Dear,

You must promise me something beforehand. Promise me that what I am about to say will not be taken as an offence. It is something that is not against you, but a pressing matter directed towards me.

I am writing to you straight after finishing the film, The Help. I cried through most of it. Initially, I was not aware of the reason for my emotions. Well, I did know partially – hatred etched on a woman’s face for another woman because of her skin colour. But that is not the reason I rushed to rest my demons by writing to you.

I know the reason for my tears. I know I was crying because I was horrified to have lived in such ignorance. I had been ignorant in acknowledging those people who had helped raise me. These very people who had cooked and cleaned for me, washed my clothes and looked after me when my parents were away. They are part of my story but I never even acknowledged their importance.

My acknowledgement, I tell you, will not affect them. Through this mere letter, I am not attempting to paint myself as a suppressor or a coloniser. I am none of these because if I am, then I am making the grave mistake of assuming I hold power.

In the blistering heat during the long summer afternoons, the entire household had the habit of taking a siesta. Nothing and no one apart from the air-conditioning had a job. When I think back, I remember her tentatively sitting on the edge of my bed. She would take one of my calves and massage me until I fell asleep. Then, she would go in a corner of my room and rest on the carpet until beckoned by either my grandmother or mother.

She was older than my mother, but neither of us considered the other an equal. Her natural position while addressing me was to sit on the floor beside the bed or study chair. I once questioned her seating arrangement and asked her to sit next to me. She declined by replying that she did not want to forget who she was. She was the help.

Did I mention? I visited home a few months ago. An hour after landing, it became difficult to even get a glass of water without asking the ‘maid’ to run to my assistance. I realised during my visit, I was ashamed of the daily life I had experienced before I had shifted to another country. I was ashamed for an elder to carry my dinner tray back and forth. It was not because the tray was heavy, but because I had attached false sense of grandeur without rightfully earning respect.

Another harsh reminder hit me during my visit – the separation of utensils and cutlery. When I reached for a glass in the cupboard, I was informed that it was the maid’s glass. In the film, The Help, the separation is prevalent because of the skin colour, but why the separation in this situation? Is it because of her job? What if I get a job as a cleaner, will my grandmother hand me a separate glass as well?

My family members laughed at my helping the help. They called it ‘westernised’ attitude. I call it manners and etiquette. When I learned how to clean a bathroom in university, I think back to the daily routine of another woman who was paid to clean my bathroom but never thanked by me because it was her ‘job’.

There was this small bit in the movie that really struck me. There is a glittery charity ball organised in an opulent setting with the white Southerners in attendance to raise money for poor kids in Africa. They are doing what I did. They are doing this particular good deed not for some hungry child but for themselves. They have held a grand event to help, while their ‘help’ are immaculately lined up silently crying for help.

I might have pacified my conscience by teaching her daughter to read and write, to sneak in my pocket money for her bus fare or consoling her when she was troubled, but all of that is next to nothing in my eyes. It is barely anything because I thought I was better than her. I allowed myself to think I had the right to entertain such an idea. I thought I was better because I was cocooned in the false security of economic and social status. I was a fool.

I repeat. This letter is not my way of atonement. Instead, it is a reminder.

It is a reminder to be humble.

‘To never forget your own insignificance’.

There lies our salvation.