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P. Devarajan

REKHA has been with us for about eight years and her best friend at home is my second daughter Dakhi. She used to confide in her till Dakhi got married and went away when she wept. The lady, thin as the rotis she makes, lives in a tin and plastic sheet shack in a slum abutting the Lokmanya Tilak Road running towards Gorai in Borivili.

Her day starts at two or three in the morning when the Municipal taps yield water for about an hour for the entire chawl. Every vessel is filled up as the taps will run wet only the next night and her husband, who is a Gujarati, helps out. Then she makes rotis, dal and sometimes a vegetable curry over an iron stove to last the entire day and sets out with her daughter to work at about 20 homes. She cleans utensils, swabs the floors and washes clothes to earn about Rs 3,000 per month. By 4 in the evening she is back home, takes some food and goes to sleep by 7 in the evening.

Rekha is about five feet tall, always neatly dressed in a blouse and saree (which generally ends up slightly above her ankles) and her eyes talk more than her tongue. Hers (she is a Maharashtrian) was a love marriage and her husband (whose name she refuses to take) works as a security guard in a private company. He does not drink, smoke or chew paan and hands over to Rekha the month's salary which comes to about Rs 3,000. She once confessed to Dakhi: "Hamara aadmi bahut achcha hai. Humko maartha nahin hai aur bachchon ko bhi maartha nahin hai (My husband does not beat me nor my kids. He is very good). Her son and daughter are school dropouts having completed Class 9.

One day she was telling my wife, "Mera ladka sunta nahin hai. Rasta pe ghumta hai aur abhi mera aadmi usko ek auto workshop mein bhar diya hai (My son does not listen to anybody. Most of the time he roams the roads and now my husband has got him a job in an auto repairs workshop)". Some two months ago she asked for about 10 days chhutti (leave) being not entitled to casual, sick and privilege leave. Its the same with her husband with a break in service being treated as leave without pay. One wonders why the Government is talking of freeing the labour market when it is most open with workers having no rights. Anyone can do anything with the hapless workers.

Some of the families agreed to her taking a 10-day paid vacation, a few objected to the long chhutti and one family put her out of job. Neither Rekha nor her daughter, Sumati, gave any reasons. A worn out Rekha came back on line after 10 days. The usual half-smile and her daughter were absent. Then one day she unloaded her tale to my wife. Sumati had fallen for a jobless youth, John, living in the same slum. John smoked and drank for a vocation and he had never entered school. Rekha did not like it a bit and objected strongly to the marriage. The wedding took place in Bandra at the place of John's friend with Rekha and her husband refusing to attend. They did not even buy a wedding saree for Sumati. Rekha explained her opposition to John's family who did not care. "Rekha, ye theek nahin kiya (You did not do the correct thing)," my wife insisted but by then it was all over.

A day ago, Rekha and Sumati were back at our home and my wife kept quiet. When mother and daughter set out after completing the work, my wife presented Sumati a polyester saree. Sumati took it even as Rekha mildly objected. Rekha missed her daughter a bit too much and went alone to Sumati's new home in a chawl at Kandivili to repair a broken relationship. Rekha has handed over 10 of her clients to Sumati as a start up and in a manner is luckier than Asha, another housemaid. Asha's husband is a drunk and never sticks to any job beyond two days. Asha got her daughter, Aarti, married when the girl was keen on studying. A day after Aarti passed Class 10 in second class she got married. She is just 20 and has two daughters while her husband sits at home waiting for a job. Rekha is tired and did have some plans to move over to Ahmedabad to stay with her in-laws in a bigger place. "Par, udhar naukari kaun dega (who will give a job)," she told herself. That remains a dream, a few hours long.

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