Popcorn and a bowl of fish

“I am going out with my friends, ma…you know Aseem is going to Mumbai to join medical classes next week…..who knows when we will meet again…we have decided on  a movie followed by lunch at a fast food joint of Aseem’s choice…errr… could I get some money please?”

“How much?”

“There will be three of us, we will go Dutch for the movie, so that would be around Rs 200, some popcorn and coke to share at the theatre…you know what cut-throats these  stalls at PVR chains are… we might go to the KFC joint and share a KFC bucket, … then commuting by auto-rickshaws… you give me eight hundred to be on the safe side, I’ll manage somehow, if any money is left, I will return it to you, now that’s a promise.”

That was my son, with a very serious martyr-like face at all the difficult social responsibilities vis a vis friends on an empty wallet….. more often than not, his wallet contained just a soiled two rupee note, and nothing else…yes, a note, not a coin.. that is the only note of that denomination that I remember to have seen in a long time. That soiled note is a permanent resident in his wallet, because I suspect no self respecting shopkeeper would agree to accept it. We do not give a regular monthly allowance to him as such. If he wants something, he usually asks. But it is a fact that my son is usually broke...irrespective of the number of small denomination replenishments made by his father and mother from time to time…for no sooner than he spots some spare money in the wallet, his longing for a piece of chocolate excess cake at Barista or something similar consumes him. He is a Jughead incarnate…and does not mind the comparison at all !!

But this story is not about my son. He is there just to provide a canvas.

For quite some time I have been without a full time domestic help, and had generally spread the word around. My 76 year old   mother who keeps indifferent health is with me these days, it is all the more necessary that someone is there at home when I am away in office. For the past couple of months that my mother has been with me,   my son was mostly at home after his Board Exams got over, but from next week he would be going to college too.

A neighbourhood cook brought this girl to talk to me for the job. She was a slip of a girl, standing in the shadows near the gate in the evening, she did not look to be much more than twenty two. She said in a small voice that she needed to go home every evening at around seven. That did not really suit me much, for I was looking for   a live-in help, and I could not always return home myself by seven. Still, I asked her who all were there for her at home, and she mentioned her 2 children. ‘Husband?’ I asked her. She shook her head and looked down. There was something in her face that made me hesitate to turn her back.

I engaged her, though she did not really meet my requirement of being available all the time at home. My condition was that she would have to wait till either my husband or I returned home, she could not leave my mother alone. I offered her a salary which was the same that my previous full time maid had, though rates for part time helps who do not stay the night are lower. Still, she was reluctant at first, stating that it was not enough for her family responsibilities. But I had my limitations too, while I was prepared for engaging and taking responsibility for one person, I was not really in a position to provide for financial requirement of a ‘family’ as such. Ruksana agreed, I suppose she too realised that she had not much choice.  

Ruksana is a Muslim girl from Bihar, divorced, with two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. She was married off at age 14, bore two children in quick succession and was divorced as quickly through a simple talaq. Her father, a mason in Bhagalpur,  raised a football team with six daughters and seven sons, and she was the eldest among daughters. Her youngest brother was just a few  years older than her elder son. She has been to Madrassa in her village , and can read and write her name in Urdu. It is an India so different from our cocooned world of rising GDP… an India where girls are still married off at age 14, can be abandoned at will and impunity by husbands who tire of them… She has come to Delhi with two of her younger brothers for a better economic opportunity, all of them are staying with a relative who works for a boutique in the neighbouring urban village. I saw her brothers subsequently when they came to escort her home one evening, one is about 14, the other might be about 17. The brothers are training with their relative for embroidery and zari work against their keep. Children themselves, and they are the ones who supposedly ‘look after’ the   children of their elder sister, while she  is away working at my place.

Ruksana reported on time, was polite, and seemed quite receptive to instructions. I had cooked fish for Sunday Lunch. When I went to kitchen, I found that Ruksana had not touched the bowl containing the fish curry that I had given her for Lunch. Perplexed, I asked her, “Do you not eat fish?”

Very shyly she told me that she had eaten her lunch with dal and vegetables that I had given her. She  would rather take the fish curry home in the evening for her children.

I felt a lump suddenly rise in my throat and I could not look her in the eye. There I was, a working woman and a mother, generously giving money to my son for spending time with his friends and for eating out, and here was another working woman and a mother, who was saving a piece of fish from her lunch for her child, because she could not bear to eat it depriving her children…a working woman, whose brothers were toiling at the boutique while my son of the same age group spent his time with his friends at the movie theatre eating popcorn… .

Later, when she was away doing some other chore, I quietly added more fish pieces to the bowl and slunk away… was it my weakness or just a guilty conscience, I do not know.