The Servants

We were luckier than most. I don’t just mean having servants. I mean we thought we had divine protection: a servant named Lakshman and another named Vishnu. How could we not thrive under the aegis of a sanctified staff? After a while, Laksman was either fired for stealing or left for his village on chutti and never came back – two of the most common reasons for letting a servant go. The third most common reason was if a neighbor in the building or a friend bribed them into their own service with promises of a higher pay.

Vishnu was more than a mere servant. For an illiterate man who never had even a day’s worth of schooling, he was an amazingly quick learner. Dad taught him how to handle a camera (and even change the roll, this being a real feat with the older 120 mm film), how to work a film projector, how to be a butler, and be a gentleman’s gentleman - a first-rate factotum. He could assemble, operate and repair appliances, the instruction manuals of which he could not read, but then neither could any of us, given that all the appliances came from Germany, and the instructions were written in a language that had strange double dots on some of the vowels and random capitalization.

He did the household shopping and managed the accounts, down to the last paisa. This last was no mean feat, considering he could not write and used only mental faculties. You could leave any amount of money and jewelry unlocked and he would not touch it. I guess my father figured that if he could trust Vishnu with his family, he could entrust him with lesser valuables. He also managed the other servants, both the live-ins and the chutaks, the part-timers who came in briefly to wash the clothes once a day or the vessels, after lunchtime and dinnertime. Vishnu accompanied us on all our holidays, and once his work was done, would help improvise games and take us for long hikes. It was Vishnu who taught me how to ride the bike during our holiday in Coonoor, running patiently up and down the footpath by my side, hanging on the seat, and ready to cushion me if I fell.

Dad was a compulsive party-giver. Upon being informed about the party – my father always vague about the number of people attending, and their time of arrival - Vishnu would start polishing the silver and setting up the bar in preparation. Turning on the air condition, stacking the LPs on the gramophone player, laying out the ashtrays and cocktail napkins, filling the little bowls with almonds and pistas – all the same machinations played out at least twice a week, if not more. The last few years of Vishnu’s service with us were traumatic, the evils of alcohol got their hooks into him and sadly, the once honest and trustworthy devoted servant turned to any means he could to secure a drink. At one of the parties, a guest asked my father if times were so tough for him that he had to resort to watering down the alcohol, and that is how Vishnu got caught. He was retired to his village Ratnagiri, with a pension and his son Raghu was hired at the factory and became the bread-winner of his family.

When I was five years old, we ‘inherited’ Sheila. Her ex-employer, and friend of my father, got a job in Germany, and could not take her along. Worried about her future employment, Jackisuncle asked Dad if he could employ Sheila, who would be a good help to Ba, and make an excellent ayah for us.

Sheila had been recently widowed and was raising her young daughter on her own. She moved in and over the years, built up enough knowledge and experience to take over from Vishnu. Unlike him though, she eschewed most foreign appliances, which would actually have lightened her load, preferring instead to do everything by hand. In any event, a food processor could never have competed with the way she ground the kothmir, coconut and chilies to produce the most flavorful green chutney, nor the mandolin, with the way she diced cucumbers and shredded carrots for the kachumbar or sliced potatoes to make us wafers.

She was a tough biddy. All the servants, the cooks, drivers and malis in the building were totally intimidated by her. Their Indian machismo melted like ghee under her ferocious gaze, and when confronted with the habitual, displeased pose of hands on her hips. She may not have been the memsahib, but no one had the gumption to tell her that.

I was the last one on earth to tell her who was the boss. She was always quick to advise, correct, and scold me and put me in my place, but I never objected to anything and quickly figured out the fastest way to turn that stern frown upside down was to call her “Tikubai”, give her a big hug and shower her with kisses.

All through the years, she steadfastly maintained that she could not understand a word of English. Yet, she managed just fine, communicating with the constant stream of foreigners that traipsed in and out of our house. I kept up the charade to make her happy. We would both pretend she could not understand, and eavesdropping on my phone conversations, she would learn my plans for the day…at what time I was off to play golf, whose party I was going to, or that I planned to skip her carefully-planned evening meal in favor of an invitation to the popular Shamiana, a café in the Taj Hotel, or eat at my friend Vinita’s house, her mother making the most divine cholé. Loyal to the end, she never told on me, not all the drinking and not all the wild bashes I would throw when my dad was away on a business trip. She would bring bottles of Limca up to my room when girlfriends visited, knowing full well the bottle of Pims No 1 would come out of my secret hiding place to add a little extra buzz.

Sheila stayed on long enough to look after my kids when we went to India on vacation. Nothing the children did would elicit anything but a grandmotherly smile, and if anyone was to be rebuked, it would be me – I was too hard on my kids, they were such angels, why do I shout at them so much and so on. The hands never went on her hips, the frown disappeared, replaced by sheer joy when I left the kids with her, when I went shopping or partying. She had transcended the traditional role of ayah to quasi surrogate mother and confidante, to even playing a dadi to my children.

It was extremely fortunate, that over the years, she had taken over the kitchen and turned out to be a great cook, which was our saving grace, given the culinary muck churned out by the maharaj.