Dear Editor, I am very sorry that I do not feel up to writing anything for this week. It is not that there is nothing to write about but, rather, there is too much and I just cannot figure out what I should talk about. Yes, we are once again having prolonged periods of load shedding in Lahore, and yes sectarian violence is unabated. Inflation is running amok and nothing is happening to give ordinary people like me any hope that things will get better. What the actions of this government remind me of is an old story about a bar in Texas that had a sign saying ‘Free beer tomorrow’. All the promises, so far, made by this government are: ‘Tomorrow will be better’ but then those promises are about a tomorrow, which remains a tomorrow. Indeed, I am entirely grateful to our Minfin of the ‘stubble’ who foretold severe load shedding. If he had not I wonder how I could have gone through what is going on right now. Thank you sir. However, what I really want to write about is so painful that I am not sure if I have the courage or the intellectual capacity to tackle it — a child servant was beaten to death by her employer. How could that be? It is the sort of thing that makes me wonder what we have become. No, I do not think it was a sectarian issue or even a matter of religious orthodoxy, it just happened. The alleged perpetrator is, I am sure, like thousands of other such women that we see around us every day — begum sahibas (well-heeled ladies) that have a servant girl-child taking care of things. These begum sahibas all think of themselves as ‘cultured’ persons. Surely, they are reasonably well-educated and make sure that their children attend the best schools and receive tuitions from the best tutors. The begum sahibas also maintain well-appointed homes and have kitchens where the best foods are cooked, often by other servants. And, indeed, their homes are sparkling clean, kept so by other cleaning maids. Whether we like it or not, our middle and upper middle class lifestyle is sustained by a retinue of maids from poor families, maids that are paid a pittance, work all day, receive no healthcare or paid days off and are often subjected to sexual exploitation by male members of the families they serve. The feudal lifestyle is blamed for this expanded dependence on servants but the feudal system, for all its particular evils, is still better as far as the servants are concerned. First, in the feudal system, the ‘servants’ are the ‘responsibility’ of the feudal ‘masters’, and second, ‘noblesse oblige’ for all it is worth still operates at some level. More importantly, the relationship between the feudal master and the servant is a reciprocal arrangement governed by tradition. Unfortunately, as far as the servants in cities are concerned, they are migratory and can be fired and replaced at will. Once the ‘permanent patronage’ system is replaced with the migratory system, whatever little protection is available in a feudal setup is also lost. In the middle class household I grew up in decades ago, the servants were ‘family’ retainers who eventually became a part of the extended family. Most importantly, children were taught to respect these family retainers and often referred to them respectfully as ‘chacha’ (uncle). The children of these long time servants were provided with educational support and, in time, were helped to obtain decent jobs. As far as the young females in these ‘servant’ families are concerned, I remember that most of them received serious financial help when they got married. As a pre-teen, I was physically disciplined only twice by my late father: once, when I did not wish the time of the day to his guests, and second when, in anger, I hit a servant. Today, I see the children of my younger cousins hitting their maids quite often without the slightest attempt at reproof let alone any physical retribution on the part of their parents. The problem of course is that servants now rarely serve a particular family in most of our urban settings for more than a few years. The ultimate downside of these temporary employments is that an ‘empathic’ relationship between the servant and the employer does not develop. Economic necessity forces many rural families to send their children into cities to work. Young boys also come into the cities and often work in roadside cafes and roadside workshops. Their problems and concomitant sexual exploitation are another chapter in this sad saga of abuse. Even if we blame what happens to young boys on the lack of ‘culture’ and sexual ‘depredation’ on the part of their employers, the problem with the young girls and women serving in well to do households is different. They are after all employed by the supposed well-educated ‘elite’. The recent spate of news items about the rapes and/or killings of female servants seems like an epidemic. It is possible that taking sexual advantage of female servants was always there but the killing of such females at the frequency being reported is unusual. This suggests two possibilities: better reporting by the press or else a new reality. Personally, I believe that we are confronting a new reality and that is the ‘coarsening’ of our national morality. Killing people for all sorts of reasons has become so commonplace in the ‘land of the pure’ that killing somebody just because you want to seems acceptable. And when we come to the killing of the maidservant by her employer, excuses will be made and eventually ‘Islamic’ law will step in. The family of the murdered child servant will be paid off, and the matter will be settled. So, who cares about a dead child? Is that what we have become? If so, how sad. The writer has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com