Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

8 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Sita Bhaskar
“We will all be walking like this.” A woman bent down and
hunched her shoulders, shuffling under the imagined weight of the
state’s coffers, flush with money from the white people.
A policeman shouted at her from the head of the line. “Stand
straight. Do you think this is a circus?”
The women muttered among themselves. “Wait and see your fate
by the end of day, you circus ringmaster.”
Nirmala stood aloof from the other women, though the promise
of a Minister’s job piqued her interest. At first she wanted to work in
an export tailoring unit surrounded by sleek imported machines that
spewed out mass-produced clothing for Americans. But when her
neighbor’s daughter complained of constant eye-strain after working
in poorly lit tailoring units, Nirmala decided to become a housemaid
instead. She had learned a lot during her employment with Akka
including how to organize a dinner party. Nirmala was entranced
by fruits and vegetables carved in creative shapes in an arrangement
elaborately constructed on delicate glass platters. While she never saw
who engaged in the demolition of this arrangement during the party
since she was busy supervising the children, she viewed the vegetable
debris with great pain after the party.
Best of all, she had learned to dress like Akka. Only saris, not pants
and skirts. Good Heavens, imagine pants and skirts! Wolf whistles
would reverberate through the narrow hallways of her governmentsubsidized
building and the paper-thin walls already endangered by
peeling plaster and faulty plumbing would collapse under the weight of
this noisy assault. Only saris. Akka grew tired of her clothes and gave
them away to Nirmala, not realizing that Nirmala’s entire wardrobe
was hung across a clothesline that crisscrossed her narrow one-room
tenement. When the clothesline sagged under the weight of Akka’s
discarded clothes, Nirmala gave some of the clothes to her neighbors.
Of course, Akka never asked her what she did with the clothes. It was as
if she forgot about them as soon as they left her closet. But she wouldn’t
forget Nirmala’s absence today. Just like the Chief Minister had to take
care of the state, Nirmala had to take care of Akka’s big bungalow so
that Akka could go to her important office job. If Nirmala did not get
appointed as a Minister this morning, she would have to hurry back at
least before Akka’s children returned from school, so that her absence
in the morning would be forgiven.
Everybody had a job to do—even the men in the truck that pulled
up to the head of the line. Nirmala could not see what was unloaded from