The Housekeeper in Paradise

An Edenic Maldivian Island

It’s amazing what people do to provide for their families. Today, at the idyllic island resort in the Maldives where I’m staying, I discovered that the gentleman who does our housekeeping speaks Hindi – so of course we were soon chatting away like old acquaintances.

The housekeeper is originally from Bangladesh and has been working on this picturesque island for many years now. His wife and children live back in his village in Bangladesh. He makes a good salary and sends back most of it to his family each month, so that his children can go to school and have a shot at white-collar jobs, at a brighter tomorrow – a chance he and his wife never had.

“Do you like it here?” I ask.

“Yes, it’s beautiful and they treat us very well, but –” there is a flash of pain across the housekeeper’s face and suddenly, I am terribly sorry to have asked him such a question, a question that doesn’t bear thinking about for solitary migrant workers all over the world. “It’s hard,” he continues, “living away from my family. Sometimes, a year and a half, even two years, go by before I can visit them. It’s difficult, not being able to see the children for so long.”

What can I do except listen and nod, my heart silently breaking for this man, with his weather-beaten face, his slightly-different Hindi, and his impeccable bed-making and towel-folding skills? It’s such a familiar story: men and women, unable to eke out a decent living in their own countries, migrate to other lands where the money is good, the living quarters are small, and home and family are reduced to memories that keep you going.

(Surely, sometimes, in the middle of the night, those who are parents must be gripped by some sort of panic: Are my children all right? What if something has happened to them? Do they miss me? Do they even remember me? What if they’ve forgotten? Oh god, I’m too far away to look after them, please keep them safe.)

I remember that my housekeeper does not have easy access to the wondrous gadgets and devices that make long-distance relationships bearable for people like us: smartphones, international calling cards, WhatsApp, BBM, notebooks, iPads, Skype, FaceTime, GoogleTalk, Facebook, Picasa, and so on and so forth. And I feel so horribly guilty, with my wasteful plethora of gadgets scattered all around the hotel room….

I wish I could have said something wise and comforting. In all probability, though, I would have just sounded patronising – trying to provide commentary on a situation I have no key to. Just as well then that I nod and say, “I see. Okay… Well, thank you for doing the room. It looks great. Shukriya. ”

The housekeeper looks relieved, smiles and walks away into the palm-fronded paradise that is this tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

On days like this, I fervently hope there’s a method to all this melancholy madness.

Inward

Image: overcoming-silence

Be self-aware. 

See your own flaws as clearly as you see your enemies. 

Love your strengths like you love your heroes. 

Come home to yourself. 

The Symphony: Elements of Life

Be like the breeze.

Have the ability to tread lightly, laugh airily, and flit from place to place.

Be like the flame.

Have it in you to burn steady, singe the unwary, and light up a murky corner.

Be like the dewdrop.

See clearly that your beauty is momentary, transient…and all the more amazing for it.

Be like the stone.

Allow the passage of time to make you more nuanced, more adaptive, more wondrous.

Be like the snowflake.

Know that there is no-one else quite like you but that we’ll all end up melted together eventually.

Be like the sun.

Flaunt your light occasionally but know when to fall back and rest quietly in the darkness.

Be like the moonshine.

Make sure you shimmer and glimmer with no real objective whatsoever sometimes.

Be like the ocean.

Combine the deep and the shallow within yourself.

Be like the cave.

Have mysteries and dark corners and shadows within yourself that others cannot reach easily.

Be like the bud.

Celebrate your potential and the roots that make it possible for you to bloom.

Be like the grass.

Let superfluous and unwanted bits of yourself be trimmed and fall away, unmourned.

Be like the snowpeak.

Exist for yourself first, for the sheer heady bliss of being…be your own zenith.

Be like the sand.

Learn to shape yourself for someone else, grain by grain, to achieve harmony.

Be like the cliff.

Embrace change and the ravages of the world…they make you impressive, they make you real.

Be like the symphony.

Weave together all your elements to create pure magic.

Image source.

Pandora's Box

Picture: J W Waterhouse

A secret prophecy.

Hidden. Locked. Safe.

In the deepest, darkest recesses of mind and heart.

A prophecy as unchangeable as – what? What, after all, is permanent, unshakeable, always itself…? Once, she would have said as unchangeable as love; now, it’s a word that doesn’t come to mind immediately.

Things change. Things alter. Things don’t stay the same.

They tell us and tell us – and tell us some more. The collected wisdom of the ages, the old stories, the authentic myths and fairytales, the epics themselves. They don't whisper it, or speak in riddles. They give it to us straight and unvarnished: things change.

But in our youth, our arrogance, our naiveté, we choose not to listen, to laugh in the face of impermanence, to challenge change itself. Because love knows itself to be immortal, and lovers acknowledge no weakness.

“THIS is forever." "THIS is different." "WE are different." "We KNOW.”

We stand steadfast in our convictions and we enjoy the sheer, heady, grand joy of what we know. (Or think we know.)

And then, time shifts.

One day, the secret prophecy is there. It doesn’t appear suddenly, abruptly. There is no jolt, no shocking assault on the senses. It’s just…there. As if it’s always been there.

It pulsates, insistent in its steady, constant rhythm, keeping pace with the beating of her heart.

She notices it as the days slip by languorously, lazily. It's insidious, omnipresent, niggling.

She contemplates it, this foreign entity within herself. She considers it from a distance, impartially. This secret prophecy seems to be an unknown quantity. Which is impossible. There can be no unknowns – after all, she is secure in her knowledge, which is complete. She *knows*. The prophecy is nothing, it is simply illusory. It’s superstition, lingering debris from years gone by, the wreckage of old notions that has buried itself into her being. Ignore it, she commands herself. It is nothing.

It is no use, though.

The prophecy will not, *cannot* be denied. It is as undeniable as – well, as love.

It beats, day and night. Like a dripping tap, it echoes in her mind until it is as if there are only two things in the world: the secret prophecy, and herself.

She concedes defeat – that too, was foretold. It was destined.

For you see, change is an impetus, an unstoppable force that cannot be staved off, cannot be stopped, cannot be reversed.

When it meets an immovable object, like love, the object realizes that it isn’t really immovable after all. Change is too strong, too hell-bent on having its way. And it always does.

She relents, she weakens, and the defenses come crashing down. The secret prophecy cracks open, and the glow of the unknown turns into the darkness of knowledge.

Where did love go? How did she miss it walking out of the door, bag and baggage? How did forever turn into a phase?

She is left, bereft. Her heart is not broken; in fact, she can't feel her heart at all. She grasps at all she used to know, trying desperately to recapture what she once felt – but memory is already working its deceptive enchantment. She remembers, certainly, that she was in love, a tugging, bone-deep, soul-wrenching, passionate sort of love – but she knows it only theoretically. She understands the surface meaning of the words, but she cannot reach the deeper meaning that lies within. Love has left the building, and she is all alone.

She stands in the ruins of yesterday's knowledge; all is broken, all is lost. Today is bleak; tomorrow, impossible.

Change has been here, too.

Where will it go next?