Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume II — Page 138
138 that you have come to college to attain an education, you will have to con sider how you are going to spend your life. If laboring over a stove continues in your life, your education will be completely wasted. You will have to pay close attention a nd create such a transformation in your country tha t this indulgence of lighting the stove should become strictly limited to the shortest time possible. For example, set aside an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening for it; only then will you be able to salvage time for other work. Do not assume that you will hav e servants; the days of servants are almost gone. Not everyone can hire help now. In fact , on ly people of means will be able to retain servants since their wages are on the rise and even people of average means can no longer afford these wages. When I went to Europe, the wages of hired help was not yet so inflated. Despite this , we paid the woman in our employ twenty - one shillings weekly, or sixty rupees monthl y. We also provided her meals. Additionally, the y had a condition that they would be given one full day and one - half day off work each week. That took care of one and a half days right there, where the homeowners had to do their own housework. The employers can complain all they like about the amount of work that needs doing, she will say , “ I cannot come in because it is my day off. ” Also, she would work no more than the assigned hours. It made no difference how much work was left , she would immediately stop and leave saying, “It is time. ” Actually , this is not her fault at all. The fact is that it is not up to them whether or not they can work more. This is because every group of workers there has unions. So me are housekeeper’s unions, some are porter ’s unions, some are unions of workers who shovel coal into engines, and some are teachers ' unions. No one ever receives any employment without rec ommendation from these unions. If they do any ad ditional work , their name is removed from that union’s membership and then they cannot get work anywhere else. We needed a typist for writing an article over there. The office employed a Czechoslovakian woman for this purpose. She developed an interest in our Jama'at after reading our articles, but the problem was that her time would be up and the work would remain unfinished. Sometimes we would need the article the very next day. She would say , “I cannot work any extra time , but I can take the article home with me and type it ther e. The unions cannot prevent me from working at home. During that