ek tha tiger - story of the indian tiger

sabina (my story) published in an international book

Sabina

‘Sometimes life doesn’t give us choices,’ I thought, as I saw her white toothy smile that overshadowed her dirty face, torn saree and cracked heels. Was this frail lady going to help us settle in our new house? ‘Sabina,’ she pointed to herself. With a twinkle in her eye, she said would do all my housework for Rs 1000 per month. I agreed, only after an argument as I had to live up to the Indian haggling protocol – her beam widened. She was employed.

Little did I realize that this was a meagre amount to change my vision of life.

Opening and settling our luggage boxes in our new house would have been like a climb to Mount Everest but for Sabina, who arranged everything with effortless dexterity. The temperatures were rising steadily but sultry summer heat was not a deterrent for Sabina as she tirelessly cleaned and scrubbed our house. I lay on my couch with the chilled iced tea and threatened her to do her job properly or else...she only responded with a wide smile. ‘This time life hasn’t given her a choice’, I thought. She has to bear with me. I pay her.

As days passed she grew into an integral part of our lives. The bell would ring at sharp 6 AM, whether I wanted it to or not. Hiding under my pillow only made her press the bell more. Her work was like her prayer. She did it with her soul.

Honesty is something that we don’t expect out of domestic help in India, but she was an exception. Be it my earrings left carelessly by me or money left in my husband’s trouser pocket, it would be promptly returned to us with a little chiding. We got accustomed to her friendly beam early in the morning. Each time I warned her to work properly, she responded with a smile that somehow made me feel really small. Her calm reminded me of my mother’s face when I used to throw a tantrum without reason.

The only time I saw a frown on her face was when the door of our two year old baby, Akshat, got locked from the inside. Like any hysterical mother I was howling and calling up locksmiths. ‘This is an emergency, I screamed, ‘come right now...my voice trailed as I saw Akshat in front of me. Surprised, I hugged him tightly, ‘Shabina safed Aki’, he babbled. I looked at her. She had a bruised elbow. As I put medicine on her, she answered the query in my eye - she had jumped from one balcony to the other, then to the other and forced open the balcony door and got out ‘Pinku’, as she lovingly called our son. The monetary arrogance in me broke. I couldn’t pay her for this.

After the incident I wanted to understand the roots of her value system. One day she coyly invited me to her ‘home’. Jumping over the water drains and slush, I reached her ‘home’. It was a modest shack with a tin roof that was like an ‘unidentified flying object’, on a windy day.  She quickly got a chair that creaked under my weight, ‘Didi sit, sit’. Her two children peeped behind a torn curtain, as if catching a glimpse of a Hollywood ‘biggi’! Soon she appeared with a bowl full of rice ‘kheer’, an Indian sweet. ‘I’ve cleaned everything properly like you do,’ she specified. I looked deep into the bowl to hide my moist eyes. She was so conscious of her status, when that was the last thing on my mind. For me she was someone I owed a lot. For settling our house, for keeping it sparkling, for saving our son...

As I dug into the pudding, she sat on the ground and narrated that she was from a poor village and had lost her parents at an early age, her uncle who couldn’t care less, got her married to a lame man, who could not support her. She was the sole bread winner of a family of four. The more she talked the more I realized how much god had given me, yet why didn’t I smile as much as her?

How did she manage to smile all the time?  As if reading my mind she said, ‘I have two choices Didi, either I cry or I laugh’. Her words struck me like a thunderbolt. The two choices are with all of us.

She introduced me with life’s biggest choices. And I have never been able to repay her for it.

Neha Shrivastava