Jerry Pinto - Em and the Big Hoom

Eventually Em did learn to type sixty words per minute and take dictation. The Standard Shorthand and Typewriting Institute awarded her a certificate and gave her a special mention for her shorthand.

‘Which is very good, even if I say so myself. Most of the other girls couldn’t read their own shorthand one hour later. I can still read my notes thirty years after I made them.’

For the next two months, Em worked with a small firm called Mehta Mechanical Electrical and Engineering Corporation.

‘It was called Memecorp. So Baig the joker called it Mommecorp.’

‘Didn’t get that one.’

‘He spoke some Konkani.’

‘Oh right. Sorry.’

Momme, in demotic Konkani, is the word for breasts.

Despite its rather grand name, Memecorp was not a particularly good place to work.

‘They paid me a daily wage. If I went in, I got paid. If I didn’t, I didn’t. And two or three times, I went in and they said there’s no work for you today so you can go and I had to go, even though I had paid my tram fare.’

‘Like a labourer.’

‘That’s what I thought. So I kept an eye out, and one day I saw an ad for a steno in ASL and I applied. There was an Anglo-Indian lady at the reception desk. She looked at me and said, “Have you been teaching, dearie?” I said, “Yes.” She smiled at me and said, “It shows.” I was such a duffer then, I didn’t even know that she was insulting me. I said, “Yes, I want to go back and teach but we need the money at home.” She said, “My, you won’t get a job as a steno if you look like a teacher, dearie.” Then she gave me a card and told me to go and see a certain gentleman. “He’ll kit you out in the latest style,” she said. “What about the job interview?” I asked. “You won’t get the job,” she said. “Go on now.” That’s when I got a bit angry and said, “I’d like to take my chances.” I sat down and waited.’

‘And you got the job?’

Then, as now, I loved a happy ending. And at least this little bit of Em’s story had a happy ending.

‘Of course I did,’ she snorted. ‘I wrote good English and I knew when to use a dictionary. I knew grammar. They gave me a little test and I think I did very well on it. They also asked me to draft a letter to the bank asking for an overdraft. I didn’t know what an overdraft was so I kept it simple. But, as Andrade told me later, that was what got me the job.’

At the end of the test and a short interview, Em left but found the receptionist missing. She was having a cigarette outside the building, oblivious to the men staring at her.

‘I felt a bit triumphant as I told her that I had been offered the job. “Are you taking it?” she asked. I thought she must be out of her mind. In those days jobs were scarce and you took what you were offered. But she asked again, “Are you taking it?” I thought perhaps she had a sister and her sister had her eye on the job, so I said, “Yes. And I told them so.” Then I thought I would be kind and I said, “But I’ll need some new clothes so I’ll go to that gentleman who you said will kit me out.” But she didn’t seem very happy with that. She started saying that it wasn’t a good idea, I already had the job, so why bother? I don’t know why but I became stubborn. “I don’t want to look like a teacher,” I said. “What’s wrong with being a teacher?” she asked. “Nothing,” I said, “but I’m a steno in a big firm now so I want to look like that.” I don’t know why I was saying these things. I thought my clothes were all right, but there was something about Brigitte that made me say these things. I think she oozed a challenge. Do you remember that film we saw about the Bengali woman taking up a job?’

‘ Mahanagar ?’

We’d seen it together for some reason. It must have been on the Saturday evening slot that was reserved for ‘regional cinema’ on Doordarshan. We couldn’t have gone to a neighbour’s house to watch it. Not with Em. So it would have been after we got our own television. The memory makes me smile: Em, with her beedi, and Susan and I watching Satyajit Ray on a Saturday evening, with The Big Hoom working overtime or busy in the kitchen. Even when we were a family, we weren’t quite the usual.

‘Is that the one?’ Em asked. ‘The one in which you thought the Anglo-Indian woman was a bad actress?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Brigitte was a little like her. She was the kind of girl who thought only she had the right to wear lipstick. She was the kind who would laugh at anyone who tried out a new fashion before she did. I hadn’t even known her ten minutes but I knew the kind. So I thought she would be happy that I was taking some fashion advice from her. But she grabbed my arm and snarled at me. “What’s your game then, you bitch?” I was so startled I could hardly speak. “Give me back that card,” she said and her voice was like lava. And ice. Cold and angry. And her eyes were so full of hate, I flinched. I opened my handbag and began to rummage in it, frantically. Just then Andrade walked past and said, “Getting friendly, girls?” She let go of my arm and I rushed off. When I got home, my hands were still shaking. Mae looked at my face and said, “Never mind, you’ll get the next one. I’m sure of it.” She thought I hadn’t got the job. She thought I’d made a mess of the interview. How could I tell her that I had been terrified by a receptionist?’

‘Did you miss teaching?’ Susan asked.

‘No, actually, it was a big relief.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘You know, an office job means you don’t have to carry anything home. Not if you’re a steno, anyway. You do your work and you leave. Then you can forget about everything. You don’t have to worry about Celestine’s father who’s a violent drunk and won’t let him study. You don’t have to bother about Fatima who’s been taken out of school and her mother tells you she’s too sickly to study and you know it’s because they’ve arranged her marriage. No corrections. No papers to set. No destinies in your hands. Just some letters to type and some spellings to learn.’

‘Spellings?’

‘Machine names. They made electrostatic precipitators. I didn’t even know whether they actually made the damned things or bought them from someone else. Don’t look like that.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘You have your worst baby-Marxist look on your face.’

I had decided I was a socialist. One afternoon, the year before, I’d joined a protest march by mill workers that went past our school. I’d walked among them for fifteen minutes raising slogans and feeling light-headed, and when I came back home, I’d let Em and Susan know. I was proud of my achievement. Em had laughed. ‘Rite of passage. Next, you lose your virginity — and what a relief that will be.’

‘I have no such look,’ I said to her. ‘You were telling me about electrostatic precipitators.’

‘You do. You look like someone who’s thinking, “My mother was part of the alienated workforce and she didn’t mind it.” Well, you shame me not. I was happy to type and take messages and eat my sandwiches and go for a movie on Saturdays. I didn’t care whether the company made a profit or loss. I didn’t care because my bonus came anyway and I got my salary anyway and I handed it over to Mae.’

‘And thus you were alienated from your labour as well as from your wages.’

‘I don’t know about that. I lived the good life in my mother’s house. I don’t think I ever worried about how food was coming to the table or what was to be cooked. It appeared and I cribbed and I ate it and the plates went away again to be washed. I had no hand in any of that.’

‘As the wage earner?’

Em looked a bit thoughtful.