Maid in Singapore
By Kishore Modak
Grapevine India Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
Plot No. 4, First Floor,
Pandav Nagar,
Opposite Shadipur Metro Station,
Patel Nagar,
New Delhi - 110008 India
[email protected]
[email protected]
First published by Grapevine India Publishers in 2012
Copyright © Kishore Modak, 2013
All rights reserved
Acknowledgement – For ideas
Milind, Amit, Albert & Rani
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The accounts that lie ahead are based on true events, stitched together . . . not intended to disparage any community or peoples. As should any stab at creativity, my hope is, that this simply entertains and vitalizes. Creativity, too, lives caged, mostly in the market structure that a product addresses, and I wish to extend a special word for all those who have dared to redefine that structure, allowing me to test new waters and tread new ground. More specifically, I wish to mention Durjoy, for courage in moving forward where others backed out, and Padma, for staying the distance and bringing the rigor of discipline that this game of thoughts and words could not be won without.
. . . more @. . .
http://facebook.com/kishore.write
CONTENTS
Mum’s Journal, Part One – Shame
Mum’s Journal, Part Two – Acceptance
Mum’s Journal, Part Three – Laughter
Eve Costello
Mum’s Journal, Part One:
Shame
A difficult request, when one is told to imitate or be oneself—a request usually requested by lawyers and drama teachers precisely at the moment when one cannot be oneself.
When we left London in the summer, David, my white, portly, middle-yeared banker-husband, faced a choice—get retrenched or move to Asia where the bank still had a glimmer of growth left on its balance sheet. He chose the obvious—getting retrenched and accepting the package. I nagged him into moving to Singapore.
‘The world’s gravity is moving east, we too have to move with the times,’ I had gone on, housewifely wisdom directed at investment banker intelligence. My Indian-ness, and its middle-class anchor, rejected the settlement of a one-time, lump sum, retrenchment payout; my build was in the comfort that a monthly salary provides, keeping income in step with monthly expenses.
‘We have never lived outside London. You may be Asian but you, too, have never lived in the East. We will be lost and unhappy within days,’ he said. He just wanted to get the fat package and perch around London for a while, before starting work again.
All significant household disagreements are usually settled through trial; ours was a few months down the road, with detectives, police inspectors and all.
‘Let’s just visit the place for a week, utilize the recce that the bank offers and then make up our minds,’ I finally prevailed.
What we found was encouraging, an expatriate life could be lived in a bubble, cut off, existing within a cocoon of expensive private schools, high-rise MNC offices, exclusive condominiums and clubs. It was to become our new life, mimicking as much as possible our past lives. We moved away, but we never moved on, clinging to our old ways in a new city. It left us comfortable, inside our isolated bubble. Outside, was a hot, steamy, locally accented world that we did not contact much, at least not in the beginning.
Cheques were signed, the move was made and the cycle of day-to-day life began ticking again from one weekend to another, in sunny Singapore.
Jay, our fourteen-year-old, did not complain at all. The school offered him all that a teen can wish for— friends with the right accent from back home in London, a blazing quick supply of sensory digital overloads and a scene filled with the discovery of adolescent excitement, including Chinese ‘silk’, Indian ‘masala’ and South-East Asian ‘fusion’ to test the taste of the palate with.
Jay, our choice of name for a son, suited both David’s and my ethnicity. It meant victory in my original language, Hindi; and it was meaningless in my adopted language, English, where it is simply a monosyllabic slur. A slight slant of accent, as regards our son’s name, was enough to bridge the ethnic chasm between me and my husband.
‘I have got the certificate and license for getting a maid,’ David told me one evening, a few weeks after we made the shift to our new home in Singapore. ‘I had to take a mandatory online lesson and an exam, before they let me have the license.’ He would have gone through the motions flippantly, where he should have been attentive; anyway the exam was not rigorous enough to reject him, as he should have been.
‘Do we need one, I mean a maid? We have never had anyone living in with us. Are you sure you can handle the loss of privacy?’ a point meant purely to bring up mild household disagreement, one that simply prolongs a pointless debate with foregone conclusions.
‘Why can’t you just get some help in the house? At least we can enjoy the pleasures of low Asian labour costs while we are here.’ He was drawn in, into the trap of pointless disagreement.
‘Okay, but remember you will not be able to lounge around the house in your boxers, or point your gun at me each time you get irretrievably drunk,’ I cautioned him.
Yes, gun. There is a story in almost all of us; the rest, the story-less ones, are satiated with what the vacuum of life can suck away, leading a joyless, sorrow-less life, without any undulations.
He looked at me, simply waving me away, like when one doesn’t want to discuss their embarrassing shortcomings.
Every once in a while he got drunk, beyond drink, brandishing his gun in my face, jeering and abusing verbally, pulling the trigger now and then as the pistol’s hammer smacked into the back of the empty barrel. Then he mounted me and made rough sex.
The gun was never loaded and the rough, thrusty, sex was satisfying and very pleasurable. I did not mind either the blank threats or the animal pawing that followed. In the morning, one just got up and took what mornings offer those ready to get on and get away with things that the night leaves remorseful.
Initially though, it was terrifying—particularly the first few times after we were married. Then it became acceptable. Now it was fun.
Isn’t marriage supposed to enliven our sexual fantasies, keeping us physically contented in its holy circle, nuptial gravity ensuring that we don’t waver outwards, tangentially away from the circumference, into the realm of infidelity?
On the weekend, we headed up to the agency to collect the maid. Yes, collect, like lost and found luggage.
‘You must listen carefully to mum, okay. Take care of the child and don’t speak all the time on your phone,’ Ms Goh, the agent advised our new maid pedantically. She was looking in general towards a group of uniformed girls sitting along the benches of the agency. They looked back at us, almost as if we were about to hire the lot of them, including Ms Goh.
Mum. Was I supposed to be the girl’s mum while she lived with us; maybe it was an Asian cultural thing?
I caught David eyeing the girls, checking them out, making a mental note, one that could be recalled when he wanted to masturbate on the many business trips that he made overseas, or alone at home, unassisted by porn.
It is true; most technology innovations of the Internet are pioneered in porn.
‘Hello, mum. Hello, sir,’ one of the girls got up.
Was she the one he had picked in his mind? She was too endowed for a man to not stray, at least for a moment, a moment enough for the groin to awaken. I was not sure if I wanted her to call David dad if she insisted on calling me mum.
Maybe she should have.
‘Are you Mary?’ I asked. That is what
the name in all the forms read.
‘Yes, mum, I am married,’ she replied.
‘I know you are married, I was simply asking if your name is Mary,’ I slowed my speech to a rude crawl, as if speaking to a dim-witted, deaf child, ‘and please don’t call me mum, I am not your mother,’ I added, raising my voice just a notch.
Ms Goh burst out laughing, ‘She is not calling you mum, just that she pronounces madam as mum,’ I was informed, to my visible embarrassment.
Outside the expatriate cocoon, it was not an easy living; it was unfamiliar and alien, one that could make others laugh out loud, unrestrained.
We left . . . with the maid and her bags, as if from a hospital with a new, overgrown child.
At home, she slipped into her work clothes immediately, arming herself with a broom and a bucket, almost like a warrior. Her work dress was skimpy, revealing yet sexless, like work wear is. She learnt fast and broke-in well into the household.
It is a luxury to be served tea in bed each morning, a pampering I was unused to; or leave the cooking to Mary and simply settle in front of the tele at noon; or leave the getting-Jay-to-school to Mary each morning.
On Sundays, when she was away for the day, we too headed out, minimizing any housework that may fall upon us in her absence.
On one such Sunday, we visited the botanical gardens; it was filled with maids on their day off. Maid, yes, that is the official word. Or do you prefer helper instead? Helper is better; maid has a slightly uniformed-to-dispense-services connotation, just a step away from the word keep.
‘David, it is full of them. Do you think Mary will be here?’ They were everywhere, accompanied by dark men mostly from the subcontinent, in cheap jeans and fake sunglasses. Some of the men walked with their arms around the fair girls; others sat under trees eating, laughing and drinking.
‘Bangladeshi boys. Trust them to dip their dipper wherever they go. Champs if you ask me,’ David chuckled.
‘How can you say such a thing? Most of these girls have families back home, you know?’ an attempt at disagreement at my end, to get another pointless conversation going.
‘Well, these girls, they do get lonely and they are eighteen plus, which makes them legal and ready to play. What is wrong? They are consenting adults, why should it bother you?’ he simply added.
Not wanting to reply, I looked away at the swans, wondering why they weren’t black, like the stamp issue illustrations at the SingPost website.
‘Mummy, you said there will be black swans. There aren’t any,’ Jay complained.
‘I know, that is what I thought,’ I, too, was disappointed, a bit embarrassed, having been the ambassador of the Singapore brand in my family, especially the sanity of its structure.
A short distance away, a group of maids and their boys sat merrily around bottles of depleting whisky. One of them got up and flung a frisbee in the air for another to chase.
On the following day after the frenzy of getting dad and son out of the house, I noticed Mary on the phone as she ironed clothes, the cell phone and the hands free were an acquisition from the Sunday off. Or, was it a gift from her Bangladeshi boyfriend, who she may be speaking to now? I looked out of the window; there was a dark man on the ground floor, just outside the entrance of the condominium, only metres from the guardhouse. He was on the phone, looking up in our direction. Was he the one showering gifts on her all day on Sundays, before doing her in the Hotel-81 around the corner? Would they build up a whole day’s libido, being playful all morning, before hiring a room, by the hour, late in the afternoon, then her rushing home to meet my 7 pm deadline, on her days off?
‘Mary,’ I called, ‘are you on the phone? Can you please finish ironing so we can get the groceries?’ I tried to be stern.
‘Yes, mum, please give me ten more minutes,’ she replied from inside.
Why was I stern? Was it because she was married and I disapproved of her affair with a Bangladeshi labourer? Why should I be stern? I was not her mum; I was her employer. As long as she delivered her work, why should I bother about her sex or love life? If she slept on Sundays with her Bongla boyfriends in exchange for cell phones and slippers, then that was her sin to bear; I should not bother.
As things turned out, I had to.
At the supermarket, Mary lugged the cart while I pointed to items on the shelves for her to pick and pile into the cart.
‘Please note the brands and the items that we use, so if you have to come and shop, you should always get the right things.’
‘Okay, mum. Can I buy these noodles?’ she pointed to a package with a pair of red prawns and a foreign label on it.
‘Yes, sure, please get what you like.’ It was a mistake . . . not an expensive one, but a smelly one, as we found out when the red-prawn-noodles were cooked in our home.
‘What is that smell of dead-dry fish?’ David was furious on the following Saturday.
‘It is her food. That is what they eat. She asked before getting it,’ I simply replied.
‘Tell her she can’t have it. It’s repulsive. If you can’t, then I will tell her that myself,’ he was looking up from his paper.
‘She is a human being. Let her eat what she likes. The smell will diffuse in a few minutes,’ I looked back at him, getting up to swing the windows ajar. Instinctively, I looked at the guardhouse. There was no one there.
‘Shit, I give up. Come, let us go to the club for a swim and some brunch. Get some biscuits and gravy,’ he got up, smiling.
Through brunch, David got progressively drunk; by evening, he was happy and wanted to deliver a speech at the club. I took him home just as he got up and began speaking. He drank some more—the better part of a bottle—and by eight, he was playing with his gun.
‘Come here,’ he whispered, pulling me close, almost yanking my collar. He slipped under my blouse, kneading my breasts and pinching my nipples with one hand. With the other hand, he pointed his pistol straight at my head, toying with the trigger like a violent intruder raping a woman at gunpoint.
‘If you make a move, I will kill you,’ he said, rubbing his crotch against my buttocks, becoming stiff and erect. I was not scared, simply aroused, these being the games that I played with my husband on some nights.
He pulled the trigger with a familiar vacant-blank- thud, before starting to kiss, almost like smearing a canvas in sweeping mindless strokes. His tongue was ill directed, stretching from my lips to my armpits. He fucked me with raw piston thrusts, scrotal-sac slapping against the inner day-less parts of my thighs, his stamina artificially increased by the effects of alcohol, eventually exploding in a whimper before rolling over and falling asleep almost instantly. The orgasm, mine, helped me sleep too, after I had tidied both of us up, longing for the morning to wipe us clean again.
In the morning, by the time I awoke, Mary had already sent Jay to school and David to work. The tea was cold on the table; she reheated it, dutifully keeping an aspirin alongside.
In the evening, the maids clustered around the kids’ play area, exchanging notes, maybe discussing the love lives of their sirs and mums, apart from their own, as they watched over kids.
Enough of background. Let me come to the main point of this narrative.
What I am about to tell you is filled, first with shame, then acceptance and finally humour.
Shame, when it came, was sudden and completely unexpected.
It happened on a Saturday morning when Jay was away for his swimming lesson; and I was heading up to the gym. Having forgotten my music player and my towel, I decided to head back home and get the same. At the front door, I turned the keys gently. Not wanting to wake David, I tiptoed up to the bedroom. He was not in bed. He must have woken up, but there wasn’t any sound from the toilet or the tele in the second bedroom.
‘David,’ I almost called out for him, aloud. I should have, it would have stopped a chain of reactions that led to the shame I am confessing to you. Not that it remained a secret; the papers make the most of any
scoop, before moving on, chasing daily gossip, leaving mineable articles for all to search and relish in the future.
Through the kitchen, I peeped into the maid’s room; there were stirrings inside. The door was not shut and bolted because it could not be shut and bolted. The bedpost protruded through the doorway, leaving the door hinged like a wooden flag on a mast, a sliver slit of an opening, enough for the interiors to be left un-private, ajar enough for a good view, in any position. Her room was large enough to hold only one article of furniture, a small bed.
On that bed, Mary was on all fours, completely naked; David was on his knees, fucking her. His right hand was holding the gun, which would have felt cold, pressed against the right cheek of her arse.
‘David,’ I finally called, my mobile phone slipping from my hand, landing on the floor with a crash. He stood up, jerkily collecting his clothes and left for the bedroom, mumbling. Mary grabbed her clothes, trying to cover up, receding to the relative safely of the bed’s headrest. She started to say something, but I had left by then.
The shock of discovery left an instant sheen of sweat on my skin, and when I bent to pick the mobile, my hands had a tremble to them.
The shame and anger of being cheated upon did not lead to an immediate, loud confrontation. After all, were we to slug it out while she heard us shouting and I crying, maybe with a slight smile on her face as she did the dishes, inside? Or were we expected to sit down and discuss this, we the three of us. Now there was a third person in our adult life, an intruder who was similar to me, ready to be semi-raped by the man at gunpoint. Two objects for the man to play with, like enjoying the mastery of two musical instruments.
When David emerged from the bedroom, he was dressed and shaved. I was sitting on the couch, face screwed in the pain of anger.
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