Materials Maids Are Made Of

In India, we have the luxury of domestic help. While we do not designate them as domestic consultants, some of us shy away from calling them servants. For the lack of adequate nomenclature they are simply called maids—this is not indicative of their maidenly status or age but the one qualification would demand that the domestic help hails from the fairer sex (you would not call a maid a maid to refer to a man now would you?). Some brash employers are not shy at all and in fact use the rashly incorrect term servant-maids as if to reinforce their own dominant status and reassure themselves of the fact that they at least are neither servants nor maids…who are they kidding?

These maids range from the extremely loyal Lakshmis to the elusive Mayas. And of course there is the variety of in-betweens. After being with a loyal Lakshmi, even though I knew she was overpaid and underworked, it was a learning experience for me when I moved house. First of all no one wanted to come…because I wasn’t trained enough in the local language and I was not assertive enough. “Don’t be so polite”, I was advised by a pro, “By doing that you are giving them the power and control to negotiate with you. You should show them who is in charge.” Well, too short timed to learn the language of the maiden’s choice so I change the prerequisites and I assertively wave goodbye to the maids who aren’t familiar with the national language…then I realize I have said goodbye to all of them! I panic and employ the last maid standing who spoke in a smattering of illegible sounds and phrases, which I thought I could overcome with sign language. It was a very short-lived relationship because she did the exact opposite of whatever I asked her to do and what was worse, I ended up doing all her work because she very regularly never turned up.

So there I was on the lookout again for the maid from heaven and the advice I got this time was, “Can’t find anyone local, look global then.” Global? I am pointed to the watchman from Nepal. I walk up nonchalantly to show I am in control and then I desperately beg him to find me someone who speaks in Hindi, can do the housework and please come early as 6.30am. The begging pays off and I am assured domestic help. The next day, sharp at 6.21am the doorbell jerks me out of bed with a warning. I see a ‘Made in Nepal’ at the door, very presentable and neat—she could have been an extra straight out of Dev Anand’s movie Hare Krishna Hare Ram. As she begins to work, I wonder if she is real. Absolutely with robotic precision she scoops out the dust from the floors and rids the grease from the dishes. I was impressed, until I saw that if she could not locate the other pair of a lonesome shoe, she would simply get rid of it by chucking it in the dustbin. Once I programmed her into the advanced search mode to look a little more, and alerted the family that they should never leave related things separated, life was like clockwork. So much that we needed no alarm as the bell rang everyday, even Sundays at 6.21 am and if she was ever off the mark, she would be a minute or two early rather than late. We cruised with Irona and our life seemed ironed out—at least on the level of domestic management.

Very happy with life, I turned to friends to check out how they were. “I have quite the material maid…she is up with the sun, in for work that she does a shoddy job of and wants everything I am not using,” said a friend. She continued, “Why the other day when I told her to sweep the floors better, she complained that the dust was because of the fact that my family and I walk too much around the house and would be better of sitting in one place. And she had the audacity to eye the burgundy wine dispenser and slyly tell me, “I know what that is…my man and I have a peg every evening” She also wanted a bed I don’t use and when I realized that she had no house and asked her where she would put it, she said that she would sleep under it!” It did not end just there, the maid was disgusted with the 18-year-old apology for a TV that had to be smacked to adjust volume levels and picture qualities. After all, there are standards to keep! Only a Plasma screen would do and my friend is still paying off the installments for it as the maid approvingly nods and dusts the new wall adornment.

Anyway, the key is to be confident and get them to do work. If there is no work, then find something for them to do—these ladies shouldn’t be left to sit around and with this statement, we both turned to the friend who to these material maids was an employer from heaven. She had two maids, so that they have each other for company, because the last time she had hired a single maid, the lass, alas got lonely enough to get involved with the chauffeur. And that was quite a to do! So the two have each other for company, cooked meals, a time slot for TV viewing, adequate rest as our friend gets a lot of the cooking done, so much so that if you dropped in for a cup of tea, she would send a beseeching look in the direction of the maids and very sweetly ask for a cup of tea. We actually thought that the maids would refuse and ask her to go make it herself. “They are so sweet,” she said as the two of them trotted off to make one cup of tea together and we were left wondering whether to strangle her into being assertive or just hand in our resumes and have her employ us as maids—I mean think of it, we would get more time to spend with each other, bully our employer, eat great food, have a TV time which we never get in our own households and we would be politely begged to get work done—it was the ideal situation.

I am in fact still debating that option because my cruise with Irona ended the day her father-in-law chose to pass away in far away Nepal and I was left with her relative who like her comes on time alright but that’s where the similarity ends. I have accepted that she is far from perfect but if I don’t look closely enough, the floors will look clean. If I don’t hear as acutely as I do, the glass bowls that break will already be a thing of the past. If I keep my fingers balled into a fist, I will never get to run them on the tables and shelves to check for the dust…and life will go on.

And I do want to raise a toast to this incomparable set of people usually ladies who help us in our quest to be efficient mothers, impeccable housekeepers, and career-focused women. The way they go about doing the work, we do not want to do. How in a Machiavellian silent way, they throw a noose around us to reduce us to be helplessly dependant on them so that they are assured employment for life. Ultimate material girls in a material world working for material ends—cheers to them!