Geetanjali Krishna: The joke's on me, folks!

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

I hung up the telephone and stared into space. I'd had a strange, thirty-minute conversation with Manju, a woman who had spent eleven years slaving or someone who, she'd believed, had bought her.

In the last month, there had scarcely been a day when I'd not thought about her plight. I'd spoken to social service organisations, lawyers and police sources to figure out how to rescue her.

Then, out of the blue, my phone rang. It was Sunita, Manju's sister, who'd happened to find Manju alone at home. Although the front door was locked from outside, the two sisters talked through the window for the first time in eleven years.

And so it came to pass that I was able to speak with her. She sounded strong and confident, which threw me off balance, I must confess. What she had to say disconcerted me further. "I have a really good life," said Manju, "my employers treat me like a member of the family...why, they've even taken me abroad!" I asked where and how. "I don't know where," said she, "but it was a long train journey..." I asked her if she ever went out of the house. "Very often," came her reply, "especially to Dilli Haat!" Did she go with her friends, I asked. "No...," said Manju, "I go with my employers, or their sons." Sunita pointed out that domestic workers didn't normally consider going out with their employers as recreation "" "when we get leave, we go out alone with our friends or meet our family!" said she. Manju retorted, "they've become like my parents, and I, their daughter! Who else will I go out with?" If they thought of Manju as family, why did they lock her in when they went out, I asked. "I lock myself in, not they," she replied, "for my own safety!" The woman had an answer for everything, I thought.

Then I remembered her neighbours saying how her employers had cut her waist-length hair off. "Why did you have your hair cut?" I asked, "if it was anything like your sister's, it must have been very pretty!" Manju suddenly sounded tired: "I tripped in the verandah and cut my forehead. When the doctor was stitching it up, he snipped my hair off!" said she.

Finally, grasping for straws, I asked her about her salary. Manju guardedly said she didn't know much money she received every month. "How can you not know how much they give you?" I asked. She said, "they've opened a bank account in my name and say they deposit money for me there."

She did not know which bank she had an account in, or how much money she'd accumulated. "I don't need it," defended, "everything I need is given to me!" I said it was her right to know what salary she was earning, and she replied, "they treat me like their daughter. Do daughters ever get salaries in their parents' homes?"

At this point, I realised there was no point discussing this any further with her, and so I rang off. All I could do then, was sit back and reflect. How does one help someone who didn't want to be helped? Was I even right to call Manju a victim when she herself didn't seem to see herself as one?

Just then, Ashwin, my eight-year-old came up to tell me a joke""Dennis was being punished, and Mr Wilson asked why. "For helping an old lady cross the road," Dennis replied. Mr Wilson was foxed. "That sounds like a good deed to me," he remarked. "I thought so too," replied Dennis, "but the lady didn't "" for she hadn't wanted to cross the road at all!

It was funny, but I suspect Ashwin didn't quite anticipate that I'd laugh so long and so hard.