Jamadar ji used to come to our home to clean the toilets. He would also sweep the kuccha aangan inside our house, with a pretty big seenkh ki jhhadu.
Ma was liberal for her times, educated, and whenever she could manage, he also got a cup of tea. The tea though was served in a chini ka cup.
Unbeknownst to the ‘really’ elders in the family, he would sometimes help Ma by climbing up to the chotta chhat and bringing something down for her.
When he would ring the back- door bell for his salary, sometimes I would go and give him the money. We never touched hands in that exchange.
I don’t know if he deliberately kept a distance - the money would be sort of dropped into his palm. There would be some conversation too. He would call me bitiya.
I discussed him endlessly, with Ma when I grew up enough to understand the malaise of the caste system. To my parents credit, they never made a big deal of his caste. And that he was an Untouchable. (I will ask Abba about it today when we sit for our tea.)
I do recall though, that someone had once told me it was because he did a lot of ‘dirty work’ that we didn’t ‘touch’ him. If he were to bathe and wear clean clothes, it would be just fine.
In my maternal grandmother’s home, the jamadarin was a stunner. She was called Rani ji, and as I grew up, the irony didn’t escape me. A Rani is a Queen. Do you know any queen who picks up the waste matter of hundreds of people? 🤨
She would come and shout from the nallah near our house, resplendent in pink, her silver jewellery in place. “Mata jiiii, paani dal dijiye!”
I never saw or heard of anyone misbehave with her in our home. She too would get tea and something to eat.
Despite this, there was a distance kept between them and us. I don’t recall any of my elders asking us to stay away. But we just did and never played with them like we would with maali baba. Perhaps they too kept the distance, not knowing any better. There were very orthodox people in my family, who would probably take a bath at the slightest encounter with jamadar ji. But those people lived in our ancestral homes.
My maternal grandfather fought for the rights of human scavengers. I have written blogs about how he and his band of boys spent night after night cleaning the town of faecal waste when the cleaners were on strike. They would bathe with mountains of carbolic soap and yet the stench wouldn’t leave them.
And I have on several occasions grit my teeth and stepped into a clogged sewer in my marital home to clean it out. Nana sb could do it, why couldn’t I? There was no shame in it, surely.
No one else would and the entire angry rant was about how the sweeper community had grown such wings!
It was either clean up the mess or watch the sewer gurgle ominously threatening to spill out all over the courtyard. I would clean up and curse the architect who made such a mess with building the house. 🤷🏻♀️ I also hoped I was setting an example for my children.
These memories keep rearing their heads. And I see how life comes a full circle.
Now we will flinch back and not just a few inches when we will encounter someone, even a friend or a relative who is dressed to the nines.
You see, these days, everyone is an Untouchable .
kianamaiart
izzy806
germansingergirl