Maidless in Mumbai Read online

  He watches us breastfeed from a distance. We seem to be enacting a strange ritual that he isn’t a part of. It makes me a little resentful. Maybe I’d never imagined that he’d be so ineffective with the baby. Or with his mother.

  Mansi hoots with laughter when she drops in: ‘I think the New Father Look is cute.’ No wonder my old school friend married Shafi, who can’t drive, swim or pack his own bag. No wonder they’re not having kids. She’d probably find it cute if Shafi sucked his thumb and blew spit bubbles.

  I check my New Mother Look in the mirror. Dark half-moons under my eyes, stray greys begging for a touch-up, blotchy skin. Ugh. I feel old already.

  ‘Give him time, Anu,’ says Mom as we soak yesterday’s nappies in a bucket. ‘Men take time to become fathers.’

  What about women? Do they become moms instantly?

  The day crawls by, marked by leaky breasts and a steady nappy count. Sameer strings a drying line, the nappies fluttering like pennants at a Piss Fest. MIL has made Sameer’s favourite aloo parathas and insisted that Mom stay for lunch. I’m about to graciously acknowledge that my aloo parathas aren’t a patch on Ma’s when Sameer tucks into his fifth one and says: ‘Mmmm, Ma, I’d forgotten what real aloo parathas taste like!’

  That’s when Tara cries. Ah! This is the perfect opportunity to bond with my husband as we put Tara into a fresh nappy. Even if it’s only to tell him that I don’t like being compared to his mom.

  Sameer picks up Tara. Ably enough, this time.

  ‘Arre, someone stop him!’ MIL clucks her tongue.

  ‘Aayieeee, watch her neck!’ yells Mom, when there is no need to yell because he is watching her neck.

  Sameer throws me a look of utter bewilderment, the sort that would be subtitled, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ if this were a silent film.

  I rush to his defence. ‘Relax, you two!’

  Three alpha females circle the beta male. ‘Give Tara to me!’ shouts MIL, lunging as though this were the last-ditch stage of a hostage-swap manoeuvre.

  ‘She’ll fall!’ screeches Mom, wrestling Sameer for the baby.

  ‘He’s not going to drop her,’ I proclaim just as Sameer sinks to the floor, holding thrashing Tara like every ounce of his male pride depended on it.

  All this female flapping has made Tara cry harder. I relieve Sameer of his unwieldy burden. ‘Let’s take her inside and change her.’

  MIL snorts: ‘What does Sameer know about nappies?’

  ‘Ma, it’s OK,’ Sameer looks embarrassed as he wipes the beads of sweat off his forehead. ‘I can figure out—’ but MIL gives Sameer a loving slap on the back. ‘Shush! Who changed your nappies? Your father?’

  Which is a trick question, because would Sameer remember it even if his father had?

  ‘Ma, relax, Anu and I can do this together.’

  ‘What together-shoogether? This is not some romantic business!’ MIL chuckles in a tolerant sort of way. ‘In two days, you’ll be back at work, Sameer. Go, rest!’

  Sameer opens his mouth to protest before changing his mind. ‘Anu, I’ll be in the other room, uploading Tara’s pictures on Facebook.’

  Tara’s face is flushed red. Mine flushes red too, especially when MIL gives my nipples a test-squeeze: ‘Milk OK?’

  Hard to reconcile tender feelings supposedly triggered by breastfeeding with murderous intent toward my mother-in-law.

  Just then, Tara breaks off nursing, looks up at me solemnly, and hiccups. I giggle in surprise. She hiccups again. For one insane moment, I imagine that she is looking beyond my breasts. At me. I hold my breath, afraid to break this first wordless connection to another human being. My human being . . .

  Later, I slip out to find Sameer. Maybe we’ll cuddle, catch up on things, be alone. But he’s belly-up on the bed, Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, eyes shut. I hope he isn’t sleeping. I hope he’s thinking about how to become a father—and why nine months wasn’t long enough to figure it out.

  ‘Sleep, Anu,’ says Mom, but I can’t fall asleep on demand every time Tara and her father do. I give the Zara jeans another try, and the zip pops.

  I do a quick mental tot-up:

  Total weight gain:

  11 kilos

  Total weight loss:

  Tara

  3.4 kilos

  Placenta

  1 kilo

  Water and miscellaneous disgusting fluids

  1 kilo

  Calories expended in labour/feeding/frantic diaper-changing/sleep loss

  1 kilo

  I should toss these jeans in the bin for making me feel fat. Unless . . .

  I carry them out to MIL: ‘Zara!’ I say, pointing at the label. ‘Tara!’ I say, pointing at the baby. Would love to gloat for longer, but Tara is crying again.

  Mom, who once weathered my adolescent storms with steady sea-legs, is now a bag of nerves. She rains questions on me like artillery fire over the din of a wailing Tara. ‘Do you think we should call the paediatrician?’ ‘What should we do?’ and ‘Is it anything to worry about?’ (Evidently not. It hasn’t woken Sameer up yet.)

  ‘Give her milk!’ squawks MIL, getting back at me for the Tara-Zara jibe.

  ‘Yes, that’s it!’ says Mom, ‘Give her milk!’

  ‘I just fed her!’

  ‘Feed her again!’ Why are they speaking in unison? And why, for heaven’s sake, is my own conviction flagging?

  ‘I won’t do it!’ I fume, feeding her anyway. Every half hour.

  Three hours and six feeds later, Tara is screaming her lungs off. I call the paediatrician.

  ‘All you new mothers are the same!’ sneers the heartless dowager who looks down on all her patients through her bifocal glasses. ‘This is no emergency!’

  I cast an accusing look at Mom and MIL. ‘What should I do then?’

  ‘Put her in a warm bath!’ the paediatrician says. ‘And stop feeding her all the time!’

  28 June

  Feel so betrayed. Sameer is returning to work today. ‘Don’t be funny, Anu, paternity leave can’t be as long as maternity leave.’

  Why the hell not, I wonder, as Sameer bends over the cot and gives Tara an in-situ hug. Like he can’t risk picking her up again.

  His parenting work for the day done, he charges the camera and updates his Facebook status to read ‘Back to Work, Daddy’. In typical male fashion, he has done nothing about the real problem, the one on the sofa watching TV. Her eyes are locked on some live yoga demo where Bearded Baba inflates and deflates his stomach at nauseous speed.

  ‘She needs company,’ says Sameer, heading for the door and making it quite clear that he’s not about to provide it.

  MIL cuddles Tara while I potter about the kitchen, sterilising things. Fat help she’s being! To atone for that hideous thought, I brew tea for both of us. We sip away in companionable silence. Well, some sort of silence anyway.

  Then, the most curious thing happens. Mom joins in the tea-sipping exercise and the silence of a questionable nature is replaced by tentative conversation. I shuffle off to send out a fresh Maid Wanted message, this time with six exclamation marks. That done, I’ll take a nap. I’m not missing anything. The moms have as much in common as a bullock cart and a BMW. They’ll make some polite observations about the weather and gush over Tara before running out of things to say.

  But wait, is MIL telling Mom a story? I am suddenly sleepless. Since when do executioner-types tell funny stories? Mom has laughed so hard, her eyes are watering. I know this because my curiosity has led me out into the living room. ‘What did I miss?’

  The two of them exchange a furtive look, and there is a conspiratorial sort of silence now.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ The seasoned journalist in me can be very persistent when it comes to wangling information out of unwilling sources.

  ‘Did you really call up some expert for breastfeeding advice yesterday?’ Mom stifles a giggle.

  This is an ambush. I’m not meant to answer.

  ‘Really, Anu, sometimes I
think you believe that there are experts for everything!’

  ‘There are, Mom, they’re called lactation consultants.’ Maybe sounding snarky will make up for my lack of conviction?

  ‘Consultants!’ guffaws Mom, ‘What an oddball idea!’

  ‘I told you she was speaking to one, didn’t I?’ gloats MIL, who really shouldn’t be congratulating herself for eavesdropping.

  What do I have to do to get a little bit of privacy around here anyway? Piss around the cot to mark my territory?

  ‘Who recommended a lactation consultant?’ Mom asks.

  ‘A nurse at the hospital,’ I say, to emphasise that my information comes from credible sources.

  ‘The hospital told you to call a lactation consultant?’

  I don’t like the invisible quote marks Mom is putting around my words, but I press on. ‘Yes, Mom, the hospital where hundreds of babies are born every year, unlike our house where only I was born, a momentous event that you remember nothing of. Nothing useful, at least.’

  ‘You don’t have to be sarcastic,’ says Mom, miffed. I feel dismayed now. Why am I being so hurtful?

  ‘More tea?’ I ask, desperate to make amends. MIL gives Mom a comforting pat on her shoulder now. I stop short to marvel at this rare display of affection between two women thrown together by their children’s marital choices. ‘Things have changed, that’s all,’ I recover quickly.

  ‘Changed! Too! Much!’ says MIL, spitting the words out like some Shaolin master chopping his adversary into a salad. ‘In our time, we didn’t step out for forty days!’

  ‘Ma, in your time, you didn’t have anywhere to go,’ I say. Where did that comment pop up from?

  More silence. Punctuated by discreet sniffling. ‘She’s sarcastic with her mother-in-law, too,’ says MIL, dabbing at her eyes. ‘I was only giving advice.’

  Why does everyone assume that what a new mother needs most is advice?

  2 July

  All this nonsense about how maids are hard to find is just a spooky urban legend. The extra exclamation mark on my last ‘Maid Wanted’ message has made all the difference. Some kind Samaritan has sent me a maid. Just what I need: a woman whom I can strike a straightforward transaction with. Work for pay.

  A paid functionary beats free family hands down (‘free’ implying unpaid as well as idle enough for devil workshopping). A paid functionary will shut up on the advice, follow my instructions instead of shamelessly pursuing her own agenda, do all baby chores that don’t involve breasts—and assume, with a child-like purity of thought, that I know best.

  5 July

  Oh no. Free family has ganged up to beat paid functionary into submission. The new maid Amina is getting paid one salary and reporting to three iron-willed bosses. ‘Why are you ironing the baby’s clothes at this hour?’ says Mom to Amina. ‘The nappies are waiting to be dried.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says peace-loving Amina, unplugging the iron and trotting off to attend to the nappies.

  This goes well till MIL comes along. ‘Why are you drying the nappies at this hour? The baby’s clothes need to be ironed.’

  ‘The other grandma told me to do this first,’ says Amina, obviously puzzled by the mixed messages trickling down from the Mother Superiors.

  ‘I know what you are trying to do, you cheeky thing,’ accuses MIL, displaying all the insecurity that her ilk is notorious for. ‘You are playing one poor old lady off against the other.’

  I call Sonia to complain about the poor old ladies who will drive all my maids away if I don’t stop them. ‘Slip the maid something extra on the side,’ she says. ‘How do you think Janaki survives my mother-in-law?’

  I’m shocked, who’d have guessed? Janaki is a family heirloom; she’s been with Sonia’s family since her husband was a schoolgoing boy. I didn’t imagine that she had to be paid off to stay.

  I sneak into the kitchen to carry out the dark deed Sonia has dispatched me on, but I feel squeamish. As a journalist, I have strong feelings about bribing people.

  ‘Don’t worry, the poor old ladies will be gone soon, and you and I will live happily forever after,’ I whisper, tucking a 500-rupee note into Amina’s hand. It’s not a bribe, I tell myself, it’s hardship money, because these ladies are neither old nor poor, and who knows if they’ll be gone soon?

  Amina smiles through her tears. Crisis averted.

  8 July

  MIL is on the prowl again. ‘Whoever told you to fold the nappies in triangles?’ she demands.

  ‘I am not trying to turn you against each other,’ says Amina, clarifying her stand well in advance, ‘but the other grandma did.’

  ‘Arre, Ritu, do you have a problem if we fold the nappies into rectangles instead?’ MIL shouts.

  ‘Of course not,’ says Mom, who did have a problem up to five minutes ago but isn’t about to admit it now.

  ‘Cheeky thing, turning poor old ladies like us against each other!’ says MIL, glowering at Amina. ‘You thought we weren’t clever enough to see through your games, but we are.’ She walks away tapping her head with her finger as if to indicate that there is a brain sitting inside it.

  I emerge from the bedroom, pleasantly oblivious to the fog of negative feeling swirling through the house. ‘Amina, are you folding the nappies yet?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m not going to fold nappies at all,’ says peace-loving Amina who has just been radicalised. ‘I quit!’

  Maybe I should argue against immediate departure, citing weather (‘It’s sweltering outside’), political climate (‘They’ve just declared a curfew. Shoot at sight!’) or timing (‘Really? Just when I was going to double your pay?’).

  But MIL decides to be brave at my expense. ‘Let her go!’

  ‘I raised you all by myself, didn’t I?’ agrees Mom. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  Who the hell is we?

  I sink into the sofa, rocking Tara as Amina packs her bags. ‘Look, Tara, look,’ I mutter under my breath, surfing channels on the telly. ‘Let’s find a serial in which the woman murders both her mother and her mother-in-law. Won’t that be fun?’

  15 July

  What I learnt this week:

  1. Hiring a maid is easier than keeping her.

  2. Becoming a mother does not help you understand your own mom better.

  3. Even less, your husband’s mom.

  4. Or your husband.

  17 July

  Must sleep. Now. This minute.

  18 July

  Fell asleep in the shower. And while eating. Also en route to answer doorbell in vain hope of a maid.

  19 July

  Must not answer random doorbells with bra undone, pendulous breasts hanging free and milk-stained nightie unbuttoned, thinking ‘Ah, might be a maid!’ Or burst out crying when it isn’t. I think I frightened away a well-meaning visitor.

  20 July

  MIL has exiled me to my room after yesterday’s fiasco. People are dropping in to see Tara without giving us fair warning, and I can’t be opening the door for them without giving them fair warning. Best to leave the socialising to the Maternal Squatters who have taken over my home. And to curl up with my notes on the dam story . . .

  Tara screams for milk. I must:

  Cast notes aside.

  Dive on bed.

  Roost on donut cushion like bird-on-nest, appearing ridiculous but sparing tailbone.

  Fix feeding pillow around self.

  Undo bra.

  Remember belatedly that the crying baby isn’t going to get here on her own . . .

  Rush to the cot.

  Fend off Tara half-blinded with hunger.

  Do the cushion-pillow-bra bit again.

  Plunk myself down for the long haul.

  After many hit-or-misses, baby connects with breast. I imagine myself inside one of those fifteenth-century Madonna paintings. The mania from a minute ago gives way to boredom. Wondering why, if everyone is so hung up on this breastfeeding business, no one has found a way to make it more entertaining.
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  By the time Sameer is home, I’ve had enough of this breastfeeding in seclusion, thank you, and all I want is to lounge on the sofa, Sameer beside me, and watch TV with my boobs hanging out.

  ‘Anu, not here!’ MIL is horrified by this exhibitionist streak in her daughter-in-law.

  ‘Be with you in five minutes,’ says Sameer, looking amused as MIL ushers me to the bedroom. Must find some way to tell her that if Sameer and I have made a child together, he’s seen much more than just my breasts.

  22 July

  The newly repaired intercom rings. At last! A maid instead of a random guest! ‘Send her up!’

  I fling the door wide open. My heartbeat is erratic, but I am the picture of steely calm. In my mind, I am casting a net in a sea teeming with maid-fish. ‘Me!’ ‘Me!’ ‘Me!’ they gasp as they flounder. If not this one, then another. Many, many, so many, to choose from. The thought stills me.

  She steps out of the elevator. I open my mouth to speak, but she raises a finger to silence me. A plump finger with three fat rings on it. She’s on the phone.

  Mom, who has just arrived on her daily visit, frowns, ‘What nerve!’

  Mom has never taken any nonsense from anyone. I, on the other hand, can take any amount of nonsense based on the well-founded belief that there is a demand-supply mismatch when it comes to maids. Why else would it take fourteen days (yup, I counted) since Amina left to find a measly replacement?

  ‘Don’t look so needy!’ hisses Mom.

  ‘Of course not, she’s the one who wants the job!’ I whisper back. Mom looks pleased. Good thing she can’t see my toes squirming.

  ‘Who were your previous employers?’ demands Mom, sounding a little like . . . MIL? No, I’m just being paranoid.

  ‘All dead.’

  What? All?

  ‘Look, Madam, there are many people who want to hire me,’ says the maid, pointing at the sheet of paper clutched in her hand. I take an instant liking to her. How utterly organized! She has a list of fifteen potential employers and I’m No. 6 on it. That’s not bad at all. I’m willing to let the multiple-dead-employers bit slide.