I Loved my Housemaid!

Sajjan Bai was in her mid-forties, well-built and always walked with her head covered with a saree pallu (loose end of a saree normally draped over shoulder). Ironically, in a few Indian States bai refers to a maid servant but in many other places females are addressed as bai for showing courtesy and respect. Sajjan Bai was our maid when I was on deputation in IIFM, Bhopal.
In IIFM main campus there were six faculty residences and Sajjan Bai worked in four of those houses. Every morning she trudged about five kilometers from her house, climb the small hillock on which the campus was situated and attend her chores in all the houses one after another. It would be only by evening that she finished cleaning the vessels, sweeping and mopping and other sundry household jobs for all the families. On certain days I could see her returning home again on foot nonchalantly.

My office was at 930 A.M. so I seldom saw her in the morning. When I came from office for lunch I would see Sajjan Bai stretched on the floor in the verandah under a shade during summer and outside on ground basking in the sun during winter enjoying her afternoon siesta after eating the packed lunch she brought from her home. She usually ate her lunch with her husband who worked as a daily wage gardener in the campus.

Sajjan Bai had never talked to me. It was only during weekends and holidays that I used to be at home mostly reading newspapers and books. On those days my wife used to ask me repeatedly to shift, from wherever I had stationed myself temporarily, to another place in the big house in order to facilitate Sajjan Bai's sweeping and mopping in all nooks and corners. Once my wife indicated to me with a tinge of a feline pride that Sajjan Bai told her, "I have never heard Sir speaking in the house." I held myself back from retorting that it was a universal phenomenon with all husbands and probably a good trait for maintaining domestic harmony. Thankfully, my intellectual and Professorial thought, whatever its worth, was not verbalized.

Sajjan Bai and I had never talked but I observed that all the time that she was busy working, she hummed folk songs quite audibly. The clanging of the vessels while they were scrubbed and the running tap water were her musical accompaniments. She sang with so much enthusiasm and gusto as if she had no care in the world. To me she was dignity of labour personified. I could not comprehend a single word of her lyrics but somehow felt happy listening to her. It was then that I realized that happiness, sadness, excitement, mistrust - in fact all emotions or moods- have their own vibes and affect the people around according to their own vibrations. Now I could appreciate more deeply the couplet that I had read long back :

ना मिला कर उदास लोगों से
हुस्न तेरा बिखर ना जाये कभी l

(Do not mingle with sad people as it will spoil your own grace and beauty.)

Despite the lack of any interaction with me all through, Sajjan Bai used to depart from her protocol once in a year. Every Holi she would place a request with my wife that she wanted to put festival colours on me. I am sure the unconventional request must had unnerved the lady of the house at first but it was granted hesitantly and I was duly informed about it.
On the morning of Holi, though it was an off day for her, Sajjan Bai came walking all the way from her house as she usually did. She had a red, dry, Holi colour powder in her palm but that day she pulled her saree pallu further down to cover her face too. I noticed it more because of the contrast of her demeanour against the riotous mood that generally engulfs people, sometimes total strangers too, during Holi. I stood tentatively with downcast eyes under the watchful gaze of my wife. Sajjan Bai stooped down and put the dry coloured powder on my bare feet and folded her hands in a silent greeting without uttering a single word. I mumbled something like “Khush raho.” The whole thing didn't take even half a minute. Yet, the ritual was followed every year without fail but probably with less tension in the air after the first time.

And then one day I committed a cardinal mistake! My neighbour and his wife had visited us at our residence in the evening and we all were chatting over a cup of tea. Somehow the ladies started talking about their household work and naturally shared their grudge about the shortfall in the expectations from Sajjan Bai's performance standards.

There is a saying – ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. Well, something similar happened to me in that unguarded moment. Swimming bravely against the trend of the ongoing conversation, I ventured, "Whatever you people may say, I like Sajjan Bai! Look how difficult her life is. Every day she walks ten kilometers up and down to work in our campus. Yet, she is a happy soul singing songs while doing her work.”

There was a deafening silence and I realized my faux pas when my neighbour smiled at me mysteriously. Batting for another woman in the presence of one's wife- and that too championing for a housemaid who is a permanent adversary of the lady in charge- is an unpardonable act.

The uncomfortable silence was broken by my wife who looked at me disapprovingly: "What do you know about her? You don't have to get the work done from her. You don't know how obstinate and difficult she is.” I thought it prudent not to continue fighting a losing battle even if I visualized myself as a knight in the shining armour.

Years rolled by and I left Bhopal on completing my deputation and returned to Trivandrum. By this time my both daughters had completed their education and were looking for attractive jobs and fat salaries. In one of those rare moments nowadays when children sit down with their parents and unconvincingly pretend to listen to the advice of elders, I told my daughters, "It is not important how glamorous or highly paid the job is. The most relevant thing is whether one enjoys doing it.” In my flow of thoughts, I continued, " Do you remember Sajjan Bai, our housemaid? Despite getting a paltry amount as wages, she was happy doing whatever she was capable of."

I am not sure what impact my unsolicited advice had on my daughters. Yet, it dawned on me pleasantly that even after the colour that Sajjan Bai had sprinkled on my toes years back had disappeared, her memory remained firmly planted in my mind. Long live Sajjan Bai.

P S: My wife, like many of my friends, doesn't read my articles so I believe that writing this piece will not invite any trouble.