Doorways

December 28, 2005

Although English is my first language, my parents hail from Kerala in South India and their mother tongue is Malayalam. Although I like to think that my comprehension of the language is fairly decent, sadly I can feel myself becoming less conversant in the language, simply from lack of use. My husband and I speak in English, although he is fluent in Malayalam, as well as Hindi which I don’t speak. Not really sure why we don’t try to speak to each other in Malayalam but somehow that is how these things work when you are in another country and we don’t.

I was at my in-laws place in Kerala with my family for a week at Christmas time and they like most of the people in India who can afford to have a maid to help with the “in house” chores such as cooking and cleaning. There is also someone to help with “outside” chores and yet someone else to help with duties such as driving. Seems to be a specialized set of occupations. Such maids are inevitably curious when children visit from far off, probably having heard something about them from the woman of the house. Lalitha, as the maid at my in-laws place was called, seemed to be quite a jovial woman. I am probably equally, if not more, curious about them and their background. So, I was most willing when she engaged me (or tried to engage me) in a unmelodious conversation of broken English and my equally broken Malayalam in an effort to delve more into each other’s backgrounds.

She started by asking me, “you Doctor?” to which I immediately shook my head “no”. I definitely did not have the language ability to communicate my education or occupation which did not fall into an easily communicable category such “doctor” or “engineer” or “teacher” so we let that line of inquiry abruptly end with the gesture of my head.

Now, like a verbal dance I took my turn to lead, “do you have children,” I asked pointing to my 10.5 month old baby Nikhitita who was in my arms and probably could have communicated about as effectively as I was doing at the moment with my hand and head motions. From what I could gather her husband had passed away 8 years ago and she had a daughter who was 28 and had a 5 year old grandson. Her son-in-law was in the military and was away quite often. Apparently the daughter had a B.S. degree but her husband did not want her to work. She was as proud of that accomplishment as had been our driver from the airport when he told me about his son studying in a University. We covered a lot of ground given our shaky beginning but I am still unclear as to whether Lalitha has a son or not.

I remember a similar conversation with another maid while visiting my sister-in-law at her apartment in Mumbai soon after we arrived. Her maid was also intrigued by us (being from the U.S.) and was very concerned as to what I thought about her cooking. My pickiness about food had clearly made its way to her ears. Mani, as this maid was called, also had a late husband, who had passed away 2 years prior. She had a daughter, around Sandrine’s age who was being taken care of by her mother and sister in Kerala while she worked as a live-in maid in Mumbai. She told me that she would see her daughter after being apart 10 months. I could see the anticipation in her eyes.

I felt a little sad as I thought that both of these maids (they were live-ins) spent most of their lives with families not their own. Of course, they were paid for their service, treated well and this just made them people with jobs as are most people in the world. But there was something poignant in the fact the Mani would probably see my 3.5 year old more in the year that we lived in Mumbai than her own daughter. Both of these maids spent the majority of their lives lingering in doorways waiting to be called upon. Strangely enough these doorways seemed almost like connections between their own families and the families who they served. You would hardly know that the maids were there since their words and their belongings were sparse. They silently cooked and cleaned and put things away and then with the pattering of naked feet on the marble floor slipped through the doorway and back to their memories about and their hopes for their families.