Isn't it funny the memories that pop into one's mind when one is sitting around on a lazy weekend afternoon! Today I suddenly remembered an incident from when I was in college in Pune, living with my parents.
One weekend morning, our cleaning lady brought her daughter along when she came to clean our house. The girl was about 10 or 11 years old. She did some minor tasks for her mother, but mostly she just wandered around the house, drinking in the novelty of it all. I was in my room brushing my hair when I noticed her in the doorway. She was trying to be unobtrusive but was clearly immensely interested in me and my room. She stood there watching me with a mixture of curiosity, admiration and envy. I invited her in and chatted with her a little. I can't remember what we talked about, only that she was very pleased and excited at the attention. So I gave her a bottle of nail polish from my dressing table. She was thrilled to bits by the gift and ran off excitedly. Which of course made me feel quite good about myself, all generous and kindly.
A few days later, I noticed a red stain on the steps outside our house and pointed it out to my mother. She told me it was the nail polish. The girl was showing it off to her mother as they left, and dropped it on the stairs. Someone had cleaned off the mess but the stain remained. I remembered the girl, so pleased and excited and proud of her gift, and I imagined how she must have felt when she dropped that bottle right as she left. Too late for me to see it happen and too soon for her to have got even a minute's use out of it.
She never came to our house again, at least not while I was around. So I couldn't give her a new one. Perhaps I should have sent one through her mother but that seemed strangely inappropriate - like placing too high a value on my own trivial gift. Or maybe I was just too shy to make a deliberate present like that and talked myself out of it. But I would wince every time I passed that stain on the stair, imagining a little girl's bitter - if fleeting - disappointment.
The girl - I knew her name at the time - was married off when she was 15 or 16 years old. Today she probably cleans houses like her mother did, probably has a litter of kids to feed, and very probably a husband who comes home drunk and beats her up. It is safe to say that she has long forgotten that incident - likely drowned out in her memory by other, more weighty disappointments. Why then does it still come back to me occasionally? And each time I feel her disappointment (as imagined by me) in the pit of my stomach and my heart turns to lead. In vast disproportion to the actual incident - I wonder why. Perhaps it is my own disappointment, at my failure to make even the smallest improvement to her life. Or maybe it's the reminder of just how cruel the gods of fate can be - not content with robbing us of the great happinesses of life, sometimes they take particularly malicious pleasure in depriving us of the small trivial joys.
One weekend morning, our cleaning lady brought her daughter along when she came to clean our house. The girl was about 10 or 11 years old. She did some minor tasks for her mother, but mostly she just wandered around the house, drinking in the novelty of it all. I was in my room brushing my hair when I noticed her in the doorway. She was trying to be unobtrusive but was clearly immensely interested in me and my room. She stood there watching me with a mixture of curiosity, admiration and envy. I invited her in and chatted with her a little. I can't remember what we talked about, only that she was very pleased and excited at the attention. So I gave her a bottle of nail polish from my dressing table. She was thrilled to bits by the gift and ran off excitedly. Which of course made me feel quite good about myself, all generous and kindly.
A few days later, I noticed a red stain on the steps outside our house and pointed it out to my mother. She told me it was the nail polish. The girl was showing it off to her mother as they left, and dropped it on the stairs. Someone had cleaned off the mess but the stain remained. I remembered the girl, so pleased and excited and proud of her gift, and I imagined how she must have felt when she dropped that bottle right as she left. Too late for me to see it happen and too soon for her to have got even a minute's use out of it.
She never came to our house again, at least not while I was around. So I couldn't give her a new one. Perhaps I should have sent one through her mother but that seemed strangely inappropriate - like placing too high a value on my own trivial gift. Or maybe I was just too shy to make a deliberate present like that and talked myself out of it. But I would wince every time I passed that stain on the stair, imagining a little girl's bitter - if fleeting - disappointment.
The girl - I knew her name at the time - was married off when she was 15 or 16 years old. Today she probably cleans houses like her mother did, probably has a litter of kids to feed, and very probably a husband who comes home drunk and beats her up. It is safe to say that she has long forgotten that incident - likely drowned out in her memory by other, more weighty disappointments. Why then does it still come back to me occasionally? And each time I feel her disappointment (as imagined by me) in the pit of my stomach and my heart turns to lead. In vast disproportion to the actual incident - I wonder why. Perhaps it is my own disappointment, at my failure to make even the smallest improvement to her life. Or maybe it's the reminder of just how cruel the gods of fate can be - not content with robbing us of the great happinesses of life, sometimes they take particularly malicious pleasure in depriving us of the small trivial joys.
No comments:
Post a Comment