2013, vimeo.com, Hindi, Directed by Kislay
A tight slap on the affluent, who viciously entraps the full-time house helper’s families for generations, in a disguise of providing a livelihood for the under privileged.
A 30 odd minute film, that firmly talks about the innate qualities of the middle income family’s mindset that exploits sub consciously their house helpers, by involuntarily break their wings, for a simple selfish motive of ‘uninterrupted comfort’ for years ahead.
The film opens to a couple, Simran and Raj discussing on registering the maid’s details with the local police station as they have moved in to a new neighborhood and the society demands the formality. Simran seems reluctant and says the maid Kamala is with her for many years and would even tell the society that Kamala is her sister. (One is touched and I in fact related to Simran myself, as I thought I cared for my maid as if she was a family member.) The strength of the film is, it throws me every now and then, to compare the happening with my very own life’s incidents.
The maid asks for 1500rs from her wage, as its middle of the month and she wants to pay Pihu’s fees. Simran searches for cash in her wallet and gives a Rs.50 note, which Kamala refuses. (Kamala isn’t asking for exuberant advances like my maid, which I readily give and date it in the back of my recipe notebook.) Kamala is seen accounting the cash in a book that records date-wise all the petty cash she had received as token of gift, from Simran.
When Simran asks Kamala to sit on the sofa and share the evening tea with her, Simran casually asks her to train Pihu to make good tea as she doesn’t want to drink any bad tea in future. The director starts working on the conscience of viewers, through that dialogue. Its a vicious cycle that the helpers strive to break, by giving their next generation education. But its the same vicious cycle the householders are trying hard to continue spinning, for they don’t want their comfort lives be shaken for years to come. The film started growing on me.
I pondered on my maid sending her 16 year old school dropped out daughter instead of her, nearly a decade ago. I bought school books to try and educate her at home. However, she seemed to be more interested in the house work just like Pihu in the film. But when my maid’s daughter got married and had children of her own, my maid’s daughter was particular never to bring her children when she came to work for me. I found that strange at first but later understood that she didn’t want to let her children know about the work she does.
The film throws light suggesting strongly that my maid rather didn’t want her children to know that a job called ‘household helper’ even existed. That’s not an option at all for her children and hence she kept them out of that world altogether, just like Kamala tries in the film but fails. (My maid would thoughtfully ask for the learning materials that my daughter used when she was little, like the mental arithmetic abacas kit, the Rubik’s cube, chess board, Thirukkural books, puzzles, story books, dictionaries and she will take it for her girl child whom I have never met in person, not even once in so many years except for a couple of photos.)
When Simran realizes that Kamala had left the house one fine morning with Pihu, the first thing the couple do is check on their wallets and when Simran finds that only rs.1500 was missing, she verbal abuses her but her deep thoughts translates to the viewers that she realizes Kamala’s determination to break the ‘invisible’ chain free and liberate her future generations.
Respect grew many folds on my maid’s daughter after witnessing Kamala’s turmoil within herself. Thanks to the pandemic, house helps are becoming an scenario of the past and like western countries we have adapted to live with minimal assistance. Under the disguise of providing livelihood to the under privileged in the name of maintaining household helpers, somewhere, makes us these dependent comfort mongers, that as a society we have collectively failed to see what their ultimate choices of life are in the first place. An eye opener. Credits to the maker and his team.
Must watch.