Missing the maidens

Missing (the) Maidens
They have been an integral part of the household. A friend, a counsel, a housekeeper unsung. They have fostered children, sung them to sleep and played with them. A day without them leaves us haywire. The miraculous ladies who sweep the house like torrent, leaving the dishes sparklingly clean, the wardrobe snuggly arranged, the clothes washed and ironed. No, I’m not talking of mothers they have been put in the hall of fame all too often. I am talking of our beloved ‘kaamwali’; five such ladies whose imprints on my yesteryears are too deep to be brushed away, who are now one with treasured memoirs of childhood.
I have faint memories of Laloo, our first housemaid. I remember her squatting on the kitchen floor, pealing the skin of green mangoes often popping in a slice or two in her big mouth. She would now and then break into a smile, revealing her tobacco colored teeth. Laloo left for inexplicable reasons and made way for Vibha. Vibha was stout dark Bengali having the strangest set of assorted teeth I can claim I had ever seen. Each stood out at an odd angle with the rest, ceding its owner with most innocuous smile. She spoke with thick Bengali assent and knew uncountable crafts. She could weave a make do swing with ropes or prepare mouth-watering Bengali sweetmeats. However, her first priority of visiting the house was to catch a glimpse of her favorite Tele-serials. She was especially fond of the youngest of the bunch, Vasundhara (our little family tyrant), and reduced her goldilocks to a baldpate on one occasion, with a quick razor shave while she was sleeping (she could never have accomplished the feat otherwise, Vasundhara adds with ardor each time this is mentioned).
Followed Chandra, one with honey-milk skin so akin to the hills she hailed from. Her job was to keep a strict vigil on the pesky bunch of us, and keep us out of harm’s way. Quite a child herself she almost hurled Vasundhara into one. It all started innocently enough, Chandra had kept steaming hot water for Vasundhara’s bath and intended to make it lukewarm enough for the cranky 3 year old, she went out of the bathroom to fetch the towel, but Vasundhara quite determined to show Chandra the door, proceeded to pour the water on her back resulting in blisters and a scene dramatic enough to make Chandra embark on a journey wayward home.
Vibha took position again, and there are hints that at some point the three of us were also bribed in to contribute to Jhadoo-Pocha after Vibha spurned the offer explaining that the job was too demanding.
Come Hira, tall, dark and well built ,she thundered the house with her booming voice. It so happened that my elder sister was given a school project to educate atleast five underprivileged children for a month, and who could be a better prey but Mithilesh, Hiras’s eldest daughter 11, who had never seen the face of school. It turned out that A, B, Cs and 1,2,3s held little fascination for Mithilesh, who insisted that she should be given free pushes on the swing for this unjust labour being imposed on her. We had little choice but to comply, it made up for a truly comic scene, Mithilesh at the swing, rolling a lollipop in her mouth treating her surroundings with an air of total disinterest, two haggled looking youngsters behind the swing giving our venerable student the mightiest pushes, and the eldest of the bunch reading out to Mithilesh an interactive story, complete with actions and props. The project had to be abandoned due to an untimely rebellion by Vasundhara and me; we paid later by completing the assignments for the non-existent students in our elder sister’s class.
We had to change housemaids with a change of address, with this the queerest bunch of Mother-Daughter made an entry in our House. We called them Munni Aur Munni Ki Ma. Munni Ki Ma though half blind had a knack for spotting snakes which thrived in the field around our house, each time a snake was spotted it was by her. Having done the household chores they would retire in the lawn and under the winter sun and make up a pretty picture picking out each other’s Lices!!