My family’s slave
Shree Parandhkar, a columnist with The Toronto Star wrote a
column today about Alex Vizol’s Pulitzer award winning book about his family’s
slave Lola. She talked about how he saw this slave being abused by his family
and still being servile to them. She also talked about servants in India and
how her family contributed to the classism in society.
Well, as a middle class girl growing up in India, our family
always had a servant. She would clean the house, do laundry and do the dishes.
She was fed well by my parents and paid fairly well. She was oppressed you can
say but the fact was that her husband was a drunkard who would squander all his
earnings on country liquor and beta her every night. The only way she could
feed her family was by working in our house. She was treated well and we were
not allowed to call her by name. We would use a respectful adjective.
And you know what? Years later, when I had a family of my
own, I had there servants working for me. The interesting part was the story of
my childhood maid being repeated with my maid. Her children would eat the food
I packed for her every evening. I gave the only clothes they had. If she had
not worked in our house, she would have died long ago. My full time servant
came from the mountains where there was no employment and his family was on the
verge of dying. His salary every month kept them fed, alive and to an extent,
healthy.
Was I contributing to the classism? In my eyes, I was saving
two families by employing two respective members. I was helping in educating
two girls of my housemaid and saving two old grandparents. I agree some of us
back home don’t treat their servants well. I am not condoning that but imagine
if those maids or servants did not have that work? Will they be better?
An empty stomach is far worse than ill treatment by few. There
is casteism, yes, certain casts are looked down upon and ill treated but moist
of the families who employ maids are, in general, not cruel. So think about.
Don’t we have cleaning ladies here? So are we not creating a class here too
Shree?
What say you readers?
