Cakes and Kites of the Past!

It used to be a ritual you looked forward to, going to your grandparents’ place in the village during summer vacations. Now you are there after many years; you still feel the house is welcoming you with a smile. Soon the memories come in a flash, like a pack of cards disregarding the order of time!

There you are with uncles and aunts celebrating your 8^th birthday and mom next to you beaming with pride. You never noticed how beautiful she looked. You sit on a stool and relatives come to put a tilak on your forehead and hand some cash. Through the corner of your eyes you look at it and total the cash. A local sweet hastily arranged in the form of cake is something you bargained as a boy from town.

From being a shy child, you turn into a performer next year. You had crammed some jokes form a children’s magazine and at any request, you recite them to bemused aunts. Today you wonder why they always laughed at the same jokes. Maybe you were their mirror to a different world, maybe they just loved you with all their heart.

Your father has bought you a kite but you do not know how to make it fly. An elder boy is given this task by your mom and you are jumping with joy when the kite kisses the sky. He hands it over to you and you pull the string suavely as if you are an accomplished kites’ man.

This year your grandfather has turned this into a pukka house. He is energetically giving all of you tour of this house and there is a twinkle in his eyes. He has made this house and you can sense his pride. Something tells you he left us years back.  

The new pukka stairs, made of stone were pointed and steep and you had to be careful when you climbed; mom kept repeating watch your steps. You loved to be there when roof was washed with water after hot summer afternoons. All slept on the open roof and often there were stories of spirits and shadows. Many vouched to have seen them and shared their experience. With each story your interest grew and you held tightly to your mom.

Once there was a thunderstorm and it rained all night. All were squeezed in a small room and elders hardly slept. They talked about their lives and when you woke up, they were still discussing something. Your mom gently caressed your forehead.  

Now everyone is playing Holi, and faces are hard to recognise. You are eleven this time. Everyone is smiling and there are happy faces all around, you could sense a warmth that existed in middle class extended families. You led a gang of children, hiding in the corners and surprise people with your fish shaped water gun.

You now remember some of them have left this world. Your aunt who was the most active one that day, gave in to cancer. The family got six months to bid goodbye. A boy who was just becoming a man would die before entering thirties. Wherever you looked at that house, people smiled at you saying hello from the time passed by. It is an eerie feeling, to realise so many people who are part of your memories are not around. You are jolted out from your dreams.

Now you feel house is not same anymore. There are odd extensions everywhere, an extra room carved out here, the open area behind covered to a great extent. Unknown tenants stay in parts and they look at you curiously. You try to find a familiar face but you cannot.

You look at your grandmother, she has wrinkled skin and every time your meet her, she grows even older. She puts a hand on your forehead and mumbles something which you find hard to decipher. She asks about an ailment that you had as a child and you wonder if like your memories, she has also lost sense of time. Your son is excited to meet her and asks her zillion questions. She hardly answers but is happy at his exuberance.

She came in pair with your grandfather and after he left, you find it difficult to accept her individual existence. She needs support for everything, to sit, to walk. She cries when you leave and so does your mom; you feel a growing lump in your throat and avoid looking at her for long.  Every time you see her, there is an unsaid thought that this meeting might be the last. She is a gateway to your childhood; she is your gateway to a time gone by and you want her to carry on and on!

A Housemaid for the Vastavas

Life has never been more exciting.

You get up at 7 in the morning and stand in the balcony overlooking colony’s gate. Time goes by and so does the remaining part of your fingernail. You oscillate near the door and look out of the peephole even at illusion of footsteps. A tense half an hour has passed and your better half is grumbling about overall misfortune in life. You play ‘would she come-would she not’ in your mind and your finger pleads it won’t grow again like nail and you should stop eating it NOW. There is melancholy all around and you can hear saddest opera music in the background.

Suddenly far across the gates of your housing, a silhouette appears. It is a good day today; the maid has arrived. World is now a Yash Copra movie dream sequence with songs and dancing. You again have the courage to walk up to your better half and look at her with ‘you were unnecessarily worried’ look in eyes. From the day you relocated to this new city, this daily excitement is part of your life.

Your primary objective while renting a house was availability of house helps in the location and still no maid looked at you house for a fortnight. You decide there is no ethical dilemma in unconventional methods if you want change of fortune and you try the roadside fortune teller.

Just by looking at your face he confirms there is serious issue with your stars. He prescribes proved cure of killing enemies in their sleep, improving chances of random coitus and giving birth to obedient children but he is amused by your problem. He gives you seven ugly rings to fix your stars. The fortune teller also tries to sell treatment of your black magic curse but you are a scientific man and do not fall in that trap.

Next day morning, a maid rings your doorbell to ask for job; people underestimate astrology and occult. You point your rings towards the sky and tease celestial bodies. The maid is so good that you thank good karmas of your past life. She can cook Mouglai, Chinese and also that tasteless mix of vegetables and grass that your better half had customised for your paunch. The maid is decent and refuses to talk about money. She keeps on repeating to just honour what was her work’s worth. For next one month, life is perfect and your better is the kindest and calmest woman on earth.

At the end of the month, when you plead and cajole, the maid drops an amount. You either need a telescope to see the stars or you can pay such an amount to your maid and see stars in front of your eyes during daytime. You thank her profusely, beg her forgiveness and take a small loan to pay her out. Seeing her earnings, you wonder career change for yourself at this point of your life. While leaving she drops a card of her agent in case you want her back and it has a picture of smiling fortune teller.

Your mother recommends giving ad in the newspaper. She even lists out qualities that a maid should have: punctual, skilled, honest, hardworking, dedicated, polite, intelligent, docile, right mix of traditional and modern, seeking reasonable remuneration. She reasons that good maid is key to good life. When you banter if her daughter in law has these, she immediately ends the discussion.

You have better sense than giving a newspaper ad and decide targeted advertising. You daily get up in the morning and stand at colony’s gate to poach maids coming to the housing society. Other residents recognise you and become possessive, slowly people are escorting maids all around.

You have a string of maids who came and leave without even giving you a chance to prove you are a worthy employer. Family members are given lessons in etiquette, how to dress, talk and behave when maid is around. You need to visit a therapist to get over these rejections and to keep trying.

It is not that everything is negative in this whole affair. Soon new residents start coming to you to look at your detailed catalogue of housemaids around. Your database has all important details including their quirks, likes and dislikes. You have also learnt nuances of advertising, image building and developing customised CV format that any employer should have for prospective house helps. 

You now know that maids are the most effective medium to spread any message in the society, just you need to add an element of secrecy. You also learn that maids are the mirror of residents of the housing society and you are only as good as your maid thinks you are.

People may tell you nothing is impossible in this world and you should ask them to find an ideal maid. If they then say even impossible has, ‘I am possible’ without physically producing a good maid, slap them hard.

Modern day modern day Swamvaras would not be about some fish and its eye but the ability of finding a perfect maid and only the real modern Arjunas would qualify!

PS: Dear housemaid, if you are anyhow reading this article, kindly accept my highest regards and reverence. This article is work fiction and is in no way related to you. Even after that if you feel offended, I hereby apologize, just don't leave our house.