December 31, 2000 - The beautiful and charming Mumtaz

Mumtaz Mumtaz is very beautiful, funny, and charming... but a little lazy. She is about 10 years old. Mumtaz attends public school... but not the better public school. Instead she chose to go to the "bad" government school because she likes the teacher. They play around much more in the "bad" school. Even so, Mumtaz is always looking for an excuse to cut school. Mumtaz is good with her lessons and writes Tamil very well. Unfortunately, the English classes at the school are not good so her English is quite poor. She needs more practice.

Mumtaz Father (Jaffer) Mumtaz is Vela's cousin on her father side. I don't have any pictures of Vela's father but he looks very similar to Mumtaz father shown here. Mumtaz father (and occasionally Vela's father) are peddle-rickshaw drivers. Rather than use a motor, these tricycles are peddled like a bicycle. These are very slow and bring in almost no income. In contrast, Mari's brother is an auto-rickshaw driver which earns a meager existence. Learning to drive an auto-rickshaw is tricky and requires real talent. No one in Vela's family are auto-rickshaw drivers. Mumtaz father is know to be a drinking man. (Looking at his face, you can see the Austroloid heritage of most of the Tamil people in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. 5 million years ago, India was part of Australia and Africa. Some people believe that aborigines came to Australia 30,000 years ago possibly from India.)

Mumtaz's Mother (M.Maliga) Mumtaz mother is very jovial and very relaxed. She works cleaning a business office for a few hours a day. She does not seem to have any concept of money, The more money she has, the faster she spends it. When I arrive in India, I give each of the kids 5,000 rupees (Vela, Kumar, Mari, Mumtaz, and Prabhu). This is about $110 US. (I also give Vela's grandmother Rs. 5,000/-.) Mumtaz gave her money to her mother. The results are interesting... but typical. 10,000 rupees should be enough for a family for one year. However, by giving them money all at one time, they feel that they are now in a new economic bracket which requires that they spend more for food. Therefore, they begin to have family meals with fish, chicken, and mutton with their rice and cost about $10 each meal. Therefore, in less than two weeks, they have spent all the money for the next six months and they blame you for their sorry condition. This example is not just about Vela's grandmother or Mumtaz mother. This is a part of the life of all these people. And the only way you can learn about this is to experiment. I have talked to many people and they tell me the same story. One lady from Europe gave a family money for much needed medicine but the money was spent on something else. Then the family blamed the lady because they did have the medicine.

Like all women in India, Mumtaz's mother is heavily built. Being fat is a sign of a good life so everyone tries to be pleasantly plump. This is the major difference between Indian movie stars and western movie stars. All the women in the movies are very plump. Western movies will be stretched sideways to make the stars look fat. No one likes a thin movie star. (007 looks unique as a fat man.)

o  Here Mumtaz plays with an electronic game from Hong Kong which she bought with money I gave her at Mahabalipurum

Mumtaz and Gameboy When we travel outside of Madras, I give the kids 100 rupees per day each. This is equal to $2.50. (In contrast, 13 year old kids are paid as little as 10 rupees per day for 8 hours of hard manual labor in India. A good pay would be 20 rupee for a child laborer for a day or $0.45 per day.) The backpacks you see in the closet are ones I brought from the USA from K-Mart but are made in China and East Pakistan. The bulky water-resistant Chinese watch on her wrist is also from K-Mart.

By giving the kids money, I try to instill in the kids an idea of saving. At first, Vela immediately spent all her money on cheap toys. They she tried to take them all back to get new toys. I learned not to interfere and let the toy vendor decide what to do. Iwas surprised how many times the vendor would roll up his eyes in disgust but still give the kids new toys for the old toys. Eventually, the kids got very good at buying good quality toys. However, they never learned to save money... possibly because if they went home with money, their parents would take it all.

Mumtaz's House Here is the only photo I have of Mumtaz' house. Using the money I send Mumtaz for food each month, her parents rented a house. This is a one room building with no furnishings. The family sleeps on the floor on thin straw mats. The mats are surprisingly comfortable but by sleeping on the floor, they get a lot of bug bites. For more information on the government housing area, click here.

This web site is written by Robert Purser. Contact me at robert_purser@usa.com Back to Table of Contents