To Margaret and Manthara

(Just put up thoughts on facebook)

I heard a few of my friends chatting the other evening. They were sitting in one of those beautiful little green patches still found in East Bengaluru grumbling as usual about their husbands, children, vegetable vendors, jobs that some of them had and finally they came upon their favourite topic – domestic help.

“They don’t get made like they used to earlier, Tina”, Anu lamented, “these maids want to watch the TV all the time.”

“I remember our maid in Durgapur. She stayed with us for 27 years and did not once ask for a salary hike. She worked even when she was ill. She loved us so much. She cried when we left. God bless her soul, she did not even live too long after that,” Nidhi muttered in reminiscence.

“Those were the days. Mom did not have to do a thing for us. Our maid worked so hard at pleasing us. Never wanted leave. Never asked for extra money every time you asked her to do extra work. Never left also, no matter how much you scolded her. We also had a very young girl, who grew up in our house with me and my sister. My mother got her married off as well. Gave her one big gold chain when she left,” Anandi boasted.

“But what now? They want more money every year. They want leave to go for weddings, funerals, birth ceremonies. They want sick leave when they fall ill. They want bonus for Christmas. I have decided its better to do the work myself,” Tina gave the verdict.

Everybody nodded in agreement and left rather satisfied at having given vent to their domestic help related observations and problems.

Got me thinking that evening. I have often heard snatches of such conversation but never had the opportunity to actually eve’s drop into a meeting like this where the entire problem of “today’s maid servant” gets defined and discussed with such vivid examples. This of course is part of the series of discussions on the problems of “today’s ” mother-in-laws, husband, politicians, school teachers and many such morally degraded beings, I confess.

What got me thinking is the way people in general have changed over the years in India. My mom worked with one hospital for 35 years and my parents stayed in one city, with each other for more than 45. Most of my uncles worked with the government and joined and retired in the same offices. All my relatives have been married once and live with their respective spouses unless in some cases death took its toll. I have seen my mother go to the hospital even when she was ill, simply because she had promised patients she would be there and they would come from collieries far away from town. My dad kept sending money to his relatives even after many humiliations and insults just because they were family and they needed help. Most of my parent’s friends believed in hard work, never asked for a raise themselves from their employer and bought or constructed their first owned houses close to their retirement. My boss still believes in ignoring the short cuts to most things and works late hours so that each document we produce from the institution is a perfect piece of communication.

However, when I compare this picture to the picture created by me and my friends today the differences are many. We work for ourselves and not for organizations so we hop jobs every few years and trade our services to the highest bidder. We don’t go to office if we are ill, and if there is a surprise visitor at home, we request for that extra sick leave. We demand salary hikes at every opportunity and threaten to resign if we know we are good. We marry, we separate, we divorce and re-marry as many times as it takes for us to find the ‘right mix’. Our first apartments are bought in our 30s, upgraded in our 40s and sold for a profit in our 50s to go for a villa or a farm house. We change cars, mobile phones, computers and television sets regularly to keep up with the latest gadget guru talks. We change opinions, attentions, positions and attitudes depending on what suits the general scenario. We are the products of the neo capitalist India making the ‘most’ of our ‘opportunities’.

Loyalty, faithfulness, commitment and responsibility have somewhat lost their relevance.

However, we expect quite different things from our domestic help don’t we? We expect them to remain just as they were; untainted, unadulterated, unique antique pieces of a bygone era. They should have remained untouched by the seductions of opportunity, unclaimable by the greed of prosperity. While we call ourselves upwardly mobile and very proudly add that to marketing jargon in describing ourselves, they should remain stagnant where they are, satisfied with what we give them, unquestioning minions to serve our need.

I am glad domestic help today is more aware of their needs and rights. I am glad they try their best to enjoy what life has to offer, because in any case they have gotten a rather rotten deal compared to us. I am glad they don’t work on Sundays and won’t come to work when they are ill. I am glad they have the sense to get their daughters to school and don’t wait for some do-gooder memsaab to marry them off with a gold chain bestowed on them. I am glad that some of them hope to ‘retire’ when they are 60. The only thing I would actually like is for them to organise themselves into a union so they can demand for their rights and not request for what is due.

It really boils down to just one question. When we don’t want to be like our mothers and fathers why should our domestic help be any different?