As the clock struck the 20th hour of the day, I
waited for the door bell to ring. Cooking a meal on week nights is a real
chore, but with my cook, Saraswati, a mundane meal can become delicious as I
feel she infuses a lot of TLC in her cooking.
She came right on time. But one look at her
anguished face, and I knew that something was terribly wrong. Cradling her in
my arms, incoherent words were uttered as she started sobbing profusely. Her 20
year old daughter had eloped.
Like most migrants to Mumbai, Saraswati came at
the age of 13, running away from her home in West Bengal to escape a society
that had nothing to offer a girl child. Fed up of not going to school and
waiting to be married off, she boarded a train and realised that her destiny
had brought to Mayanagri or Mumbai. But to survive in this city was not easy,
so she started working as a live in maid.
Dance bars were at their peak in the 90's and
the lure of easy and great money, attracted Saraswati to this profession.
Saraswati was rechristened as Priya.
However, she found a good man, who married her
and Priya once again became Saraswati. They had a baby girl, named her
Purnima, and life was all hunky dory. She started working with me once she lost
her husband. Whilst I started educating her daughter, Saraswati worked her
magic in various homes, saving money for her daughter's marriage. Purnima
finished her 12th and started working in a call centre, where she met a
colleague and eloped.
Saraswati always dreamt big for her daughter.
She lived in a one room tenement, called a chawl. She wanted Purnima to live in
a flat, hence the education and English speaking classes. Numerous dreams were
being weaved, whilst chopping onions and stirring the pot. Today, her dreams
are shattered as the boy is not educated, lives in a chawl with his parents, 4
brothers and a sister.
I don't know how to console Saraswati. The
numerous sacrifices, the hours of toiling from sunrise to sun down, making a
small gold earring from the bonus she got during Diwali, the hand me downs she
wore to give her daughter new clothes...now, all in vain. Seeing her cry, I
just had one prayer to the Almighty, to give me the power never to cause a tear
to fall from my mother's eyes…
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