In these Challenging times all of us need to be optimistic and that is the only way to keep us going amidst all the problems we face. I wanted to write a blog on Corona but then somehow felt tired and exhausted hearing the word umpteen number of times. I wanted to come up with a blog on Indian maids – their role in an Indian household and their role as a “Broadcaster”. We should acknowledge the fact that ‘Gossip’ is part and parcel of Indian culture and it just exists in our system. Not just the person who is speaking gossip even the one who is listening is responsible to penetrate the gossips reach more and more people. I had to cautiously add some fictional aspects but the core of the blog is taken from real life incidents.
Now let me go over some background about these maids – they run a typical 1980 story such as Drunkard and irresponsible hubby, two kids to take care, not in good terms with Mother in law and whole lot of responsibility lying on the shoulders; They typically have to work in 4-5 houses and on an average earn anywhere between 2000 to 4000 per month by that way they end up earning 15000 on an average; The need for a maid is inevitable in a Indian household for three reasons – Dirt, Heat and number of meals in a calendar day; Even a CID officer may not be able to identify how dirt accumulates inside the house and constant cleaning is a must. Tamilnadu is one place in Earth where Summer lasts for 9-10 months, as a couple we have cooked food for 30 in 5 hours but in India all I have made is just omelette as it gets exhausted standing inside a kitchen for some period of time. There is a thumb rule in India – Men should not do household chores and if they then boy’s mom face will be longer than great wall of china. This makes the equation tougher for housewives and all they can do is take care of cooking and outsource the rest to maids.I think with these three reasons put together it is a mandate that one employs maid for Household chores like sweeping, mopping, cleaning vessels and washing clothes.
Just imagine following five households and assume all houses are geographically closer
Home 1:
Husband, wife, 2 kids and In laws
Home 2:
Husband, wife and 2 kids
Home 3: New
married Husband and wife
Home 4:
Husband, wife, one kid
Home 5: Elderly
Husband and wife with kids settled abroad
Makeup and Ladies: The Lady in Home 2
has a habit of spending quite a lot of time on makeups – just to name a few
like applying Milk clothing ,
green gram powder, multani mitti, coconut milk combined with honey in face,
….But the lady always sounds modest and humble saying everything is natural and
she doesn’t believe in make ups. She doesn’t realize she has A.I.R (All India
radio) in the form of her maid who updates her day to day activity to females
in Home 1 and 4 who all hang out together. This gives huge scope for female
leads in 1 and 4 to make fun of 2.
Spending pattern: Couple at Home 5 is very popular amongst
social circle since they are members of some of the elite clubs in the city;
Also since kids have settled abroad they have even more time to spend time on
parties. People who are super rich always have a common characteristic like
that of being miserly for petty things and elderly couple in this case is no
exception. Maid has requested for Sabena dishwasher powder for over a week now
and still her request is not fulfilled and this is good enough for maid to do
her A.I.R service that of spreading gossips to Homes 1,2 and 4. She might say couple
spend thousands of rupees in gifts, drinks but end up calculating for small
things such as sabena dishwasher powder.
In laws Grinding: People boasts
Daughter in law is like their own daughter but everytime I hear this someone
say I just laugh inside. If daughter sleeps till 8 am then that is okay but if
Daughter in law sleeps till 8 am then that is bad; Mother in laws have habit of
grinding Maids to know details regarding their daughter in law and maids who
are A.I.R does their job effortlessly just to be in good books and the same
maids play a double game by reciprocating everything to daughter in law too
thereby adding oil to the already burning Thiruvannamalai deepam
Men cooks: Some men portray themselves
like Actor Raghuvaran by their manly features, there is CNN Inside story to
that. These men are excellent chefs and they cook very well. This can be a well
guarded secret to the whole world but the so called A.I.R in the form of Maid
is good enough to spread the information much faster than travel of light. This
gives so much fodder for the ever hungry females in neighborhood.
As you can see from above examples that Maids
play a role of news broadcasting much better than CNN/NDTV and they spread news
much quicker than corona virus. People take legal actions against social media
platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, Zoom citing privacy concerns
in their software but just hire an Indian maid and the word Privacy is up for a
toss. Having a maid, driver etc., all add comforts but at the same time you can
be assured privacy is compromised. But on a
serious note these women possess enormous amount of will power and they are
physically and mentally tough. Even the food that is offered to them they take
it to their kids and they sail through all the challenges in upbringing their
kids.
