Those were the days of no mixies, no wet grinders, no refrigerators, no washing machines, no tube lights, no TV, no computers, no cellphones — we just about had electricity with a very low voltage; but we were a happy and contended lot. We had no dhabas, fast food joints or take-aways but we all ate healthy and fresh food and visits to the family doctor was rare. We had maids who lived in and who were faithful and never demanding. They would do so much work and that too very well.
This was not a very long ago but just about four decades back. My parents had this ever-smiling middle-aged woman who worked in our house. She had lost her husband to a liver ailment and her two children had died earlier in a cholera epidemic. When she came to work for my parents I was just a toddler and my brother a baby. She loved us like a mother and had such fine qualities that even my parents may not have had. She would go about doing her work quietly never complaining or grumbling (like the present maids). She was uneducated and did not know the local language and yet managed successfully to buy grocery and other things for the house.
Pappi, as we called her, lived with us for 35 years. Those days our house was always filled with cousins, relatives, and friends who would not just visit, but stay on for many days. Pappi’s preferred diet was rice kanji and chilli chutney, which would set sensitive stomachs on fire. How she washed all our clothes, pressed them, brought us our lunch to school, and did all the numerous chores in the house; it now makes me wonder whether she was a superwoman. Whenever my mother scolded any of us children Pappi was always on our side protecting us from Amma’s anger. She was a saviour of sorts.
When she became old we did not have the heart to send her off. So we put her in a home where she was looked after very well. She had Alzheimer’s and severe dementia. In spite of her medical condition whenever we went calling on her face would light up. It was as though she was happy to see us. She stayed there for five years before dying peacefully one day.
Somewhere down the line the younger generation seems to have lost the most important quality that makes a person a good human being. Concern for others is a mark of culture that one hardly gets to see today. In the rat race of life almost all the good things have been pushed under the carpet and forgotten.