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Sunday storytelling slam featuring millennial authors (HT Brunch Cover Story): Gurmehar Kaur writes…Rain
Househelp Kusum’s love for the rain lasts while she’s working in a sleek apartment, else it’s all smell and muck
The rains have arrived, Kusum thought gloomily as she looked outside the window, dreading the terrible wet walks she would have to make from house to house, progressively having to get her sari messier as the more houses she cleaned. For her the heat was bearable and she often found repose in Kalyani didi’s house where she would turn the air conditioning on and breathe for a few minutes as the house was often empty since both Kalyani a young interior designer and her husband left for work early before she arrived. Kalyani and her barely had any conversation, but she was far kinder than many of the people she worked for and she showed her kindness in small acts of gifting untouched food gift boxes, which she received at work. “I’m always on a diet and neither me nor Arun will ever eat this mithai or namkeen, you take it home,” she would roll her eyes on the word diet and pass Kusum her sweet smile. On days she returned with the food boxes, her children’s eyes shone with endearment for their mother and that was enough to make her day. Small satisfactions of life.
The door opened before she could rummage out the keys from the jhola she carried on her shoulder. Kalyani shot her a quick smile as she actioned Kusum to walk inside quick while she hummed yeses in the phone, she did not want the rain water puddled in the corner of the staircase leading unto the apartment drifting inside her home. Kusum leaving the umbrella outside closed the door behind her as she began gathering the drenched bits of her sari into a knot as to give her more mobility to work around the sleek apartment. “Didi how are you home today?” she asked as soon as Kalyani put the phone down. “Today it’s raining so much and you never know where it might flood, didn’t want to to be stuck at work for hours, so I’m taking a work-from-home day,” she went on to explain a work-from-home situation to Kusum who nodded enthusiastically. “Kash hum bhi work-from-home ker saktey per kismet mien kahan” (I wish we could also work-from-home but don’t have the good fortune),” she said jokingly but wishing it were true. Kalyani looked up from her kettle and giggled at her.
“Today, the road was blocked again as usual because of the corporation work, so I had to take the longer way, a longer walk in the rain here but what to do? I had to make it here somehow,” she continued “and it’s still easier on the side of the roads, you find footpaths, but in the slum where we live the water in the open gutter mixes with the shit and floods the whole road, that is when it gets the most disgusting. Buhot smell aata hai (It smells a lot).”
“Ek toh I don’t understand what is with the protests in your slum against the relocation to Mahul, they will give you a proper house to live, no more of this gutter nonsense,” she said casually and added. “The government is trying to do so much for development but we as citizens must also cooperate na?” she looked expectantly at Kusum waiting for her to agree with her, which Kusum did because why argue with a nice woman and how will she explain to her existence – wasn’t garbage needed to be dumped in a corner next to chemical refineries to be left to die so the posh Bandra area could be developed to spare the flooding. Plus, when it floods they could always ‘work-from-home’ she thought but didn’t say it.
She would admit to herself that she did often wonder what it would be like to move to a pakka ghar, no matter how small.
Development wasn’t supposed to be a bad concept, it was the same development project that had her husband employed but she did wonder whose benefits in mind are kept when they think of development. How did it cater to her and her people if in the larger scheme of development they were nothing but obstacles needed to be disposed off. Everything in the world seemed to exist to comfort the richer.
“You are drenched Kusum, come have a cup of chai with me and enjoy the rain,” Kalyani said as she poured her a cup of tea from the kettle. And Kusum did enjoy the rain, at least for those 15 minutes the chai existed in her cup and then she got up, finished her work and left the house to face the downpour that she was dreamily gazing at not 30 minutes ago. Even the rain seems to exist to comfort the richer.
Author bio: Student activist and writer, Gurmehar Kaur is a youth icon who has authored Small Acts of Freedom and The Young and the Restless. Edgy, crisp and straightforward, her writing strikes a chord with the youngsters in India today.
Illustrator bio: Parth Garg is a Delhi boy who, at 24, is a millennial himself. In addition to illustrating for HT Brunch, he is currently involved with a project that promotes education for all.
Additional reporting by Lubna Salim
Read: rovidence by Bilal Siddiqi
Read: The Reptile Kind by Vivaan Shah
Join the conversation using #HowMillennialsWrite
From HT Brunch, August 18, 2019
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