Last week, I spent a morning on Benaulim beach in Goa, watching the fishermen haul their nets ashore, filled to the brim that day with crabs. I noticed that many of the smaller fish were managing to slip through the fishing net to safety. “Actually, when we want to catch really small fish, we use a finer net, else they escape,” said a fisherman to me. “The ones that are getting through the net must be thinking it’s their lucky day today,” he grinned before sauntering off. I sat there watching the fishwives carry away the catch in baskets, wondering where I’d heard just the opposite being said recently.
Then I remembered. It was a couple of weeks ago in Delhi, when we were talking about Murti, who’d long worked as a part-time domestic help in my neighbourhood. She’d worked in my house for sometime too, so I knew her well. The general consensus amongst the moms in the park was that people like Murti always managed to slip through the social security net. “They don’t have ration cards, voter I-cards, access to convenient and free healthcare,” said one mother, “who’s there to help them when they lose their jobs or are too ill to work?”
Murti was an industrious soul with a waster of a husband and three young sons. She washed and cleaned eight houses to keep her own home running. However, she’d recently developed persistent fever and a cough which made it impossible to maintain that pace of work. “Did you know,” said one of the moms at the park, “she’s had to quit working four of her eight jobs?” The matter was quite grave, since without Murti’s salary, there was no way her family would even eat. “I don’t particularly care if the husband starves,” said one of the park moms, “but I do feel bad at the thought of her sons not being able to go to school…” Sure enough, her eldest son soon dropped out of Class X, taking up a temporary job instead.
“How can we help her?” I asked the park moms. Most just shrugged. Others said ranted about the government not doing its job if people like Murti had no hope for any succour after they’d been rendered unable to work. Yet others feared that a bailout now would have Murti and her family begging for money and assistance forever. “If you all give her money now,” said the watchman, chief opinion-maker in the park, “remember, her husband is a whining waster who’ll feed on your sympathy and bleed you dry!”
Anyway, all this talk, as it so transpired, was in vain.
Later that week, Murti didn’t come to work one morning. When the watchman went looking for her, he discovered to his shock that she had died the previous night after an acute bout of coughing. When I heard about Murti, many questions began buzzing in my mind.
Should it be only the government’s job to support people like Murti when they’re unable to work? Shouldn’t employers of domestic servants have any legal and moral responsibility to ensure their well being? Until the central government classifies domestic work under the organised sector, people like Murti will continue to slip through its security net (for what its worth). Having said so, in my guilt-stricken mind, Murti was as much a victim of my apathy as she was of the government’s…
On the beach that day, watching the small fish that slipped through the fisherman’s nets into the safety of the deep, I hoped that Murti too had finally found her peace, faraway from the apathy of this world.
