The Axis

She made her entry unobtrusively without causing any ripple. This was way back in 1983 when my mother had had a hysterectomy and a help was badly needed at home. I was away and Latha was in the medical school and Geetha was just young. She was sent by my aunt who lived in Kerala. By virtue of being a doctor, my aunt had access to a whole lot of people and she was the one we turned to whenever we needed any live in help. (The sad thing now is that my aunt has difficulty finding a help for herself.) Narayani was the latest entrant after a couple of failed attempts. She had had a brief stint in my aunt’s house and Geetha had met her then. When she joined us she was a 25/26 year old girl who except for a year spent in Vijayawada babysitting a little girl, had no other experience to her credit. It goes without saying that she had to fend for herself right from a young age; and this she had done by engaging in odd jobs in and around her village.

Since I had no role to play in her initial years with my family, I cannot write about that. My interaction with her until 1995 was only when I came down on vacation which at the most would be for about a month or two in a year. With regard to those twelve years, I can only say that it was great having her in the house and she looked after all of us like we were princesses. This feeling was more pronounced since we three girls lived in places devoid of any domestic help. My mother being who she is had seen to it that Narayani had learnt the ways of the house and had taught her all the cooking she knew. The good thing about this is the fact that we get to eat food with the very same taste as what we had in our childhood.

Within a couple of years of my return to India, my mother’s health condition deteriorated and thus Narayani became my responsibility. By this I meant that the interaction on all matters concerning the household was between the two of us. It goes without saying that she looked after my mother more than all the three daughters together have. The fact that she was totally illiterate did not deter her from coping with my mothers complicated medication schedule. She saw to it that my mother was never in want of any comfort and she wholly dedicated herself in my mother’s service. She became the fourth daughter to my mother. This period also coincided with the arrival of my daughter. Frankly speaking I am not very good when it came to children. One reason for this could be the fact that motherhood came to me late in life. Now when I think back, I wonder how I would have coped with Sridevi if Narayani was not around. I had written earlier in one of the articles that I owe a part of my motherhood to my friend Latha Mohan, and now I say that I share this same motherhood with Narayani.

My nieces and nephew love Narayani and they keep talking about eating her delicious meals. She in turn dotes on them and sees to it that each one of them gets what he or she likes. I think they are jealous of the fact that Sridevi gets to have her the most. To the four of them Nanimaa is their very own. She has been the point of envy not only among the kids but also among all the adults who visit us or stay with us. Their parting remark invariably would be to know if it was possible to get someone like her. Well I proudly tell them that she is one of a kind and that HE doesn’t make them anymore!!! Narayani has her own following and like a troop leader she controls all of them. That makes the job easy on me because only if things go beyond her control, do I have to get involved. I have given her full freedom in the house as she has earned every bit of it and she on her part has never ever crossed the limits. She has never ever asked for a pay rise, but then when you come to think of it, she does not know what her salary is and has the confidence that we will give her what is due.

The relationship I share with her is one of mutual love and respect. She is a sister and friend to me and shares with me my joys and my sorrows. It is to her I go to in a tricky situation and she somehow has the right solution to my issue. Her biological family beckons her from Kerala (she remains single and has her sister, nieces and nephews) and the two/ three trips she makes a year, is the time for me buckle up and get the establishment going. I would love to call her an asset, but that would be a wrong thing to do as I do not own her and she is not an inanimate object. How I wish she could read and write, because I so badly want her to read this. (That is one area where my mother failed. All her attempts to make Narayani literate were futile.)

To me she can only be a gift from the Gods and with this gift I consider my family and myself to be truly blessed.