Bindu Desai is my friend from Togus VA, Maine days. Bindu is an activist, a writer, a poetry reciter and a retired neurologist. When not globe trotting, she can frequently be found volunteering or teaching. Here is a picture of us when she visited me on my Chief-of-Staff-detail in Grand Junction, Colorado in 2012. And what follows is her essay for International Women's Day - March 9, 2019.
SO OFF THEY WENT TO EARN A LIVING……
Every woman works at home and helps the family earn a living. As caregivers, raising their
children, doing a myriad of household chores - fetching water, firewood, cooking, washing
clothes, keeping the home clean, working in fields often for no pay if they are helping their
husbands or for paltry wages, at construction sites and on and on.
Following Indian Independence in 1947 ( August 15) a new sort of working woman emerged -
middle class, college educated, often unmarried, who went to work as school and college
teachers, secretaries, and as administrative staff at various levels. On this International
Women’s Day my thoughts turn to my many women cousins quite a few of whom are now with
unseemly haste departing for the great beyond and whose lives I wish to eulogise.
I was born after Independence and as a child remember cousins lauded for going on to do a
Masters in Arts, for obtaining a First Class, for breaking caste barriers by marrying across caste
and province, though this was not without controversy and objections. Intense discussions took
place with uncles and grandmothers taking sides and some boycotting the wedding. One
cousin had to leave home due to a hard, recalcitrant even cruel father. But leave she did and
even her wedding invitation was issued by her elder sister and brother-in-law. Usually it was the
parents who sent out the invite with the words “Mr and Mrs so and so request the pleasure of
your company to the wedding of their daughter …” etc. Having left home was a move not
previously heard of in our extended family, marrying a divorcee from another province another.
My mother and aunts were married in their early teens, bore from 7 to 14 children of whom 5 to
7 survived. All were literate, my mother finished school and due to her Shakespeare loving
father could recite lines from Romeo and Juliet and other plays. All their children boys and girls
were sent to school and college, one became a gynaecologist, another a PhD in plant genetics,
yet another a Masters in Statistics. Most graduated from college with a Bachelor of Arts to their
name, a few got a diploma in education and became school teachers. But it is not their
educational achievements that I want to write about today. It is the sheer newness to work for a
living, earn a salary that had never happened in their milieu before. I was a child then but to me
the novelty of this did not make an impression. Only now decades later do I realise how in their
quiet dignified way they blazed a trail.
Their jobs fetched them a modest salary, one earned Rs 200/month in 1955, the hours were
long, the commute hard with early rising hours to store water, cook a meal and catch a crowded
suburban train to reach their place of work. The barely adequate salary meant virtually no
household help and a long evening’s slog before sleep and the same long day to follow. My
eldest masi’s ( mother’s sister) 3 daughters and my Bafoi’s ( father’s sister) 4 daughters were
graceful sari clad women, the 2 eldest always in a Gujarati style sari with the Pallav over their
right shoulder, a quiet elegance now rarely to be seen. Their sarees were not expensive but
impressed the eye. Mainly cotton prints with big borders or plain white. To my child’s eye they
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seemed to glide in them! They wore no make-up and virtually no jewelry. They had grown up in
2 or 3 room apartments, where 7 to 8 persons lived.
Over time they saved moneys from their salaries and bought flats on an “ownership basis”
putting together a deposit and having a loan to pay off over the years. The sums they paid for
these flats appeared high then but today in Mumbai one could not get a single room miles away
from the city for the same. Slowly they bought appliances, a mark of arrival as it were - an iron,
a radio, a ceiling fan. Much later came a refrigerator. Car ownership did not occur except to a
few and that too in the 80s and 90s. Little did they or we realise that all these markers of a ‘good
life’ carried within them a portent of disaster.
We ( my sisters and I ) visited them periodically, those who stayed nearer we saw oftener. Our
rebel who left her father’s home became a “Paying Guest” after she married. Her husband and
she rented one large room which was always a welcoming home, a large room made even
larger by her affection and generosity. She hosted many a dinner for us and her husband and
she would walk us back to our home at night to make sure we reached safely.
It is the warmth and love I recall from each cousin, the light in their eyes as they answered the
doorbell, you knew you were welcome and felt at home. Being the youngest I did not participate
in the conversation which my sisters carried on with an earnestness and energy that was
remarkable - covering so much ground it was difficult to keep up about various relatives and the
good more often ill fortune that had befallen someone! Tea and snacks would be served and
when a refrigerator had been bought cold water served with a pride deeply felt. Oh those were
simple days. No one had been overseas, Santa Cruz Airport was more renowned for the
flooding that occurred near it and caused destruction during several monsoons to a cousin’s flat
which was in a ‘low lying’ area.
Over the decades their lives got easier though their working days were just as long. They
travelled at first within India, then overseas. All of them had an admirable work ethic, they took
their duties seriously and were diligent in what they did. It is a tribute to them as well to the era
in which they worked that they had benefits - a provident fund, annuity, and pensions. Also they
saved and with helpful tips from colleagues they invested in Fixed Deposits (FDs)/stocks and
were able to live out 2 to 3 decades of retirement in a degree of comfort. This might the case all
across India indeed across the world. But it was in India that the change in the decades of the
40s and 50s were such a break from the past. One heard so much of ‘black money’ ( tax
evasion ) and corruption that it is reassuring to realise how many like my cousins did neither.
Their interests were varied, many sang well and could regale you with Hindi film songs
beautifully rendered. There were film buffs who could recount a film “scene to scene” complete
with sound effects. They did it in such detail that we no longer needed to view the film! Others
followed cricket closely discussing scores, mistakes, strategies with friends. The advent of year
long cricket and the shorter formats was helpful to pass the hours after retirement. Nearly all
could knit and embroider. A small table cloth embroidered by my eldest cousin is still with me,
an exquisite flower pattern done in each corner. Politics was of course ever present what with
the defeat of S K Patil then an uncrowned King of Bombay in the elections of 1967 and the
turbulent decade that followed with the Emergency of 1975-77. Mostly the politics was left of
center with two having husbands who were Communists and active in their Trade Unions.
Last year anxiety was expressed about Trump, a widespread sentiment globally!
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As they aged disease took its toll, tragically in the case of my eldest maternal cousin and with
varying degrees of severity in the others. Of 21 women in our family 10 are gone. Their
departure has left a void, no more telephone calls by them to my sisters advising of changes in
the interest rate for FDs for Senior Citizens, no more of the special wadas - apparently now
known as Desai Wadas in Surat - made for me when I came home to visit. No more making
sure that fresh vegetables were bought to bring from Delhi to Bombay - a 24 hour journey by
train, our cousin sure my mother and sibs would appreciate the gesture, no more inland and air
letters written on a regular basis….
So as these ‘precious friends’ are ‘hid in death’s dateless night’ I pay homage to them this
International Women’s Day. Now it is commonplace for women to work in offices, to be in
virtually any profession from airline pilot to sommelier, to wear slacks and tops to work, to have
all sorts of ‘smart’ gadgets at hand. The trains are even more crowded, the days just as long for
them and the jobs though better paying often have no benefits. Marriage across caste and
province generally raises no hackles, in pursuing careers the sky is literally the limit. No doubt
they face their own problems, from sexual harassment to being passed over unfairly for
promotions. But as they go off taking earning a living as a given let them spare a thought for
those whose shoulders they stand on.
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SNOW one day; gone the next.
