“As long as we have a few young ones to laugh along with, every day is a blessing.”
– Rajamma
I walk up the corridors of my college to reach the class in time. I cross the service staff on my way, for whom the day has started much earlier. I spot the familiar faces and one particularly stands out, it’s innocence and sincerity encompassing every on in its way. With desires so humble and a smile that lights up her face, Rajamma was one of the many that formed the support system for the school. She was the backbone to the brains of the college but such that is scarcely recognized. Her day starts at the wee dawn hours into the morning when the sun is just coming over the horizon. She gets her children ready for school and then heads out to one herself. Not as a student but as a woman of service. Her toils start from 8 in the morning when she checks into the college campus, a plush green scene which contrasts with the drab background she comes from. Nevertheless, this is her job which she loves to come to everyday. Although it has been only around three years of her association with the campus, she looks at everything in child-like wonder and is as coy as a new bride.
Rajamma’s journey before a service staff was as a house maid. The usual back breaking chores, yells of the house owners and a persistent cough and cold was a part of her routine. Wanting to change her circumstances, she headed to the campus with her husband who is also employed here. Two years making the area greener through gardening and one more year of making the hostels livable, she is now one of the important members of the support staff. Her duties include keeping the premises clean but like all clerks of her generation, she goes beyond her role by taking care of even the tiniest requests of the students.
That is of course the rosy side of her job. But what it actually is, is grub work. 365 days a year she needs to report and work rigorously for 8 hours before she can head back home that is another long travel. All this to feed her family of four, including a boy in 4th class and a girl in 3rd class, whom she doesn’t even get to spend time with because she is taking care of someone else’s children all day. Our college very well holds the spot for the cleanest and greenest campus, but it is made possible because hundreds of support staff like Rajamma are putting in the elbow grease to make it so. And so it was. You could look around the campus and see a world of green, you would look down and see a spotless path. Very often it is easy to forget the supposed invisible hands behind the cleanliness. Very often we take all this for granted. Because it is a given that somebody else will clean up our mess.
Ponder for a moment if that should not continue to be the case. Then what? It’s not to say that the students should charge into washrooms and clean it themselves. But the point is to have an attitude of gratitude which is imperative. A polite thank you for their work, a happy hello in the morning or even bringing in the basic etiquette when talking to them is all it needs. Good gesture likes gifting them and children on festivals or giving them a day off because we vow to take at least some of their responsibilities for a day could be a start. Imagine how much easier they make our lives and how we can return the favor by syncing in steps with them. Not lying our litter around, making sure we use the ‘Use me’ signs and bringing in our cleanest selves is not hard but can go a long way to ensure that we lessen the burden of such workers. Sometimes, be of service to them – be it in college or corporate or those cleaning your own homes.
Little things make for big difference. Just like how we might think that their presence matters less but it’s their absence that hits us hard.
