Lillie

Lillie symbolizes everything my children hate about India: heat, dust, and poverty. Squatting on her honchos, Lillie moves like a penguin and sweeps the floor with a long broom. It is hot, hotter than hell, on a June afternoon. Temperature outside has soared to a hundred and twelve degrees. Even with all windows of my in-laws' apartment closed and curtains drawn to brace against the hot blast, the sweltering heat inside is suffocating. A fan whirring overhead and a desert cooler happily whining away in a corner make for little comfort. Every pore on my face is oozing sweat. My daughters sprawl on a bed dreading the though of spending three week in the choking heat. Still groggy from jet lag, both girls sit up as the ceiling fan and the desert cooler suddenly die out. Eleven-year-old Lillie smiles meekly, then goes about sweeping the floor with a vengeance, while I try to explain to my daughters that she has to turn the fan off before sweeping the tiled floor.

"That is so lame, God! I hate India."

The misery on their faces turns to agony as they utter these words and run to the living room, and they turn on the ceiling fan. I follow them and flick the TV on. The girls spring to their feet as soon as they spot their favorite pop singer's face on the television momentarily. I hastily flick channels and lock on MTV. The girls stop wiping their faces with their T-shirt sleeves and glue to the TV screen. In the land that is mostly alien to them, MTV provides a glimmer of recognition. But not for long. The next song is a popular Hindi pop, which they fail to understand.

"This is retarded."

"I hate India."

Retarded, gross, lame, stupid, gay, are the words they would utter frequently during our brief vacation in India. Within the first twenty-four hours they would run out of all hyperbole within their vocabulary. I am about to lecture the girls on the importance of learning about their own heritage when Lillie walks in, this time with a pail of water, and starts mopping the floor.
Whether it is because of the complete lack of anything better to do or whatever, my daughters begin to talk with Lillie. Neither of the girls are proficient in Gujarati. So I translate their questions to Lillie. We learn that Lillie lives with her parents, three sisters, and one married brother and his family in a one-room house across the railway tracks. Her dad drives a rickshaw (a three-wheeled taxi) for a living while her mom stays home. Fortunately, Lillie goes to school in the afternoon. Would she like to go to college? Yes, she replies, her black eyes sparkle with excitement. When asked what she wants to be, she replies with confidence: "teacher." Why? I leave aside translating and interject my own question. But she just shrugs her shoulders.

To my surprise, my daughters quickly start conversing with Lillie in Gujarati, and I ease in the background. As days go by, I find out that Lillie has many questions about America. When my kids explained that we flew in an airplane for hours to get to India, Lillie is perplexed. What is an airplane? My kids burst out in laughter. When they tell her what an airplane is, Lillie's eyes suddenly light up. "You mean a balloon?" she asks, initiating another round of giggles from her audience. My daughters explain the difference between a balloon and an airplane. Troubel is, Lillie means airplane when she says balloon. To my daughters' surprise, Lillie is clueless about what a real balloon is.

We show her the American currency, and Lillie wonders why it is different from the Indian rupee bills. And too, why, unlike the Indian bills, the American bills are all the same size and same dull and confusingly similar looking? That one we could never quite explain to her satisfaction. So innocent is her question that Lillie leave me wondering why the currency that the world trades by should not be more colorful and, so to say, dignified?

"Why are you not wearing frocks?" Lillie asks one morning. My daughters explain that in America, formal dresses are worn on special occasions. Most American kids run around in a pair of jeans shorts and T-shirt. But this concept does not sink in Lillie's head, we can tell from her blank eyes. Perhaps she is thinking in her mind that it is decidedly retarded to wear faded pants when you could were nice frocks. Lillie has only four frocks, including her school uniform. The very concept of formal and casual wear is beyond her grasp. The conversation peters out; the cultural roadblock is too strong for either side to breach.

My daughters are working on a scheme to fund Lillie's education. Out of the cash gifts they get from their uncles, aunts, and grandparents, they want to save some for Lillie's college tuition. I inform them that because she is poor, Lillie qualifies for a scholarship even in grade school. In any case, all girls in the State of Gujarat, regardless of their family income, are guaranteed free education--all the way to graduate school. "Only girls, not boys," I emphasize.
"No free education for boys? That is so unfair, Daddy."

"Whatever."

It is difficult to explain that in India the limited family resources go in educating boys first--hence the law to send girls to school free. But the idea does not go well with my girls, who judge things by the American concept of absolute equality. Another dead-end conversation. I give up in exasperation, but begin to understand Lillie's the blank look in Lillie's eyes.

Over the next few days, whenever she can break from dusting, mopping, scrubbing, cleaning, washing, Lillie engages chills out with my kids. But frequent calls to finish her chores interrupt Lillie's playful activities. She has to leave a juicy TV show and go set the table for lunch. A card game has to stop because Lillie forgot to sweep the verandah. My kids are annoyed at first. Then they want to help her finish her work so that she could play. And they thank their luck for not having to work at all. The heat and the lack of air conditioning suddenly seem to them like minor problems in contrast to the work Lillie puts out for mere five dollars a month.

Lillie's small figure struggling with household work melts our hearts. My wife and I lament the plight of the poor Indian children like Lillie, whose childhood innocence is crushed daily under the load of physical labor. We even bring up this touchy subject at social gatherings and parties, but evoke only a nod or a faint smile, as if the whole problem exists in a different dimension. India has just exploded nuclear bombs, the hottest topic of discussion wherever we go. That a poor girl, living in conditions slightly better than a slum could attend college if she chose, sounds like an achievement even more impressive than exploding a "thermonuclear device" made from technology stolen, borrowed or surreptitiously purchased from the rest of the world.

My wife's mom quietly draws our attention to the fact that instead of hiring an adult maid, she hired Lillie on purpose. From the balcony of her apartment, my mother-in-law once noticed Lillie and her sisters pick garbage on the street. She offered her work, and Lillie happily accepted. Pitiful as her plight appeared to us, it still beat picking trash under a blazing sun, and make twice as much, not to mention of two square meals and a healthy snack in the morning.
A fusillade of questions about her former life as a trash picker shocks Lillie as she walks in for work the next morning. My daughters spend hours on class projects fostering environmental awareness. But this is the closest they have come to someone used to be actively involved in "recycling"--Indian style.

"Were you not scared going everywhere by yourself to pick trash, Lillie?"

"No. We went in a group. Five, six girls, all my age. What's there to be scared of anyway?" Lillie opens her hands incredulously.

"What's your favorite trash?" I ask.

"Plastic milk bags. They fetch the most money."

"What about the empty coke cans?"

"Useless," she replies. The cans are still new in India. They haven't caught the attention of the trash market yet.

I propose to my children that they actually go with Lillie and observe the trash pickers. I promise to join them too. But the whole idea sounds so retarded to them, that they refused to take me up on it.

The whole concept of American press publicizing their corrupt corporations' exploitation of child labor all over the developing world suddenly sounds out of touch with the choices children like Lillie and their parents are having to make. Even Indian journalists have caught on this idea. I run across articles in the local newspapers about the plight of India's future wilting in forced labor camps. What would these kids do if they didn't work in sweatshops? Pick trash on streets choking with vehicles spewing fumes that burn their eyes and gnaw their lungs? Depends upon whose measuring stick we judge by.

Sanjay, a young businessman I run into, brings a glimmer of hope as I engage in a lively conversation with him around the whole issue of child labor. He tells me he employs children as young as fifteen in his jewelry workshop. But the place is air-conditioned. And workers get three breaks a day. When I press him for the reasoning behind air-conditioning his whole workshop floor, he grudgingly admits that it is not altruism but economics that drove him to this extreme. In the burning heat, an air-conditioned shop, Sanjay explains, is a perk the workers find hard to come by. So they not only work harder, but also stay loyal to an employer that offers this privilege. Even in a marketplace teeming with cheap labor, experienced and loyal workforce is hard to find and keep.

There is, of course, no excuse whatsoever for the existence of sweatshops that exploit the abjectly poor people. But, until their standard of living improves, the poor will choose labor camps over picking trash or dying of hunger. Sadly, but truly, they're pursing happiness where they find it, even if it falls short of our standard of "happiness" and "equality." Lillie's redemption depends, not on Indians embracing the western concept of social liberalism, but, rather, on her country's ability to adopt to their industrialized counterparts' leitmotif of economic liberalism.