Sita

“Sita is my right hand,” says P. This is no exaggeration. One day as we were getting ready to go out, P. called me to the terrace. Then she called Sita over and instructed her to wipe her brow. I tried not to let the horror show on my face. “You do not have servants to do things like this in America,” says R. “No, no we don’t,” I say, my disgust thinly veiled at best. But it’s not disgust. It’s embarrassment. Sita is being used as a display of wealth and privilege that is meant to impress me. I am not impressed. I am embarrassed that anything like this should be for my benefit. I can only hope Sita knows this.

Sita is beautiful in hot pink. I saw her one day in her nicest sari - beautiful hot pink with gold. Most days she just wears dirty old saris, as she moves about the house at P.’s beck and call. “SiTAAAA!”

More beautiful than Sita in hot pink is simply Sita herself. She sings as she goes about her work, quietly, as she walks away from P. She smiles and laughs both at and with me. “Chai, chai!” she scolds if I absentmindedly forget to drink the cup of steaming tea on my desk. Lovely peals of laughter follow when she asks me something I simply don’t understand and I confusedly move about trying to figure out what exactly she meant. Something about clothes. . .

Sita lives in a small house in the back yard with her husband and two children. Her husband works somewhere, and moonlights as P.’s driver. I wish they were happy. But Sita says her husband has another wife somewhere in the city. He doesn’t come home some nights. When Sita, beautiful Sita, confronts him, he threatens to beat or kill her. P. tells me this is a problem with the servant class. P. scolds them both, like children. Sita’s husband should do better, and leave his “other wife.” Sita shouldn’t scold him. She threatened to throw him out. If I were her I would.

But I’m not. I certainly identify more with her than P. I wish I could talk to her, know what she was thinking. I want to be her friend. Our secret smiles and the warmth with which we treat each other are the most welcoming gestures I’ve encountered here. Far more friendly than all the sweets and cheek pinches P. could offer.

My goal is to communicate with Sita. Not in commands, but as one human to another. All I can do now is ask, “Baganara?” She is always, “Bagananu.”