My name is Archana. I get up at 4am to set off for the city with my mother and grandmother. Sometimes my eyes feel like they have been glued to their lids but I have to get up and go.

My mother took me and my sister to live with my grandmother when my father deserted her. We are very poor and I have to work to support my family. I do not feel bad about it.

When I leave with my mother we never have the time to eat anything. Although I feel hungry I have learnt to live with it. We reach Kolkata around 5.30am and it is only then that we eat.

I used to come here at 10am to go to school, now I arrive early with my mother and work until 7am when I go to school. The school gives a free lunch so I eat there and then I am back at work again at midday.

I sometimes think of the big space where I used to play with my friends and the little bridge over the river that we used to cross while playing hide and seek. Now I come early as I have to work along with my studies. That is ok with me.

It is true that I do not get to play with my friends back home anymore but I have been exposed to a different world out here. In my village some houses have electricity and they have a television set too. Sometimes in the evening I would go with a group of friends and watch the television through the window of a house. Now that I work in Kolkata, I get to watch television at the homes I work.

I peek in from cleaning the utensils or sweeping the floor at the television screen, where the children of the house sit and watch funny characters doing funny things. I know they talk in English but I don’t understand it as it is so fast but I laugh all the same when the children laugh.

I like it. I like to play with the children of these houses too. They all look so nicely turned out in their colourful and expensive clothes. Sometimes I feel embarrassed with my dirty frock but I know I cannot compete with them.

Apart from playing with the children I also clean the house and wash the dishes. Sometimes I get scolded for not doing the job properly. I work in three to four houses. I wash clothes in one place, fetch water in another and elsewhere I clean utensils.

Sometimes they try to make me work for longer but then I put my foot down saying that I have to go to school. This has led to a quarrel with one of the houses I worked in and I left their employment.

On certain days my mother feels very ill. She remembers my father, who abandoned us, and is very depressed. Those days she finds it hard to concentrate on her work. So she asks me to help her out. That is why I started to work.

I want to continue with my studies as far as I can. I have told my mother that she will not have to pay for it, I will continue to work as a maid and fund my education as well as my sister’s. I want to study and do better in life.

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Archana was talking to Sweeble correspondent Nilanjana Bhattacharya in Kolkata.