Damp queries

On reaching home yesterday, I go up to dump the fish bones in my lunchbox in the garbage bin before leaving it in the kitchen sink for washing. I notice leftovers from the morning's puttu already dumped in it. Almost one kutti of puttu thrown away.

Why? I ask the maid.

Vaava spat into it while I was feeding her. I kept telling her dont spit, dont spit but she spat. The maid tells me.

But how could she spit, I ask her.

She spat when I went away to get some water for her. She says.

I look at the puttu once again and check its texture. Sometimes I can be worse than Sherlock Holmes.

I realise that it is just puttu powder wettened before cooking.

Were u feeding her uncooked puttu? I persist.

No, actually I was making it for Vaava in the evening. I had made her sit on the kitchen platform and she spat into the damp dough. The maid changes her tale.

I dont know why she threw it away. It continues to bother me. I hate wasting food that is not spoilt.

But what does she care? It is someone else's money and toil.

Train to Kerala

My inlaws left yesterday night. It had been a great help having them around since m-i-l especially saw to it that the kids were fed and taken care of well. They left worried about how the maid would take care in our absence. The maid does other household chores - cooking and cleaning and stuff - well but she doesnt show much interest in babysitting. She utilises her spare time to read the Malayalam newspaper (I think she is a very slow reader going by the amount of time she spends on it, as if she were preparing for an exam), afternoon siesta, bath, TV and so on.

Mil had given her a tution about how to take care of the kids and keep them out of trouble (their inummerable fights and dangerous play, such as suffocating each other with a pillow) plus a generous tip (hopefully the latter will make her more enthu and sincere about her job).

Ash quickly bid his grandma goodbye at the railway station and clung to his dad for dear life. It was a good thing hence that we didnt try to send him away to Kerala with them or he would have created a big racket. It would have been easier if I had gone along to leave him in Kerala. Anyway the allergy tests and a couple more tests coming up made us decide against sending him in the first place. His face has cleared but I wonder if stopping the oral steroids will make things worse again. The lost hair and weight need to come back too. The itching hasnt stopped - the eyes still itch (he is on FML and Olopat drops for that) and so does some parts of his body.

On the eye doctor's instruction, we had taken him to the dermatologist at SMF before meeting his regular paediatrician last Saturday. She said she will coordinate with the pead and her professor, Dr. Patrick, and do the needful. She also advised light therapy for his skin - since Chennai is so dusty, the sun's ultraviolet rays cannot penetrate the atmosphere and do the needful for people's skin.

Coming back... when Ash saw two nuns in the train he pointed them out to V: "Look Appa, sister!" Then he added in fear: "Appa, sitter cool venda (no sister's school for me)." During his last stay with my parents, he was attending a convent school nearby and his playschool teacher was a pleasant-faced young nun.

The Chandanapally perunnal (our church festival) is on. Mom tells me that the raasa (procession) came towards our area first and so they got to see a really grand procession at 9.30 pm. Usually it come last to our area past midnight and by then most procesionists would have taken the shortcut to reach church and grab a good seat for the drama/musical concert afterwards.

Once upon a time, people from other parts of the district and elsewhere, descended on the homes of their Chandanapallian cousins to take part in the festivities. But now, most churches celebrate St. George's day in May, and people dont need to make the journey to Chandanapally. Still, a few faithful continue to make the journey every year.

A bug's life

Nothing much to report except that I'm recovering from a bad cold, that I have passed on the flu bug to V, that Ash's itching is worse inspite of not eating anything improper (I wonder if Dermavive is trying to revive his skin by a process of scaling) and that Ash and Mira can make intelligible conversations with longish sentences in Malayalam with us. And that Prince and Sarita are here for a day and came home for breakfast. Life had been more fun when they were in Chennai for a year some 8 years ago. Prince happens to be one of V's dear friends while I enjoy Sarita's company. Hopefully, I can leave early for a dinner out with them.
The maid is adapting quite well to her new circumstances and the kids are happy with her as far as I can see. She also takes interest in sprucing up the place in her spare time - some 2-3 hours in the morning when the kids are away at school. Looks like she was used to a lot of cleaning activities in her Gulf tenure.
p.s. New posts at Misspelt...

Maid (substitute)

Just when I thought our lives were going to set into a pattern again, things had to go sour again. The maid left yesterday night for Kerala after her folks called to say that her 40-yr-old brother died, god knows how. She expressed a desire to go and we couldnt be mean enough not to let her go regardless of the train fare up and down. (The fact is that we just make two trips a year to Kerala, while the maids go every other month on one pretext or the other, and we have no option but to humor them since we need their services badly.)

The funeral is supposedly today, and she said she will be back by Friday. I think we can take her word on that since she hasnt taken any of her belongings with her, only her purse. She found a seat in the ladies compartment of Trivandrum Mail, standing in a queue and supervised by the railway police (which is a good thing. Earlier, male relatives or railway porters fetched seats for many of the women travelling in the unreserved ladies compartment; porters, of course, for a price.) Her return journey could be less tedious if my dad manages to procure a reserved berth in the train for her.

Nowadays, tickets for travelling in the unreserved compartments can be booked 3 days in advance. I had managed to sneak out from office at lunch time and buy a ticket in 2 minutes' time at the ladies/senior citizens/handicapped counter, which was surprisingly not closed, like in the peak-hour evenings. The evening queue lines are crazy too and one can never hope to board the train on time.

We have requested the services of Manohari, who had looked after the kids in January, and who had expressed a desire to work for us again if necessary. She had been pestering my partimer Kala to find her a job as a cook, and had even offered to make a biriyani for me any time I wanted. I will order a poori-potato masala first!

Dossier KM

Introducing our new maid from Kerala.
Kochumol (KM) is a Dalit Christian who attends the CSI church in her husband's native place near Punalur. Married (on her own whim) at the age of 15 to a good-looking but good-for-nothing loafer whose main preoccupation is boozing, she has had the burden of looking after her family when many others her age were still in school/college. She has given birth to three but only one, the middle child, survived. She says her aim now is to make some jewels for her school-going daughter who is almost 18 and will soon be of marriageable age.
She has worked as a daily wage labourer (who earn Rs.175 a day without food and Rs. 150 when food is provided by the employer) and as a maid. She even had a two-year stint in Muscat, working as a maid in Arab households. Her agent had collected Rs.25000 from her (of which 15000 was deducted from her salary) for the travel documents, airfare and visa. The agent collects the same amount from each Arab employer she is sent to. In two years, she was shunted to three households. She tells me that only rich Arabs can afford to keep maids from Indian agents. As for Indians working in the Gulf, they get cheaper services from Bangladeshi and Filipino maids. The Arab masters of hers had been decent, not lecherous. Each household had a dozen kids, the older ones looking after the younger ones. So she had to take her of only the cooking, which she learnt, and other household work.
The agent has told her that he will send her again if she brings the visa and assorted fees, but she says she doesnt want to go with a grown-up daughter back home. We found her through her elder sis, who works for my aunt.
She is not very talkative except when talked to. (And this time, I have not taken too much interest in talking as all the earlier maid escapades have made me sore.) She is a keen reader - of the vernacular daily and magazines - and a fan of TV serials (though Ash restricts her TV time with his Pogo watching).
There is a beauty in her dark face. Her black eyes light up at times, and there is almost a smile on her lips. But on the whole, she strikes me as a person who has been benumbed by the bitter experiences in her life and whose heart had hardened, which is not a good thing when you looking after two small children. For instance, she just ignored Ash as he howled the house out on Saturday night complaining of ear pain - the ENT had dewaxed his ears in the evening but the pain set in late in the night.
p.s. Ash might need a small surgery to remove his swollen adenoids. The earlier the better, the ENT said. But the dermatologist has asked us to wait until the test results come on the 5th. We might fix a date for the op after the 10th of March. Should we beware the Ides of March?

New maid

My mom is in town. She landed yesterday with a maid in tow. In fact that was the main reason she came. My dad, who hasnt missed any of Ash's birthdays so far, decided to cancel his ticket in favour of hers as he didnt want to accompany a young maid in the train.

The new maid is in her mid-30s, has a drunkard husband and a teenaged daughter, and goes by the name of Kochumol (little girl). I am in a dilemma as to what to call her since that is a pet name we reserve for our daughters/nieces and not maids! I cant chechify her either, so I just have to call her her only name I guess.

The first day was a bit unsettling for her since we had an army of guests from Ooty - though I prepared the breakfast, she had to do a good part of the lunch. Her cooking is pretty good, so that is a comfort for us - though it means we are back to our Kerala dishes with an overdose of coconuts in all forms and shapes.

The kids for their part have warmed up to her and calls her ammamma. I hope they wont mind being alone with her in the house, once my mom leaves on the 28th.

She needs to show more involvement in babycare as right now she seems more interested in reading the newspaper and watching soaps on TV. And until she is trained and settles down, I cant rest.