Maids Of Honour

Statutory warning: This is not yet another post on my wishes about my wedding and mother in law. I would rather call it an emotional one and I usually prefer to stay away from such poignant rants.

After thirteen long years, my family will be shifting from a plush south Delhi home to another lavish south west Delhi home. And as the date draws nearer, all of us start recounting our last shifting memories more than a decade back.

I am seriously not going to write poems here about my over-privileged south Delhi lifestyle where everything is available at a stone’s throw, the greenery and the cleanliness.

When you reside at a place for a very long time, you make recollections with the people you interact with, the trees that grow around you, the roads you walk on and the birds that come twittering to your balcony/terrace for their daily dose of leftovers. The mongrels which chase on your morning runs and the local cats who swoop into your lap like an attention crazy kid.

But the most important people with whom you forge an unforgettable bond are the house maids. Apart from keeping our homes in a sparkling state, our days are incomplete without the neighbourhood gossip they bring to our mothers’ otherwise monotonous days when we are occupied.

My Mom like any other mother has always been very particular about the cleanliness affairs and hence her affinity with the maids. There are good moments apart from the usual bitter-batter about “this corner was left un-swept”. I sometimes get a very peculiar feeling that she misses the maids when they are on their quarterly/annual/sick/casual leaves.

So when the last time we left Vasant Vihar, we were leaving a very understanding and hard working maid who had been loyal to our household for more than eight years. More than my Mom, the maid, named “Basanti” (colourful name though!) was more emmotional about our departure. On our last day, she controlled her heart and flatly told my Mom that she won’t be coming to see her off and would sit at a corner far away from us and would watch us leaving (teary eyed). In fact she was so attached to my Mom that she even wanted to travel to our current place (a 3km drive) and keep working for us. My mom still misses her I guess.

Here, at R.K. Puram, we had a spate of Chamelis, Lolitas and Maya. Maya is a fiery Nepali with a glass shattering voice but a good heart. She is a smart business woman and very sharp in finances. She does have a liking for my sister considering her homely and introvert nature. It always seemed to me that she was not much fond of us. But the last time my sister came for Diwali holidays, she was actually delighted to have her around. She even hugged her with teary eyes.

So let us see what Maaya does when we finally leave the place.

P.S.: Maaya and Chameli always liked me more because of my talkative nature and my ability to donate my new clothes to them. I can not help being conceited even here. Wink wink.