SitaRam and Daiwaa

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All friends fill a gap in me. A gap, as in a quality, I am looking for or a trait which is missing in me. I have friends who are great cooks. Some are great guides be it relationships or travel or shopping. Some friends are great listeners and some friends make me laugh a lot. Some friends listen to my support staff's  stories and some listen to my family gossip. Each one provides comfort in a different way. These days, I am scared to write the word 'maids'. I have to write house help or support staff. It is not that if I write maid, I treat them any different. But the whole liberal agenda is getting to me. Earlier, for me, staff meant people working in an office set up. Maid or servants did not have a bad meaning. Everything cannot be casteist as some intellectuals make it out to be. To do 'Sewa' was the best form of service which we did to people or God or Guru. Suddenly all these words have become shameful. May be when the English said it, that is what they wanted to convey. We have grown up with 'Daiwaa' who was there to look after the house work and all of us. Our parents and Grandmother trusted us and the house with 'Daiwaa'.

Daiwaa lived with her husband and three children. One daughter was married and her husband kept asking Daiwaa for money. The other daughter was blind and was called Andhri by all. She and her father used to go begging in town. Andhri was a smiling girl used to wear a shirt/ top and a  coloured skirt/petticoat. Her father was old and walked with her. They had a son called Arjun who was a dwarf. I used to play with him and tie Rakhi to him. Over the years, her husband passed away and so did Andhari. I remember Dai crying for them. At some point, she sent Arjun to some hostel. He was unhappy there. He ran away from there. Then he was dead too in some town. We had another male house help called SitaRam. He was much younger to Daiwaa and a married man.  Daiwaa gave him place to stay in her house. Gradually he moved his family from the village to Daiwaa's house. SitaRam took care of Daiwaa though his wife was not very nice to her. SitaRam used to catch pigeons from our terrace and put them in a cloth bag. He would cook the pigeon in the night for dinner at his house. Chicken was expensive so they ate pigeons. I remember being so scared of his cloth bag.

They had a 'Kachha Ghar' which was a mud hut with a low roof.  A lot of poor people stole electricity from the electric poles and had a lone bulb in the house. I have gone there and eaten meals at BaluGoda where their house was. BaluGhoda was an open coal mine which was now filled with sand. It had sand hillocks and houses were built on it.The Dubai Safari sand dunes reminded me of BaluGoda. I had eaten a couple of meals in Daiwaa s house . One meal which I remember consisted of roti and Aloo Baingan ki sabji tari waali ie potato and brinjal with gravy. SitaRam helped her build a 'Pucca ghar' there, a concrete house. I had visited alone and  had tea with biscuits. The steel glasses in which the tea was served I recognised they were from our house. SitaRam's children, we somehow did not bond with, as we did with Arjun.

Whenever we took long road trips from Dhanbad to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Agra, Benares etc, one of them travelled with us in the car and one would stay back to look after the house and the balance family members. A couple of times, we visited SitaRam's house in a village in the interiors of Bihar. They made us and Dad sit on the 'khaat' or Charpoy, with his Father. We got tea with fresh cow milk. All his younger cousins and Aunts came to see us. So many were wearing our old clothes. Mom and Gauri Bai had the privilege of going inside the house and sitting with the lady folk. SitaRam was like our guardian when we went on an all women and kids trip to Gujarat without any confirmed train tickets. We managed to get seats in the first class AC compartment from Delhi to Amdavad. Six children, Mom, Chachi and Bai. We had a bathroom attached with running hot water. We had so much fun. SitaRam got a seat in the nearby second class compartment. We requested the Ticket Collector to allow him to sleep outside our First AC coupe. That train journey was the best of my life. That luxury of the compartment done up in maroon and gold, the white bed linen, big windows, passing scenery and the full family together ...what more did a child want.

SitaRam and Daiwaa were with us through thick and thin. Did they fight ? Yes. Did they steal ? May be. We as a family are eternally grateful to them and all that they were to us.




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