-Lakshmi Narayan
This is the story of a honest and hardworking maid servant who was poor and struggling. She worked in many rich homes. Many were kind to her, but there was always a thick line drawn between what she could have and what they could.
For instance, they didn’t share their party food of biryani and korma, rich with the aroma of ghee and saffron, with her. Or let her sample delicious sweets, or the dry fruits stored in the locked kitchen cupboard. She accepted her lot with fortitude. But ever so often, their delicacies would swim in front of her eyes and she would sigh, “How I wish I could try them at least once!”
Around this time, she heard that a foreign family which had newly arrived in the city was in need of a house helper. She wondered how she would communicate with them. Drawing courage together, she approached them, spoke to them in the broken English she had picked up from her various employers’ kids and was pleasantly surprised when she got the position, little realizing her neat and clean appearance and pleasant features had impressed them.
The only problem was they expected her to work for them from full-time morning to evening. This meant she would have to give up her part-time jobs. But she was fine with it, as she would be paid three times the amount she was currently earning. On the first day itself, the memsahib showed her the larder and said, “Take whatever you like for tea from here.” In front of the was an Aladdin’s cave of cakes, cookies and stuff she had never tasted.
She couldn’t believe her luck! She helped herself to small amounts of nibbles and thought she was in heaven, so exquisitely scrumptious were they! When she went home and told her kids, they longingly said, “Amma, can’t you bring some for us?” But she hushed them. However, the guilt kept pinpricking her. On Sunday, when it was the cook’s day off, she helped herself to small amounts of the confections and took it home. The joy on her children’s faces made up for the small theft she had committed.
Then the cook went on long leave and she was roped in to help out. Along with the extra pay, she also got a free hand to pilfer snacks she wanted. She couldn’t eat (Excerpted from Fables from Beyond, Authors Upront, 2020) When the Supreme gives us a chance to make good, going rogue will bring the benefits down to zero. Journalist, author and animal activist Lakshmi Narayan is a former assistant editor of Femina and former editor of Eve’s Weekly & Flair what they ate — it was too foreign — but she could filch dal, rice, sugar and other groceries. Soon, small items like the children’s hair clips, ribbons, shoes and clothes went missing. One afternoon, she made bold to purloin the lady’s sealed perfume bottle, as well as a shampoo. The memsahib did ask where they were, but didn’t accuse her directly. “She probably thinks she’s mislaid it,” thought the maid smugly. She’d made the cardinal error of mistaking her employer’s compassion for weakness.
A few months later, her mistress dropped a bombshell. They were transferred to another country and would be leaving soon.. But the maid was confident of finding a post with one of her mem’s friends, as they all thought highly of her. Little was she aware of what her employer was telling her friends, “Yes, she is good at her work. But a petty thief.” Word had got around in the diplomatic circles about her light fingers and she was dropped like a hot potato as, ever so politely, doors were slammed shut on her.
With her thieving, her needs too had increased. Her children were now in an English medium school and she had used her savings to pay the deposit for a small low income flat. Left with no choice, she went back to her old haunts to seek work as a part-time bai. But they had all found replacements and didn’t need her any more.
Too late, she realized the Almighty had opened the door of prosperity to her. But she had misused it.
When the Supreme gives us a chance to make good, going rogue will bring the benefits down to zero.
(Excerpted from Fables from Beyond, Authors Upront, 2020)
Journalist, author and animal activist Lakshmi Narayan is a former assistant editor of Femina and former editor of Eve’s Weekly & Flair
