Made for each other

I, like hundreds of working women the world over, have a love hate relationship with my maid.  Or should I be saying household helper to be politically correct? 

I cannot fathom why she needs to have the simplest instructions repeated over and over again and I am sure she wonders why I nitpick so much;  and why I cannot leave my  frustrations at work where it belongs-in the office!!

However, at times I do wonder which one of us is truly the “emancipated” one.  She, who is unlettered, manages the household finances so well that she actually manages to put away a small amount each month for each of her children, while I, with all the resources available to me, still need to take the help of hubby dear even to declare my taxes!!

I have hit a wall trying to convince hubby dear that adopting a baby would be a good idea (relatives be damned!) while she, has gone right ahead, adopted one and brought her up to be a woman in her own right; able to stand up for herself.

So, imagine my shock when she, who was unfazed even when her roof caved in and her house was flooded (two separate instances) was reduced to a crying, shivering mass of nerves the other day.  The whole story, when it came out, reduced me to temporary paralysis too.  Her elder daughter, allegedly for no rhyme or reason, had emptied a cauldron of boiling hot sambhar over herself, and  my poor maid was informed of it  only three days later.

In between trying to get more information from the faraway Vellore CMC hospital and trying to get my maid there at the earliest, I was stuck by how fragile our lives were.  One wrong step by anyone in our orbit and all our hopes and dreams, all our calculations and plans can go up in smoke.   I havent heard from her in two days; while I am writing this, I am hoping and praying that her daughter recovers and that it was all an accident….the alternate is too horrifying to even imagine.