Egged on by illiteracy

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

We were two of us for breakfast and Lakshmi, the lady who helps me with housework. "Three of us are going to eat so could you make three omelettes with two eggs each please, I said to Lakshmi. "Two for us and one for you." Simple enough instructions I thought.

I emerged to her shouts of "hurry up, breakfast is served". I sat down at the table to find three omelettes on the table. "One is for you, so why did you make it now?

"My egg is in the kitchen and I haven't broken it as yet," she answered triumphantly. "Then how are there three omelettes here?" I asked completely puzzled. "You asked for three," she said, a veiled blame in her voice for creating confusion.

I didn't want my omelettes to suffer as a result of all this calculation and I sat down to eat, happy in the thought that at least she had got one part of the instruction right . But as I went to put my plate down in the kitchen sink I found only one egg next to the stove waiting to be cooked.

"Why is there only one egg here, Lakshmi," I asked, by then a trifle irritated at having to exercise my brains so early in the morning. "How many should there be then?" she asked completely confused at this ado over breakfast.

"Two surely," I said firmly. "Didn't I tell you to use two eggs each in our omelettes, which means you used up four eggs? So where is the fifth?" this time much more patiently. It was not that I was particularly worried about the fate of the missing egg, but just the thought of the instructions not having hit home was galling.

Especially because my partner at the breakfast table by then was completely hysterical at this early morning math tuition and was trying to tell me how maybe I could have worded my instructions differently.

"That's true,",said Lakshmi, "where is the fifth egg?" Muttering under her breath she opened the kitchen bin and peered inside to see if she could spot the broken shells of five eggs. She did and that ended this morning saga.

As I was recounting this tale to my friends a few days later, one of them told me of her experience with omelettes and eggs. She was obviously a more evolved breakfast eater , and had told her house help to serve an egg sunny side up.

"As soon as the oil in the pan starts smoking, pour out the white and then gently place the yellow in the center" she had instructed. After an interval she came back to find the lady standing staring crestfallenly at the egg she had cracked.

"No white in this one, only a yellow. Should I check out another one?" It was then that my friend realised how elitist it was "" the way in which we prefer our eggs for breakfast.

In a place like Santiniketan, I suppose the lack of the urban polish also makes the poor seem even more naïve. A conversation I had with Lakshmi one lazy afternoon also brought home to me the curse of illiteracy.

As she was telling me about her daughter's pregnancy I asked her how old her daughter was. "She is nineteen years younger to me," she said. "I was nineteen when she was born," she explained again.

"So how old does that make her now," I repeated.

"Just calculate," she said, wondering why I was being so idiotic. "Unless you tell me how old you are, how can I calculate," I reasoned. "Yes of course," she said, a little embarrassed. "I am three years younger to my brother and he is three years younger to our older brother."

Thankfully the postman arrived and our conversation was interrupted and I did not restart it. I thought it would be better for her to believe that she could calculate her daughter's age only if she could calculate herself.