Shukla, who cooks for us when we are in Kolkata, begins her day around three in the morning. She cooks for her family, gets ready and is out at dawn – it comes early in the east – to first catch a bus and then the local train that brings her to south Kolkata. After an over two-hour journey, she is in at my in-laws’ by 7.30.
Then begins her day’s work – sundry household chores – for two families living close by. In between she makes rounds of tea for herself. She is through in two hours, and then takes a bus or a shared auto-rickshaw to reach our flat by 10.30. Her day is made if she can take the 3.30 train back, as then she can be home by six.
There is an endless little game between my wife and her over the journey from my in-laws’ to our house. My wife gives her auto fare so that she can come quickly; but she regularly takes the bus and pockets the extra fare, giving a variety of reasons for why, despite travelling by auto, she took so long. When she gets really late, she does take the auto — and that is how she came to grief the other day. The auto started off before she could properly get off, she stumbled and the auto wheel grazed her ankle. By the time she hobbled into our house, she was in acute pain from a swollen ankle.
She was immediately asked to lie down in our daughter’s room and was given a Combiflam. In a little over an hour, she was back on her feet, making tea. Go lie down, my wife said. I can’t sit around and do nothing, she replied, adding, the pain is gone, I am OK. Don’t be silly, I intervened, it is a painkiller, and if you don’t rest, the injury will not heal.
She eventually limped out of our house into our car, not to go home but to get dropped off at my in-laws’, where she got an anti-tetanus shot and spent that night and the next, unable to walk every time the effect of the pain killer wore off. She was lucky in two ways. The cell phone made it easy for her to inform her family that she wouldn’t come home. She also had no problem getting the rest she needed, since she was an old faithful at all the homes where she worked.
Then, on the fourth day, she was back to work, cheating on auto fare and as animated as ever. Watching her, I told my wife, bemused: those who have nothing have spirit. My wife, who had known her for decades, recalled: when she was a young girl, she had such a lovely complexion.
In the evening, we went shopping for sundry stuff and stopped at a hawker who stocked a load of guavas on the pavement outside the market. If their stuff is good, you can get a bargain; these itinerant sellers charge less than those who run stalls within the market. He explained he was selling it to us cheap since he wanted to finish his stock and go home. What struck me was the look of the man. He appeared to be a middle-aged tribal with genuineness and simplicity written all over him. When I decided to buy his stuff, my wife asked how I could be sure it was good. I replied that I didn’t know about the fruit but I was willing to take a bet on the man. Seeing her perplexed look, I explained: a middle-aged tribal with a face like an open book will not cheat.
Then as we walked into the market, the world changed. Compared to the fruit seller, the fellow manning the fish stall at the prime corner looked distinctly upper-class. His fish looked good – he knew it was so – and he refused to lower the price even one bit below the premium peg. Why is your fish so costly, my wife asked. He replied: “Didi, it is local and fresh, not chalani, shipped from far away and kept under ice for days.” Not being good at making out the difference between fresh and not-so-fresh fish that was still good, she withdrew from the transaction, and I stepped in and paid up.
Over the next couple of days, we knew the fish was good-value despite the high price. As I mulled over these sundry people in our lives, I realised that you get more and more genuine people as you go down the social ladder.
