By Priyatham Swamy
“Do you think my son will really make cartoons one day, Amma?” Aarti asked, leaning on the kitchen counter. Her face was tired but animated, her eyes filled with the kind of hope that could withstand storms. “He’s obsessed with Pikachu. Says he’ll create something even better!”
My mother, chopping onions at the time, paused. “And what do you say to him?”
“I tell him to focus on his homework first,” Aarti replied, laughing, the sound carrying the weight of her exhaustion and her joy.
That was Aarti—equal parts pragmatic and dreamer.
Aarti entered our lives quietly, one morning in June. It was the start of another humid monsoon, and I remember her standing at the door, wiping rain from her forehead, sari sticking to her frame. My mother had been looking for help around the house, and a neighbour sent Aarti our way. She was in her early thirties, with a bright, almost childlike smile that seemed at odds with the world-weary shadows under her eyes.
She wasn’t the kind of maid who kept her head down and avoided conversation. She had a way of speaking as though she were a longtime friend, not an employee. My mother, who was in her mid-fifties and naturally reserved, found herself talking to Aarti more than she did to some of her relatives.
Between chores, I often found them on the balcony, sipping tea, their laughter filling the space between them. It was an unlikely friendship, but one that felt natural.
My mother always ensured that Aarti had enough food, even extra servings. Aarti laughed it off, saying she had a big appetite and always finished everything she was given. She relished the food, always making sure to appreciate even the smallest gestures. We all ate from the same vessels, sharing the same meals without reservation. It was a simple act that, to me, symbolized the ease of their bond.
She’d sit on the kitchen floor, her back against the wall, and sip slowly, the steam clouding her face. It was during one of these moments that she spoke of Nepal, of fields terraced along the mountains, of her father’s small paddy field.
One rainy afternoon, as thunder rolled faintly in the distance, she told my mother a story from her childhood in Nepal. “I was four,” she began, her voice distant, as if she were looking through a window into a world she no longer inhabited. “There was a carnival near our village. My father had saved up for weeks to take us. It seemed so magical at the time—bright colours, laughter, everything perfect.”
She paused and smiled, the kind of smile that belongs to a person who has lived through too much. “That day, I thought we were rich. My father and mother seemed so tall, so strong.”
She laughed softly, more at herself than the memory. “It was only later, when we lost the fields and came to Chennai, that I understood. We weren’t rich, Amma. My father just wanted me to feel like we were. He gave me one perfect day.”
Aarti had two children—a boy and a girl—and she poured her soul into raising them. They were confident and outspoken. “She’s given them a rare gift,” she told me once. “A sense of self-worth. They don’t feel inferior to anyone, they walk into a room like they own it.”
Aarti’s children, despite everything, carried themselves with a quiet self-assurance that was hard to miss. They didn’t slink away in shyness or look down at their shoes when spoken to. Instead, they met people’s gazes with a steady resolve that belied their modest upbringing.
For her children, she was a fortress, shielding them from the storm of her struggles.
Her pride in her children was boundless. Her son wanted to be a cartoonist, her daughter a doctor. She had no doubt they would achieve these dreams, even if the path was steep.
One evening, as my mother and Aarti stood on the balcony watching the rain, she revealed a part of herself she rarely showed. “I was engaged once before Vikas,” she said softly. My mother, who had been watching the rain, turned to her.
“I was only fifteen,” Aarti continued. “He was just like me—talked a lot, dreamed a lot. Mad fellow. He wanted to become an actor. Said he’d be in all the TV serials one day.” She laughed, but there was no joy in it. “I believed him, Amma. He painted such a beautiful life for us. I loved him.”
“What happened?” my mother asked.
“On the day of the wedding, he ran away,” she said, her voice breaking for the first time. “Just disappeared. I still don’t know why. Maybe he got scared. Maybe he didn’t love me the way I loved him.”
After the failed wedding, Aarti’s life took a different turn. Her father moved the family to Chennai, fleeing debt and the cruelty of bad harvests. He found work in a sawmill, and they lived in a cramped room with thin walls that let in too much noise and too little light. The move was jarring—exchanging the cool air of the hills for the oppressive heat of the city, the quiet of village life for the chaos of urban sprawl.
After her father passed away in an accident, her mother remarried, and they moved to Hyderabad. Aarti found herself in a new household with stepsiblings she adored. “They were kind,” she said once, “but I always felt something missing. A father figure, maybe.”
Her marriage to Vikas came a few years later. He was much older, a quiet man who had lost his job as a school peon. Their life together was neither loving nor hostile; it was functional. When Vikas lost his job, Aarti stepped into the role of breadwinner, working tirelessly to give her children the life she never had.
“Vikas isn’t abusive,” Aarti said once, shrugging. “He wasn’t unkind, but he never really saw me either. He is distant.”
It was her children who gave her life meaning. Aarti celebrated her children’s birthdays with a joy that felt almost contagious. She would save up for months to buy them small gifts—a toy car, a new set of crayons—and make simple but hearty meals for them. “We had a feast last night, bhayya[1],” she’d report cheerfully. “I made chicken biryani!”
“We may not have much,” she often told her children, “But you are no less than anyone else.”
But life had a cruel way of catching up. Her body began to betray her. Years of standing for hours, washing utensils, and working in damp conditions left her legs covered in sores. She ignored them at first, brushing off the pain, but the wounds worsened. Then came the coughing, relentless and deep. Tuberculosis, the doctor said.
Vikas, who had always been distant, stepped in to cook and care for the children. But it was Aarti’s absence from our home that hit us hardest.
One afternoon, after a brief hospital admission, Aarti’s daughter came to our house. She was teary-eyed, and I knew something was wrong.
“Ma’am, my mother won’t be coming to work anymore,” she said. “She’s too sick. We’re moving to another locality.”
My mother’s heart sank. “What happened to her?”
“She’s just… sick. Her health has been bad for a while, and now… it’s worse.” The girl’s voice trailed off, and she left without saying another word.
My mother didn’t say much after that. She went about her chores in silence, but I noticed how often she paused, her hands lingering over the vegetables she chopped or the clothes she folded. It was as if a piece of her routine, her life, had gone missing.
Years passed. My sister moved to the US, married, and had a son. My mother visited her there, her excitement about becoming a grandmother filling our calls. I moved to another city for work, and though life pulled us in different directions, we sometimes found ourselves talking about Aarti.
“Do you think her son ever became a cartoonist?” I asked my mother once.
“I hope so,” she replied.
“She deserved more,” my mother said one day, her voice quiet.
“Maybe,” I replied. “But she always tried to make sure her children wouldn’t have to stay the same.”
And so, life continued, as it always does. But the memory of Aarti—her strength, her dreams, and the way she had woven herself into our lives—remained. Aarti wasn’t extraordinary in the way the world measures greatness, but in her quiet, unassuming way, left a mark on us all.
[1] Brother, used as a term of respect for her employer’s son.
Priyatham Swamy is an emerging writer exploring complex human relationships and societal narratives. He works in India’s rural and agriculture domain and is passionate about literature and human connection.
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