I have almost started getting used to the thought of having hired help. And as soon as I start writing this, my maid and her youngest daughter show up. I hate when she brings her; we have asked her not to but she doesn’t listen to us because it’s a great help to our maid having her daughter doing some of the work. And here she is, sniffling away while she’s sweeping the floor around my feet.
I have almost started getting comfortable around my maid and my guilt. I am even able to communicate with her sometimes in my broken Hindi–I make her laugh and that eases my awkwardness.
I have just been getting friendly with my Mumbaikar neighbor downstairs. She’s in her 30s, has a 2yr old daughter and 10 or so yr old son. She has a live-in servant who has been with her for a month but is leaving. She’s sweet and smiling, laughing and playing with the daughter in the midst of her chores. She irons while we’re talking, goes out to the store for some juice, then cooks. My neighbor is so relieved to have help, and seems to think she treats her well by paying her Rs 2500/month ($64 rounded up) and giving her 3 days off/month so she can visit her family who lives in a nearby slum. Obviously that doesn’t even translate to having every Sunday off. Nevertheless, my neighbor is ‘empowered’ by not having to be bogged down with cooking and cleaning, and the maid can earn some money. I myself would not be comfortable with such an arrangement, however.
I have become so almost-accustomed to this arrangement that I was almost startled when my brother-in-law in the US exclaimed, “Wow, that’s really great you have someone to cook for you!” I suppose it’s too easy to take people for granted, until they don’t show up and you finally notice. Please see Kalpana Sharma’s article on India Together on a movie called “Lakshmi and Me” about the relationship between a woman and her maid:
They flit in and out of our homes like ghosts in the night. They sweep and swab, wash and cook, look after our children, care for the elderly. Yet we know little about them. Most of us just about know their first names. We don’t know where they’re from, where they live, whether they are married, how many children they have, how many other homes they work in, what they earn — how they survive. They are virtually invisible.
We usually wake up to their existence when they don’t turn up for work. And the first response is annoyance, because of the inconvenience caused to us. Many professional women don the title of being superwomen because they manage jobs and homes — work life balance. But in fact the real superwomen are these silent workers, without whom few professional women in India would be able to function.
Films like Lakshmi and Me ought to be shown on prime time television, in housing societies in a city like Mumbai, in schools and colleges (www.lakshmiandme.com / www.raintreeefilms.net). As a society, we are becoming increasingly blind and indifferent to the existence of people who hold up our homes, our lives, our cities. Such films should help open our eyes and our minds.
See also this post at Ultra Violet for an interesting look at domestic help and unionisation in Bangalore and Karnataka.
