2012
"Mumma meri Kummo se baat karogi?" (Mother, will you talk to Kummo?) asked excitedly my 2 year old daughter drowning whatever my mother was telling me on phone. I asked my mother about this 'Kummo' who had activated such enthusiasm in Nyasa. "Her name is Kamala and she teaches Nursery kids in the school. And when you send Nyasa to me, she becomes her governess," told my mother. So, Kummo is the one who handles my child and I better be thankful to her. After a week when I travelled to my hometown to fetch Nyasa back, I finally met Kummo and her sister.
2014
My mother, an erstwhile scientist, founded the first 'English Medium' school almost 25 years ago in what can be called one of the most backward districts in Uttar Pradesh. She is not a flag bearing feminist (she's quite conservative sometimes) and yet I learnt my first lessons in gender equality from her. Whenever I got too busy in my professional 'shenanigans,' I sent Nyasa to her grandparents. Now, she stays there full time. All the parties involved love this arrangement. Including Kummo. Interestingly, there are sanctimonious relatives, friends and colleagues who are ever anxious to send me on the 'bad mother' guilt trip.
When I reached my parents' house that noon, I saw Nyasa being fed khichdi by a tall teenaged girl, dressed in the way almost every small-town girl does: a pair of unaltered jeans with dirty and worn out cuffs, a synthetic kurta and a shiny stole. A dusky complexioned, completely average looking girl who greeted me with a Namaste and stood aside to facilitate an emotional reunion of her ward with the mother. As I learnt later that day Kummo took care of Nyasa during the school hours when my mother was busy in her office downstairs. Her elder sister, who also teaches in our school, paid occasional visits during the school recess but Nyasa hadn't taken a fancy to her.
As a nitpicking mother and an ungrateful daughter I observed Kummo very closely during my stay there for one reason initially and quite another after my mortification. The girl appeared a little unstable, extremely sweet at one moment and quite detached the other. She stared continuously at a spot without realizing it. She ran without really having to. I found her really irritating at times. I was waiting for my mother to come upstairs after winding up for the day. How could she trust our most precious treasure with a girl who was definitely mildly idiot if not totally a crackpot! I never realized in my sanctimonious demeanour at that moment that Nyasa was MY responsibility which I comfortably transferred to my mother expecting world class arrangements in a god-forsaken mofussil. She came upstairs and I accosted her with endless complaints. My mother, as usual, made an angry face which was an age-old signal to shut up. She then declared, "This girl is a rape survivor."
"Stop being so judgmental," she demanded. "And, haven't you noticed how happy your daughter is in her company! Nyasa is an extremely headstrong child and hypersensitive one at that. You think it is easy to find somebody who can be so patient and genuinely caring. Why don't you find one in Delhi?" I was ashamed of myself on many accounts. How could I be so callous that I chose to ignore her patience and loving ways with Nyasa and focussed on her messy hair! That she was a rape survivor hadn't sunk in at that moment.
"You ask me why I have employed her, so here are the two reasons. Firstly, the sisters belong to a poor family and do not have means to support their education. Whatever I pay them here goes towards their education. I agree that they are not great teachers but at a nursery you don't need educators. You need people who can connect with little children. They take long leaves during the exams and come back to teach once done. And with all your gender equality activism in a metro, do you realize how difficult it is for a girl who was raped and brutalized in childhood to survive in a small town like ours? She is a little unstable but at least she is putting up a fight. Isn't it our duty to help her and the family to put the trauma behind them?"
I was suitably chastised. And I also learnt a lesson on rape and rehabilitation first hand.
All mothers teach you important life lessons, but working mothers, radical or not, burst the bubble that your precocious ideas create around you, complete with jargon and theories. In my case, both my daughter and mother keep teaching me a lesson or two on regular basis and ensure that my eyes never overlook what exists even beneath the grassroots. I became a mother just before my 24th birthday much to the amusement of my radical friends and colleagues. At this other end of the spectrum, the 'bad mother' me has suffered ridicule and discrimination on account of my early marriage and motherhood in professional circles. Ironically, it is my daughter and her nani that contribute immensely in my understanding of feminism and womanhood.
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