I know this is not an ode, because it is not a poem, it is not lyrical/rhyming. But from my heart it poured out like a song, like a poem, so it's an ode ;-)
My darling Tittu, who has nobody in her life at this point of time, because she gave up her life to be with us.
In this selfish weird world, I have seen negligent parents who do nothing for their children, parents who raise children just so that they can eat off them later in life. Parents who are ready to abort their foetus, parents who abandon children as orphans.
In this kind of selfish world, my sister & I were pretty lucky/blessed, to have the unconditional love of not just two parents, but three.
Yes, it is not at all filmy and I am not going overboard when I equate Tittu with a parent.
An ordinary young househelp, she walked into my parent's lives when I didn't exist. She came to stay for 3 months, to help look after my 9 month old elder sister. But she stayed on forever, she became didi's nanny. She nursed mom through her pregnancy, she saw me when I was a few hours old, she looked after me when I was a sedated infant, she saw me before I saw her.
We gave her all kinds of names. Didi couldn't pronouce 'Tulasi', so she became 'Taachi' to her.
After I was born, we began calling her "Aanyiien'. I don't know how to spell it in English, I mean like 'आंयीं. I don't know why I called her that, but the name stuck.
Then my neighbour friend used to call his brother Kittu, so I started calling Aayi 'Tittu'. It started as a play, but the name stuck on for life.
Tittu used to go back to her hometown to visit her mother/sisters/brothers during our holidays, they would try out matchmaking, she would reject all prospective grooms. Meanwhile, I would struggle with my life in Delhi, depressed, wanting her to get back as soon as possible, it was pure mental agony, one of the worst experiences of life that I can clearly recollect, it won't be an overstatement to classify it as 'deep grief', or 'trauma'.
At some point in life, Tittu realized that she loved us too much, she felt strong maternal feelings for us, she finally told her family to stop searching for matches, she wanted to just live with us, for us, by us.
For me, family has not been 'four of us', but 'five of us'. Even today, when I recollect events from my childhood, movies that we watched, songs that we sang, houses that we lived in, stray dogs that we played with, ice that we munched on, cotton seeds that we tried to catch, seeds that we planted, flowers that we plucked, chocolates/candy/crisps that we ate, books that we read, in every memory, there is Tittu.
Tittu would have been ready to die for us.
Some people do not have the karma to become famous. Had Tittu been born somewhere in Roman Catholic rural Europe, say in Italy, she could have been beatified/canonized as the Patron Saint of Nannies. I am not joking!
I don't know what relations God binds us into, I don't know why Tittu was born in the untouchable Shudra tribal caste, I don't know why I was born in the highest caste under the Hindu Chatur Varna system. But I do know that Tittu mothered us. I don't know how our worlds collided, what bonds bind us, but she is a part of our life forever. Sometimes I think that perhaps I worry more about her than I worry about my parents.
My parents are educated, they can speak out, they are aware. More importantly, both of them can watch over each other. Whereas Tittu, Tittu is uneducated, I always fear that someone might take unfair advantage of her, I feel guilty for her loneliness, I feel like she did everything for us, but we left her alone. She's always in my dreams, I can't imagine my childhood without Tittu. Whenever my mom recollects our childhood, she always ends up talking about how much support Tittu was.
Because my parents are from a higher caste educated group, they know their birthday, I can at least wish them on their birthdays. I can't even wish Tittu. She doesn't know when she was born, she can only recollect some comparative markers, like she can remember my aunt's wedding, she remembers my great-grandfather's death, etc. So I know she is younger than my parents by around 6 years.
India is a land of rich culture & history. Our peoples were never illiterate/uneducated. They may have been 'illiterate' from the eyes of English language schooling under British occupation, but they were well versed in their own indigeneous systems of education. Hence, my great-great-great-grandfathers knew their birthdays, deathdays according to the Hindu calendar. My great-grandfathers knew their dates by the Hindu/Telugu as well as the Gregorian calendar. But the lower caste people were totally illiterate, they didn't keep any kind of record. Tittu comes from such a society, where her parents didn't even make note of her birth according to the Telugu/Hindu calendar, let alone the Gregorian one that was followed officially in British India. She is the only person I knew in my personal social circle, who didn't know her birthday, she spoke of how they couldn't afford Ghee in their food, they used to pick discarded wheat/rice kernels from farms to feed their empty stomachs. But very proudly, Tittu says, her mother never let them beg, never let them become wayward, Tittu was brought up with family values of dignity, respect, hardwork.
Tittu had a good life with us, she was loved, she learnt about equality, education, health, hygeine, nutrition. Today I can proudly say that Tittu is more aware of the importance of a balanced diet/nutrition/hygeine/low salt/low oil/physical exercise/first aid/gender sensitivity/ etc kind of issues than some of my own semiliterate relatives. In fact, sometimes I am convinced that though she was born a Shudra, she has more Brahman qualities in her than some real 'by birth' Brahmans. She lives a chaste life, she gave up eating meat/eggs, she turned strict vegetarian. I recollect a funny incident, I sent her to the next-door shop to buy me eggs that I wanted to apply in my hair. She was embarassed, she tried her best to discourage me, she said eggs shouldn't be brought into the house! Finally, she reluctantly bought some, but she explained to the shopkeeper that they were meant for my hair, she didn't want anyone to wonder why eggs were entering a Brahman household! She would tell me not to linger around the Puja area if I hadn't bathed yet! She voluntarily started fasting on holy days, attending jagarans, she says this is the way people approaching old age should live. I have never seen a woman as straight as her, that's why I refer to her as the patron Saint of Nannies. She may have been born a Shudra, but she has spent most of her life living like Brahman, and will die a Brahman. Because Brahman is a state of mind, not just a state of genes.
Thank God for technology, Tittu has a mobile phone that I can call her up on whenever I miss her too much. I know I will always be there for her.
When my parents go back to India, when I go back to India, I see Tittu living with us, I see her helping me raise my children. It broke my heart one day, when Tittu said, nobody will care for her even if she dies, she hopes that we will take care of her burial, because we are the children she has.
I want my children to be able to spend time with Tittu, I want them to know that she is their grand-nanny. I know she will love them as much as a grandma loves her grandkids.
Life is unfair. Tittu is everything in my life, everything in my eyes, but for outsiders, for legal eyes, she is just a househelp, I wish I could bring her here and show her my house, I can't, I will never manage her visa documentation.
I feel more bad for her than for my parents. Because my parents are my biological & legal parents, they can visit me here. Because they are educated, they have a computer at home, they have internet, they have a webcam, I send them our photos regularly, they see me on the webcam, I see them too. But with Tittu, I can't see her, she can't see me, I can't show her my pictures, she doesn't have an official address for me to post letters to. That is where the divide comes, a gap that cannot be bridged. In fact, I worry for her safety, she is a millionaire in the eyes of her deprived relatives. So I worry that they may want to snatch the single pair of gold earrings that she has, they might want to steal her money, they feel jealous of her mobile phone. So even to help Tittu, I fear. I bought gifts for my parents when I went to visit them, but I was worried about what to gift Tittu. I was scared of gifting her something expensive which her relatives/neighbours will see & it will be like I cause safety issues for her.
Of course, I shouldn't be complaining. Until two/three years ago, Tittu used to call us up for 2 minutes once in 2 months. It would be agony for me if she didn't call, I used to fear if she fell sick, if she got murdered, what the hell could have gone wrong with her? But now, she has a mobile phone, I can call her up regularly, I really thank God for this provision in life, it is a miracle.
The heart wrenching sadness comes in phases and goes. As a child, I wrote letters, now I can call, that is the only difference.
Tittu loved us so much, one summer, when she went to visit her people, my parents put us in a creche, I broke my arm. We were all in a mess. Dad sent a telegram to Tittu, Tittu just cut short her vacation and rushed back to look after me, she couldn't imagine leaving me without her care.
I never thought I would live life without her, separated from her, all of us on four different continents.
We continue looking after her financially/morally, because we know that she is our family, she will always be. I just hope that in our next janam, God, please make her my blood relative, so that legal hassles don't separate us, society doesn't separate us.
Of course, in a family, there are ups and downs. So there were with Tittu too. Tittu was more like mother, so she bossed around us, since she was in-charge of instilling good behavior/morals in us. We had all long forgotten that she was a househelp, she forgot it too, and started behaving a little too bossy, sometimes we didn't like it as we grew older. But dad always says, that if we have a real family member who misbehaves, do we throw them out? No, we stand by them. So even if Tittu spoke nonsense, dad said, she is like my younger sister, women go through menopause, that makes them upset, so we should stand by her patiently because she has noone other than us. Also, she hasn't seen outside life, so she doesn't know how valuable this is, she is a stupid innocent person.
Yes dad, you are so very right, as the years went by, I saw so many cases, where educated people intentinally misbehave with their family, speak nonsense, behave in a shameless selfish way, but the family doesn't throw them out, the family puts up with the abuse and tries their best to rehabilitate the person. If educated aware people can intentionally behave so cheap in big ways, the small nonsense that Tittu spoke in some phases feels minute.
It is especially minute in front of the colossal effort that she put up to make me "Me".
Today I see lots of working parents who juggle between careers and parenting, the children are often under pressure, the mothers give up work, all kinds of problems. Which we never felt as children, which mom never experienced, only because she had Tittu, we had Tittu, and Tittu had us. :-)
Most amazingly, I have actually seen real blood parents who are least bothered if their children aren't well fed or looked after, it stumps me to see mothers who are not bothered about simple things like deficiencies in children. And I think, wow God, you gave me a househelp, who felt more responsible for me than some mothers do. When I learnt all about vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, balanced nutrition in Prep school, I narrated those stories to Tittu, Tittu would remind me of the same whenever I refused to eat, "Remember you told me it's necessary to eat Pappu, remember you told me it's necessary to eat Koora"....
I never grew up in Tittu's eyes, she gives me a list of 'Thing to be careful about' whenever we talk on phone, she feels bad that I need to cook/clean/wash all by myself, repeatedly she tells me, 'Had I been there, I would have done all that for you without your even having to tell me. Be careful with the stove flame, be careful with the sharp knife, don't do things in a hurry. Be careful to mop up any pool of water in your bath, you might trip later if it gets paachi."... I laugh, I try to tell her that my bathroom here doesn't have the scope for water to collect/stagnate... Then I realize that I can't explain... And she realizes that some of her fears might be unfounded, silly even, in my eyes.. So she apologizes, 'Don't mind if I tell you such things, I think of your safety all the time, in my eyes you'll always be a little girl"...
But when she needs advice about the outside world, she knows she's the little girl, and I am the big girl!!!
I love you Tittu, I wish I would email you and show you this blog, unfortunately you can't read. But when we meet next, I will read this out and translate it out for you!
O how could I forget, Tittu, I learnt Telugu all because of you, no problem if it is an inferior illiterate dialect that I picked from you, it was my mother tongue nevertheless!
