...the love-love-hate relationship

I love-love-hate my live-in help. Love-love her for everything she has selflessly done for my family especially at times of desperateness. I have been literally living at her mercy for the last five years.

The hate part is my own dependence on another person for the smooth running of my house. You know, women do take pride on being the multitasker. How much ever you feel like letting go, there is some part of you that wants to control every single aspect of your household and your family...Also, she has few traits which has continued to irk despite the years of co-existence - her weird laugh and her subtle opinions about how things should be done. Yet, she is the most selfless creature that I have known for long in my life.

I do want to tell her not to speak in between when I am chatting with my elder brother. Then I realize that she loves my brother so much that she feels comfortable around him enough to open her mouth. If I tell her to keep quite, she will feel extremely bad. She also has developed some kind of weird laugh which comes out as a loud laugh even when the actual response expected from her is a chuckle. Some kind of attention seeking mechanism out of her deep seated insecurity. But I do not want to hurt her...But it is going to come out of my mouth one day....something I know about myself.

She is quite intelligent, which is actually crippled by lack of any formal education. But she do learn things quickly, and is quite an expert in comfort cooking. I can eat most of the items that she cooks though the husband has a different opinion. The only skill she lacks in cooking is in the making of phulkas which I believe is because of the lack of experience.

I call her akka which is sister in her mother tongue tamil and she calls me 'mol' which is daughter in Malayalam which is my mother tongue. I did realize that she calls me that because she has difficulty in pronouncing names, but then who cares? I do want to teach her to pronounce names for her own sake, but then such things doesn't matter...

I know I should put a photo of hers here in this post, but then I don't have any recent photo of hers that I can put. Isn't that weird?

Akka is someone who has paid me back in kind in the last 5 years by taking good care of all of us. I hope our relationship gets even better and I can return the favor in times of her need. I will write more about her later.