I was on phone with my mother in India. At 60 she still spends a considerable time in the kitchen that had metamorphosed over the years… from red oxide paved cement floor to tiled glazed flooring, from earthen stove to imported gas cooker and a puffing chimney paved way to a exhaust fan blackened with oil, spices and dusty cobwebs. She was extremely lucky on one aspect – for most…. the life line of a modern kitchen – domestic help. There was this family of 4 sisters, from the nearby district with roots in Tanjore, who took over our kitchen in the last 3 decades. They made their entries and exits chronologically as each of them reached their marriageable age.
Sandhya made her debut when the youngest of the sisters left last year. Unlike the sisters, she was not a resident domestic help. She lived 10 minutes of long-strided walking from my house and started her chores at 7.30 am and left (I should admit) exhausted at 5.30 pm. She was a mother of a 2 year old and 4 year old who were taken care of by her widowed mother. I was glad that my mom was happy that sandhya had fitted into the cast that had been moulded for 3decades by 4 dark sisters with a graceful servility that was imagined to be difficult for a new tribe to ensconce into.
She was in a hurry to hang up the phone as Sandhya had to leave work early today to attend the Sthree Shakti (Women Power) meeting. Not knowing what this government funded program was aimed at, I was anxious to know what does a high school drop out and mother of two working as a domestic help, doing at these meetings and whether it did help her to ease her life’s troubles.
There was a silent revolution gaining momentum in the rural areas and she was a link in that long chain connecting thousands of women witnessing a blooming emancipation and self-sketching their empowerment under this program. The program gave them a platform to launch small scale entrepreneurial programs like paper basket units, revival of handicrafts techniques on the verge of fade out among others thereby creating self sustainable units and creating jobs in their neighbourhood.
Sandhya earns Rs3000 a month from her job, lives with her family and finds time to engage herself in social programs creating additional revenue streams for her family. What about the gulf maids? Are they better placed than Sandhaya? They earn double the salary and live in air-conditioned apartments in the Gulf. There ends the glossy side. The price they had paid for this is a huge loan from the local loan sharks to pay for the Visa, ticket and agent commission. On an average majority of the maids do not stay for more than 3 years. They reach home richer by a few chiffon sari’s but still need money to pay-off the debts that helped them to reach gulf. The trauma of living away from family and kids and in some cases the physical trauma endured are scars that may take a long time to heal.
Every town and village has scores of aged parents and working couples who need domestic help. Then why do nations export domestic help and get branded as nations brimming with maids and labourers.
No comments:
Post a Comment