Oshini


The Das family was well educated for those parts. Lecturer Das had an M.A. in English Literature from Tezpur University; he gave questions-and-answers about Shakespeare and Dickens to students at Nehru College, who wrote exactly what he had dictated during their exams. Mrs. Das wore starched saris and taught economics at Earle Higher Secondary. The Das girls, Rakhi and Pampi, attended Earle and could enter the staff room whenever they wanted—without permission—and drink filtered water from the AquaGuard machine.

They lived in a concrete building, painted purple, behind the district police officer’s residence. Two police cadets stood guard in a small hut near the gate, the walls of which were plastered with magazine cutouts of various Bollywood heroines and a poster of Boy George. Those guards were only for show; the officer liked to have them to enhance his status. But Lecturer Das told his colleagues what a nice thing it was to have official protection.

Lecturer Das traveled across the river once a month to teach at a pathshala where he encouraged the students—children of poor tea garden laborers—to study hard so someday they could attend Nehru College. They always laughed. Then he gave them each a tablespoon of Amul milk powder that the Central Government provided. At the end of one such afternoon, after the headmaster had pressed on him a canister of Amul to take home, Lecturer Das set out for the ghat.

As the Lecturer walked his scooter onto the gangplank to reach the ferry, “Barak Queen,” he saw a most interesting face. The Lecturer had a thing for faces. This one belonged to a man who sat on the ferry’s wooden floor, clutching a cloth bundle. His face seemed to have been permanently contorted into a half-smile, half-grimace. His skin was the shade of freshly watered earth, and his mouth hung open to reveal missing teeth, at least three on top, at first glance. His hair, however, was thick and well coiffed, standing on end above his temples.

The Lecturer almost laughed, but the impulse vanished when the man pressed his palms together in a namaste, his mouth folding out into a full smile.

I have never seen this fellow before, thought Lecturer Das, and yet he pays his respects. He looked down and saw his ironed trousers and the Vespa and understood.

“Oh, Bhai,” Lecturer Das said, for he believed in equality and called his servants bhai instead of the flippant kooka, “Where are you going?”

“Across the river to find work.” His tongue wavered between the gaps of missing teeth.

“What kind of work?”

“Digging ditches, washing clothes, dishes, fetching water, cleaning—”

“What, man, you mean everything?” the Lecturer said.

The smile flowered.

“I. Can. Do. Everything.” He stopped after every word as though he had no idea what he should say next.

The Lecturer thought: Was this man retarded?

“Babu, any work at your place?”

The Lecturer usually consulted Mrs. Das before such decisions but he heard himself say, “Come to the house behind the big police officer’s residence. Tell the guards you are there to see the Lecturer, and they will let you in.”

“Police?” There was a note of fear in that English word which rolled off his tongue with remarkable clarity.

“Just mention my name, and they will let you in!”

“Police. Guards. Will. Let. Me. In.” A light of wonder entered his phlegmy eyes. “Into Babu’s house.”


The next morning, Mrs. Das was massaging the Lecturer’s feet with coconut oil, and he was reading about the problems of illegal Bangladeshi immigration in The Assam Sentinel when they heard a distinct “Babu!” over the raucous laughter of the two ornamental guards. The Lecturer found them asking the man he’d met on the ferry useless questions and laughing as he repeated their words. The Lecturer admonished them with a “Choop!” They turned back to chewing sugarcane as the Lecturer led the man away.

Definitely Bangladeshi, thought the Lecturer, taking a close look. Illegal, for sure.

“Rakhi’s mother,” he said to Mrs. Das, “I met this man on the ferry. He can do everything, he says.”

“I. Can. Do. Everything,” lisped the man.

“Bhai, what is your real name?” said the Lecturer.

“Joydeb Das.”

“Aha! So you are of my clan, eh?” said the Lecturer. “See, nothing is above you. Who knows? Someday I may be working for you!”

“Someday you will be working for me.”

"Are you mimicking me, Bhai?"

But the man continued to smile, uncomprehending. Mrs. Das had to smother her face within her pallu—so hard she laughed. The interview was over.


Joydeb soon became the Lecturer’s favorite servant. Mrs. Das assigned his daily tasks: These included washing dishes and clothes, cleaning out the ditch where they put their food waste, and cultivating their vegetable garden on the riverbanks.

Like her husband, Mrs. Das believed in equality—but she did not think servants should eat exactly what their masters ate, or even eat from similar dishes. She gave Joydeb rice on a small steel plate that had been Rakhi’s when she was two, and tea in a porcelain mug, a leftover from the Lecturer’s days in the National Cadet Corps. They sat around their dining table eating fish curry while Joydeb sat on the ground eating day-old dal and rice out of his child-sized plate and NCC-issue mug.

At the day’s end, Joydeb took a bath in the river and combed his hair. The Lecturer swore he saw a light of intelligence in his eyes when he was thus cleaned up. But then he would ask him, “How much work did you do today, Oshini?” (He had started calling him Oshini, saying that he reminded him of a faithful servant from his childhood. Joydeb accepted his new name without any objection.)

“How much work did I do today, Babu?”

The Lecturer repeated the question.

Oshini would stare at the Lecturer’s feet, until the Lecturer gave up and went to consult with Mrs. Das. Most days Oshini’s pay was forty rupees, and on days that he did hard labor—digging a new drainage ditch, for example—it was fifty.


Lecturer Das walked into the common room one afternoon while his colleagues were discussing the rising cost of petrol, rice, and hired labor.

“This inphlation is very severe,” said the Manipuri Manimohan Singha. Lecturer Das retrieved his tiffin case and suppressed a smile, never failing to find funny how Manipuris were unable to pronounce “f”.

He found a seat beside a sociology lecturer—a Bengali fellow with glasses so thick they swallowed his eyes—who was saying, “At least the hired labor problem is seeing a remedy in these Bangladeshi illegals.”

“What!” said the Manipuri. “How so?”

The sociology lecturer’s eyes glowed with pride at being such a fulcrum of lunchtime discussion. “I heard a fellow in the bazaar yesterday,” he said, “who hired what was no doubt very much a Bangladeshi illegal for only fifty rupees!”

Lecturer Das tore off a corner of his chapatti.

“Imagine, fifty rupees,” the sociology lecturer wagged an index finger. “And it was for doing all the housework, and garden work, the irrigation, and what-not.”

Lecturer Das looked out the window as he chewed.

“Phiphty rupees cannot even buy enough rice for a phamily of phour, due to the severe inphlation,” agreed the Manipuri. “Is it not so, Lecturer Das?”

Lecturer Das nodded, pointing to his full mouth.


That night, the Lecturer asked Mrs. Das if she thought they were paying Oshini enough.

“Has Oshini complained?” she said.

“Na, na,” said the Lecturer. “My fellow lecturers were talking about how people are exploiting cheap Bangladeshi labor by paying them too little.”

“Too little?” she said. “To whom? If Oshini isn’t complaining, who are they to say? The day he says we are not giving enough, we will give more, na?”

She reminded him of how Oshini happily smiled when they paid him. They had also gotten into the practice of giving him some handfuls of rice and dal from their pantry every Friday. These Oshini always received with unintelligible expressions of gratitude. The Lecturer had forgotten all about that weekly gift, as it had been Mrs. Das’s idea.

“Remember,” she said. “Sometimes rich and educated people think everyone must live by their standards. You and I are generous but we also live in reality.”

The Lecturer could not argue.


The Das family owned an orchard two miles outside the town. Lecturer Das had been born on that property to his father, a vegetable vendor, and his mother, who farmed and had come up with a hybrid variety of capsicum, both spicy and sweet. They had been poor but had grown comfortable because of their shared determination that their only son would have a more respectable life. When they died, Shonkor Das was left the orchard; the old house with a new sanitary bathroom; two lakhs in the Central Bank of India; and an education from a university in Upper Assam, where he told his friends that his father was a cement dealer and his mother an agricultural scientist.


Mrs. Das had wanted to get rid of the orchard; she was a town girl. But Lecturer Das said that the spirits of his parents were sure to be displeased, and—there was the lychee tree that stood near the old house behind the toilet.

Lecturer Das was very fond of that lychee tree. When it was in season, he would personally pluck armfuls, straightening out the net that hung over the tree in an attempt to keep passersby from noticing the fruit. He hired a farmer to tend to it twice a month, as well as the myriad banana and guava trees that thrived on the property. He had instructed the farmer to sell the rest of the fruit, but all the lychees were to be brought directly to him.

When Mrs. Das served the peeled lychees to him on a porcelain plate, Lecturer Das always said they were still as sweet as when he had been a little boy. The tree had been in his family for five generations, he said.

One month after Oshini started working, the Lecturer went to check on the lychee tree. He was angry when he came home. Some hooligans had picked off the ripe lychees. The remaining green fruit would not ripen for two months … not until after the monsoons, he told Mrs. Das, pouting like a child.


The summer blazed long and hot. Oshini walked into the Das’s courtyard each day just as the sun rose in its molten whiteness in an opaque sky.

It was the week before the summer holidays. Mrs. Das was reciting Oshini’s tasks as he looked up in wonder at the Oscar fan that dissected the summer light on the ceiling. She was narrating the process for mopping the floors with phenyl solution when Lecturer Das came out to go on his morning walk.

“Listen carefully, Oshini,” said the Lecturer, not without affection. Then, Mrs. Das took Oshini inside the kitchen to show him again where the phenyl was kept; he still required some supervision with his house duties.

“Put phenyl. In water. Then put in rag. Mop floor. Wring rag. Mop floor,” Oshini said.

The Lecturer laughed.


They came home to the alarming smell of kerosene. Mrs. Das checked the kerosene stove and saw that it wasn’t leaking. She felt the coolness of the freshly mopped cement under her bare feet and knew where to look. The plastic can of safflower oil where they kept their kerosene was missing some of its blue liquid. When she questioned Oshini, he muttered that he had used phenyl to mop the floors just as Babuni had instructed.

“Dhandoop!” said Mrs. Das, calling him a dunce. “How many times I showed you what is what!”

Mr. Das winked at her and dipped his head towards the phenyl: it was also in a safflower can.

“Next time, think carefully, bhai,” she said. “Kerosene can burn the house down. Remember: only phenyl turns water into milk.” As a good schoolteacher, she knew how to simplify instructions.

“Kerosene. Can. Burn. The. House. Down,” said Oshini, “Turns. Water. Into. Milk.”

Oshini would not look up at her; she gave him five handfuls of rice that day, instead of three. He pressed his hands to his heart in gratitude.

“Did you see that?” she said to the Lecturer.


That same week, Rakhi, the older daughter, became a woman. She came crying to her mother in the common room, blood trickling down her legs.

“Were you bitten by a leech?” said Mrs. Das.

“No, Ma … it’s coming from the Dirty Place,” said Rakhi, tears and kajal running down her face. Mrs. Das went to Priyanka’s Variety where she purchased a pack of Carefree Napkins. She told Rakhi how to use the big rubber band to hold the napkin in place but Rakhi did not understand. In the end, she just stuffed the napkin inside her underpants and walked with small steps.

Mrs. Das told Rakhi that the napkins were not to be left in the bathroom for her father to see, as it was a most disgraceful thing. She was to wrap it in used newspaper, and put it in the pile of garbage that Oshini burned each evening.

On the second day of her period, Rakhi accidentally left her sanitary napkin in the bathroom.

Lecturer Das walked into the side yard to watch the sun set; he asked Oshini where he had found bandages to wash. Mrs. Das was called to assist, as Oshini answered every variation of the question with the same answer: “I am to wash anything in the corner, I can do anything for Babu and Babuni.”

Mrs. Das went to look at the shredded fabric that had turned stiff from the sun, hanging beside the girls’ uniforms. The blue strips on it were undoubtedly the adhesives of Carefree napkins.

“Hai-re!” she said. She sat down and laughed, pounding the earth with her fists.

“Tell me!” said the Lecturer. “I want to laugh also.”

She told him. They were still laughing when the girls came home from their harmonium lesson and came to see what the hullabaloo was all about. Rakhi saw the strips hanging, and, immediately realizing what had happened, ran into the house.

“Dhandoop!” she screamed, between sobs.

“I. Am. A. Dhandoop,” Oshini said.

Lecturer Das gave him an extra ten rupees and told him it was for the good laugh. Oshini did not smile. He did not appear the next day, or the next.


Then the monsoon storm came which All India Radio had been warning about, raining hail the size of cricket balls. The river rose—past the flood markers—and three weeks went by. Lecturer Das could not travel to the pathshala across the river that whole month; even though the “Barak Queen” went a few times, so many huts, trees, and dead cows rushed by that Mrs. Das begged Lecturer Das to not go lest the ferry bump into a dead cow.

“What if you die unclean?” Her lips quivered, so he did not go.

The river descended and soon the battered flood markers reappeared. But still there was no Oshini.


One night, as they were eating their dinner of steamed hilsa, Lecturer Das suddenly said, “I wish I knew where he lived.”

“Do you think he got deported to Bangladesh?” asked Mrs. Das.

Pampi, the younger daughter, looked into her steel plate and began to sniffle. Rakhi left, saying she had to go to the bathroom.


Lecturer Das prepared to go to the pathshala the next day. He informed the family that he would also inquire in the bazaar if anyone knew where Oshini lived.

“Don’t forget to use his real name,” Mrs. Das said.

“How lucky you reminded me,” he said. “I forgot his real name. Joydeb Das. Joydeb Das.” Thus repeating Oshini’s real name, he left.


When Lecturer Das returned, it was late. Supper had long been prepared. When the clock in the living room dinged eight times, they heard the Vespa’s rumble. Mrs. Das was so relieved that she shouted, “Rakhi and Pampi’s father has returned!”

The girls came running, but he had diarrhea from having eaten parathas from a tea stall. He had to rush to the bathroom after accepting a glass of cold buttermilk from Mrs. Das.

When Lecturer Das came out, they asked if he had found Oshini. He told them to wait. He took a bite of the capsicum pakora before he said, “Na.”

“He is just one of those Bangladeshi laborers, you know,” said the Lecturer. “One shopkeeper told me that there was a colony of Bangladeshis who lived on the riverbanks. During the floods, those huts were swept away.”

“Ma-Go-Ma!” said Mrs. Das, Rakhi, and Pampi all at once.

“The good news is that no one died,” he said. “They are all safe—somewhere. Oshini will return.”


They had to hire one of the laborers they had used on a regular basis before Oshini had come into their lives: the Nepalese Kalipod, who had short, muscular legs and could dig ditches all day long. But Mrs. Das bemoaned that she missed having one servant who could work both inside the house and outside, and yes, she was talking about that dhandoop Oshini.


It was on a Saturday evening—when the Das family went into town to see a Hollywood movie called Jurassic Park in the Devdoot Cinema Hall—that Oshini returned.

They were having a very loud discussion as they walked into the gate, about the movie, which was unlike anything they had ever read or imagined. Lecturer Das kept saying, “But this is the power of computers!”

The sky had gotten dark. It took them a few moments to see that there were several figures sitting in the shadow of the house in the side yard. And while all of them seemed unfamiliar, a voice as familiar as the crows that flew home overhead said, “Namaskar, Babu, Babuni!”

“Oshini!” Mrs. Das shouted.

“Where have you been, my friend?” said Lecturer Das.

With disjointed sentences and vigorous hand gestures, Oshini explained his absence: One of those huts on the riverbanks had indeed been his. When the river rose close to it one night, they had gone to sleep, believing that in the morning, surely, the rain would stop. Imagine their surprise when they awoke to see that water had crept over their threshold. They had quickly packed all their belongings in a few bundles and ran to the nearest pathshala, which, incidentally, was where Lecturer Das went to give lessons.

The Lecturer interrupted: “But I inquired there about you—and they told me no Joydeb Das or Oshini was there!”

“We are Bangladeshi and too-big family,” said Oshini. “They sent us to the tea garden the very next day to … the refugee work camp.” He wanted to introduce his family, who were sitting unmoving and silent, like bhoots.

“Meena Rani,” he said, pointing to his wife, who Lecturer Das noted had a cultured face, all her teeth in place. She even wore sandals.

“Pompi Rani,” Oshini pointed to an adolescent girl whom the mother shoved out of the shadows. She wore a dress that barely reached her knees, even though the hem had been let down. The Lecturer made a note to tell Mrs. Das to find some of Rakhi’s old clothes to give to the girl. Then there were Mampi Rani, Anju Rani, Anju Babu, and Popo Rani whose ages Lecturer Das estimated to be in a range between six and twelve years.

In Meena Rani’s arms, there was an infant whom Oshini introduced as Rakhi Rani. She was only six months old and Oshini pointed out proudly that she was not as dark as the others. “Her name is like little mistress’s,” he pointed at Rakhi, who was staring at the baby. “Rakhi Rani.”

The tea garden babus had found out that Oshini did not have his papers, and there were so many refugees looking for work in the tea gardens that they said, Leave.

Lecturer Das and Mrs. Das headed inside to discuss the situation in private. As Mrs. Das was reflecting on Oshini’s devotion to them—and how he had never stolen even a lemon—Lecturer Das clapped. “The orchard!” he said.

They decided that they would see if Oshini and his family would be willing to live in a small hut they would construct in the orchard. Although the old house was still standing and nobody enjoyed it except for the rats, it would not do to have their servant’s family live there. Oshini could continue to work for them, and he and his family could take care of the orchard, and the lychee tree.

“We might even make a profit out of it.” Mrs. Das made some calculations in her notebook.

That night, the girls talked about an essay they would write in Moral Science class as they looked for their oldest clothes to give away. Rakhi asked her parents why they didn’t add the word for “queen” to her name. The Lecturer and his wife laughed. They said only poor, uneducated people did things like that, adding royal titles to their names.


Lecturer Das and Mrs. Das were pleased with the arrangements. They hired a few laborers to construct a two-room mud hut. Instead of the fifty rupees daily, Oshini would get thirty rupees since the difference was to go towards the construction costs and their rent. Of any vegetables they grew and sold, they could keep five percent of the profit.

Oshini’s wife sometimes came to help with household tasks after she finished working in the orchard. She was very good at mopping, Mrs. Das noted. The floors gleamed, and Mrs. Das could see her face in them.

But when Mrs. Das handed her a few handfuls of rice and dal, she saw that the woman’s face did not light up with gratitude. She murmured her thanks, without looking at her benefactress.

“She is too clever,” declared Mrs. Das one evening at supper with the air of one who had uncovered a deep secret, “to be married to someone as simple as our Oshini.”


After Rakhi and Pampi had given some of their old clothes to Oshini’s children, they lost interest. They told their parents they didn’t like how the children stared at their clothes when Oshini brought them along.

Lecturer Das advised Oshini to not bring his children—they could play in the orchard. Just as he had when he was a boy!


The sun began to slack in its fervor and the rice fields turned golden. Mrs. Das and her daughters started to frequent the Nahata Textiles mega-store because, in just two weeks, it would be Durga Pujo. Pandals were being set up all over the town and artisans were bringing the goddess Durga to life from clay and straw in preparation for her five-day visit to earth. The Lecturer and Mrs. Das had saved one thousand rupees for new clothes and toys for the girls.

Nahata Textiles had so much new merchandise that the Das girls could not make up their minds. But they still had time. After the third such outing, they returned home empty-handed, except for Mrs. Das, who carried a newspaper-wrapped bundle from a fabrics merchant behind the fish market.

Oshini and his wife were sitting in the courtyard, facing the Lecturer who sat on a chair. They did not look straight at Mrs. Das, even though they said, “Namaskar, Babuni.” But she was undeterred in her joy. She dropped the bundle into Oshini’s wife’s lap. The woman undid the jute string slowly; she only looked up after she had uncovered its contents: two pieces of polyester fabric, blue and pink.

“For Pujo, to make one new dress each, and one pair of shorts for the boy,” said Mrs. Das. “One-and-a-half meters for each. Should be enough.” She could not stop smiling.

Oshini mumbled the words “Pujo,” “new dress,” and “Babuni”.

The Lecturer cleared his throat. “They are asking for a little more money,” he said. “They say that the vegetables haven’t grown to be sold for a profit—that thirty rupees daily is not enough.”

“Only a little more money,” Oshini jumped in, clearly, his eyes bright with effort. “Soon they will grow. Peas, squash, cabbage …”

Mrs. Das grabbed the end of her sari’s pallu and began to shake it.

“We want to buy shoes for the children,” said Oshini’s wife. “For Durga Pujo.”

“What is wrong with strong hawai chappals? I wore them as a child!” said Mrs. Das. “If we give you more money, will you pay us going-price rent? Say? Say?”

She was speaking loudly, and Lecturer Das made a “sit down” motion. They fell silent. Inside the house, Rakhi and Pampi were arguing over which of the pandals they had seen—the Taj Mahal or the Titanic replica—was the most beautiful.

Oshini tried to speak, straining forward till the veins in his neck stood out like sitar strings. “Wife,” “children,” “dal,” and “oil” were the only clear words.

“Fine! Fine!” said the Lecturer. “Forty rupees daily. And keep seven percent of the profits from the vegetables. No more gubber-gubber. Finished!”

When they left, Mrs. Das said it was surely the work of the wife.

“If only I could take back that material,” she said. “Just think! I spent one hundred rupees out of the goodness of my heart.”

Lecturer Das taught his girls a new proverb: Give them an inch, they want a mile.


Winter came.

One morning, when it was so cold that the girls were still sleeping under their blankets and Mrs. Das had turned on both the electric heaters, they heard Oshini.

“Oh, Babu!” he called. “Oh, Babuni!”

The little one, Rakhi Rani, had taken ill with a high fever. His wife held the sick child, who was breathing like a broken fan. Mrs. Das said that perhaps it was a fever from the severe cold; she gave Oshini a strip of Paracetamol tablets.

“It will surely take down her fever,” Mrs. Das nodded. “Even my children get sick like this sometimes. Let’s see if she gets better in a day or two. If not, we will take her to the town hospital.”

Lecturer Das told Oshini that the lychee tree was looking ragged. “Why don’t you prune it today?” he said. “This is the perfect time. Before spring comes, it will have a chance to sprout new leaves.”

“Sprout. New. Leaves.”


Two days went by. Oshini did not come. Mrs. Das complained that the laundry was piling up; she asked Lecturer Das to go and see if Oshini or “the clever one” could come.

Lecturer Das was busy preparing questions for the unit test; it was not until the next evening on his way home from the college that he was able to stop in at the old orchard.

Because it was winter, the evening fell swiftly. It took the Lecturer a few minutes to make out the lychee tree, the first thing he always looked for. His face turned red.

“Oshini!” he shouted. “Oh, Oshini!”

But Oshini did not come.

“Dhandoop, what have you done?” the Lecturer clutched his head as the cold air poked through his two sweaters and cashmere muffler.

Someone had pruned the lychee tree: All the branches had been cut off as though it was a tea plant. And while the Lecturer had never grown anything, he knew that the tree would most likely never bear fruit again. He kicked at the ground with his polished shoes and walked to the door of the hut, which was made from old mustard oil tins. It was unlocked and the Lecturer went in, thinking how cold it was. His breath blew ghost-white patterns in the air. It was dark inside, lit only by a hurricane lantern. A sound reached him before the sight. On two mattresses were Oshini, his wife, and the children surrounding a small figure wrapped in all their blankets. The dog-like howling of Meena Rani and the irritating sniffling of the two older children reached the Lecturer’s ears. He reached them in two steps, wondering if he should have taken off his shoes first out of respect. But the lychee tree—his beloved lychee tree!

He saw first, the old blue monkey cap that had belonged to his own Rakhi. Then, he saw the face of Oshini’s Rakhi Rani inside it, like a specter from a bad dream: the eyes rolled back, half-crescents of whites visible under spidery skin. Dried grey snot under the nostrils. The still, black air.

“Maa Kali,” whispered the Lecturer, the words coming out like a blessing instead of an invocation. Maa Kali.

Perhaps we could have given them one of our heaters, he thought.

–Grace Singh Smith (from The Tishman Review)

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