MY MIGRANT MAID

 

MY MIGRANT MAID 

“Good morning, Madam.” Thus I am greeted every single hazy-headed morning as I open the door to my daily help Mausi, as I fondly address her. Right on the dot of time for two years in a row, this energetic fifty-year-old dynamo has been serving me with all her heart and soul, captivating me with her ready smile and her enthusiasm for the rigorous jobs of ‘top work’ that I frankly find too tedious to even contemplate.

She tells me she came here to Goa ages ago from her native Karnataka, when her husband abandoned her and her baby girl. With pride she declares that she helped build the very building complex I live in. Nowadays she works as a domestic help in the homes she and her family help build. She narrated the details of how she had to bring her daughter along with her and let her wander around in the dirt, while she was slogging in the sun. She managed to send the girl to school but then decided that girls were not worth educating much as their future is in the kitchen. Now a grandmother at last, her daughter having married at the tender age of 19 years, she is still busy earning the small bucks to pay back debts that a lavish wedding had heaped upon her.

When I hear derogatory remarks made about migrants, I think of people like her who helped build the posh buildings and hotels that dot our state of Goa. I feel like the Shiv Sena sickness has come home to roost. When we need labourers to serve us, we welcome ‘outsiders’, as we call them, with open arms. Then we feel threatened and they become infiltrators to be ousted. If they really vanish as we wish them to, I wonder whether there will be anyone here in susegaad Goa to take their place. Or will we have to resort to self-service like our counterparts in the West. For people fattened by Middle East moolah, this could be a good thing as it may help reduce the accumulated layers around the waist and the fog around the brain.

My maid invited me to her grandchild’s naming-ceremony last year. When I went with my whole battalion (we are a family of 6), she was delighted. The entire gathering of Muslim migrants was surprised we had come at all, and welcomed us into their hearts and homes. It was an exhilarating experience to feel the warmth in their acceptance. I felt like Shantipriya (remember Om Shanti Om?) for a while in the attention I got. I also saw, for the first time, in what appalling conditions people like them live. Yet in all that squalor, I saw a sense of comfort and ease. There were at least 100 people squeezed into that tiny zopadpatti spilling outside and into the neighbouring house, and everyone seemed to be having a ball. I plonked myself and my kids on the floor but she wouldn’t have my husband do that, so she got the ‘Sahib’ a special chair. My kids caressed baby goats and cupped little chicks in their hands for the first time and were thrilled. When I filmed the ceremony for her and presented her with the DVD, she was deeply grateful - and I was happy to have been able to make her happy.

I realise that having migrants come and settle in large numbers leads to several problems of housing and hygiene, but that does not mean that we have the right to abuse them. When we go abroad to work, our Goans are given proper accommodation, which they vacate once they leave. Here we cannot follow this policy because they are Indians like us and have the full right to settle down anywhere they want in this great land.
Where is the famed courtesy and hospitality that we Goans boast of when it comes to our migrants? Have we tried to see why crime has increased with their influx into our neo-rich state? If we love making quick money, so do they. It must seem like putting your nose to a candy counter and salivating. 

Our people are also earning illegally, aren’t they? Otherwise how come our politicians have so much money to play at casinos and travel in posh cars? Gandhiji was a first-class politician who traveled third class! Aren’t our politicians third-class people who travel first class?

Let’s not bash up the poor migrant who wants to get rich just as we do. As long as we need them, they will keep coming. I, for one, desperately need my migrant maid whom I love and need too much to let go.