The Dignity of Labour

One of the good things about having been brought up in a middle class family in India was that I learnt  to be self-reliant. 

Like I said earlier in my post “A Happy Childhood”, we didn’t have much money when I was growing up.  My Dad was a lecturer in Russian at IIT Powai, Bombay, and we lived in the lecturers’ flats on the campus.  My mother managed the home without any domestic help, so I learnt to help around the house.  Dad was a handyman - he just liked to fix things.  We hardly ever gave anything to be repaired as far as I remember.  He had a set of tools at home to do practically anything, and weekends invariably saw him sitting at the table taking apart some gadget (not that we had many), or fiddling with the plumbing or electricity in the house.  Dad didn't differentiate between my brother and me on the basis of gender and taught us both the same things.  At an early age, I learnt what a hammer, screwdriver, drill (the manual one), saw, pliers, chisel, etc. were and what they were used for. 

We had tape cots and cotton mattresses in those days, and every once in a while, when the bed began to sag, he would get set to tighten the tapes, or, if they were worn out, to change them.  We children had an important job to do then – we were stationed on the opposite side from where he was working, and we had to brace our feet on the edge of the cot and pull the section of the tape that he passed us with all our might.  We did the long side first and then the broad side, where it was fun to weave the tape in and out.  It was tiring work and we were quite small, so we had to take it in turns to help.

During holidays, he would decide to build something or paint something and my brother and I enjoyed working with him.  He started with small stools, which he cut and built from scratch.  During that part, all we could do was to fetch and carry for him and sweep away the sawdust. But when it was done, then we had the privilege of helping with the sanding and the fun job of painting. We learnt about different grades of sandpaper and how to make the surface smooth and nice, how to dip the brush in the paint, wipe gently on the side to remove the excess paint and paint with smooth strokes.  We were all proud of our handiwork when the stool was ready and was being used.

When I grew up some more, I knew how to change bulbs and fix a loose connection in a faulty plug.  I could fix a leaking WC cistern and have even taken apart the trap under the bathroom sink to rescue the tiny ruby earring that slipped and fell through the drain holes – what a tremendous relief it was to see the red stone glittering through the muck. My maternal grandmother had given them to me when I was a toddler and my mother would have been furious if I had lost it.  I never thought of all this as unusual.

So when I got married, it was a tremendous surprise to me that my husband didn’t do any of these things.  If anything needed doing, it had to be done by me, or it wouldn’t get done.  I couldn't understand it - I had thought all men were like my Dad!  When I was expecting my daughter, I went to stay at his parents’ house for a few weeks, and I understood why.  His parents were used to having helpers do all the manual work.  I stood amazed while his father called their local handyman to change a bulb!  Though my father-in-law was a university teacher just like my Dad, they had a woman to clean the house, another to cook, a man to take care of the garden and someone who came on call to do odd jobs!  It was all very alien to me.  I later realized that I was seeing them when they were quite old (they were at least a decade older than my parents) and no longer comfortable with physical labour.  Being the youngest of five children, my husband had grown up when they were aging and perhaps able to do less on their own.  Besides, my mother-in-law had gone through a serious surgery to remove a brain tumour when he was barely a toddler.  The operation had caused her to lose the function in one eye and one ear.

But it was also true that my in-laws knew how to manage workers.  My mother-in-law was a very patient woman and able to put up with faults of people, whereas my mother was quite intolerant and so couldn’t keep a helper for long.  The result of this abundance of domestic help was that my husband grew up not having to help much around the house or think about any of the domestic chores or responsibilities.  It may have also had to do with socially acceptable roles of boys and girls in those days – girls had to help in domestic chores, but boys were not expected to do much and were allowed to play when they were not studying. 

Being so independent and self-reliant sometimes worked to my disadvantage, as I would automatically take on everything that needed to be done and exhaust myself.  To avoid being a drudge, I had to keep domestic help.  Also, our circumstances were such that I was totally consumed by the task of looking after an extremely hyperactive and dysfunctional younger son, so I just couldn’t cope without someone to help me. 

The result was that our daughter also grew up with other people doing everything that needed to be done, so there was no need for her to help around the house.  Because of this, when she was old enough, I looked for an opportunity to send her abroad to study.  This was not because education was better there, but because she would learn the dignity of labour and get an opportunity to learn to manage multiple activities like work, study, housework, cooking and managing finances.  She was also very possessive about her privacy, since she had to protect herself constantly from her intrusive brother, so living with other housemates taught her tolerance, cooperation and better interpersonal skills.  She got a part time job in a retail chain and held it for a year and a half, learning to work hard and speak politely to difficult customers.  She also learnt to be responsible and to value money, since she knew how tough it was to earn it herself.  The expense of studying abroad was huge, because she was there for three years. However, in the experience she gained on how to manage on her own, I truly believe it was a wise investment, given that she was learning life skills I had not been able to teach her as she was growing up.

Westerners reading this will not quite understand the Indian context and will be quick to judge us.  In these countries, people are geared to doing their own work and public systems support this lifestyle through the conveniences and facilities provided by the government as also by public and private enterprises.  Most young people work at part time jobs to pay their way through college.  Learning these skills is necessary for survival as an adult, because unless you are very rich, there is no other option.

However, here in India, because labour is so abundantly available due to widespread poverty and lack of education, our social systems are geared differently.  If people became independent enough to all their own work, millions of poor people would lose their jobs.  Also, our culture of male dominance ensures that if we were to do all the work ourselves, it would be the women of the house struggling to do it all, with no practical help from their male siblings or partners.  Availability of affordable labour has made it possible, for our women especially, to delegate the routine and time-consuming chores to someone else and devote their time to a career or hobby and a more active social life.

But things are changing now.  Our generation of Indians may be the last to have enjoyed having domestic help to do all our manual work.  We already see now that it is becoming more expensive and more difficult to find domestic workers, because the poor in our country have begun to have higher aspirations.  They want to educate their children and come out of poverty and the youngsters among them would much rather work at jobs in factories and retail outlets than at manual work in someone’s home.  This in my opinion is the best thing that could have happened for them – the breaking free from the cycle of poverty through education, higher aspirations and greater opportunities.  At the same time, it also means that the more well-to-do among us need to foresee the change that will surely come in the future and teach our children to do everything that needs to be done; and for that we ourselves need to believe in the dignity of labour.