The Maid Who Stole Idlis

This is a memory of a woman and a tribute to all the women whose struggles go undocumented in history.

A Powerful Name and a Powerless Existence

Her name was Karthyayani, a synonym of the goddess of power in Hindu mythology. Yet, she was one of the most powerless and vulnerable human beings who lived in our village half a decade ago.

Karthyayani was our maid when we were children. She was dark with curly hair and a stout and short body, and the villagers did not consider her attractive or good-looking. Yet, even as a kid, I remember seeing a rare beauty in the smooth blackness of her skin, her sparkling eyes, and the way she talked with a hint of cheerful sarcasm.

She was married to a man who just disappeared when she was in the prime of her youth leaving her with three small kids to take care of. Though she belonged to an upper caste community that was generally landlords, her family was poor. As the husband, the breadwinner, unceremoniously left, she had no other option to survive than to become a servant in the houses of other upper-caste families in the village. 

She became our full-time maid, meaning she would come around six o’clock in the morning, clean the house and do other household chores, double down as a labourer in the ongoing agricultural work, and tend to the four or five cows we always had. She would take a half an hour's lunch break to go and feed her children on school holidays and stop work in the evening around 5 o’clock.

It was backbreaking work but at that time, all that was the normal work of a maid. As both my parents were employed, they would leave me and my younger brother in the care of my grandmother and the maid the whole day. She would find time to play with us.

Stealing Idlis

I still remember the smell of her hair and bosom as we would lie down with her for an afternoon nap on the floor on a mat made of grass. It was not particularly pleasant but her intimate fondness of us children rendered it endearing and comforting. The floor was cool and the afternoons were windy. Her curly hair would spread on the white pillow like a peacock’s tail. She would always have some sandal paste put on her forehead as a dot or a short and thick horizontal line which was a practice that all our villagers did after taking a bath. It had religious overtones when we gathered the sandal paste from a temple, but putting sandalwood paste on the forehead was also part of the secular routine even if you did not visit a temple in the morning. The faint fragrance of sandal paste would engulf us if we put our faces close to hers or when she kissed us on the cheeks.

One day, I heard my mother whispering to my grandma that she stole idlis (a breakfast item of fermented rice cake) by putting them inside her blouse to take home to her kids. They were laughing at the way she cleverly hid the idlis. Stealing petty things such as sugar and groceries was expected of all maids in those days. India was a poor country with a lot of people who lived a depraved life. As children belonging to a well-off middle-class family, with caste privileges too, my brother and I were oblivious to these harsh realities of life. We also laughed between us talking about her stealing idlis and putting it inside her blouse.

How she might have felt when she gave those idlis to her kids. Would there have been tears in her eyes or did they glow with joy? She used to take some breakfast to her house from us but those were the days when plenty was never a word uttered without guilt. Elders would scold the younger ones for cooking a rich meal unless it was a festival or worship day. So, whatever we shared with her was not evidently enough to satiate the hunger of her kids. Or, one of her kids would have loved Idlis. She risked her reputation and job to fulfil the craving.

An Unsung Life of Love and Resilience

By the time I grew up and began to attend high school, I was quite fond of her and she was of me too. I was also opening my eyes and mind to the prevailing misery of one section of society as compared to the affluence of another section. My father was a trade unionist who fought for the rights of organised labour but the plight of unorganised labourers such as housemaids was outside the understanding of even him and his likes.

I still remember the day when I had a fever and she walked about 8 kilometres to the nearby clinic carrying me. Lying my head on her shoulder out of exhaustion from the high body temperature, I could hear her rhythmic and strained breathing as she walked the steep climb of the road leading to the clinic.

When I got employment as a journalist, I began to set aside some small money to give to my grandmother and Karthyayani (whom I used to call Karthyayani amma, meaning mother Karthyayani) whenever I visited my village. She was getting old. Her children had grown up and the two girls got some small jobs and got married. Her son became a local chef who was employed to cook for family events and festivals. Yet, they were struggling financially.

I would visit her in her small house which had been turned into a small concrete structure from the thatched mud house that it had been before. That was the only visible change in her life. She would make black tea and give me some mixture (a local snack made of mixing roasted peanuts, fried noodles, roasted and threshed chillies, garlic, and curry leaves) whenever I visited. She would hug me and kiss me. She would scold me for not getting married and impishly ask me if I had someone in my mind. I would sit on the long cement bench on her verandah, leaning on the thin square pillar at one end and stretch my legs on the bench. 

She would be agitated about what to give me to eat and how to make me comfortable. I would feel all the peace on earth settling upon me against the warmth of her love. She would tell me about her children while I took in the view of the vast paddy lands that expanded beyond her courtyard.

She passed at the age of 68 or 70 as the hard work of her entire life might have broken her health. I could not make myself visit her when I knew that she was in the ICU, unconscious and sinking. She remains my second mother, and her memories are my second home.