Battling the sharp, post-monsoon September sun and the rising dust, Sabina Khatun*, 26, wrapped in her green gamcha (light towel), cycles back from the high-rise buildings of Gurugram’s Sector 70, to her rented tin-shade, trapping the heat within. About 300 metres away from her informal housing, Khatun gets off her weathered cycle and walks back home, down the dirt track, her forehead crinkled in worry. Trying to catch her breath, she tells her brother-in-law that all the houses where she used to work as a cook have replaced her with someone else. “They have all appointed Hindu women, lest they have to go through days without having house help,” she says.
Khatun had been absent from work for over a month, when she, her husband, and 7-year-old daughter, fled Delhi’s corporate suburb for their hometown, Malda, known only for its mangoes and mulberries. They had been here four years, with husband and wife making ₹30,000 a month, she working as a cook, he as a security guard in a housing complex near Tuplip chowk, in the same sector.
