Grateful, What For?

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“But what more can she ask for, Ashwin?” replied an agitated Anagha. “She has a room to herself, a clean bathroom, 4 square meals a day. I take her out wherever I go. She is getting to see so many different and new things. Had she been living at home, she would have to stand in a long line to go to the bathroom, she would have had to live with her siblings in a crammed up ‘kholi’ and her parents would have hit her every other day. How can she be so ungrateful? I just don’t understand this girl”, Anagha complained about her 17 year old maid who had been acting up since the past few weeks.

“You are assuming she wants this, and this is what happiness is for her”, replied Ashwin calmly. “You are imposing your world-view of happiness on her, but you are overlooking the fact that she is living away from her family, has to work since such a young age, live with strangers”, he continued. “Maybe all she wants is to play with her brothers and sisters in her crammed up ‘kholi’, eat her ‘maa ke hath ka khana’, hop in the streets with her friends.”

Anagha sat quietly for a while. She had always thought she was providing a very good life to Sheetal. She was teaching her english, gave her good clothes to wear, took her to restaurants and on trips. She had never thought Sheetal or anyone else could want anything more than a better standard of living. Sheetal had been living with them since two years to help take care of Anagha’s children. Her recent tantrums baffled Anagha and she was very irritated.

Ashwin had come over for coffee and as always Anagha poured out her problems before him. He always saw the other angle and helped her alter her perspective. Anagha pondered over his words. She had not thought about Sheetal that way before. Sheetal had been working since the age of 12. Two years ago at the age of 15, she had switched jobs and started living with Anagha’s family. She went home once a month for 2 days. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother a blindly religious woman. She had a younger sister and brother. Their ‘kholi’ was the size of Anagha’s kitchen. Her parents would take away her entire salary and not even give her a single rupee to spend on herself. Given these facts, Anagha had presumed that Sheetal was happier and better off living with her. 

But maybe all Sheetal really wanted was to be with her near and dear ones. Like all of us, she too loved her parents dearly inspite of their minor flaws, her ‘kholi’ was not big or small… it was home to her. Probably all she wanted was to munch on a 1 rupee candy with her friends and giggle about the guy who lived next door.

Anagha conceded. She had never looked at it from Sheetal’s point of view.

Most often, don’t we all think and behave just like Anagha. We look at the lives of those working for us through our eyes and often assume that they should be more than grateful for what we do for them. We feel they should be thankful that we hand them down our clothes, utensils, left over food and other old and used products. We don’t like our children mingling with theirs. We rarely care about their problems and worries. More often than not, we are oblivious of their hardships, their desires and wishes, their struggles and worries. We often complain about how they take us for granted and have no respect and value for what all we do for them. But never once do we take notice of all the things they do for us which are not necessarily a part of their job profile.

We wonder how they are not smart enough to have just one child or sometimes none. Like the desire to procreate and the joy of raising children is meant only for us. We complain how their situation will never improve because they don’t save and invest their money wisely, assuming they have the knowledge and opportunity to do that. We believe they waste their money on televisions and smart phones, like the right to entertainment is only ours.

Maybe we ought to stop viewing their lives from our point of view. We need to stop thinking we are doing them a favour in any way. They don’t need to be grateful to us for anything. Life has dealt us a better hand and that does not give us the right to expect gratefulness from the less fortunate. Our education and exposure do not give us the right to think of them as foolish or unwise.

It is a simple give and take relationship where they provide a service and we pay for it. They are doing for us those chores we would hate to do personally. We don’t need to be grateful, but we definitely need to stop expecting their reverence and thankfulness. And if we are honest with ourselves, we will see they do much more for us than we can and will for them.