Simply Girls
Every day five near naked girls, all of them sisters, play outside my window. It’s hard to guess their ages but they are roughly between 3 and 11 years. We all begin about the same time daily; me at my desk against the window, reading the newspapers, checking mail, and typing words on virtual paper and the five under-clad girls at their games I can’t quite follow.
Saroj, the mother of the unclothed sisters, cooks and cleans for me. Saroj has six children, there is a son too. The five year old son is the father’s favored child whom he lugs around like an infant monkey. The rest of the brood is released at day break and herded up at dusk and in the in-between hours, they are as good as abandoned.
Saroj is young and attractive with a taut build, so that her saggy-stretch-marked-stomach, drooping over the petticoat of her saree, seems like a misplaced identity.
She works with ferocious energy, doing incredulous amounts of work, cooking and cleaning in three households. But she’s perfected a method which keeps her employers fairly satisfied with her. If one day she skips brooming and mopping one house, the same day she advances an inability to cook at least one meal at another house. So each day she passes over a labor or two here and there and manages to stretch her energy reserves to cover the operations of three households, other than her own. If there’s some grumbling by any of the employers, which there always is every now and then, Saroj manages to wield it away with smooth talk. Other than that she barely talks.
There is a far away-ness in her demeanor which is hard to fathom. All she brings with her to work is her intent to get the day’s work done. No idle chit chat, no personal questions or answers. One would think her to be very business like but it’s not that she’s trying to separate personal life from work. You can see the firm set of her jaw, the complete lack of acknowledgement of your query or instruction, the sudden grunts and sighs and abrupt hand gestures etc. She’s dealing with the grime of her existence with every lash of the broom and each swish of the mop.
However, every few days she dispenses her angst without provocation: “Only if that lout of a man would give me some of the money he earns. Only once a week he buys groceries. What do I put into the bellies of this long line of wretched children? Huh?”
“No money for kerosene, he says. I should collect wood and burn that. One of these days I’m going to collect wood, build a pyre and burn him on it. That’s what I’ll do”. And then nothing again for days, as though she’s repenting for having indulged in such extreme expression.
The day we saw the last of her, she visited each one of us with her five daughters and all six of them in the decent-est of clothes that they must possess. Her last words were as few and potent as they had always been: “That bastard has run away memsaab. He’s taken my son too. But that fool knows nothing. Only a woman can tell whose child she’s carrying. He’s left his own produce behind and taken off with another man’s; serves him right for having denied his own flesh and blood, simply because they were girls. He could never tell the difference anyway. "
"I’m marrying my son’s father, I will need a man.”
Anita Kainthla is an author and freelancer from India. She has had a collection of poetry published by Writer's Workshop, which won the third prize in the Indo-Asian Literature Poetry competition in 2005. Viva Books released her biography of the late social activist Baba Amte in 2005 and is currently publishing her new book Tale of Tibet, a religious and historical background of Tibet. Kainthla has written short stories and travel articles for Woman's Era and India Currents (Indian-American magazine) and her poems have appeared in Poetry Chain, Journal of Poetry Society of India and Indo-Asian Literature Poetry Journal. She is currently working on a travel book.
Every day five near naked girls, all of them sisters, play outside my window. It’s hard to guess their ages but they are roughly between 3 and 11 years. We all begin about the same time daily; me at my desk against the window, reading the newspapers, checking mail, and typing words on virtual paper and the five under-clad girls at their games I can’t quite follow.
Saroj, the mother of the unclothed sisters, cooks and cleans for me. Saroj has six children, there is a son too. The five year old son is the father’s favored child whom he lugs around like an infant monkey. The rest of the brood is released at day break and herded up at dusk and in the in-between hours, they are as good as abandoned.
Saroj is young and attractive with a taut build, so that her saggy-stretch-marked-stomach, drooping over the petticoat of her saree, seems like a misplaced identity.
She works with ferocious energy, doing incredulous amounts of work, cooking and cleaning in three households. But she’s perfected a method which keeps her employers fairly satisfied with her. If one day she skips brooming and mopping one house, the same day she advances an inability to cook at least one meal at another house. So each day she passes over a labor or two here and there and manages to stretch her energy reserves to cover the operations of three households, other than her own. If there’s some grumbling by any of the employers, which there always is every now and then, Saroj manages to wield it away with smooth talk. Other than that she barely talks.
There is a far away-ness in her demeanor which is hard to fathom. All she brings with her to work is her intent to get the day’s work done. No idle chit chat, no personal questions or answers. One would think her to be very business like but it’s not that she’s trying to separate personal life from work. You can see the firm set of her jaw, the complete lack of acknowledgement of your query or instruction, the sudden grunts and sighs and abrupt hand gestures etc. She’s dealing with the grime of her existence with every lash of the broom and each swish of the mop.
However, every few days she dispenses her angst without provocation: “Only if that lout of a man would give me some of the money he earns. Only once a week he buys groceries. What do I put into the bellies of this long line of wretched children? Huh?”
“No money for kerosene, he says. I should collect wood and burn that. One of these days I’m going to collect wood, build a pyre and burn him on it. That’s what I’ll do”. And then nothing again for days, as though she’s repenting for having indulged in such extreme expression.
The day we saw the last of her, she visited each one of us with her five daughters and all six of them in the decent-est of clothes that they must possess. Her last words were as few and potent as they had always been: “That bastard has run away memsaab. He’s taken my son too. But that fool knows nothing. Only a woman can tell whose child she’s carrying. He’s left his own produce behind and taken off with another man’s; serves him right for having denied his own flesh and blood, simply because they were girls. He could never tell the difference anyway. "
"I’m marrying my son’s father, I will need a man.”
Anita Kainthla is an author and freelancer from India. She has had a collection of poetry published by Writer's Workshop, which won the third prize in the Indo-Asian Literature Poetry competition in 2005. Viva Books released her biography of the late social activist Baba Amte in 2005 and is currently publishing her new book Tale of Tibet, a religious and historical background of Tibet. Kainthla has written short stories and travel articles for Woman's Era and India Currents (Indian-American magazine) and her poems have appeared in Poetry Chain, Journal of Poetry Society of India and Indo-Asian Literature Poetry Journal. She is currently working on a travel book.
