Lakshmi is our part-time domestic help. She has been working at our home for nearly 20 years.
Her life is somewhat predictable: many children and grandchildren, poverty, displacement from a neighbourhood hutment to temporary addresses in far-flung suburbs as Bangalore climbs the real estate boom graphs. Disease. Death. Vagrant males forcing the women to work grindingly long hours as domestics in many homes, with long commutes, irregular meals, and no certainties whatever.
She brought along one of her grandchildren the other day. The girl was very attentive, doing chores with interest. I heard she is good at her studies.
Lakshmi took a loan of Rs. 2000 yesterday as she had to pay her grandchildren's school fees for the new year. I am going to write it off.
Lakshmi does rangoli, especially on Fridays, like the one here. About a metre in size, it covers the stone slab outside the gate. It is done with the white and coloured rangoli sand she buys from the corner shop. It is easily smudged.
I often stop and see the elemental beauty of the rangoli. Its sight is sheer joy.
The worry that it will be soon smudged is offset by the surety that a new one will take its place. The rangoli reflects the way life renews itself, like the splendid flowers on street-lining trees.
I am simply fascinated. How does Lakshmi balance all life's woes and despair with a sense of beauty and creativity? What is that spark, that hidden hope in life? Can there be anything more welcome at life's proverbial doorstep? Can any self-help book be better inspiration?
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