by Anita Gill

We arrived at my grandmother’s house in the summer, when the heat had already begun to sting. Punjab may be the northern region of India, but it still had harsh seasons. I was 25 and had only visited a couple of times, but the rooms were etched in my memory: the blue linoleum floor and light blue walls decorated with Guru Gobind Singh looking up to the heavens, the two bedrooms with hard wood bases and thin cot mattresses, the tiled bathrooms, one that housed a western toilet. Compared to other homes in Chandigarh, it was ancient. It was on a corner street with a small patch of land on the left side of the house. Trash accumulated there from pedestrian traffic and vegetable sellers with their rolling carts. The house suffered rolling power outages whenever construction work started in another sector. The inside felt dark and filled with too many memories, too many ghosts.

The banker came by in the afternoon. Dad brought him into the living room, the one room rarely used that had a fan humming and the large hanging portraits of Uncle and our grandfather, Papaji. Each picture had an orange garland draped around it. Voyeurs in the transaction.

The banker had on a full suit and a striking magenta button down shirt. Sometimes when he moved, there were the circles of sweat under his armpits. He kept his small Nokia phone out and kept talking in loud Hindi, which sounded like fists pummeling leather. Mom, my younger sister, and I were sitting on the stiff chairs in the corner. Everything happened in Hindi. Mom wasn’t Indian and she couldn’t follow the Hindi, but she was attentive.

The servant came in with a small tray of water glasses, the condensation already gathered on the outside. Her sari was a worn cloth of green and pink and she had draped part of the fabric over her head. She slowly walked toward each of us and we took a glass. I forgot how to say “thank you” in her language, so I pitifully muttered it in mine. I didn’t know if she heard me, or even understood.

My grandmother—Beeji—rented the second floor rooms to a Nepalese family who worked as servants. As a servant, they also had living quarters and full meals. The man who lived upstairs in my grandmother’s home was short and skinny and equipped with a small mustache. When I was 10 and on my first visit, he would come downstairs to cook, creating the smell of sweating onions mixed with coriander and cumin in the house. After he finished cooking for my grandparents, he would set aside a small plate, taking it with him upstairs.

The man later married and his wife took over the cooking and cleaning for my grandparents’ house. I learned this on my second trip to India when I was 19. The wife had the same Nepalese traits as her husband: high cheekbones, bronze skin and a small frame where clothes draped over her body. She had one long braid lining her spine. On certain days the woman would sweep all of the floors. She used a short handmade broom that looked like a jumble of sticks tied together. She would crouch on the floor and move the dust out of the house. Later, she would take a soapy bucket and rag to wash the linoleum by hand. She threw the soaked rag to the ground and made fast swipes on the floor, a wet semicircle forming with each toss.

In addition to cooking and cleaning, the Nepalese woman took care of my grandparents. My grandparents stubbornly wanted to remain in their house, even though the small step from the house to the driveway would be the step that later ended my grandfather’s life. One day, his bones shivered; he fell on that step and broke his hip. After Papaji died, my grandmother refused to move in with her children. Beeji had been the mother of four children including one adopted cousin. At age 18, she started to take care of her own mother, who suffered from epilepsy. She wanted the house to be hers; living with her children would only start a power struggle. 

The servants remained and Beeji never felt lonely. Beeji’s house had more primitive plumbing (“traditional” according to locals), so bathing took place in a shower stall with a large bucket of warm water and a smaller cup to pour the water over your body. Because of her age, Beeji wasn’t able to wash her hair when she bathed, so the Nepalese woman would take some soap and comb it through her thin white hair and gently braid it into a small thread of a plait. She finished by twirling the braided hair into a small bun right above her nape.

When I woke up, I rushed to the bathroom to take a bucket shower (the hot water would shut off at 9 in the morning) and then I sat at the table with my family. The Nepalese woman usually made a heavy morning meal: flat bread stuffed with potatoes, onions and cilantro with fresh-churned butter. Being served felt more discomforting than the bucket showers on chilly mornings. My instinctual reaction was to grab the floral plates and set the dishes. To move would be to interrupt the current flow in the house. My grandmother would say something to me that I wouldn’t understand; my father would tell me not to get in the way; the servant would feel ashamed. As I ruminated over the outcome, the servant was dashing from the kitchen back to the dining room placing fresh hot bread in a plastic bowl. After eating a few pieces, I smiled to the servant woman and put up my hands, trying to say “no more, thank you!” My grandmother gave us a gummy smile and said something in a croaking voice. She wanted us to feel at home. Because this was what home felt like to her.

Now the house was being sold. And I watched helplessly, clutching my glass of water, already lukewarm. A knock came at the door and the servant answered it. In came another man, this one smaller, older and in a dirty shirt and pants. He brought in two large sacks. He was a messenger and probably the person the suit man had been barking at on the phone. After propping the sacks on the floor by the sofa, the messenger immediately left.

The two dirty white sacks were filled with black money. White money is through the bank. Black money is in cash. While dad spoke to the bankers in Punjabi, the local dialect, the servant woman walked towards the kitchen. Did she feel overwhelmed knowing that there were bags of money in the other room, enough for her family to buy their own home and stop working as servants? I softly asked mom, “What’s going to happen to the other tenants and the servants? Will they stay in the house?”

“Well, it’s an older house, so they are going to demolish it and build a new one here instead. As far as the tenants, they will have to move. The servants will probably go work for another family.”

The house would be destroyed. Why hadn’t I realized that? New owners would rather tear down the house and build a new one on that land, one with better plumbing, higher-quality electric wires and their personal architectural style. I had assumed a new family would move into the main living quarters and the servants would simply work for them instead. But we were evicting the servants. And they would have no reaction as they took in the news that they needed to find a new home. How would they be treated in the next home? The new family would be inured to having servants as shadows passing through the rooms.

Beeji loved to tell stories and the servants were probably subsequently steeped in knowledge about our family history. They were witnesses to everything that occurred in the house. They had met my other relatives from the United States—they probably had nicknames for us they only shared with one another in their bedroom darkness. I wondered if the Nepalese family saw us in a negative way, as people who had ignored their elders and barely visited them. I had flown 7,000 miles to see my grandmother and I couldn’t utter one intelligible syllable to her. The servants could talk to my grandmother. The Nepalese woman addressed my grandmother as mataji or mother. There was some envy in my glare at the servant woman. She and her family probably considered me to be a spoiled grandchild, who refused to learn her father’s language and therefore neglected any connection to her Indian family. Where was my defense? I never had a choice in the matter; my father believed it was more important that he support his family than teach his daughters Punjabi. When I was 10 years old, my aunt translated my grandmother’s words, “She says you need to learn her language.” I had already failed them. I bit the skin around my nails that night until they bled.

            When I was 26, I returned to India. My cousin Sonia was getting married in the United States and we were buying her wedding clothes for the Hindu ceremony. Sonia was my age and commiserated with my dread of India. We both cringed at the overwhelming poverty, the pungent smells and the accusatory relatives who felt we didn’t like their food, who thought we were too Americanized. Her parents, my Uncle Raj and Aunt Pinky, had lived half of their lives in India; the transition was much easier for them.

We stayed at Leena Auntie’s house, which was only 10 minutes away from Beeji’s former home. At Leena Auntie’s house, the servants had changed. In a previous visit, Sumit was there with his wife and three-year-old son. Sumit and his family were also Nepalese. His son looked like miniature version of his father, always smiling. He used to play with Leena Auntie’s grandson, who was about the same age. Now, only Sumit remained. “Mom said that Sumit’s wife left him and took their son back to Nepal,” Sonia told me. She was better at deciphering the Punjabi and eavesdropped on the conversations that curtained me off. “It’s so sad. The poor man has been abandoned.”

            Sumit was awake before all of us, bundled in his worn leather jacket and wool hat. It was the middle of the three-week cold spell that hit Chandigarh every winter. “Good morning!” he said to Sonia and me with a heavy accent. He brought out some tea with steam curls visibly wafting in the chilly air. We acted appreciative and glossed over the truth that his family was gone, returning to the mountains where there were fewer job opportunities and schools for his sweet son. Later, Sumit drove us to the local emporiums and walked with us, haggling with vendors on our behalf. “Discount, discount,” he would badger them, trying to get us the best deal. I wondered who had taught him the few English words he used.

            I went upstairs in an emporium that sold handcrafted items from southern India. There were spotted vibrant red pillowcases with small mirrors decorating the edges. Through the small mirrors, I could see parts of my face reflected back.

            “You like anything?” Leena Auntie asked from behind me. She was happy to see me take an interest in Indian goods. She liked that I embraced my culture much more than my father did.

“Oh, I’m just looking at these pillowcases,” I said and I showed her the ones in my hands.

“Very lovely! You should buy it! It’s your job to maintain a nice house for your husband!” I had gotten married a year earlier to an American. To my Indian family, I was now a wife, the woman who kept up the home. Auntie wandered off towards Sonia who deliberated buying some cloths as decoration for her mendhi party. Auntie’s advice made me remember high school English class and my eccentric teacher explaining the Victorian woman as the angel of the house. Most women in those stories had affairs, went crazy or committed suicide.

Leena Auntie only came to the United States once—in 1987. I was only a few years old at the time. Mom told me that she didn’t like it in America, so she never came back. 

Leena Auntie always had an excuse for why she wasn’t able to attend our weddings and graduations—she was too busy. After we sold Beeji’s house, she moved into Leena Auntie’s spacious home. Leena Auntie said it was difficult taking care of her mother with her other responsibilities. Her comments usually had an undertone of resentment that her siblings in America hadn’t done their share to take care of Beeji.

At night, Sonia and I slept in one of Leena Auntie’s spare rooms. We were in our cots buried under covers with the space heater humming in the corner. It felt like Sonia and I were children again staying at each other’s houses and making jokes in the darkness until one of us would hiccup. “I don’t get it,” Sonia whispered to me. “Auntie says she’s so busy, but she doesn’t have a job. She doesn’t even have to take care of the house! She has two servants who do that! My mom works and cleans the house! How could she take care of Beeji at the same time?!”

*          *          *

One evening, Beeji fell. She was shuffling in her sandals and she tripped on her baggy salwar pants. We gathered around her, checking if she broke anything when she hit the marble floor, but she seemed uninjured save for sore limbs. We put her to bed. Sonia and I went to her room once she lied down. Sonia tried to translate what Beeji was saying.

“She says don’t worry! I fall all the time!” I looked at Sonia.

“That’s not comforting,” I said.

One of the servants, Priya, pulled out a thin mattress and set it on the floor next to Beeji’s bed. She quietly draped some sheets over the blue mattress, setting up her post at Beeji’s side for the night.

The mound of blankets covering Priya was curled up on the floor. I should have been the one taking care of Beeji. Did Priya know this? Did she resent it? I wondered if she acquiesced to her task without thinking how little the grandchildren sacrificed.

On the day we departed, Aunt Pinky quietly said to me, “It’s a good idea to give the servants some money to say thank you!” She suggested that I give each servant 500 rupees. I went to hand it to Priya, and she refused at first, shaking her head and putting up her hand to say “Stop.” Stop paying me to do the job you should be doing. I kept saying, “Please,” and hoping she would forgive my limitations and accept the little I could do. She reluctantly took the money.

It was the equivalent of ten American dollars.

Back home in the United States, I unpacked and came across my notebook. I had brought it to take down some of Beeji’s stories. On one warm afternoon, we sat outside on the front porch. Aunt Pinky sat with me and translated as our matriarch sputtered nonstop in Punjabi, pausing some moments to sweep her thin shawl over her shoulder.

My great-grandfather Nanaji employed Indian servants that were both Muslims and Hindus. When partitioning occurred and the British left, the mass migrations began. Nanaji’s town, Ludihana was predominantly populated with Hindus and Sikhs. People heard that in Delhi, Muslims were being killed in the streets. Locals were aware that the Hindu Nanaji had Muslim servants. To protect them, he hid his servants in his cellar and told prying neighbors that they had already left.

One day, the servants’ young boy woke up hungry. No one had been to the cellar with food yet. He quietly snuck out of the house and tried to find food in the village.

Nanaji found the boy wandering in the street and brought him back home. He realized it was getting too dangerous. Every family had lost or deceased relatives on account of the geographic transition—killing another “misplaced” family occurred as frequently as pumping water from the local well.

That night, Nanaji had his Hindu servants take the Muslim family on horseback to Malerkotla, a Muslim village about 10 miles away. Some time later, the people of Malerkotla had a mass migration into Pakistan, with Nanaji’s former servants included.

The former servants remained in contact with Nanaji and sent him letters. They communicated until Nanaji passed away.

When Beeji finished her story, I felt a new quiet in my chest. My family didn’t see servants as property that could be discarded. That word “servants” wasn’t appropriate for the connection between them. The servants worked in the private walls made to protect families from the outside world. Their jobs were in the most intimate spaces we make for ourselves.

When I was 19, I went with my father to visit Amritsar, a northern city where he went to medical school. He asked our driver go another half hour and reach the border with Pakistan. The road changed from pavement to dirt. There was no line of cars pushing to get across the border. The landscape was the same on both sides. Beyond the dusty plain was a tall fence guarded by two young men, their thin frames weighed down from machine guns. Past that barrier, Nanaji’s former servants lived and remembered.