Maidservant

Seethamma had been cooking and cleaning for us ever since we came to live in the coastal town of Ernakulum about fifteen months ago. My father worked in the accounts section of the Southern Railways and transfers were a part of his job routine. We lived in a spacious railways quarter set amidst a small garden of its own and Seethamma helped my mother with the household chores since the first day itself in this city. She was a small, dark complexioned lady with a delicate constitution that housed an iron will within it. She used to work on a part-time basis in a few houses in the neighborhood, cooking and cleaning, before we came and my mother engaged her services for the full day to help her run the house and look after my baby sister. Seethamma gladly accepted the offer and started bringing her only child, a girl of twelve called Vijaya, along with her to assist her and mind the baby. They would punctually arrive every day at about six in the morning and start the day for us. They had a duplicate key to our main door interlock and would enter the house, bringing the newspapers and the milk packs with them. Together, they would clean up the dishes and the leftovers from the dinners previous nights and prepare breakfast for the family. Seethamma was an expert at the local cuisine and I invariably woke to the aromas of sizzling dosas and uttappams or steaming idlis in sambhar-curries. By the time I was dressed up for my school, my father would be sitting in the front garden, reading the newspapers and sipping hot coffee and Vijaya would be busy bathing my sister. While I breakfasted, I would listen to my mother talking with Seethamma in the kitchen about the day’s menu and other things in general, while the latter kept up the conversation along with her chopping the vegetables or grinding the spices.

I was about eight years old and studied in the fourth grade at the Saint Francis Boys High School that was located in the city. I commuted to the school in a bus that had been arranged specifically for the students of the school and returned back home by two in the afternoon. My father would be away at his office at this time while my mother would be putting my sister to sleep and it was always Vijaya who would be standing at our house gates to receive me back from school. She was a cheerful and sprightly girl, but rather small and thin for her age. I liked to see her smiling and waving at me as I got down the bus in front of our house and crossed the street. She would open the gates and close them after me, keeping up a friendly chatter all the while, asking about my day at the school, about my friends that she knew about, about my test results, about the sports events and many other things of that sort. I would enter my room, put my school bag away and wash myself before going to lunch. My mother would be up by this time and come and sit by me while Vijaya laid the table and waited on both of us. Lunch would be another grand affair of Seethamma’s gourmet skills and we would relish various South Indian vegetarian delicacies prepared with the utmost care. After lunch, my mother would generally check up on my school work for an hour while I took my afternoon nap on a couch nearby. In the evening, I would usually wake up at about five and go out to play with the neighborhood children outside. When I returned home about two hours later, Seethamma would have finished cooking dinner and cleaned up the kitchen behind her while Vijaya would have finished feeding my sister and would be playing with her on the rug in the drawing room. My father would be back from office, smoking, relaxing and talking to my mother in the bedroom while she nodded and listened while knitting or embroidering all the while. I would then settle down to finish my homework given by my teachers or prepare for the upcoming tests. About an hour later, my mother would come in to supervise my efforts and provide the necessary corrections wherever needed. We would work together at my studies and go for dinner at about ten. Seethamma and Vijaya would have left for their home by that time. Mother would serve dinner for all three of us and sit with my sister in her lap while we ate, talked and laughed. We all looked forward to this family-hour with pleasure. After dinner we all retired to bed by eleven. This was our daily schedule in general and needless to say that Seethamma and Vijaya became indispensable extended family. Even during my holidays and vacations Seethamma’s cooking and cleaning quietly filled our house with a reassuring presence as I passed the days happily playing with my friends outside or in the company of Vijaya and my little sister Mira, who had started toddling and lisping small words.

However about five months later, when I was preparing for my half yearly examinations of the fifth grade just before the Christmas holidays, Seethamma broke the inviolate daily schedule and did not show up for two consecutive days. My mother was naturally very inconvenienced and perturbed. She somehow managed to pull on with the house chores, now that Mira was nearly three years old and did not require constant attention but she was quite annoyed with Seethamma at her abrupt absence and the lack of any communication whatsoever. When the mother-daughter duo did not turn up in the morning on the third day as well, my mother could bear it no longer and decided to find out about them. That day being a Sunday, I was at home and so was my father. After we had breakfasted and mother had finished cleaning and cooking lunch, she asked father to look after Mira for a while and holding my hand, walked out of the house. We went visiting nearby within the Colony, where Seethamma used to work for a part of the day before she started working full-time for us. The couple living there had two grown up sons, the elder one having married recently. The young daughter in law led us to the kitchen where the lady of the house was talking to another maidservant while the latter was cleaning the cooking utensils. They looked enquiringly at my mother and she explained that she wanted to find out about Seethamma’s sudden absence from work. The maidservant there was an old friend of Seethamma who had taken over her share of work at this house when she left off to start working for us. She looked at my mother very surprised and said, “Oh Amma, you don’t know anything about this? Seetha has been admitted to the government hospital in the city with third degree burn injuries after she was brutalized and set alight by that drunkard of her husband. We rushed to the scene just in time to save her and called the police. The man is now under arrest but Seetha is badly burned and fighting for her life. Vijaya is there looking after her mother as they don’t have anybody else at home. We are her friends and neighbors but as we have to attend to our own daily work in the day, we are able to visit them only in the evenings and attend to their needs then. Probably, that is why nobody informed you.”

My mother was shocked and stunned by this latest news on Seethamma but she did not waste a single moment. She thanked the lady of the house for her time and immediately set off for the government hospital taking me along with her. We hired an auto-rickshaw to reach the government hospital which was located a considerable distance from the Railway Colony, in the center of the city. Mother looked at me kindly and pressed my hand. She said, “Son, we are going to visit Seethamma at the hospital where she has been admitted for third degree burns. She has worked her heart and soul for us these last two years and we owe her this much in return. The sight would not be pretty; it might even scare you. But these are the hard lessons of life not taught in the books and I want you to face them and grow up tough and strong.” We reached the government hospital where the poor and needy were treated for negligible charges but the facilities provided consisted of the bare minimum. Consequently, the conditions within the hospital were more awful and depressing than ever with cries of pain and agony all around. When we reached Seethamma in the burns ward, I was simply devastated to see her. Her face was all disfigured and mangled beyond recognition with burn injuries and her eyes were shut tight. Her body was covered with a protective netting to keep the flies and the bedclothes away from her wounds. A pungent smell of some antiseptic disinfectant pervaded the whole ward. She was on a saline drip and appeared to be sleeping. However, Vijaya rushed to hug my mother and burst out sobbing piteously. Mother silently hugged her for a few minutes, then patted her back encouragingly. She pulled up a chair from nearby and sat beside Vijaya, holding her hand while I stood there watching quietly. Without my mother asking any question, she herself started talking about the mishap, wiping her tears continuously as she spoke. Mother let her speak on, if only to relieve her of the painful burden she was carrying in the depths of her heart. “My father never lived with us or supported us as far back as I can remember. He moved with all sorts of bad people, drinking and gambling with them. Sometimes he got into trouble with the police and they locked him up in jail for months together. Mother did not approve of his ways and we severed all connections with him and neither enquired nor searched after him. However, he came visiting us time and again and troubled my mother no ends with his demands for money. He took away all our hard earned savings and mother’s jewelry into the bargain and drank and gambled them away. Every time he turned up, mother resisted him and they would quarrel and fight. But every time father would have his way in the end when he would beat her up and forcibly snatch away whatever he wanted and vanish from our lives for the next few months. I always stayed away from these fights as I felt very scared and afraid for my mother and did not wish to interfere and aggravate the situation. This time things got very bad indeed. Father kept asking mother for more money that she did not have. Then he slapped her and tried to forcibly snatch the remaining few gold jewelry she was wearing but my mother did not yield. When he tried to snatch the gold mangalsutra she was wearing around her neck as a mark of her marital status, she got wild and hit him back for the first time in her life. That was what released the dangerous beast in him and he pounced on her, threw her down, poured cooking oil on her and set fire to her sari. At this I started screaming loudly even as my mother tried to put the fire out by rolling on the ground. Father then got at me and started beating me to shut me up but our friends and neighbors had rushed in by then and some of them held father up against the wall while others rescued my mother and brought her to this hospital.” Vijaya covered her face with both hands and cried bitterly. Mother kept sitting beside her and patted her back reassuringly.

Suddenly, Seethamma stirred on the bed and moved her lips that had somehow escaped the burns that marred her face elsewhere. “Who is it Vijaya?”, she asked slowly in a very feeble voice, speaking with a tremendous effort. Vijaya immediately got up and bent over her, speaking softly near her ears, “Mira baby’s mother is here to see you Ma. She has brought her son also with her. She has been sitting here with me for the last half an hour.” On hearing this, Seethamma slowly turned her scarred face in our direction and whispered, “Amma, are you here? I want to say something.” My mother went and stood beside Vijaya and said, “Oh Seethamma! I feel so sorry for you. I have already heard about whatever happened. I shall talk to Mira’s father and see if you can be shifted to the Railways hospital. It is much cleaner and spacious there and the treatment is also better.” Seethamma slowly shook her head and spoke weakly from within the depths of her blindness. “No Amma, no need to do anything for me…. My time of suffering is over as my life draws to an end. I know it. It is for Vijaya’s sake that I am troubling you as you have always been so kind.” She paused, gasping for breath. After a few minutes, she slowly resumed, “I had been regularly saving up nearly half of our earnings as you had advised me about a year ago. As per your instructions, I used to put away the money in the box you had given me and kept it behind the rice container in your store-room. It is still kept there. This is why I did not have any extra cash to spare when Vijaya’s father came demanding for it.” She again paused for breath before resuming, “I only have a nose-ring and my mangalsutra left with me now. These are the only gold jewelry that I would be able to pass on to Vijaya. The nose-ring is studded with diamonds and was given to me at my wedding by my mother which she had received in turn from her own mother. It is a family heirloom. I would very much like Vijaya to be married in this nose-ring and mangalsutra as this is all I can bequeath her. Please take them away in your safe custody.” My mother protested, “Hush Seethamma! Don’t talk like that. I understand that you are very grievously injured but don’t lose hope. You shall certainly get better and maybe get back your eye-sight too if treated properly. We shall try shifting you to the Railways hospital. Have faith in God.” But Seethamma only shook her head again and said, “No Amma, no. I do not have much time left. After that I don’t know what will happen to Vijaya. Please take the jewelry off me while you are here and together with our savings put it in a bank in Vijaya’s name. In the meanwhile, if you don’t mind her staying with you, she could continue working for you and live at your place. She has learned some of my cooking from me. She is older now and can handle additional work. You pay her whatever you like besides food and shelter. I fully trust you. But once Mira baby is older and you do not need Vijaya’s services, you may send her to live with my sister in Alleppey. She is a widow and lives there with her two sons, cooking for a living like me. She had visited us a few times here and Vijaya knows her. You shall find her return address written on some letters sent by her that I have kept in that same box given by you, out of the reach of my husband as I did not wish him to see them.” She paused for breath again and motioned to us to take off her jewelry. Since she was so insistent, my mother requested a nurse to come up and do her bidding. The nurse dexterously took off Seethamma’s jewelry, handed them to my mother and left. After a while, Seethamma tried to smile and spoke slowly. “I don’t know why we celebrate weddings the way we do. I myself have only found sorrows in my marriage. But I found one blessing too and that is Vijaya. I hope my gifts to her will only bring her blessings in future and the sorrows will end with me.” After that she did not say anything else. My mother was quite touched by her concerns for her daughter even during such suffering and said reassuringly, “Don’t you worry Seethamma. Everything will turn out all right in the end. I am taking your jewelry and I shall keep it safely away in your box. You too shall soon recover at the Railways hospital and then we shall open a joint bank account in both your and Vijaya’s name. I am leaving now and I shall return to see you tomorrow morning. In the meanwhile, I shall arrange to send your meals tonight.” With that my mother hugged Vijaya once again, explained certain dietary precautions to her and left the hospital with me.

But my mother never got to send the dinners to the hospital that day. Seethamma had a heart attack and died within hours of our departure as the maidservant with whom we had talked in the morning came and informed us in the evening. But before she died she had used the last drop of her strength to ensure her daughter’s safe future in the motherly spirit which only a true mother can show.