Sonia Faleiro

"Age of innocence, burdened lives

Cook, scrape, clean, serve. Two young girls and a poignant blueprint of despair. But everywhere too, signs of what could so easily be: education, laughter, a future. Just the bare necessities of life.

Two girls sit on plastic chairs under a flowering tree, swinging their dusty feet as little girls will. Nagina, 14, has red ribbons in her hair; Naina Baburao Ingole, 11, wears a sea blue “Calvin Klein” t-shirt with matching track pants. A blue rubber band pulls her ponytail back into a happy fountain. Naina likes Pokemon, which she watches on a friend’s TV. Nagina likes teaching her native language, Bengali, to those even smaller than her. The girls are among an estimated 45,000 children in Mumbai below the age of 14, who earn their living polishing the homes of others into brightness.

Some people love the company of children, but in the Indian housekeeping industry, where human beings fulfill the role of washing machines, vacuum cleaners and dishwashers, the reasons for this are Machiavellian. Naina was fired after she took leave for three consecutive days for exhaustion. When she returned, and peeked through the door, she found another little girl, even smaller than her, squatting under the dining table, polishing its teakwood legs. “My employer told me ‘I’ve found someone else,” says Naina. “So I said ‘at least pay me for the days I worked’. She replied, ‘Get out. If you ever come back, I’ll beat you.’” Naina has yet to be paid her salary (Rs 500 per month) as a live in domestic worker, whose hours were 6 a.m. till after midnight. “Children never answer back,” explains Shobha Kale of the National Domestic Workers Movement. “So the employer works them day and night.”

Child domestic workers—90 per cent of whom are girls—, who are forced into work by poverty, are aware of their precarious position. They are answerable to their parents, and counted on to contribute to the family’s finances even though they’re made to work harder, and paid less than an adult. For example, for what Naina does, an adult would earn approximately Rs 3,000. Small built and weakened by poor nutrition and a lack of hygiene, they are easy prey for hard nosed employers, some with children of their own, who victimize them physically using not just their fists, but any available object. The previous day, Kale visited a hospital in Bhayander where Nidhi, 12, was recuperating from burn marks from heated coconut husks. Her mistake? She worked too slowly. Nidhi’s services had been purchased from her father, a farmer in Kolkatta, for Rs 1,000. She hadn’t received her monthly salary of Rs 200 for eight months, and was abused until a neighbour called the police. Despite what is acknowledged as a growing problem, according to Kale, only six cases of physical abuse against child domestic workers have been registered in the past year.

Being poorly paid, overworked and verbally harassed is part of an incestuous quadrant, in which child domestic workers find themselves imprisoned. The fourth, most debilitating aspect is sexual harassment and abuse. Unlike other children, they aren’t accompanied everywhere they go. A pretty girl on the cusp of womanhood is appetizing prey for street corner layabouts. Nagina says, “Yahan log bahut harami hai. On the road a man will whisper ‘get into a rickshaw with me?’ Or the boys will get together and tease me, saying ‘ai pagli!’ They whistle, and catch my hand. Today one boy asked me to go home with him.” Nagina’s father is a labourer, her mother a domestic worker. She says, “I never see her. And even if she listened to my complaints, what would she do? She works all day.” Both girls walk with their hands covering their chest; they look straight head, and have been warned by their parents to never respond to jokes with a smile. “Hans gayi to phans gayi,” grins Naina. She points to a wasteland of garbage where children, too young to work, are allowed to play. She tells of an elderly man who waits there, promising Rs 10 to any girl who will massage his body.

At work, the situation is potentially worse. Outside of four walls, the cries from within will not be heard. Two days ago, Nagina, who already works at eight houses for at least an hour each, earning Rs 800 a month, started a new job. The employer was an elderly man, with a young son. As she was washing the dishes, she felt a hand around her waist. “Come and lie down,” whispered her employer. “Why?” responded Nagina, who speaks little Hindi, and no Marathi. She sometimes wonders whether she misunderstands people. “I’ve come to wash your dishes, not to rest.” He slapped her face, and would have done worse had she not started screaming. His son ran into the room, took one look at his father and told Nagina, with quiet resignation, “You’d better go home.”

The choices made for the girls have been fashioned by circumstances of poverty, and by a poverty of opportunity. In the Ambedkar Nagar slum in suburban Andheri West, live families of migrants from Maharashtra’s farming districts of Akola and Amravati. Some families like Nagina’s claim to be from Kolkata, although Kale surmises they crossed the border from Bangladesh. Geeta, 31, a domestic worker and Nagina’s neighbour, says she earned Rs 10 a day working on another’s fields. She sold their home and lives with approximately 500 people in this slum of homes fashioned from bamboo poles and plastic sheets, where furniture constitutes pickings from the garbage dump, a wardrobe is made of hand me downs from generous employers, and one’s daily bread isn’t daily.

Twice a year the BMC’s bulldozers raze the slum, claiming illegal occupation. Within days, it’s reconstructed; its inhabitants again bereft of their pitiful possessions. What do you spend your earnings on (Rs 2,500)? I ask Naina’s mother, Mayana. “Food,” she says simply. The slum has no light or water facilities. Rice and dal is cooked on fingers of wood foraged from gardens. As summer heightens, the girl’s scorched skins infer hard times. Daily, they take an empty drum of water, and walk through the prosperous neighbourhood beside their slum begging security guards permission to use the building tap. Every day, says Naina, she’s slapped, verbally abused, or laughed at. If she returns home unsuccessful, the family has no water to drink. She hasn’t bathed for a week.

There are other problems unique to families of migrants. Polygamy appears to be the natural recourse of lonely married men who leave their families behind in the village, and migrate for work to the city. Three months after Nagina’s father Kishore left Kolkata for Mumbai, and there was still no Demand Draft in the postbox; the family realised something was wrong. Nagina’s mother and five children came to Mumbai, and found that Kishore had remarried. After months of arguments, during which both women and the children were beaten by Kishore, the second wife left the slum. In a month, Nagina will return to Kolkata for her eldest sister’s marriage. Her biggest fear, she says, is that her father will find a third wife there and leave them again. “Sab ladki ke peeche bhagta rehta hai,” she says matter-of-factly. (He runs after all the girls).

Their parent’s relationship is but one aspect of the girl’s lives, poisoned by poverty. Their fathers are alcoholics, spending Rs 22 on a half quarter of country liquor daily. They beat their wives and children. So Naina and Nagina are slapped at home, and slapped, sometime fondled at work. They’re hungry at home, famished at work. One constant? Work.

Nagina works from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., but stays awake till 1 a.m. making tea for her father’s friends, who play cards and gossip. She says, “Mummy works all day, so when she returns home she rests. My three sisters and I cook and clean.” After work outside, Naina works at home washing dishes and clothes, collecting water, and watching over her younger siblings Ganesh, 7; Dinesh, 6 and Radha, 4, as they play in the mud. Neither she nor Nagina have time to play. Her former employer was a well known actor’s aunt, and Naina often babysat the actor’s daughter, as well. She sighs, “Anything she wanted she got. One day she cried for a car, and the next day her father bought home a new car. She sits in airplanes and goes on holidays. She lives in a bungalow, and plays in gardens. But the one time I sat in a chair next to her, the actor’s mother told me, ‘You’re a servant. Behave like one.’”

Perhaps it would have been better had Naina and Nagina not known of the path their lives could have taken, given a chance. But both studied in village schools. They understand the concepts of opportunity and deprivation. If you give Nagina a Bengali storybook, her eyes will light up. But if you ask her what she wants to become when she grows up, she will respond without rancor: “What will I become? I’m a servant.” “I liked everything about school,” she reminisces, sadly. “I liked going there; the uniform, even the master was so nice.” Naina has no memory of anything she learnt in her three years of schooling. “We had khichdi for lunch,” is all she remembers. Now the girls are forbidden school by their parents, because whatever promise of a good future education may hold, their current earnings are life’s blood. “She’s too old for school,” says Mayana of her 11-year-old daughter who wakes early, sleeps late, is a cleaner, cook and nanny; an agglomeration of adult qualities and concerns squeezed into and out of a child’s body.

In a few years, Naina and Nagina will be forced to marry men like their fathers. They may become women like their mothers. And their children? Will they follow the blueprint of Naina and Nagina’s life? Or will that generation be given a chance?"

Tehelka, March 25, 2006.
For photos of Nagina and Naina's homes, see Ambedkar Nagar I, Ambedkar Nagar II
All photos: Sonia Faleiro
Read the rest of the series on the lives of Mumbai's domestic workers.
The Other Half I
The Other Half II
The Other Half III
The Other Half IV

Labels: Profiles

Another moving post in an excellent series. Should be cross posted by other bloggers as I believe this must be read by as many people as possible.

Thanks Sonia.

good job, who has to be blamed for making them like this, parents or the one who employs them, or the government who just passes bills prohibitying child labour.

Your series on domestic workers is just excellent , Sonia. I read this post and felt like crying. When I was a child , I had gone for a sleepover to a friend's place and they had a eight year old child working for them. She was treated extremely badly , beaten for the smallest of 'mistakes',even by my friend's younger brother who was younger than her. The child had to sleep every night in the bathroom . That day , when I was at their house , she hung herself in the bathroom . Luckily , they saved her. Though I saw it happening , they denied it just two minutes after because it would bring their family a 'bad reputation'.( I was thinking that as the reason , even then.) She was hurriedly packed off to her native village.And this was an 'educated' upper middle class family.

Even if a child is too poor to afford education and has to work the LEAST one can do is to allow them some dignity, entitle them to a childhood they can look back to in inevitably worse times.

I agree. I've been really impressed with all of these articles. Great work.

I agree with the other posters. These issues need to be addressed before India can truly be "shining." Sonia, I don't even have to repeat myself about the quality of your articles. I would love to post these articles on my blog with credits to Sonia of course. But the lawyer in me just doesn't agree. Besides it will dilute the visits to Sonia's blog and I think it would be unfair. Forwarding the links as I have done seems to be the best alternative. Well, Sonia is the final judge anyway.

Rayan Felix Coutinho
http://www.rcoutinho.com

sonia, that was really good of you to write about the bitter realities prevailing in our society.

But, tell me is this going to stop all this? I mean I am not trying to falter from your good work, it's just that nobody can change the mind-set of people. I always feel so bad about all this. Not only this, but so many other things that have become rooted in the country and show no sign of stoppage.

To tell the least great article..hope it gets published somewhere or you publish it atleast..was wondering how could you gather so much info..but so your profile..gr8 work..

Sonia, this is just to say that I really look forward to reading your superb blog - it is thought provoking, insightful and completely addictive.

Suresh, SoftyKid, Yam, Vikrum, Rayan, Aswin, Anon: Thank you.
Indu: I don't have the answer to that question. Does writing or the truth really ever stop injustice of any sort, big or small? That depends on the individual and the individual situation. But just because one doesn't see tangible results, or results immediately, doesn't mean we should ignore such issues, and write only about those that we believe will be resolved merely by their publication. Every step foward makes a difference.

But both studied in village schools. They understand the concepts of opportunity and deprivation.

Hi Sonia

It is sadder with the kind of understanding of their situation they have...to me those two lines were strangely uplifting, yet, cruel that they are suffering knowing all about their deprivation...I wish they could get a rewarding opportunity again...

“I liked everything about school,” she reminisces, sadly. “I liked going there; the uniform, even the master was so nice.”

Great work, Sonia. Dont know how much to admire you. Please keep them coming.

commendable effort!

such a pathetic story abt the girls and u have written it with great effort.we employers of house maids shud change and take a vow not to employ children for work.

Sonia, this and other similar posts should be mandatory reading for schoolchildren in America. The value of freedom and the right to an education should be held precious to the heart. You are awesome, Sonia!
I have acted on your commenter Suresh's suggestion and cross-posted parts of your article with links back to your blog.

Umang, Manoj, Twilight Fairy, Ramya and Dave, thank you for your thoughtful comments. And for linking to these stories. I really appreciate it.