Maid In Singapore
Authors: Kishore Modak
Maid
in Singapore
By
Kishore Modak
Grapevine India Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
Plot No. 4, First Floor,
Pandav Nagar,
Opposite Shadipur Metro Station,
Patel Nagar,
New Delhi - 110008 India
First published by Grapevine India Publishers in 2012
Copyright © Kishore Modak, 2013
All rights reserved
Acknowledgemen
t
–
Fo
r
ideas
Milind,
Amit,
Alber
t
&
Rani
AUTHOR’S
NOTE
The accounts that lie
ahead are based on true events, stitched together . . . not intended
to disparage any community or peoples. As should any stab at
creativity, my hope is, that this simply entertains and vitalizes.
Creativity, too, lives caged, mostly in the market structure that a
product addresses, and I wish to extend a special word for all those
who have dared to redefine that structure, allowing me to test new
waters and tread new ground. More specifically, I wish to mention
Durjoy, for courage in moving forward where others backed out, and
Padma, for staying the distance and bringing the rigor of discipline
that this game of thoughts and words could not be won without.
. . . more
@. . .
http://facebook.com/kishore.write
CONTENTS
Mum’s
Journal, Part One – Shame
Mum’s
Journal, Part Two – Acceptance
Mum’s
Journal, Part Three – Laughter
Mum’s Journal, Part One:
Shame
A
difficult request, when one is told to
imitate or be oneself—a request usually requested by lawyers
and drama teachers precisely at the moment when one cannot be
oneself.
When we left London in
the summer, David, my white, portly, middle-yeared banker-husband,
faced a choice—get retrenched or move to Asia where the bank
still had a glimmer of growth left on its balance sheet. He chose the
obvious—getting retrenched and accepting the package.
I
nagged him into moving to Singapore.
‘The world’s
gravity is moving east, we too have to move with the times,’ I
had gone on, housewifely wisdom directed at investment banker
intelligence. My Indian-ness, and its middle-class anchor, rejected
the settlement of a one-time, lump sum, retrenchment payout; my build
was in the comfort that a monthly salary provides, keeping income in
step with monthly expenses.
‘We have never
lived outside London. You may be Asian but you, too, have never lived
in the East. We will be lost and unhappy within days,’ he said.
He just wanted to get the fat package and perch around London for a
while, before starting work again.
All significant
household disagreements are usually settled through trial; ours was a
few months down the road, with detectives, police inspectors and all.
‘Let’s just
visit the place for a week, utilize the recce that the bank offers
and then make up our minds,’ I finally prevailed.
What we found was
encouraging, an expatriate life could be lived in a bubble, cut off,
existing within a cocoon of expensive private schools, high-rise MNC
offices, exclusive condominiums and clubs. It was to become our new
life, mimicking as much as possible our past lives. We moved away,
but we never moved on, clinging to our old ways in a new city. It
left us comfortable, inside our isolated bubble. Outside, was a hot,
steamy, locally accented world that we did not contact much, at least
not in the beginning.
Cheques were signed,
the move was made and the cycle of day-to-day life began ticking
again from one weekend to another, in sunny Singapore.
Jay, our
fourteen-year-old, did not complain at all. The school offered him
all that a teen can wish for— friends with the right accent
from back home in London, a blazing quick supply of sensory digital
overloads and a
scen
e
filled with the discovery of
adolescent excitement, including Chinese ‘silk’, Indian
‘masala’ and South-East Asian ‘fusion’ to
test the taste of the palate with.
Ja
y
, our
choice of name for a son, suited both David’s and my ethnicity.
It meant victory in my original language, Hindi; and it was
meaningless in my adopted language, English, where it is simply a
monosyllabic slur. A slight slant of accent, as regards our son’s
name, was enough to bridge the ethnic chasm between me and my
husband.
‘I have got the
certificate and license for getting a maid,’ David told me one
evening, a few weeks after we made the shift to our new home in
Singapore. ‘I had to take a mandatory online lesson and an
exam, before they let me have the license.’ He would have gone
through the motions flippantly, where he should have been attentive;
anyway the exam was not rigorous enough to reject him, as he should
have been.
‘Do we need one,
I mean a maid? We have never had anyone living in with us. Are you
sure you can handle the loss of privacy?’ a point meant purely
to bring up mild household disagreement, one that simply prolongs a
pointless debate with foregone conclusions.
‘Why can’t
you just get some help in the house? At least we can enjoy the
pleasures of low Asian labour costs while we are here.’ He was
drawn in, into the trap of pointless disagreement.
‘Okay, but
remember you will not be able to lounge around the house in your
boxers, or point your gun at me each time you get irretrievably
drunk,’ I cautioned him.
Yes,
gun
. There
is a story in almost all of us; the rest, the story-less ones, are
satiated with what the vacuum of life can suck away, leading a
joyless, sorrow-less life, without any undulations.
He looked at me, simply
waving me away, like when one doesn’t want to discuss their
embarrassing shortcomings.
Every once in a while
he got drunk, beyond drink, brandishing his gun in my face, jeering
and abusing verbally, pulling the trigger now and then as the
pistol’s hammer smacked into the back of the empty barrel. Then
he mounted me and made rough sex.
The gun was never
loaded and the rough, thrusty, sex was satisfying and very
pleasurable. I did not mind either the blank threats or the animal
pawing that followed. In the morning, one just got up and took what
mornings offer those ready to get on and get away with things that
the night leaves remorseful.
Initially though, it
was terrifying—particularly the first few times after we were
married. Then it became acceptable. Now it was fun.
Isn’t marriage
supposed to enliven our sexual fantasies, keeping us physically
contented in its holy circle, nuptial gravity ensuring that we don’t
waver outwards, tangentially away from the circumference, into the
realm of infidelity?
On the weekend, we
headed up to the agency to collect the maid. Yes,
collec
t
,
like lost and found luggage.
‘You must listen
carefully to mum, okay. Take care of the child and don’t speak
all the time on your phone,’ Ms Goh, the agent advised our new
maid pedantically. She was looking in general towards a group of
uniformed girls sitting along the benches of the agency. They looked
back at us, almost as if we were about to hire the lot of them,
including Ms Goh.
Mum
. Was I
supposed to be the girl’s
mu
m
while she lived
with us; maybe it was an Asian cultural thing?
I caught David eyeing
the girls, checking them out, making a mental note, one that could be
recalled when he wanted to masturbate on the many business trips that
he made overseas, or alone at home, unassisted by porn.
It is true; most
technology innovations of the Internet are pioneered in porn.
‘Hello,
mu
m
.
Hello, sir,’ one of the girls got up.
Was she the one he had
picked in his mind? She was too endowed for a man to not stray, at
least for a moment, a moment enough for the groin to awaken. I was
not sure if I wanted her to call David dad if she insisted on calling
me
mu
m
.
Maybe she should have.
‘Are you Mary?’
I asked. That is what the name in all the forms read.
‘Yes,
mu
m
,
I am married,’ she replied.
‘I know you are
married, I was simply asking if your name is Mary,’ I slowed my
speech to a rude crawl, as if speaking to a dim-witted, deaf child,
‘and please don’t call me
mu
m
, I am not
your mother,’ I added, raising my voice just a notch.
Ms Goh burst out
laughing, ‘She is not calling you
mum
, just that she
pronounces madam as
mu
m
,’ I was informed, to my
visible embarrassment.
Outside the expatriate
cocoon, it was not an easy living; it was unfamiliar and alien, one
that could make others laugh out loud, unrestrained.
We left . . . with the
maid and her bags, as if from a hospital with a new, overgrown child.
At home, she slipped
into her work clothes immediately, arming herself with a broom and a
bucket, almost like a warrior. Her work dress was skimpy, revealing
yet sexless, like work wear is. She learnt fast and broke-in well
into the household.
It is a luxury to be
served tea in bed each morning, a pampering I was unused to; or leave
the cooking to Mary and simply settle in front of the tele at noon;
or leave the
getting-Jay-to-schoo
l
to Mary each
morning.
On Sundays, when she
was away for the day, we too headed out, minimizing any housework
that may fall upon us in her absence.
On one such Sunday, we
visited the botanical gardens; it was filled with maids on their day
off.
Mai
d
, yes, that is the official word. Or do you
prefer helper instead?
Helper
is better;
maid
has a
slightly
uniformed-to-dispense-service
s
connotation,
just a step away from the word
keep
.
‘David, it is
full of them. Do you think Mary will be here?’ They were
everywhere, accompanied by dark men mostly from the subcontinent, in
cheap jeans and fake sunglasses. Some of the men walked with their
arms around the fair girls; others sat under trees eating, laughing
and drinking.
‘Bangladeshi
boys. Trust them to dip their dipper wherever they go. Champs if you
ask me,’ David chuckled.
‘How can you say
such a thing? Most of these girls have families back home, you know?’
an attempt at disagreement at my end, to get another pointless
conversation going.
‘Well, these
girls, they do get lonely and they are eighteen plus, which makes
them legal and ready to play. What is wrong? They are consenting
adults, why should it bother you?’ he simply added.
Not wanting to reply, I
looked away at the swans, wondering why they weren’t black,
like the stamp issue illustrations at the SingPost website.
‘Mummy, you said
there will be black swans. There aren’t any,’ Jay
complained.
‘I know, that is
what I thought,’ I, too, was disappointed, a bit embarrassed,
having been the ambassador of the Singapore brand in my family,
especially the sanity of its structure.
A short distance away,
a group of maids and their boys sat merrily around bottles of
depleting whisky. One of them got up and flung a frisbee in the air
for another to chase.
On the following day
after the frenzy of getting dad and son out of the house, I noticed
Mary on the phone as she ironed clothes, the cell phone and the hands
free were an acquisition from the Sunday off. Or, was it a gift from
her Bangladeshi boyfriend, who she may be speaking to now? I looked
out of the window; there was a dark man on the ground floor, just
outside the entrance of the condominium, only metres from the
guardhouse. He was on the phone, looking up in our direction. Was he
the one showering gifts on her all day on Sundays, before doing her
in the Hotel-81 around the corner? Would they build up a whole day’s
libido, being playful all morning, before hiring a room, by the hour,
late in the afternoon, then her rushing home to meet my 7 pm
deadline, on her days off?