Everyone's children are the same.

A bengali woman started working as part time help in my house recently. She is as bad as they come, dishonest, unreliable, lazy, incompetent and I wonder why we have her at all. The last time I told her that it was not working out she almost fell at my feet and she really does seem very needy so the story goes on. Anyway, four days ago she got her 3 months old daughter along to our house. Her husband had hit the child so she could not bear to leave her alone with him.

I peered at the dark, malnourished kid. She seemed reasonably clean but very weak. I made her lie down in the drawing room under the fan on a small padded mattress that Ruhi uses for her dolls, carefully covering it with a plastic sheet and a piece of cloth. She lay there happily gurgling while her mother went about her chores. No one except me and the other girl who helps me run my house, came near the child.

Before leaving, the woman left Ruhi's small mattress in her room and put the cloth away for washing. Nothing of great consequence till I realised that my mother in law was greatly upset with what had happened. That I had made 'that' kid lie on Ruhi's toy mattress.

I have a pact of silence to all things disagreeable within my rather volatile joint family. So I quietly went about collecting my things to leave for our weekend getaway. When she became particularly nasty, I softly told her " sabke bachche ek jaise hote hain" (everyone's children are the same). She did not say anything to that.

Half way through our road trip, I got a call from my father in law. He is nearly ninety, and always graceful. He sounded livid with me. He said his wife had told him that I let an infected, dying child lie down on my daughter's mattress. I asked him how he had arrived at that conclusion. He said the diagnosis was based on my mother in law noticing from farthest way that the child's limbs were rather thin compared to her head and body !!!

But she had not even as much come near the poor child. How did she know it was a fatal, infectious disease ? Unless the disease was called abject poverty. She had also noticed that the child's leg had touched the carpet on which she sits down to read namaaz everyday. Everything had been soiled it seems. And I am the freak who allows pariahs into my house, on to my carpet, on to my children's playthings.

I kept burning in an indignant fire till hours afterwards. I am not class conscious. I eat from the office peon's tiffin. I have inherited this from my mother who is beyond care for anything and anyone at all.

I always turn to my husband in such times to give vent to my feelings. He patiently explained that the issue was not class but hygiene related.

I know that's not true but I will be a coward and let it pass.