On Friday I had a very interesting conversation with our maid/cook, Lady S. She speaks English well, but still with a very heavy accent. So I’m not always sure I am interpreting her words correctly. Or our driver’s, for that matter. But the story below is what I believe she was telling me.
I had come home, exhausted as usual, from the gym. For once, I had no lesson plans or reading comprehensions to frantically make before heading off to teach my students, so I grabbed a glass of milk and double rich chocolate protein powder, drank it in the kitchen, and just chatted with her for a while. I think she was bored, too, because she was cleaning out the spice drawer.
We started the conversation rather dully. I would look at the particular spice jar she was cleaning, smell it, ask the name, and promptly forget the name. Some she would encourage me to taste. Eventually we both grew bored of that activity (she has quite a few spices in that drawer) and, I meekly put my milk glass in the sink. I always feel weird creating more work for her, right in her presence. Clearly I was doing nothing but loafing around while she worked.
I started a second attempt at the conversation by asking about her marriage. Our driver, Driver A, had told me that Lady S had a love marriage (previously, I had believed the opposite- he had told me that HE had a love marriage- again, difficulties in interpreting the people’s words here). Driver A had been very self-righteous, proclaiming how much better arranged marriages were than love marriages, because, in love marriages, “the love leaves within six years”. I had asked him if he loved his wife at all (since his was an arranged marriage) and he told me yes. He said children were smarter now than in the past, because more people were getting arranged marriages again. I guess people have seen the error of loving before the marriage.
Marriage is a weird topic here. Everyone thinks that their idea is the best. I guess it is like that in the US, too, with some Christians so ridiculously against gay marriage. But marriage in general seems to evoke very strong opinions in India. Teacher R told me she had asked her students why people get married. Her reason? To have kids. I personally thought that was an awfully short list of reasons. Don’t you want more than just kids out of a marriage? A sense of belonging, love, family? What if you are unable to have kids? Is it okay to end the marriage then? Teacher R is a Christian, incidentally, if you are keeping tabs on the various religious beliefs associated with marriages.
Anyhow, after hearing about the marriages of the people that my maid and driver know, I sure am glad I don’t have to be in their situations, regardless of whether they had love or arranged marriages.
Back in the kitchen, Lady S was telling me how she fell in love, and got married at 16. Sixteen years old, can you believe that? She is about my age. I was a sophomore in high school at that age. Granted, the school system here is different- I think she’d be out of grade school by then. But still. Married.
If I understood her correctly, her mother never gave her ‘the talk’, and so she didn’t know she was pregnant. A friend told her at 7 months. She apparently didn’t even know how babies were made. And so her daughter was born. Lady S is 29 years old now, with a second daughter who is now about 3 years old.
About five or six years ago, her husband started the drinking and yelling. His job (I believe she called it ‘poon’, but I can’t figure out quite what word she was saying) is a low-paying job where he runs errands for other people. For example, if I need to give my husband a piece of paper at work, I could hire him to run the paper over to him. It seems like a pretty common job here in India. He earns about 4000 rupees/month ($89). Lady S earns twice that. Can you imagine supporting a family of four on $267 a month?
Lady S comes to work at our spacious two-bedroom apartment after feeding her daughters and dropping them off at their school. She stays until noon or one, making fancy food for us, putting our barely worn clothes in a washer and then dyer, putting dishes in the dishwasher, and cleaning our floors and bathrooms. She then picks up her daughters, and takes them home. She cooks for them, and hand washes all of the family laundry. Hand washes her dishes. Cleans the home. Plays with her children, helping them learn. What a busy life she has. She has to do all the housework twice each day. And it is much more difficult the second time around. Her husband comes home from his job around 4:30 pm. He demands food, yells a lot, eats, and leaves the house to go get drunk. Every. Single. Day.
Lady S doesn’t really like drinking. A lot of people in India don’t really like it. Now I can see why women don’t like it. Driver A- he will go out and drink with his friends, too. He doesn’t tell his wife. I had thought it was a bit funny, at first, him hiding the one day a month when he drinks beer with his friends, but now I see how sad the situation is.
Lady S is from a fishing caste. Their family has been here for years and years. Apparently, the name of her street is even her last name. And the men of the fishing caste are great at drinking. Lady S told me that for every three men, two will be complete drunks. Her husband included.
‘But,’ she told me proudly, ‘he never hits me’. Well, maybe that is the silver lining.
Driver A elaborated this for me a bit. Again, is a Muslim, so he doesn’t have the same family history, background, etc as Lady S., who is a Hindu. But he still, around his community, had stories to tell. He told me that most husbands will come home, and immediately pick a fight. ‘The food is too salty. WHY DID YOU PUT SO MUCH SALT IN THE FOOD?” Often, this seemingly stupid little topic results in a ‘coin’ around the wife’s eye (black eye) from being hit with a fist. The husband will leave, and possibly not come back for days. If he is back, he will engage in that childhood game we all stopped in middle school, “Kids, tell your mother that…” The kids relay the message. The mother listens, and responds with “Kids, tell your father…” Driver A says that a week or so later, the fight is over and everything is peaceful. For a day or two.
Driver A additionally told me that drunk husbands will come home around 1:00 or 2:00 am, after drinking the night away, and roughly push their wife awake, “make me some food, woman”. She has to get up and make a meal for him. Remember that there aren’t refrigerators in these families. So food is basically cooked from scratch for each meal. Driver A, his chest puffed up in pride, pride informed me that he doesn’t do that to his wife. He always makes sure to eat before going home as to not bother her. I didn’t ask about whether or not he hits her, though.
Lady S told me her husband’s shouting doesn’t bother her anymore. She knows he won’t change, so why worry about it? She seems complacent. I am glad that she can be at peace, but it is so painful to hear her story. I don’t want her to have to settle. I want her to have a better life. I want her kids to know that it can be different, to find something better. But this is the life that the fishing caste knows. Normal life.
She told me, again, how surprised she was that the previous renters had never yelled at her. That the husband had never yelled at the wife. Normal life to us is alien to her. No wonder people in India like working for the foreigners so much.
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