Geetanjali Krishna: Of women and other problems

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A couple of Holis ago, I congratulated Ramu, our ex-watchman, on his wedding. Sheepishly, he'd told me they were already expecting their first child. This Holi, I happened to run into him again. I asked him how marriage and fatherhood were treating him, and he looked quite morose.

"Well, it's good in some ways, not so good in others," he said with a deep sigh. I was slightly surprised at his lukewarm response. "Women," he said, "if you'd pardon my saying, complicate a man's existence. At least, the women in my life have complicated mine!" Curious and irritated, I asked him what he meant, and he told me his life story.

"I came to Delhi from my village in Bihar five years ago," Ramu began. His uncles were working here, and managed to get him a job as a watchman. "I began sharing a tiny room barely large enough for two people, with six other boys "" three of us had night duty, and slept during the day, while the other three had day shifts and slept at night," he said. He saved a lot of money this way, and all was well.

Then he got married. "My wife refused to live in the village so I was forced to rent a single room for us to live in," he said.

Now they may not have consciously desired to populate the world with little replicas of themselves, but that's exactly what they ended up doing every nine months or so. First a son, then a daughter, then another daughter...finally when the fourth daughter entered their lives, Ramu's wife began complaining the room they lived in, wasn't big enough.

"Since we could not afford a larger home on my salary, we decided that she should also work," Ramu said. So they asked his mother to move from the village to look after the children while his wife began working as a domestic servant. His mother arrived, but with her youngest daughter in tow. "So suddenly, while our income had grown and we were in a bigger place, our household and expenditure had gone up as well," Ramu explained. The elder two children began school, and the expenses piled up even further.

Soon, the quarrels began. "But that was expected," he said, "women will be women and my wife and mother are both stubborn anyway." After a particularly bad fight, his mother stomped out of his house, taking the sister with her. Overnight, his wife had to leave her job as the children were too young to be left alone. "So we were left in rooms that we couldn't afford and more children than we could feed "" on just my salary," he said.

Something about his expression intrigued me, even though his story was not a particularly unusual one. "What did you do then?" I asked him. "There was no option but to send our daughters to the village, even though the youngest one was barely six months old," he said. "My mother and sister could manage them there, and anyway, what's the point in spending money on educating girls?" he said. They kept their son with them, though: "we'll send him to a better school since we don't have his sisters to think about any more..." he reasoned.

"So, all your problems are solved now!" I commented, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. "Perhaps," he agreed, "but the house it too quiet now that all the girls are gone..." Suddenly, he burst out, "I told you women have complicated my life! Life would have been simpler if I'd stayed away from them!"