Breaking Barriers with money

Ratna Raman Delhi

The cleaning woman who worked for us for over 30 years died two months ago. For 30 years, almost five to six days a week, between 8am and 8.30 am in the morning, she would ring the doorbell and announce: "Bibi, kooda dey dey."

Someone would hurtle towards the door, give her the kooda and once the transaction was over and the dustbin had been retrieved, the door would be shut. Occasionally she might ask for water to drink, or if there was a birthday or a festival, she would be given some sweets for the occasion. "Tu jiye, terey bacchey jiyen" she would mouth, as she trudged her way to the next house. She was a lanky handsome woman, who lived far away from the Safdarjang neighbourhood where she travelled daily to collect garbage. The day after Holi and Diwali she came to collect mithai and baksheesh and sets of old clothes and sheets, which donors assured her had years of wear and tear left in them.

Her husband was ill for many years, after a severe attack of paralysis and her daughter, a pretty feckless girl, married and moved into her husband's, often returning home between bouts of domestic violence and reconciliations. Her good-looking young son was ideal movie material except no talent scouts intervened to make a difference to his life.

Although he did accompany his grandmother while she tried to train him to take over her work, it didn't work out. When she became too old to collect the garbage, she eventually leased it out to two young men who were reconciled to the work and the money it brought in. It was one of them who informed me of her death.

Each month she would come by to collect her wages, which rose from the initial Rs 10 to Rs 60 a month in the last couple of years. Of late, ill health had deterred her from arriving every month to collect the monthly dues, so I had simply lost sight of the fact that two months had gone by. She belonged to the hidden and rarely mentioned part of our lives, albeit providing a vital service. Her death, like her life, was subsumed in anonymity and ignominy.

Perhaps, she too belonged to the darkness that frames the origins of the protagonist of The White Tiger. In her case, the darkness eventually engulfed her. Balram Halwai proves to be more fortunate. Despite grinding poverty in Laxmangarh, a tubercular rickshaw pulling father who dies a pitiable and horrendous death, a marriageable sister who causes him to be pulled out of a promising academic life to repay the dues of debt-ridden natal families, Balram Halwai finds employment in a tea shop, and graduates to a job as a driver through the efforts of his family. This is a popular enough pattern of economic mobility and Balram is soon employed by one of the hated landlords. He learns the ropes, manages to oust control from the other household helps (one of them non-Hindu) and makes himself indispensable to his masters.