by Preeti Madhusudhan
Selvi began her day early, before the rising sun painted the sky a delicate pink. The earliest to reach the communal tap, she bathed, sluicing the delicious cold water on her body, washing away the previous day’s sweat and grime. She then washed the clothes of the household, as much as she could gather in the semi-darkness of their chawl. All this took her a mere 15 minutes with minimal waste of water. Time and water were both of equal importance to her. She knew the communal tap had water running out of it only until noon each day. And the entire tenement of almost 50 families depended on that one tap. The 50 families were all like family to her and so the women-folk had each other’s back. When one fell ill, her neighbours filled her pots without being told to do so.
Dawn was soon to break. Selvi could tell, though the sky was just as dark. That was because it just felt a little warmer already. Her small body with her hair piled neatly in a bun on top was already beginning to sweat barely minutes after the cool bath. She worked as a janitor in the gleaming offices of a construction company. White aluminium extrusion sheets and miles of glass-clad office which owed its squeaking cleanliness to many like Selvi who toiled over the merest speck of dust and imagined lint. Her small frame and neat hair were one of the reasons she was selected for the job, though there were many others who were probably better built to do some of the strenuous cleaning chores. Seems small, waif-like creatures blended well into the background of that steely-glass monstrosity, what with their spotless white aprons and white trousers and caps that hid their dark hairs. She had to clean and then vanish without a trace when not required.
Having deposited the filled pots in their place by the kitchen corner of the low, asbestos- sheet roofed, single-room, single–storeyed chawl, Selvi proceeded to clean the floor with a broom. Just because it was just a room in a dirty part of the city, it didn’t mean she was going to let the place gather dust. As was her practice, she gently dusted the walls too, focusing on the top of the walls where they met the slanting roof, to ward off any stray lizards or more significantly, scorpions. She noiselessly cleaned the floor next, watching out for the heap of sleeping forms on it. She shared the place with her consumptive father and her middle-aged brother who spent most of his wakeful hours at the state-run liquor store. She gave him a monthly allowance for his expenses, all of which went down in drinks. Her father drank, bringing his family to the streets and into this slum and then his son continued his legacy. Selvi’s job at the construction company gave them just enough to keep the tin-roof on their heads and have two meals a day.
Having cleaned up, Selvi lit up a couple of cheap incense sticks she regularly bought outside the temple she visited every Sunday. The matchstick flare briefly illumined the beatific face of the goddess in the faded picture hung on the only nail in the mouldy walls of the house. Selvi folded her palms together and prayed. That was her only offering to her deity, her prayers.
“That’s enough thayi, She wants nothing more than your love.” The priest at the temple with the kind, brown eyes always told her, turning around to indicate the Goddess in the sanctum sanctorum. His wrinkled, warped body and grey hair soothed her agitated thoughts. He never said more than what was necessary, always waiting for her to speak first. He very rarely smiled and when he did, she felt as though her mother had stroked her hair. She had very faint memories of her mother who had died when she was a toddler. She was consumptive too, coughing painfully till the very end.
She glanced once more at the picture on the wall. “Did amma look like this?” Though she hadn’t seen a picture of her amma, she knew almost instinctively that her mother most certainly couldn’t look like the goddess in the picture. Old though the picture was, you could make out that the Goddess had fair skin, unlined and clear, her eyes glowed from a kindness that probably came only on a full stomach and her lips had a mystic smile that only wealth could grant. There wasn’t anything remotely mystic or kind about poverty. She prepared rice gruel which was the only thing her father could swallow anymore and her brother’s intestine could retain with a hangover. She ate a portion of it adding a little rock salt, chopped raw onions and green chilli for her breakfast. Thank God, onions and green chilli aren’t expensive yet, she reflected with a wry smile dashing a glance at the Goddess. There were times though in the recent past when even those had become a luxury and the prices were then brought down artificially by the state following demonstrations and protests and ugly newspaper cartoons.
She carefully rinsed her mouth with a little water, spitting out the waste at the roots of the tamarind tree that grew outside their hut. Atleast this comes free she thought, collecting a bunch of dried tamarind that had fallen down overnight and stored them as usual in an old plastic container in the kitchenette. Her mouth watered at the thought of the rasam she could make for their dinner that night. She pinched a small piece off, popping it in her mouth and relishing the rush of sour tanginess that watered her mouth instantly. Her eyes fluttered involuntarily with the sour juice filling her mouth. Unable to resist the flavour, she pinched off another piece and stuffing it in her battered purse, she set off for the day. Her father and brother were still asleep. As she stepped out, the sun had already risen; the east end of the sky was a glorious riot of various shades of orange. The birds were up and about, the chawl had woken for the day. She could hear pots banging as the lady-folk rushed to the tap. She smiled shyly as elderly women admired her discipline.
“What Selvi? Up and out already? “
Others who knew her family a long time, as usual commiserated.
“Tsk,tsk! You poor child! That brother of yours! Oh, don’t mistake me, but that rascal broke my pot last night in his drunken fit”.
“Alright, akka. I will get you a new one.” She sighed inwards, a pot didn’t cost much but it was the equivalent of two days of lunch money at the company. They weren’t allowed to carry lunch. The manager had been instructed to not let the cleaning staff get packed lunch. “Who knows what they will bring and spill it where!” They could buy lunch at the canteen and how many ever times they had complained about the cost to their manager, there seemed to be no effect. “Just fucking skip the lunch for all I care. I want to hear no more of your filthy, fucking lunches you whores,” he had yelled the last time they had talked to him of this. This job was the closest to home, for any of the other similar places Selvi had to take a bus or a train and that was only going to eat into her savings. Today was already the third day she would go without lunch. The morning gruel was the only food she had been having the past three days. She simply didn’t have any energy left to cook when she reached home after dark.
“I ate the leftover gruel from morning, you lie down if you are tired,” her father told her.
Again. She thought. Again no lunch.
She changed in the grubby locker room in the construction company’s offices. The elderly watchman and Selvi were the earliest in the place every day. After opening the main lobby and her grubby locker room, the watchman went his way and she only saw him while leaving the place in the evening. He stayed in the premises in a similar grubby room somewhere near the building’s motor room. Anyway better than my hut, she thought as she neatly folded her thin cotton sari into her bag. She took good care of her uniform as even a slight spot in it could mean her losing her job. This uniform was partly the reason why she woke so early. The communal tap was surrounded by huge flag stones that also served as washing stones. They got mushier and dirtier with the passing hour and a white cloth could easily get dyed brown in that grime. She cleaned the flagstones, squinting her eyes in the dark looking for mud and slush. She then carefully cleaned her uniform with the soap she bought especially for this. She treasured the soap and hid it at home so it stayed clean, unpolluted by the dirt from other clothes. She had a cheaper soap for the ordinary clothes.
Her tummy felt a little queasy as she tied the apron behind her back. Must be the raw onion, she thought. The tamarind was still at the back of her mouth, she brought it up front and took a bite and waited for the tang to soothe her stomach’s unease. She then set about with her vacuum cleaner, beginning at the lobby. This was an all-white space, the source of her nervousness as she entered the building each day. The white leather upholstery of the long couches, the white raw silk panels that hung over the long plates of glasses of the façade, the gigantic, fine-glazed, white ceramic vases that stood in the corner of the room all required different cleaning materials and different pressure of her hand to get cleaned. Every day by the time she had finished the lobby she found that she was completely drenched in sweat. She would then hurry away as she was afraid of the smell of her sweat clinging to the air there. She had heard the receptionist joke about her “slum smell” to the junior clerk.
Her tummy turned again as she headed to the top floors, pushing the cleaning supplies trolley ahead of her. As she stepped in to the service elevator, the smell of the cleaning liquids, the trapped air in the elevator, all rushed to her head; she saw the room go round her in a wild circle. She leaned on the trolley to support her swaying body. The elevator door opened with a soft “ping” letting out the trolley that had leaned against it bearing the weight of Selvi. As her head hit the hard surface of the black, gleaming granite floor, her last thoughts were of the trolley that had with a clatter, just then come into contact with the glass wall opposite the lift.
Pic : https://www.flickr.com/photos/85296574@N00/
