Sayamma...
26 years old Karuppazhagi. Works as cook-cum-cleaner-cum-butler-cum-watchwoman-cum-friend-cum-caretaker for the owner of our Hyderabad office.
Since I am staying in the same building in the guest-house, she takes care of my work as well. She cleans my room, washes my clothes and brings food for me.
She loves talking. I am speechless when she talks, which is very rare, as I myself am a talkative person.
She has a girl child in village who is being taken care of by her parents and brother's family. She lives in her master's house. They take care of her very well. She is like a member in the family, but she does a lot of work from her heart and is a happy person.
What about her husband, as she has a daughter?? She says that she was married very early and she lived with her husband for 10 years - they had a daughter and he wanted a son. As she had some problem with her uterus they had to remove it and hence cannot conceive any more. That made her husband just abandon her and walk away from her and their daughter.
When he was with her also, he did earn and bring home money - but used to drink country liquor and abuse her and beat her. Hence she had to do some odd jobs or borrow money from brothers and parents and live a pathetic life. Once he ditched her, she was working as a farm-labourer in paddy fields, where she had to stand in sun for hours and transplant the paddy saplings. This made her weak and she fell sick.
That is when the wife of her present employer met her in her village and took her to Hyderabad to work as all that I said earlier....
This has happened to be a boon for her, as she has a decent home to stay, safety from unwanted attention of other men, food at all times, clothes new and old frequently and also entertainment in terms of television movies and programmes every day.. She says what else I need now?? True, she sends home money to her parents for her daughter's education and visits village once in 3 months and spends a day or two with her parents and daughter.
Recently she managed to spend 37000 rupees and buy a gold choker for herself. She showed me this piece of jewellery and asked me to wear for Dassera festival... I laughed heartily and told her that it looks better on her. She may not understand if I tell her that she deserves it more... hence I told her that she should wear it on festival day.
Yes, that jewel is for her boldness in accepting life as it was given to her and the fact that she is going to wear it on Vijayadasami day signifies her victory over her mean husband who wanted a son from her and dared to abandon her after using her for 10 long years!
Good going Sayamma... you are a role model for other such women in AP, yes, I know, that what happened to you is a regular feature in rural Andhra and many women are victims to the whims of men who call themselves their husbands!
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