A Lifetime of Bondage. By Roland Francis. Source: Goan Voice Daily Newsletter 18 Aug 2013 at www.goanvoice.org.uk
One of the reasons that facilitated movement to the Diaspora was the long established system of the house servant in Goa. Most often this was a woman from a poor family with more children than their parents could handle. She was offered to the household for a lifetime of servitude since education in those days was accessible mostly to the land-owning class and there were no laws requiring that children be educated until a reasonable age. A life span of service was not always the case though. In later years after the 1960s some of these women would move on to get married usually to a field worker or mine laborer and if she was fortunate, to a settler in Bombay or a seafarer. In some cases this servant was an adopted girl, a 'poskem' of whom I have written in a previous column. These were more fortunate. Although they did the same chores as that of a servant, there was always a kind of family moral obligation hovering somewhere between a servant and a real family member that resulted in a little better treatment. A few families who were more Christian, with their faith extending beyond the Sunday mass and their charity beyond provision of a minimum sustenance, treated their adopted family member almost as good as their own. I know of some of these few who gave their servant-poskems the family name and left them the same legacy as they did for their biological children. This is more likely to have happened if the child was brought as an infant rather than at 6 or 7 years old which was the norm. The job of a servant in Goa was all hours, all days all year. While the rest of the family had breaks in routine on Sundays, feast days, visits of the scattered family and fun times of that sort, the poor servant would actually have to do double her normal work when the family celebrated. If someone was kind enough to give a little tip for extraordinary services rendered, it was usually inadequate but considered lavish enough by the giver to share that information with one and all. The servant would be reminded of it for the rest of the year. None of that right hand not knowing what the left was doing. Talking of money, if the family considered itself generous, they would set aside a small sum every month towards adulthood and marriage, considering even that a favor. That monthly amount was nothing compared to the real economic worth of that individual but few stopped to think of that inadequacy and unfairness. As family members got older, the servant doubled up as the long term care provider (all for free) with all the ugly work that the situation entailed. Senility made the servant's tasks all the more onerous. Nevertheless, there were more complaints than appreciation for all this from the lady of the house. When visiting family members and friends in Goa, I used to marvel at the diligence and hard work of faithful, sincere servants but if I mentioned my awe of these individuals I would be countered with petty faults and trivial failings which I was often tempted to compare with those of the householders, but being a guest prevented me from doing that. The Mangaloreans have a system that Goans would do well to emulate. If the mother dies and the father is incapable of looking after the children financially or otherwise, or worse if the children were left orphans, the maternal uncle would according to custom take in his sister's offspring and bring them up as his own family. As such children grew older and did well for themselves; they would treat these adoptive parents in a much more loving way than would their cousins, the biological children. In such a situation, orphans in the Goan community would be left to fend for themselves either with a religious order or with some priest or other relative 'magnanimous' enough to take care of them. One would have thought that with the passage of time and people from Goa becoming materially well off, attitudes with their domestic helpers would have changed for the better. Unfortunately they haven't. Whatever changes have occurred are due to a shortage of supply and the natural driving up of wages and demands in level with other menial occupations. In my opinion, adequate compensation for their work is still not being practiced - rather the moaning and complaining of the employers has ratcheted upwards. I have often heard overseas Goans telling long winded stories of how difficult it is to get domestic help in Goa. What they conveniently omit is what they consider an attractive wage is wage below what a human being requires to keep body and soul together in today's Goa. What they should realize is that every human being's desire to improve their lot, just as they did theirs, should not be out of reach of their domestic help as it once was. -------------------------------------------------