YASODHA AMMA
After a long battle with a sundry group of part time maids who came and went at regular intervals, I gave in, and decided it was time to get over my fear of keeping a live in maid .The uncertainty of whether a maid would come in or not every morning appeared to be a greater trauma than the constant watch over the live in maid not getting into problems. One of my colleagues found a way out by suggesting I keep an elderly live in maid so that I don’t have another ‘Shobha’ experience. Well that made sense and yet another colleague who had rubber estate in Kerala offered to get one from there when he returned from his hometown.
That is how Yashodha Amma came to stay with us. An elderly lady probably in her early 40s .She was up early morning would have her bath even before we were up and about finish her prayers and would have a fresh and clean appearance with the sandal wood paste on her forehead. She really was clean and fresh all the time in
her starched off white ‘set mundu’, the typical Kerala wear of two piece sari.
She looked like an elder in the family. Cooked the typical Kerala meal and all of us were happy for the ‘taste of Kerala ‘, which we otherwise had only on our vacation to Kerala. She had us enjoying those longed for taste on a daily basis. Until then we never had a cook from kerala. It was always When in Rome eating as the Romans do. North Indian food when in Delhi, Marathi flavors while at Bombay, kandiga cuisine while at Bangalore, Gujarati food in Gujarat, Chennai grub at Chennai etc. Because of this my own cooking could not be classified into any particular genre or was it just a result of not being a good cook?!Yashodha literally had us eating out of her hand, given this back ground.
I guess it was too good to be true .despite all the praise we showered on her I always thought she was not happy. In retrospect perhaps it was sheer boredom but every day evening when I returned she would complain about people staring at her through the windows .I thought she just was scared to be in a new place, she did not know the local language and hence could not speak to anyone. But each time the complaints become more paranoid. Slowly she stopped looking normal too there was this sort of crazy look in her eyes which had me really worried .I spoke to a couple of doctor friends they said she probably needed a psychiatrist she seemed to imagine some one was following all her moves through the windows and was out to harm her . She became quite neurotic about this .Despite her culinary skills we decided to part ways I did not want to have another attempted suicide on my hand.
After a long battle with a sundry group of part time maids who came and went at regular intervals, I gave in, and decided it was time to get over my fear of keeping a live in maid .The uncertainty of whether a maid would come in or not every morning appeared to be a greater trauma than the constant watch over the live in maid not getting into problems. One of my colleagues found a way out by suggesting I keep an elderly live in maid so that I don’t have another ‘Shobha’ experience. Well that made sense and yet another colleague who had rubber estate in Kerala offered to get one from there when he returned from his hometown.
That is how Yashodha Amma came to stay with us. An elderly lady probably in her early 40s .She was up early morning would have her bath even before we were up and about finish her prayers and would have a fresh and clean appearance with the sandal wood paste on her forehead. She really was clean and fresh all the time in
her starched off white ‘set mundu’, the typical Kerala wear of two piece sari.
She looked like an elder in the family. Cooked the typical Kerala meal and all of us were happy for the ‘taste of Kerala ‘, which we otherwise had only on our vacation to Kerala. She had us enjoying those longed for taste on a daily basis. Until then we never had a cook from kerala. It was always When in Rome eating as the Romans do. North Indian food when in Delhi, Marathi flavors while at Bombay, kandiga cuisine while at Bangalore, Gujarati food in Gujarat, Chennai grub at Chennai etc. Because of this my own cooking could not be classified into any particular genre or was it just a result of not being a good cook?!Yashodha literally had us eating out of her hand, given this back ground.
I guess it was too good to be true .despite all the praise we showered on her I always thought she was not happy. In retrospect perhaps it was sheer boredom but every day evening when I returned she would complain about people staring at her through the windows .I thought she just was scared to be in a new place, she did not know the local language and hence could not speak to anyone. But each time the complaints become more paranoid. Slowly she stopped looking normal too there was this sort of crazy look in her eyes which had me really worried .I spoke to a couple of doctor friends they said she probably needed a psychiatrist she seemed to imagine some one was following all her moves through the windows and was out to harm her . She became quite neurotic about this .Despite her culinary skills we decided to part ways I did not want to have another attempted suicide on my hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment