OXFAM Inequality
Every morning at five, Ketaki awakens and cleans her house. She then cooks for her son and her husband – her three daughters, all married, live in other cities. Later, clutching her bag close and watching her steps, she walks through the lanes of Sangam Vihar and into opulent shining Gulmohar Park.
Every morning at 7, Ketaki enters her first workplace and cleans someone else’s house, cooks for someone else’s family, and does their dishes. Going around rooms she has gotten to know well over the years, she occasionally peers out the window before turning back to her work inside the house, There is only one thing she won’t do. She won’t be seen doing any of the chores required of her outside the house. No one in her extended family or in her neighborhood knows what she does. They all think she works in a small corporation. She would not want them to know she is a kaamwali. She will not say why but anyone in Gulmohar Park or in Sangam Vihar can venture a guess – a question of dignity perhaps.
After four other houses, she goes back home, walking slower now. She gives her evenings to her son before tending to her own house once again before her husband comes home. Before her husband comes home, she also catches up with her neighbor about the odds and ends of the day, tch-tching now and then when she is told about one thing or the other which happened in her neighborhood while she was gone. Sometimes she speaks to her about leaving the place. Both of them nod silently in the knowledge that she can’t.
