So my roommate left almost a week ago and I've been living on my own for all this time. The nights are ok, but when I wake up in the morning to an empty room, it can get pretty lonely especially when I have the entire day to kill and nothing much to do. I had thought I'd do alot of things to fill my day. But so far I haven't gotten around to doing any of the things I had planned.
So I spend my day laying in bed, watching FRIENDS and speaking to no one.
Just when I thought that the silence and boredom would kill me, I found company in someone who could very easily have been left by herself or ignored.
Every morning, at about 11, the maid comes to clean the house. When I tell people that my maid is a 12 year old girl (I'm making a guess about her age)they shoot an accusing look at me and mouth 'child labour'. Now, I feel bad about the situation, but somehow right now I feel like there isn't something I can do to stop my landlady from sending the girl to my place.
Anyway, I have a few things I think I can do now that I think about it, but it'll take some time.
So anyway, her name is Sarika and she stays with her family in Vadaj. The first time she spoke to me was when she came up to give me a bottle of cold water that the landlady had sent. I smiled at her and said "thank you", and she replied with a "Welcome" and the brightest smiles I'd ever seen.
She came up to swab the rooms and sensing that I may like some company, she began talking to me.Maybe she didn't really know what to talk to me, or maybe it was what she wanted to say, but she began to tell me about the landlady. She seemed excited to tell me different stories of the people who had lived in the house before I came. She laughed at certain instances and I joined in. She in her excellent super fast Gujarati, me in my absolutely poor and broken Gujarati-Hindi-English sentences, made quite a hilarious pair. I barely understood everything she was telling me, but I knew she thoroughly enjoyed talking to me.
The next day when a robbery took place near my place, she took it upon herself to warn me about earlier thefts and mishaps in the area. She told me to keep the doors locked and be careful when I came home alone at night.
Today when she woke me up from my sleep at nearly noon time, I asked her if she went to school. With a mix of a sheepish yet adamant look, she told me that she'd studied till 6th std, but had quit after that. I asked her why. From what I understood, she'd loved to study, and her two younger sisters were at school too. But her grandmother never encouraged her to continue studying. Being the eldest, Sarika was expected to work and help her mother. She didn't have a father( or grandfather, I didn't really understand) and when I asked her how he died, she told me she didn't know. But her grandmother never let her do her homework and that made things difficult for her at school. Finally she got fed up with all the trouble she was getting in at home and at school and decided to give up studying all together. I asked her if she has plans to study again, and she said she wasn't sure.
She then told me about an incident that made me so furious but yet again, I didn't know what to do. I don't even know if I should be writing about this here, but maybe someone reading this has any ideas of something I could do to.
She told me that she loved earrings and bangles and one day she went to a shop near her place to buy a pair of earrings. The shopkeeper showed her a pair she loved and told her it was for Rs 15. Sarika didn't have that much money and asked him to give it for less. The shopkeeper, instead of giving her the earrings, put them on for her and told her that she didn't need to pay for them, and then started acting funny with her. Shocked, Sarika threw the earrings back at him and ran from there. She told me that she thinks he was drunk, because he stank and his eyes were all red. I asked her if she told anyone of what had happened, and she said that she did tell her maasi but no one wanted to do anything about it in case he came after them at night.
I sat there and listened to her talk about the incident in such an easy manner, but I knew that it would have been anything but easy for her.
Not sure of what to say to her, and my poor Gujarati posing as a huge barrier especially when I was at a loss for words, I simply asked her how old she was. She looked at me for a while, and then said, " khabbar nai" (I don't know) Calculating her age from the fact that she had left school just months ago and she had been in the sixth std, I assume she's 12.
That's way too young to experience the things she has, and the things she hasn't told me...
May be I seem selfish in thinking that I've finally found someone to talk to in that empty house, but I'd also like to think that she'd found someone to talk to as well. May be that isn't so bad.
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