With love - An evening of appreciation

It is 7:45 pm in the evening, and I am back after a rather tedious meeting from work. I am thinking something, and as I open the door, I see my maid still working .

"8 O clock, Shanti ammaa..? "
She looks at me, smiles and says something in tamil, which she knows I will not understand.
As I always do after I get back home, I put on the Geyser and move to the kitchen to brew some tea.
"You want some? , I ask her , To which she answers "Swalpaa kooro", meaning get me some .
As I shirk off the cups, I notice my favorite cup broken, and I ask her - How did it get broken .She pulls on the drawer and shows me how it got stuck, as she was pushing it off ,and got broken .its broken a voice in me tells me , and I say , "problem beda" , meaning no problem .
The tea is close to brewing and I am sieving her, she asks me for a chapatti (Indian bread). My first instinct is to make her a Maggi, coz that's what I would have made myself when I am very tired. But something in me tells me to stop being mean, and make her a chapatti . There is no vegetable sabji so I get her some amla pickle and pudina chatni (Indian sauce).

As I am making the first one , the power goes off, and I make both the chapattis in the dark .I am bad at making chapatti’s by the way, so this is probably my excuse to not take charge !




She smiles as I capture her, saying the light isn't enough. Somehow she always get really exited when I shoot her .

See her live in action as she helps with cockroaches here .


As she is sitting in the balcony next to my kitchen on the broken chair ,suddenly seeing her I remember my Mom, and all the time she used to feed me as I used to stand next to her in the kitchen . Most of these times, I never understood when she used to make me that extra chapatti
with the dough, which she would have had herself, and she is tired enough not to kneed the dough again, and goes on to bed with a half empty stomach. Only much later I realized to trick her by finishing the last chapatti and then asking her for me, thus "forcing" her to kneed more floor .

My sister on the other hand, was much more subtle. As I was preparing for my IIT entrance exams she used to get up in the middle of the night and make me tea and get em a little to eat.
When I was back from the classes, she used to make me food, and so was it for the evenings, till Mom got back from work. My sister in that way was my second Mom.

This wonderful lady, my maid , enables that I put my best each day learning new things and understanding the world of Mathematics and Sciences .She enables me to do more , be more.

Life is too short to complain, about broken cups, about maid asking you to cook something for her, when you are tired enough not to make one for yourself, about the cold water that you would have to take bath with , because there's no power.

Three wonderful women - My Mom, My Sister and My maid- here's a note of thanks , for I wouldn’t have been what I am today.

Footprints of Gerizim

You will know the meaning of a kiss only when you have never been kissed.

This simple realization stuck to me yesterday, when I had been to Gerizim Rehabilitation centre .

At the first sight , there was particularly nothing remarkable about Rahul. He had just been an ordinary child, but what stuck me at first when I saw him, was he wished me Merry Christmas Akka(sister in Kannada) almost four or five times that single afternoon. That was December 25th ,2009 .



Rahul is the one next to me in the picture- in White








That day, Anupama and I had been to Gerizim first. We had our inhibitions at first about how it would be to spend some time with specially abled kids. We took with us some sweets, and color books and crayons .But what was remarkable (and unexpected) was that these kids were extraordinarily disciplined .They never rose once while we are distributing the stuff, and continued to watch the movie that was being stage in the hall they were seated in.







And this is Vidya .










Yesterday, once more, we had been there. And this time with more energy that we had than the previous !
While I was playing with the kids, Vidya came to me, and as I soothed her hair, and picked her in my lap, it was appalled by the warmth she gave me and it was then that stuck me , these kids had no family , they were mentally challenged, and might not even remember us. (But I was surprised when the kids drew in thin air the signs showing coloring –as if to tell us that they remembered us from the last visit)
It stuck me that at times when we have nothing to lose, we still hold ourselves, in the tough collar, shutting ourselves out ,to what is humane .

That’s why they say –You never know what your smile does to someone, for a moment, for a day, for a lifetime of memory book – go sketch a memory book for someone .

This is something where My world of numbers and Mathematics have no meaning-Just the plain realization that we must give selflessly .

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Helping people help themselves
Ekta Grover