I miss the smile

I was enchanted by her smile the first time saw her. She sat on the living room carpet, cuddling a white polythene bag under her arms, eyes moving from one artifact to another quickly . She was a very tiny little thing about 4.5 feet tall and so thin that the thickness of her hands was just about the thickness of my two middle fingers. But she was beautiful in spite of ultra small eyes and slightly flat nose that gave away her nepali origin. Her exceptionally fair complexion, translucent glowing skin, long silky hair and childish ways set her apart.

Her eyes lit up the moment I entered into the room and she smiled. Her smile had a pristine child like innocence, stretched from one ear to the other and exuded a welcome warmth.
I myself couldn’t help smiling at her.
I knew she was the maid that the woman from the placement agency was talking about.
But this one seemed too little. I had placed a request for a semi skilled 15-16 year old.

“tu kitne saal ki hai”,?I asked her.
“13”, she said and smiled .same charming smile.

It was impossible to believe that she was 13. She looked like a 9-10 yr old kid too fragile to even hold a broom let alone sweep and mop the 3 bedroom house.

I immediately dialed the agency to tell that I wanted some one who could handle all the house hold chores and not a kid. Since the lady did not have any alternative option and I was in dire need of an extra help we decided to give her a try.

“Tera naam kya hai?”, I asked.
“Khushi”, she said and smiled yet again.

The smile tugged at my heart. I gave myself all the reasons to think of it as a cleverly crafted mechanism to win over hearts but all I could see was dewy-eyed innocence.

Khushi took over all the household work from day one itself. She would skip around from one room to next grinning, smiling and singing. She had a melodious voice and crooned incessantly.

Added to all the adjectives attributed to her is the word chatterbox. She would talk endlessly to anyone and everyone who was in the proximity so much so that one reached the brink of exasperation. Soon she took over almost all the work and we became dependent on her for even the basic necessities. We got so used to ordering her around that we even forgot she was at the end of the day just a child who claimed to be thirteen just because her mother told her to do so and actually she might have been younger than that.

Slowly khushi started shirking from work. The initial enthusiasm had been replaced by the daily monotone of the tasks. She desperately missed her family and my heart bled to see her shedding silent tears for them. But the child that she was she would forget all her sadness immediately and start playing with neighborhood kids when they came along.
She would dance with my 2 year old niece oblivious to the fact that she was a servant or that we might be watching. One day you would see her howling with brazen impudence saying that that she did not want to stay and the next day she would claim that she was never ever going to leave our house.

Meanwhile I did all I could to ease her workload. I even argued with other family members when she was laden with extra work never consenting to the fact that she was a servant and be treated like one. Though there were times when I too found her ways bit annoying. But her evergreen smile always wiped out all my anger.

There used to be days when we would see the broom stick , dust and dustpan all scattered in the center of the room and Khushi absconding. Further investigations would reveal that she had forgotten to complete the work and was either picking up flowers, or rearranging pots or making jewelry out of wheat dough or just staring at the sky. Some harsh words and tears later she would get back to her smiling self. Khushi had a bag full of all kinds of hair clips, earrings ranging from studs to danglers, lipsticks, bangles and what not and her considerable amount of time was spent in admiring them and then ofcourse trying them out on herself. She was very fond of dressing up and would spend hours styling her hair obviously at the cost of time spent in cleaning. You could see her flaunt her new hair do almost every other day.

I reasoned that she was not clumsy but just bored like any other child. I reasoned that she was not irresponsible but just not old enough to take all the responsibilities that had been endowed on her. Seeing her smile fade away, some times I wondered if I should send her back or probably send her to work in some family that was less demanding but my own selfish interest held me back. Who would work here if she left.

She would never take any kind of pampering. If we ever said thanks to her thinking that it would make up for the extra work load on her and make her feel better, she would curtly reply, “mujhe thank you kyon kehte ho. yeh to mera kaam hai”. I so wanted her to know that I felt deeply for her but she was too naïve to understand that.

And then one day when I reached home from office I came to know that Khushi had left. She had taken all her dresses and her dear makeup kit. She had gone with her parents to her native place somewhere in Nepal. We had let her go because we had found a better skilled resource than her. The new maid took the reigns in her hand from that day itself and harnessed her duties very efficiently. Things became neat and orderly once again.

All remained well except for the smile that has been missing since then.