They are
indispensible but intolerable too. It is a general wisdom that neither the
presence of maidservants keeps housewives satisfied and happy nor their absence
does. Life without maids is not only miserable it is unthinkable for housewives
and other ladies managing their home affairs. Housemaids are mostly found in
abundance in posh and affluent societies, usually living in the servant
quarters of large bungalows and remain on call round the clock. A large
population of them also works as daytime workers in upper middleclass and
middleclass areas.
This
community is widely called as Maasi, Naukrani, Kaam wali larki or Mai. At times
they are also called with their half names or nicks like Nooran, Chhona,
Chanda, etc. They invade the house when male members of the house leave for
work and children go to school. They perform multiple household assignments
e.g. cleaning, pocha (rubbing the floor with wet piece of rag), dusting, dishwashing,
laundry, ironing and cooking (sometimes just making chapati or even limited to
making dough).
From the
moment these maids take control of the house, they work like machines (housewives
always call them lethargic and kaam-chor) to finish the job as quickly as
possible and run to the next house for a similar work. The housewife would invariably
take every measure to pointing out maid’s mistakes and her carelessness to the
work so that maid redoes incomplete jobs, her stay gets prolonged. The great
lady in the same breath asks her to finish the work as quickly as possible. On
the contrary, the maid would always insist that she has done all assignments
with great care and responsibility. Exchange of foul words, explicitly by
housewives and slyly (dil hi dil me) by maids, never stops. Staring into each
other’s eyes is a very common sight.
All the
necessary electrical gadgets we own for easing out our lives are operated by
maids widely & wildly resulting in frequent repairs and replacement of them
in almost a year’s time. Science and technology are yet to invent such home appliances
that cannot be damaged by the maids. It shouldn’t be surprising if manufacturers
of washing machines, irons and vacuum cleaners print a tag called “Maids Proof”
on them in near future.
One needs
to glance at the maid when she irons the clothes; she literary fights a boxing
match with clothes. Her arms move as swiftly as a boxer tries to hit the
opponent. If a TV is playing a drama or film at the time the maid does ironing,
rest assured the outcome would be burnt clothes. By the way, are you aware of
any housemaid that has not burnt the expensive clothes of Begum Sahiba while ironing?
Sometimes the burnt dresses are the brand new ones which poor Begum Sahiba is
yet to put on. Similarly, school dresses of children have never survived maids’
wrath. The not-so-expensive shirt of Sahib-jee sometimes also carry hot ironing
stamp somewhere near ribs, arms or at the backside.
After every
dusting assignment, the housewife would grab the hand of a maid and show her
the dusty patches she intentionally left undone on a dressing table, showcase, TV
screen and furniture. Ask a maid to clean the mirror with wet newspaper, she
would find a blackened paper, most of the time the one which carries film
advertisements and here, your mirror is more blurred than ever. And then, maids
have long & unknown enmity with books, laptops and computers. Cleaning of
these articles is surely beyond their jurisdiction.
Coming to
the laundry; if you are habitual of putting on new clothes after an initial
wash to kill the fabric smell, be ready for its discoloring or application of
an abstract art on it. Mend your habits to put on new clothes as long as you
can because once it reaches in the domain of a maid, only prayers can get you
back in the same shape and shade. Many a times you forgot to take out
handkerchiefs and small currency notes from the pockets of shirts and pants.
After washing, spinning and ironing, you would always find these items crumpled
up exactly where you left them.
Something
on cooking; if your kitchen is being run & ruled by the maids then you need
to buy monthly grocery every fortnight and ignore the wastages. After every meal
the large quantity of residual food lands in the shopping bags maids carry always
with them. Maids are very bad cook; it is generally portrayed by housewives. If
family members begin liking the cooking of a maid, the credit always rests with
the housewife because she taught her cooking skills. Similarly if the maids are
given free hand to dishwashing (literally speaking they always have) then the
housewives are ought not to count and recount the glassware.
In spite of
above narrated blues one must always consider the great ease, advantage and
luxury of having maids at our doorstep. A maid employed to work for 3
assignments i.e. cleaning, dishwashing and laundry gets less than 5000 rupees a
month, a meager amount less than or equal to 1 to 5 percent of our monthly
household income and we still remain unsatisfied over maids’ ever increasing
salaries. Most of us serve them with leftover foods and old & used clothes
to wear (literally rags or those that cannot fit us). We treat them inhumanly
and exploit their poverty shamelessly; hardly offer them hot fresh meals, new
clothes, shoes or advancing them part of their salaries. We insist maids to do
laundry on daily basis with chilling cold tap water under freezing temperatures.
Be storm, thunder, cold or rain, she must be there. A maid is ought to be
immune to diseases or at least she pretend to.
It is
generally alleged that housemaids are synonymous with stealing of household
items especially cash, jewelry and cell phones. If something is lost or
forgotten, the first accused is always a maid. Sometimes they undergo insult, torture
and dishonor over the theft charges they never committed. I’m yet to undergo
such an experience but we did find some maids consuming some eatables like biscuits
& fruits as well as stealing raw food items like sugar & tea without
our permission. Prima facie, it looks a breach of contract or shaking our
confidence but factually it is more a disgraceful act on our part over keeping
the maids starving and needy on such petty things.
I must
share a spine chilling incident here: Once cleaning the floor, a teenage
daughter of our maid took in hand a peel/shell of a Pine-nut (Chilgoza),
brought that to my wife and asked what we called it! With her eyes open, my
wife asked in disbelief: Haven’t you eaten Chilgozay before? The girls’ reply
was astounding, bloodcurdling and heartbreaking; someone gave us a little
quantity of them a few days ago but we didn’t know what they were and how it
was eaten! We found ourselves being sucked in a quicksand.
