A Story of Servants in Karachi
By: Owais Ali
Tags: Inspiration, Culture, Essay, Love, Life

A Story of Servants in Karachi

What we learn from those who serve us

Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Pexels

Many years ago, when I was eighteen years old, our family needed to hire a servant. Our mother took advantage of the strongest network in the town (better than intelligence agencies even) — she asked a couple of aunties in the nearby area.

Word spread quickly that we were looking for help. Some of the aunts held grudges and wouldn’t be of much help, but the news spread like fire to the other aunties.

We began the recruitment drive for a housekeeper. They were interviewed on whether they could handle the workload and whether they agreed on the salary as well. Since we paid generously, or at least better than others in the area/block, we soon found one who agreed on the workload which was sweeping, mopping, and dishes of the whole house. She also agreed on the budget.

We were relieved to find a housekeeper. Would it be possible to have a relationship with our servant beyond the duties she fulfilled? Since she was doing her job well and was very quick too, instead of hiring a new maid, we added laundry to her routine.

It is mostly the labor community who is more physically fit and a source of inspiration as well as a source of a little shame for our health and fitness.

New Lifestyle

Karachi is a metropolitan city — the world’s eighth-largest city. It is a hub of jobs and employment for everyone. We see a lot of people coming from smaller cities and villages who earn a good living in Karachi. Common domestic jobs are readily available for drivers, cooks, maids, and gardeners. Two-thirds of the workers are women. Many households in Karachi, even middle-class families like us have servants especially if there are sick people or old people in the home. Then servants are a must and become a crucial part of everyday life. As many people say:

A clean home is a happy home.

Like many others who come from the villages to work, similar was the case with this maid, who we shall call B. They work in fields (men and women both) all day in scorching heat and at the end of the month usually do not earn much because they usually don’t own the fields they work on and they are only paid partially. So, for many of the people living in villages, coming and working odd jobs in a big city is a good milestone achieved for them.

Whenever she went to visit her village, usually our whole family divided the tasks daily. It was then when we really appreciated her hard work. We were shocked that she single-handedly took care of the house and helped other households, too.

In middle-class families, when there is no maid, the couples fight, children cry, and whole families suffer, their world going upside down.

Once my mother fell ill, so she asked her to cook for a week, and ultimately cooking was added as part of her daily job. Since she was doing a lot of work she was spending more and more time at our home. Soon the chemistry between my mother and the maid grew stronger and they were chit-chatting a lot as well.

New Guests

The maid was taking care of two children from villages, so leaving them alone at home was not feasible, hence she started bringing two kids to our home. A boy, A , who was around 7 and a little girl, T, who was around 3. So she was spending more time at our home. I came to know they were her grandchildren she was taking care of because her daughter and son-in-law were already having a hard time affording their siblings back in the village 😢 They were both cute but reserved because they were in a new city and in between new people and they didn’t have any idea what they were doing at our home.

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I had an inclination to talk and interact with them because they were cute but there was a language barrier since they spoke Saraiki. The girl hardly spoke 10 or 20 words in total. I had a new smartphone with me at that time and I was exploring the games and apps. I found Talking Tom to be very funny. The game repeats what one says to it. I showed it to them.

The trick worked like a charm and we became comfortable with each other. We started talking and playing together. Soon my other siblings were engaging too, but their interaction was mostly with me since we used to play together on the phone by finding other trending games. Once I downloaded a child app called Spinning Blade which I found very boring. In the app, there was a blade spinning constantly but slowly and if you touched the blade edges, it spun faster, and virtual blood splashed on the screen.

I was about to uninstall it but I thought to show it to A to confirm he would also dislike it and we would uninstall it with the mutual decision. But against my assumption, when he placed his finger on the blade, the vibration of the phone and virtual blood scared him and at the same time, he was laughing and enjoying it. Watching a kid laughing like mad and those reactions of him were amazing and priceless. I had never experienced this before. Now it was the turn of the little one to try. T was completely scared of even placing her finger on the screen as if she was seeing it as a real blade. Again, bingo. Their reactions made my day. So much so that even I started liking the app and when they were not around, I would open and play with the app.

Photo by Olia Gozha on Unsplash

The lifestyle of people who come to Karachi obviously changes because all the children here go to private schools which are more expensive compared to government-run or public schools.

Government schools here are improving gradually to provide quality education as well as spreading awareness of education and promoting it among the poor. Government schools provide free books and uniforms and even sometimes they give a small stipend to parents for sending their children to schools. That’s really cool, right?!

Since Karachi is huge, people from all kinds of economic backgrounds live here. We have posh areas and slums and everything in between. A huge number of people send their children to government-run schools even in the wealthy city of Karachi.

I learned from the kids schools are not as good in villages. When I asked them in which school they were studying, they said they were attending a village school whereas they had already been living in Karachi for more than a year. Let’s be honest here — in villages, since there is no check and balance for quality (but thank God it’s getting better now) the schools are not as good. After getting admission it’s upon parents whether to send their children or not because the school has fulfilled the responsibility of admitting them in school.

A couple of weeks after we had this discussion, we saw A coming to our home in uniform. He had taken admission to a school near our home. The main thing is that in a couple of months I was talking with him in Urdu before I realized. He was already learning the official language of Karachi!

Final Words

When we spend time with servants and their children they provide a source of inspiration for life that can never be forgotten.

B’s husband who was doing a civilian job in the Pakistan army got relocated to another city where they got a new quarter.

While they were here, I got to increase my vocabulary a little and some of the words I can recall are: