 years. When my daughter was learning baking as part of her vocational course. S was presented  with an iced birthday cake baked  by her,  with her name  on it, probably the first birthday cake of her life.  She thought it was really special, took it home, her family was totally amused, and her aged mother was impressed. 


Armed with a cartoon cake and a small cricket set, we landed up a bit early, since the daughter is obsessed with running these days, and would be going for that later.   S. had put up lights outside the house. The birthday child's other grandparents had come in from Pune, and the main and only small room of the house was agog with  folks, with the younger women  bustling around and the sons organizing seating et al outside , while keeping an eye on the playing children.  Every one , along with the kids and birthday boy, would gather at the Community Buddha Vihar later, pay their respects, and would enjoy the ordered special community meal.

We were introduced to all the daughters-in-law (I already knew the sons),  aunts, uncles, and relatives. My daughter, who always moves around with her camera, took some family pictures, with S holding the birthday boy, amidst all. S's son also took a few pictures of us with the birthday boy. The kids kept "accidentally" gravitating towards the cake, since one of them found out it had a cartoon face. By popular demand, this cake was cut amidst the kids. The eldest grandkid, who is obsessed with history and swords,  held the cake knife in a warrior pose and was slowly dissuaded to hand it to the birthday kid, who was helped by his parents, to cut it. No  messing around, no smearing of faces with the icing , and S. had the daughters-in-law do the distribution, but not before, one of the restless grandkids,  decided the stuff on the knife shouldn't be wasted and decided to lick it up.

Some more aunts appeared.  S.'s own daughter returned from work, and the entire gaggle of kids ran to greet her outside.   Some more photos,  and then S. went inside her kitchen for a longish time. Her youngest daughter-in-law, quietly came out, opened an old almirah, and took out some white blouses and went in.  When S. emerged, she had changed into a very conservative white saree with gentle embroidery,  in preparation for their visit to the Buddha Vihar.

We had been there for an hour, not realizing  how time flew. It was a delight to see everyone enjoying as well as helping out.  S.'s youngest grandchild was all of 3 months,  and was lying in the lap of his cousin's maternal grandma, being patted to sleep. There was this huge sense of unity despite the differences in generations and thinkng, and economic wellbeing.

It was time for us to leave, after enjoying the cake and some other stuff.   S. offered us Frooti . And no, we didn't see any of the kids throwing a tantrum because they wanted a Cola or anything. They were just too busy climbing around and playing. S. walked with us to the corner.  We bid her goodbye.

Late , around 9:30 pm or so, the doorbell rang.  Mumbai is having an unusual winter, fewer people out on the roads, and we wondered who it could be.

It was "S".  She was carrying a steel container. Their ceremony and celebrations at the Buddha Vihar were done, the food had arrived in time, and most of her guests, many who came from long distances , had left.

The stuff inside the container was hot. She handed me the stuff at the door, and left in a hurry, to attend to folks who were staying over at her small house.

It was my daughter's share of the Chicken Biryani :-).  Straight from the giant container at the celebration. 

The daughter often works late into the night, after running etc , when she has some assignment to complete. Sometimes she works in the living room so as to not disturb us with stuff that she keeps playing in the background on her laptop. 

I think yesterday she was also busy with something else.

The steel container felt considerably lighter this morning.

   

"S." in the time of 3-day weekends....!

My household help, "S.", a hitherto greatly admired lady in the blog world (she knows I write about her), came in this morning, after what must have been a great 3 day weekend for her. She had been telling me much in advance about going away for three days at this time, so as to not inconvenience me , and so that I could mobilize for S-less days, and schedule my stuff accordingly.

S. is a great follower of the late Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, and is a Buddhist. They have a community hall in their crowded locality, where she is an office holder of the local Buddhist Women's Association. Smart, "illiterate", sensible "S.", was earlier the treasurer, and would plan the community events with great care and attention. She probably did an excellent job, despite being unable to read numbers and alphabets , because she is now the President of the group.

Some local folks recently announced a bus trip over the 3 day weekend that just got over. Folks would be picked up, and would travel to the ancestral village of Dr Ambedkar , Ambavade, in the coastal Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. After spending some time at the memorial there and visiting with his remnant family, they would then proceed to his first wife, Ramabai's ancestral village , about 50 kilometres away, at Wanand , in the Dapoli area of Ratnagiri District. The idea was to spend some time there visiting, learning about her, talking to folks, have a late tea/snacks session, and then drive and spend the night at a hill station , Mahabaleshwar, about 110 kilometres from there.

The drive,  although  not a big distance in kilometres, was through several small internal roads,  some through hilly areas, away from highways, and so quite timeconsuming.  

The amazing thing was, that her overall family budget decreed that two people could go, and her family urged S and her daughter to do this trip. They took along the eldest grandson (he went free), a very talkative,curious fellow , all of 5 years, who had started school. With a new grandson in the family and other small grandsons, this would give a break to those who stayed at home, and S told me she thought it might do the eldest fellow some good to see places around where so much history happened.

S cannot read or write, but her descriptions of the trip would make a great travelogue. Leaving at dawn in Mumbai, following the coastal highway to  Dr Ambedkar's native village , Ambavade, way inland from the coast, and they reached there at 1 pm. Visited the village center, met and spoke with a nephew (of the great man) who still lives there. A simple village lunch was organized for them. Then to visit the ancestral maternal village of Dr Ambedkar's wife, Ramabai Ambedkar, a small village called Wanand, more on the coastal part (Dapoli) of the same district.

The late Ramabai(1896-1935), was married to Dr Ambedkar when he was 17, and she was 9 , in 1906. While he left to study in England, she continued to slog and support her siblings in their ancestral village in very difficult situations. On  Dr. Ambedkar's return, she was a great support to him in his campaigns, and was with him till she died in 1935.

This trip, for S, was to see and meet people in places , she had just heard about till now. Ramabai Ambedkar is greatly revered by folks, and S wanted her grandson to also see, how the rest of the country outside Mumbai lived.

The trip wasn't all educational and serious, she said. From Wanand, they drove 110 kms, to Mahabaleshwar, a very popular hill station , in the mountainous Satara District, to spend the night there. The entire route , after the recent monsoon must have been a wonderful green.

A great day spent sightseeing, visiting river origins, the famous Venna Lake, strawberry farms and factories making delicious strawberry stuff, and it was time to return to Mumbai on the third day. (Mahabaleshwar is famous for its strawberries).

An amazing and nice change for S, where meals and lodging was taken care of,  and she could just enjoy the trip.

En route, they passed and stopped at Pratapgadh, a wonderful mountain fort, made famous by Chhatrapati Shivaji, a great Maratha warrior King revered in the state. Her young grandson was dizzy with all the mountain climbs and descents, complained of "chest pain" (if you will) , and forgot all about it the minute they spied the steps ascending to the top of the fort.

Naturally, there were a bunch of things for sale , and the fellow was hoping to buy a big toy sword and shield, costing 150 Rs much to S's chagrin.

"It's all this TV stuff. He thinks he can charge around battling with it, and its just an invitation to get into situations where someone will be hurt ", she told me. And so she convinced him that a set of binoculars was better, and he could watch the stuff from the bus, and see things like birds, and animals, and sceneries that others couldn't etc etc. He could even later see the Thane creek from the hilltop, after he got home, and show his brothers and uncles.

I was amazed at the firmness with which S dealt with this. I know kids who create a racket in toy shops till they get what they want. Regardless of price. Some parents just give up, and give in. Between the sales person's strategy, a possible new reputation as a  stingy parent, and unwillingness to become unpopular and be criticized, some attach great value to the ability to spend money easily, and substitute money for reasoned thought.

And here was S, convincing a chap to enjoy a binocular; much cheaper than the sword by all means, but certainly more useful, and shareable.

But what was amazing was what she got for my daughter, when she came in this morning. In this whole fast paced , event packed trip, she had bought a packet of strawberry chews from the strawberry factory in Mahabaleshwar ! The thrilled recipient of these goodies, took a photo of it for this blog, before it was opened , and  shared with the family and , of course , S !

All I can say is , "wow!"......

Strong Tea of Life .......(edited)

I sometimes read , in various magazines, and the Net, various stories, where women ask for advice, outlining their problems in detail. It often has to do with interfering in laws or even parents, jealous spouse, thwarted ambitions, abuse, and so on. And what is notable is that these are all folks from a strata of society, where they basically don't have to worry where their next meal is going to come from.


And then I heard this story. From the lady herself.


She literally grew up as a daughter of the fields. Living with her parents , a sister, and two brothers, in a small dilapidated structure on a farm on the outskirts of Pune, she resisted every effort of her father to send her to the village school. The older children went, but she preferred to wander around, climb trees, collect cow dung to make it into dried fuel cakes, which someone actually bought for 15 rupees a basket. There was nothing better than working in the fields, and then learning from /helping her mother at home. Every so often, she would be part of a group gathered around to help someone who was sick, and years of participating, made her a kind of repository of native plant cures on various human conditions. The chance of a minuscule permanent government job, with all its attendant future benefits, had the family gravitating to Mumbai.

In her sister's wedding, some folks suggested a boy for her, her parents and the boy's parents agreed, and she was married off at 14 , and went to live again on another farm near Pune.

She was the mother of 4 children, (3 boys and a girl) before she was 21. Her marriage was a classic case, of, parents of a boy thinking "he will improve after marriage". He didn't. Verbal and physical abuse, unwillingness to stick on to any job, drinking, and inability to be a provider to his family, had her scrimping on what little she got, and starting off on her cow dung collecting again. She worked in the fields to keep the little mouths fed and sent her kids to the local school. The husband was a social misfit, and took pleasure in denying her the few outings she enjoyed with her kids and extended family of in laws. Not to mention the beatings, and drinking.

Came a time, when her parents thought things had gone too far, and she was brought home to a better life. She worked very hard, listened to whispers, but was surrounded by folks who cared for her.

For the last 25 years, she has worked houses, educated her kids , taken loans and risks , acquired a minuscule tenement, been socially active amidst the ladies group in the slum area where she lives. She is possibly the most educated person I know, who never went to a single school anywhere.

The children remember the father, and have visited him on occasions that would have demanded his presence, but the man refuses to acknowledge them. She is on excellent terms with her erstwhile in laws, and attends their social functions and vice-versa. She keeps her eyes and ears open, is convinced that her kids must be educated , and now that the kids are married, and have small children, she pays a completely preposterous monthly fee, so the grand kids can attend a good school in the neighborhood, where the ladies she worked for send their children.

It means there are almost no new clothes , it means you deliberately do not dream, it means you learn to share a lot as family, and it means you stand up for each other.

Very recently her family decided to apply for caste certificates for the sons. She has her own caste certificate thanks to her father, and her kids need to show that of their father/grandfather/uncle. Her certificate is of no use.

And so she disappeared a week from work, and went to search for the children's father, because he was not to be found in the village. She thought she had heard that he worked as a helper in a state transport workshop, and she went there to meet up.

The watchman barred her at the gate. She showed the guy the photo she was carrying and mentioned by name who she wanted to see, saying this was a case of a woman wronged.

And she was totally stunned to hear that the guy in the photo existed, but the name was wrong. So she asked if she could see the man, her husband. They called him to the office. And she got the shock of her life. The man was the same, but he now went around under another name . His entire work record, his savings with the company, retirement benefits were all under a totally different name. He flatly refused that he was in anyway connected to her, although the world and the office could see that he was the same man in the photo she carried.

She now had a problem, of claiming to be a wife of someone who didn't exist . His caste certificate with the new name wouldn't help, as the children's school records showed the original name. No one knows if he officially changed the name. Chances are he didn't. Chances are he was in trouble with the law, and did this name change to acquire the workshop job, by making payments here and there , and nobody wants to talk.

I asked her if she could get her in laws to identify him. They could do a affidavit to that effect. There was even a suggestion earlier that if she filed for a divorce (which wouldn't make a difference to her now anyway, after 25 years of no contact) , she could then have her children apply for a caste certificate , based on hers, as she the mother who took care of them, would be the only head of family.

How do you file for divorce when the other person's existence is not clear ? The guy now claims to be someone else. There is even no record of the death of the original chap. Why this is bad, is because there is some ancestral land in the village, and her children would have a right to that. No one knows if the fellow's name is on that piece of land record, and if so, with what name.

How much time can a person spend following up on all this , if you work at a job that pays you by the day ? 2 of her three sons, one daughter, and one daughter-in-law, fall under that category; you earn today if you work today. All the people she herself works for, do not subscribe to the theory of cutting her emoluments because she misses a few days.


And so she ends up making endless trips to Pune, her village, her husband's village, her in-laws , her lawyer and so on. Faced with a guy, who exists but says he doesn't. Doesn't acknowledge that she is a wife and that he has fathered children. The strange thing is there is no "other woman" .

She is hell bent on applying for the children's certificates because it entitles them to apply for a guaranteed house , possibly a small government tenement, and she thinks she will , in the meanwhile check out the situation on loans, from employers, well wishers, her bank where she manages with a thumb impression and some savings.

The latest I have heard, is that she has managed to get her brother-in-law's certificate, and apparently that proves, that her husband (whether he exists, existed, or not) is of the same caste. She is now paying some lawyer to do the paperwork, he has promised to get the caste certificates for not only her children , but their children as well.

I hope things work out for her. She has never cribbed about that husband of hers, ever, in all these years. Never considered him worth wasting any time on. The children went to call him for their marriages, and, except him, everyone from the in-laws attended, and she was pleased with that. She is on excellent terms with her in laws.

She has never done a hue and cry about her situation, but will fight to ensure that children get what is theirs according to the law of the land.

This was S., my household help. She told me the story about the husband, with changing names, after she came back from her most recent trip , in her on going fight. She has tried court cases, where he will get defined as her husband, and benefits will accrue to her kids. But he never turns up, and she only ends up spending money of travel.

I don't know what the current lawyer is going to do about the caste certificates. Maybe what he has charged is a fee, for getting things to move fast, who knows.

But in a country, where the premier investigative agency, drags its feet on investigations on worthies who have stashed monies abroad, and cases where the guilty have got away because some timing rules were ignored by the prosecution, I have nothing but admiration, for a woman, who has battled problems, single handedly , all her life, without making a public issue of it, preferring to do whatever was required for the common good of the family.


In the manner of folks asking for solutions on the Net , I wonder if anyone has a solution for S. ....

Eleanor Roosevelt , one tough lady herself, said something that fits this situation to a T.

"A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water".

S., is surely , one amazing cup of some really strong tea !

Update as of July 7, noon : A young friend who read this post, contacted me with a wish to help with her legal costs. S. also works for someone else in the same building as this young friend. They met, had a wonderful chat, and the young friend, a research scholar, handed her a decent sum to help her with the legal costs. S. is greatly pleased.

Thank you, and greatly appreciated.

An eternal S-walk.....

No, this is not about the Slutwalk likely to happen in our capital.

This is more about , my household help S., and her eternal trudge , to get her life organized, so her children can get what she never got.

I've blogged several times about S. She is my household help for the last 25 years. Sometimes I think she is a lady ahead of her times. Illiterate, but very smart in a native kind of gutsy way, she was married off early, had 3 sons , 1 daughter, all the while suffering at the hands of a drunkard, violent, useless husband. Her parents, went and brought home their daughter (with kids) and gave her a life. Very revolutionary for those days.

Today she has a 2.5 room very small tenement which is her own, and she, her 3 sons, 1 daughter (all adults), three daughter-in-laws, and 3 grandchildren, stay there, possibly in willful dynamic equilibrium. She educated her kids, who now work. Her daughters-in-law are both more educated than their respective husbands, no one discusses egos, because everyone is so happy and busy with life and S. is very proud of them.

Very clearly, this matchbox of a house is not going to be enough . The grandchildren are growing up. Recently, S heard about a special government scheme for folks from the Scheduled Caste Category (she belongs) , where, those below a certain yearly income could register for and be allotted, a tenement which would be heavily subsidized by the government.

The main thing you needed for this is a "caste certificate". She has hers, because her late father, who worked in an academic institute as a mason's helper, was very aware of such things, and got hers made, a long time ago. The main thing required there is details about the father. Amazingly , no caste information about the mother is asked for.

S., has put in her application for the tenement because she qualifies income wise. She now wants her adult children to apply, particularly her daughter, who is back after being cheated in a marriage, and now works in a women's hostel cafeteria.

S's children studied up to the 7th grade elsewhere away from Mumbai. The thing is to get their school leaving records which might have a record of caste. They also need their father's details. A father, who has not bothered to look up his children for the last 20 years.

S, needs to go to Pune to make some application , and then go to her husband's village, to check out records with the local authority, the Talathi. Records may or may not be there. She doesn't think her husband will help or will even be bothered. The Talathi will probably have to be paid a price for allowing folks to peruse his records. S knows all this because a relative did this kind of thing in his village.

And so S., suddenly disappeared last week, without informing me , and landed back over the weekend. She occasionally does this after informing me , when she has to attend a court case in Pune, where she is trying to oust a fellow who is occupying a room belonging to her in Pune, and claims it is his, and she has a lady lawyer helping her.

When she told me about this tenement scheme and the caste certificates, I had asked her to check with the same lawyer lady , for help regarding this. Last week, S., took that to heart,and rushed off with her own documents to check with the lawyer. She particularly wants her daughter to apply for a place, so she has some security , post-S.

After doing her own S-walk, nay, hard S-trudge, to some old schools and stuff, she has convinced the lawyer to handle this for her and put in applications for caste certificates for the children. Which will mean lawyer fees, some more trips on demand to Pune, but this is any day better than a lone woman battling out the bureaucracy in the village. Those of us who she assists in housework on a daily basis, have agreed to help her out financially with the fees and stuff.

The irony is, that the mother who gave birth , nurtured, and educated her children single handedly working 7 days a week, 365 days a year does not count here at all. Else the children could have got their certificates based on hers. The government in all its patriarchal "wisdom" insists on the father's caste certificate. And here is a good for nothing father, who really doesn't deserve either S., or the wonderful children.

I hear about people who got false certificates made to enable college admissions in a special quota, and I recently read about the false caste certificate scam in New Delhi, where people paid 5 lakhs (5,00,000) for such false certificates, and supposedly the perpetrators of this scam have been arrested. I wonder if anyone even asks for the father's details here, other than name.

And then I wonder, why the mother's name and certificate is not enough in such cases. Her children work in places where missing a day means a cut in salary. Much as they want they cannot accompany her everywhere.

A President, a ruling party chairperson, an opposition leader in Parliament, all women. Four Chief Minsiters of states, all women. Day in and day out they spout forth on corruption, power, scams, and when they have finished talking about large sums of black money, they raise the gas prices and talk about the Aam Aadmi (~common man).

I wish someone thinks about the ordinary woman, makes laws that are useful to her, and educates her truthfully about them.

I wonder if I have my information wrong. I know that today, particularly for schools admissions and stuff a mother's signature is acceptable and on par with a father's. Maybe there has been an update on the rule for caste certificates.

Until then, the S-walk continues, the saree wrapped on both shoulders, pallu covering her head, changing buses and trains in the thick of rain and traffic, standing endlessly outside government offices, with papers in an old cellophane bag, accompanying the lawyer lady, doing affidavits, giving a thumbprint whenever asked.


So many S-walks over the years. So many obstacles.

But she learns from each.

She holds her head high. This is one walk I support.