I finish wiping up (we call it disinfecting to meet with the
international standards of our hotel chain, but my dirty rag probably doesn’t
quite make the cut) and begin washing a massive container full of
strawberries. It’s not the right time of
year for strawberries, but they get imported from somewhere. In my village, we can only get them for a few
months, usually around December or January.
Most of the tiny berries get sold to out-of-towners or boxed up and put
on lorries to be eaten by strangers in the cities. I sold strawberries for a short while when I
was younger, nicking the tiniest ones and nearly making my eyes water with the
burst of warm sweetness that reddened by tongue. I smile at the memory and recall my younger
sister then, her dark eyes glinting at the sun, laughing at my indignation as
she took off with a handful of berries and disappeared behind the clog of
rickshaws and cows. But that was
before. She doesn’t laugh anymore, not
now that Ratnesh spends many evenings with his bottle and his stick.
Hours later, my work is finished, and I take one last deep
breath of the restaurant’s air conditioned interior before I trudge out into
the Goan night, still as steamy as one of the hotel bathrooms just after a shower,
despite the fact that it’s sometime past midnight. It’s not far to the staff quarters, which
stand in tin and asbestos rows like a set of ragged old soldiers. An array of glorious mast trees blocks them
from the view of hotel patrons who might gaze out their French doors or sit on
their manicured balconies with their morning French press coffee. Usually, each metal box houses 6 people, all
of us migrants from other parts of India, having followed rumors of plentiful
work and the off-chance of somehow getting a piece of the great wealth that
floods into Goa in the pockets of Russians, Germans, and Brits.
A group of four Nepali boys used to share my house, but they
all disappeared en masse a few weeks back.
Every hotel employee claims to know the true cause of their evaporation
into thin air, postulations ranging from a better paying job in North Goa to an
escape from a boss to whom they owed some money after a failed drug transfer. So, now I share only with Gunpat, an ancient
gardener who possesses three and a half teeth, nine toes, and a strangely
durable sense of humor, which has lasted despite the deaths of his wives (first
and second) and five of his six children.
He’s snoring on his chattai in the corner, but pops open one eye as I
enter.
“Aalam,” he screech whispers, “he’s been doing it again.”
“Who’s been doing what again?” I ask, not sure if he’s
dream-talking, dementia-talking, or really awake.
“That posh Sahib of yours has his hands in the big man’s
pocket. Moushie says that Sneha said that
Pooja saw him fishing around the cash box during chai time. Oh, and your fly is down.”
As I glance down at my pants, he cackles hysterically at his
success in fooling me, smacking himself on the stomach several times before
rolling over and re-closing his eye.
I have to grin a little at his
joke as I strip down to my chuddies, rinsing a small spot out of my white shirt
so that I can wear it again tomorrow.
All at once, my general torpor gives way and I feel myself filling with
a blue-hot resentment towards the Sahib, who parades as a righteous,
god-fearing, honest man with a bold red tikka streaked down his forehead. “It is my joy to serve for the good of the
hotel.” That’s what he says,
complimented by a dazzling smile, when in the presence of his superiors. “Dog,” I think, as I drift off to sleep.
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