Calcutta

by Amit Chaudhuri

  The poor traditionally live in the basti. Basti is an Urdu word, meaning “neighbourhood”; in Bengali, however, it means “slum.” I remember the shock I felt when I was seventeen, when I first began to listen to Urdu ghazals, where the poet or singer might be pining for a woman living in a different basti from his own, because the word, with its connotations of squalor and anarchy, familiar to me from my visits to Calcutta, sounded incongruous in the ghazal’s fragrant world. These days, the person who comes in the morning as your domestic help doesn’t necessarily live in a basti, but often in developments for working-class folk, such as Subhasgram, clusters of houses with poor facilities and inadequate drainage and roadworks, but with shops and a local railway station. The trains are dangerously full in the mornings with commuters making their way to work in South Calcutta—so full that cooks and maids have sometimes reached us in the tranquillity of our flat in Ballygunge—a posh residential area—with a leg or arm bruised, having fallen off or been pushed off by another commuter on to the platform. These signs—of the wear and tear and abrasions of commuting, of the cook limping dramatically into the apartment and receiving only moderate sympathy from her colleagues and her employer—aren’t that unusual.

  When a domestic begins to shout in an unseemly way at another domestic, or even at her employer, the word “basti” invariably makes a reappearance. “Don’t behave as if this is a basti,” the employer will instruct the domestic. “This is a bhadra person’s house.” In fact, the word might come up when two middle-class people are shouting unrestrainedly at each other. “Remember,” one might interrupt the other, “this is not a basti.” It doesn’t matter if neither person has ever seen a basti; it’s meant to bring back to them, indirectly, the presence, or the trappings, of that elusive thing, a bhadra existence.

  Disasters occur in Calcutta, mainly from a stupendous disregard for norms and regulations, and from a mixture of greed and apathy—but not frequently enough for the domestics to arrive late at our doors in the morning. The women come wearing saris meant for the journeys workward and then homeward later in the evening—sometimes saris with atrociously colourful prints—which they discard and change for a drab work-sari after they’ve entered their small room by the kitchen. All this in six or seven minutes.

  The city’s not at war with itself, and trains generally run on time, so there’s really no excuse for coming late. Despite this, a domestic might walk in an hour after she was due and claim the train was late, a story that may be contradicted by another domestic. Only on bandh or strike days do kaajer lok have an absolute, unarguable reason not to come. In comparison to many other cities, and despite occasional political conflagrations in the outskirts and neighbouring villages, despite “jungle mahal” further afield (the sovereign mini-states within states where Maoists reign), Calcutta is fairly safe to walk and travel through, and you won’t as a rule be robbed or shot or lacerated or raped (though you may be run over by a bus). This is not so much because the police are vigilant, but because the working and homeless people who populate the pavements at any given point of time are, despite their conditions, intrinsically bhadra. On the whole, there’s no good reason for domestics to delay reaching, or abscond from, their place of employment—except the obscure compulsions of their personal lives, compulsions which are almost always considered to be fictitious by their employers, and sometimes probably are. The two days of monthly paid leave are given to them reluctantly, and other swathes of time when they disappear without explanation, switching off the mobile phones that all of them have, or simply allowing them to ring endlessly, are viewed with helpless bafflement and outrage. (I’ve used the word “they” or “them” frequently, because it’s the other term—ora—besides kaajer lok most used to describe domestics.) When they return from their inexplicable absence—citing illness, or a relative’s illness or death, or a wedding, or a puja or festival—they’re usually accepted once more into the fold, not with open arms as the prodigal son or even one’s own son might be, but fairly meekly, with some moral remonstrances that are, on the whole, pretty unintimidating.

  I say the city isn’t at war with itself, but it is in a state of chafing conflict; the oppositional mode, where kaajer lok are concerned, is passive resistance. Strategy, subtle preparedness, and passive resistance are most in use during festivals. New festivals, paying homage to some unheard-of deity, are invented almost annually by the kaajer lok, in order to fob off the interminable and unrewarding cycle of work in a way that, at least in their own eyes, requires no rationale. Certain dubious middle-class festivals, such as jamai sasthi, when the demi-god and star and bane of Bengali society—the son-in-law—is fed and appeased by his wife’s parents, have grown in strength and consumerist fervour amongst some sections of the middle class after being appropriated by the free market and advertising; all this is being undone by the fact that jamai sasthi has now been smuggled out of its domain by the kaajer lok, and amplified for their own purposes. For days exceeding the single day of jamai sasthi, domestics fail to reappear, as they’re busy celebrating their own jamai sasthi—in an intricate, slow-paced way. Jamai sasthi, as a result, is more or less ruined for the middle class, because you can’t flatter and feed the son-in-law without the infrastructure and detail afforded by the hired help. Jamai sasthi, for the middle class now, is a week of dearth and abandonment.

  Working people not only lack time for recreation and holidays, they also lack a proper notion of these things, and, at times, they’re indistinguishable to them from torture. For days they’ll go back to their home or desh or gram or village or family, the very place whose devastation drove them to Calcutta in the first place, be impeded during their return by a flood or a hurricane or a local election—anything from a natural calamity to a man-made disruption—and return to their employer’s apartment looking barely alive. No middle-class person would have undertaken this excursion—they’d simply have severed ties with their home town. Sometimes they insist on embarking on a self-flagellatory pilgrimage—my parents’ driver, Mahinder, did this: he went off to the famous Tarakeshwar temple, took a train from Howrah and got off at Sheoraphuli, collected water from the Ganga in two earthen pots which he hung from both ends of a pole resting sideways on his shoulders, then walked forty kilometres barefoot, as is customary, to the temple. He resumed work gaunt as a ghost; not only had he demolished the soles of his feet, he’d contracted gastroenteritis. Despite the awfulness of domestic work, most middle-class people would prefer domestic work to this kind of holiday. For the kaajer lok, kaaj or work is often terrible, but the escape from work sometimes seems more destructive. “Why did you do it?” I asked Mahinder, thinking divine reward might be the attraction. He suspected he was being mocked. “Oi—for some bhakti-wakti”—“devotion and stuff.” “Any other reason?” Surely some good fortune? “No, just bhakti,” he said, sheepish. Should I believe him? To make that trek, but receive no windfall?

  The Durga Pujas, the principal festivities of the year, is a period of abeyance and false stability, when passive resistance is applied cautiously, or in stealth. It’s akin to a card game; especially to playing poker. The kaajer lok, like everyone else, will receive notun bastra, or new clothes, from their employers, as part of the season’s distribution of goodwill. Even if they’ve come to hate their employers, poker-faced, the kaajer lok will play the game till the end of the Pujas, in the interests of the notun bastra, upon receiving which, and the moment they have a better offer from a potential employer, they will show their hand, rise, and leave. Today, notun bastra is passé, and domestics forgo it in favour of a palpable monetary incentive, a Puja bonus, which could be half their salary and thus worth substantially more than a new sari. The drivers, the crème de la crème of the hired help, of course receive a full month’s salary as Puja bonus. If, for some reason, you need to hire a driver or a domestic a month and a half leading up to the Pujas, you’ll be unsuccessful and have to do without, because the game has begun to be played, and no dis
affected staff will reveal their cards and peremptorily move jobs before the bonus has exchanged hands.

  The middle class feels it necessarily fares badly at this game of poker, despite holding its cards close to its chest. It also forgets that domestics—besides the fortnightly off-day—have no time for observances and anniversaries: they’re chopping onions in the kitchen on Independence Day; they’re swabbing the floor on Christmas Eve; they’re answering the telephone or doorbell on Republic Day.

  Sometimes, when I’m in Norwich during the Pujas, I hear that some of the help have gone missing for a week, and the house is in disarray. The situation is worse with two old people at home, one of whom can no longer walk or talk properly. Helpless in Norwich, I open myself to a sense of penance at my selfishness and to my wife’s beleaguerment. This time, I’m in Calcutta, and nothing unexpected happens.

  * * *

  Just as there are neither permanent affiliations nor lasting enmities in politics, there are few in the employer–domestic relationship. This is true of our family. Employees who’ve thrown up their hands in despair and left have returned after months and resumed work; domestics whose services have been terminated because of some tiff or for repeatedly coming late to work, their final salaries paid, their signature or thumbprint received, are re-employed as if nothing had happened. For the employer, in the game of harvesting and hoarding staff that continues well after the Pujas, the returned domestic is a stopgap until a better alternative comes along. Since none does, the domestic becomes a long-term stopgap, her (it’s almost unfailingly her) incursion into territory she was recently exiled from tolerated in the knowledge that she’ll be discarded when the moment presents itself. The lapsed exile herself reunites with her past employers for being, for now, the least of necessary evils, and will forsake them as soon as it’s convenient.

  Lakkhi is a case in point. She was our cook long ago, when she was fairly thin and could’ve been pretty but for her goofy expression. She’s quite a good cook in fact—not one of the great Bengali cooks of legend—but, given that culinary skills have receded irreversibly among the bhadralok and the kaajer lok, a good, competent technician. Her language is regally her own: she refers to Aquaguard, the water purifier installed in most kitchens, by her Bengali neologism, kuaghat, or, approximately, “the well on the river bank”; and to vinegar as bhinikal, which could be an esoteric kind of tap (given “kal” is “tap” in Bengali). She hates cooking, and, though she doesn’t say so in so many words, makes no bones about this; but, in a regrettable, circumstantial way, it’s what she’s spent most of her life doing. In the game of brinkmanship that is employment for the kaajer lok, you probably tend to forget such details. Her husband was a grocer; both a wholesaler and a vegetable-seller in Gariahat Market. Lakkhi left her job because she was arriving increasingly late, and tired, and couldn’t stand working in the kitchen any more. The kitchen, especially in April, May, June, and July, is an awful place; which is why cooks, despite being better paid among domestics, are a vanishing breed—the cook must combine the technician’s proficiency and a bit of artistic instinct with the archaic tenacity of a slave. Besides, it turned out Lakkhi was working somewhere early in the morning to supplement her income, though she denied it—which is why she was coming late, and, by the time she did, was quite disenchanted by the idea of cooking. Words had to be exchanged.

  Outside the context of whatever family and private life she has, and the property she and her husband own in Subhasgram, Lakkhi’s work is not that much better than slave labour. Of course, the slave owners of ancient Greece had their own sense of morals and propriety and justice when it came to slaves, and we aren’t without morals or propriety when it comes to kaajer lok. And there are reasons why we’ll draw the line, and not permit ourselves to be entirely at the mercy of someone like Lakkhi—though, most often, we believe we are, unlike that slave owner in ancient Greece. Comparing ourselves in Calcutta and India to ancient Greece, or even to modern Saudi Arabia, we feel we are somewhat better, that our employees have a range of privileges—though, in times of frustration, we might envy the Greek slave owner. The second time Lakkhi came to work for us was after two years had passed and the heat of her recalcitrance had cooled, while our memory of her delayed arrivals, her loud retorts that made us flinch, her powerful and robust indifference, had transmuted into something pleasant, and seemed preferable to whatever state of instability then ruled the kitchen. Lakkhi was welcomed back discreetly to her rightful place.

  She was now a bit heavier, and had lost some of her mad sparkle, as well as a canine tooth. Her slow uncaringness as she walks in, her bodily awkwardness, her evident unawareness of herself as a sexual being, have all come together—why I don’t know—to give an impression of honesty—in short, that she is who she is. Besides, her face still has a puritanical symmetry and gleam, so that it’s no surprise she never apologises for anything; I can imagine her—roaming in Banaras, her sari loosely tangled around her, as it is in the kitchen; or, back in the eighteenth century, among the early settlers of North America—ploughing forward. Not that there’s a way of spotting a dishonest person; nor are the kaajer lok generally any more or less given to dishonesty than the bhadralok. Still—there’s been a steady outflow from our apartment over the years, denuding us of bhadralok accoutrements: of decorations, saris, cardigans, shoes, precious jewellery. We know who the most likely culprits are—three people in the last twenty years—but have no proof. Sometimes, with a start, my wife will speculate about what Arati did with the Hobbs cardigan, since no one else could have removed it; and whether straight-backed Chandana, with her soulful gaze, ever wears the long, moss-green East cardigan in Sonarpur in the winter. No, it’s most likely they were sold. When a piece of gold jewellery vanishes, my mother mourns, goes into a week-long depression, claims that nothing like this ever happened in her three decades in Bombay, but the police aren’t called, the floors are swept, all the usual chores from daytime to evening are performed. I feel helpless, outraged; I also feel a little like the Sheriff of Nottingham did about Robin Hood’s activities—except, of course, unlike the Sheriff, I’ve had the benefit of reading, and being instructed and entertained and illuminated by, the Robin Hood stories.

  The Bengali middle class sees itself rather than kaajer lok as primarily responsible for churi, or theft. Everything valuable must be kept under lock and key; if it isn’t, and if it then disappears, the employer is as much an accomplice as he or she is a victim. Abetment is the primary offence, and it isn’t viewed lightly by the bhadralok. On that count, my family have been serial accomplices and abettors. Lakkhi, however, didn’t take valuables; she purloined supplies from the storeroom and food from the kitchen. When she protested, in her harried way, about the incredible amounts of oil our kind of cooking consumed, and that she was falling short again, we told her excessive oil was bad for the health, to use it moderately, and went out and bought some more. One evening, R returned early, and found Lakkhi and Arati, the maid who helped around the house, standing right in front of the elevator. They’d shut the door to the flat; so R would have to wait for me to get back with the keys. Lakkhi and Arati rushed into the elevator like obstreperous children, and R, pointing to a bulging carrier bag by one of the elevators, said, “What’s that?” They weren’t even aware it existed; indeed, they’d just noticed it: “We don’t know,” they said as the doors closed. R sat on the steps for ten minutes; then thought, “Wonder what’s in that bag?” It was crammed with things from the kitchen and storeroom—two kilograms of Sundrop oil, one kilogram of mustard oil, four kilograms of basmati rice in plastic packets, a one-kilogram packet of moong daal, already-opened packets of chana and matar daal, potatoes, onions, garlic, already-opened bottles of ghee, sugar, about three hundred grams of uncooked mutton from the freezer, beginning to thaw, two neatly folded plastic bags, and some bay leaves. So far, we’ve only felt horror and amusement at the audacity of the operation; now, writing down the list, I feel a self-indulgent wi
stfulness. How inadequate the provisions seem! Especially since it was the night before Holi—these, the raw materials for the big lunch the next day! But it shocked us. Arati blamed Lakkhi; Lakkhi said it was Arati. “I can’t keep one of you and not the other,” said R. Both had to be dismissed.

  After three and a half years, the standards in our kitchen—precarious anyway after Lakkhi’s departure—had declined strikingly. A good cook is near impossible to find. People who take up that line of work are conversant with the stereotypical protagonists of Bengali cuisine—daal, maacher jhol (fish curry), kasha mangsho (dry mutton curry), even the sought-after malai curry, made with prawns and coconut milk—and they know the motions of cooking, of vigorously and convincingly scraping the kadhai with the spatula; but only have a dim sense of what the food tastes like. This may have to do with Bengal’s economic setbacks; yet great artist-cooks were in more plentiful supply when Bengal, in the twentieth century, was as economically devastated as it is today, if not more. Partly it’s a symbol of rural and urban Bengal’s gradual loss of its past, with its delicate artisanal textures. This food too was delicate. Now it is watery. For there’s a thin line separating the delicate from the bloodless, in art as in food. Partly it has to do with the nature of Bengali modernity, which emerged in the nineteenth century as a secular puritanism—evident most clearly in the tenets and practices of Rammohun Roy and Debendranath Tagore’s Brahmo Samaj. This puritanism, which rejected the Hindu gods and goddesses and their antics in favour of an immanent radiance, and which, in the realm of the arts, preferred the implicit to the over-the-top, also kept its distance from strong and violent flavours in food. That modernity is on its last legs, as is its food. What was once implicit is now insipid.