The silent agents of change

Sitting ensconced in our upper middle class worlds, we all like to believe that we are in some little way making a difference in the world. Somewhere out there, things are better because of a little charitable deed we did. That could well be so. But what we don't recognise is that the real, silent and potent agents of social reform inhabit our everyday lives but remain invisible to most of us sahibs and memsahibs

Take the time to get to know the team of women who clean and cook for you and you’ll be amazed. While we were living in Mumbai a few years ago, we had three ladies coming in to help us. One used to clean, one used to cook and a third babysat my younger son, who was then less than a year old. Their life stories, on the surface, were just the same as those of millions of other women occupying the less glamorous part of the urban Indian landscape. But dig a little deeper and you’d be blown away by their individual initiative, ambition and fortitude.

All of these women had three children each, coincidentally two girls and a boy in each case. The cook was a widow and the other two had been deserted by their husbands soon after the third child was born. None of these women had studied beyond primary school. And all of them had been married off while they were girls, in their early or middle teen years.

Now these ladies led very hard lives. The cook and cleaner worked three or four part-time jobs in middle class homes to make ends meet. Money was always short. Yet all of them – and this is what impressed me most – had promised themselves that they would educate their daughters and not marry them off before the age of 18. This wasn’t because of advice from social activists or from fear of being punished for breaking the anti- child marriage law. This came from within.

People like you and I cannot understand just how much it takes for such women to stick to this resolve. First, money is a constant challenge. Even public schools for the poor cost some money. Second, there is no supportive spouse to share the responsibility. Then there is always pressure from peers less evolved in their thinking to pull the kids out of school and put them to work. And when it comes to the daughters, the constant advice from the peers is to get them married and pass the “burden” on to another family. Yet none of these three ladies caved. The cook, who was older and had grown children, even made sure that her younger daughter got the vocational training she wanted in order to get a good job.

We’ve now moved to another city and the women who keep our current home running are more fortunate as they are in good marriages. But they too were child brides. Yet they don’t wish the same fate for their daughters, all of whom are in schools.

Through my life I have encountered scores of such examples of admirable courage among the invisible members of home after home. The majority of maids had alcoholic and abusive husbands. The women kept the home fires burning. The cleaning lady in my mother’s home in Delhi has single-handedly put five children through school. Her husband, a gifted embroiderer, wasted his earnings, talent and life on drink. Yet all their kids completed school, thanks entirely to the mother. One of the sons now runs an Internet cafe and computer repair store.

Think about it. This is a gigantic leap, accomplished in a single generation. I can’t think of a parallel in the lives of us, more advantaged, people. We are born into means, giving us automatic access to the education we want to make something of ourselves. We get all the right opportunities, know all the right people. Some of us have probably done a little bit better than our parents managed to at our age, but nothing life-altering.

And then look closely at the lives I have written about. Don’t ever look down on these women. Don’t ever be condescending towards them. They’ve moved mountains while we’ve probably just piled our sand dunes a little bit higher.