Apology to Jitan

With early loss of our mother, our household was always dependent on domestic helpers. In 1970s, it was common to have young boys from poor families become migrant workers in urban households.

Jitan, a young 10–12 year old boy was one of our helpers, my contemporary. Jitan’s first duty in the morning would be to light the coal-fired cookstove , a.k.a chulha. In those days, you needed connections to get a gas connection in India, it was a privilege. Sometimes Jitan would fail to wake up in time and delay our breakfast or miss to pack our lunch boxes. Very often, he would bear the brunt of my frustration. There were other countless episodes which I feel very ashamed of.

As I grew up older, I reflected upon these matters and always had the burden of being callous to Jitan and other underprivileged people. I often wonder why I had this sense of entitlement. Why couldn’t I see the unfairness, a boy of my age uprooted from his family, working as a slave. While I was curling in my bed in cold winter mornings, he was desperately waving a fan, his eyes filled with smoke, blowing on the fire to speedup the process. My sense of entitlement appals me.

I had good fortune of meeting Jitan during my trip to my maternal village in 2017. Jitan had become an entrepreneur, running his catering business in Jaipur. He had decided to stay back temporarily in the village for a while to marry off of his daughters. I came to know of his presence and I called him for a meeting. After a bit of small talk, I offered him my apologies for my disgusting behaviour of those early years. The concept of apology to generations of oppressed people is alien to our culture. He most certainly wasn’t expecting any of this, I could see his teary eyes. These few words wouldn’t wipe off either the harm nor the guilt, however, I felt a sense of relief. The story of migrant workers continues, four decades has gone past. A large number of them still domestic workers in big cities as we watch them parade the highways of India, returning to a safe haven.