Maid in India

For the last ten days or so, we have had maid trouble. Like all domestic help, the woman who worked in our house was intensely inventive, creating all sorts of stories that I, as a novice in these matters, had no clue about where veracity was concerned. But over the last ten months or so since I took over house-keeping and dealing with the aforementioned maid, I have learned a great deal.

Lesson 1: Be very clear what the bai, aka the maid, was employed to do. It is obvious that she washes dishes, sweeps and swabs the floor and ‘does’ the bathrooms, but to what extent do these duties stretch? Our bai would rush in like a miniature whirlwind around 7:30 am every morning, clatter the dishes (with a wonderful Stella Gibbonsish fervour), whiz around the house wielding broom and then swab-cloth and get terribly in the way of all three residents – self, father and kitten. The entire apartment would be redolent of soap and eucalyptus oil by the time she left, but we would be edgy, jumpy and very irritated with any noise or movement at the end of the short half hour.
But look closely and you see what is not done. The floor of the lobby outside the front door would be swept and swabbed, but around the large footmat. The bucket used for water used for swabbing would be empty, but with dirt and grease clinging around like a watermark. The garbage bins would be empty…of not only rubbish, but the bin liners as well. And the air-conditioning units would be inch-thick in dust and plant debris because she, in her infinite wisdom and confidence of the long-term employed, would insist that it was not the work she was hired to do.

Lesson 2: Never believe the bai, aka the maid. Ours came up with the most ingenious excuses to avoid work, or take a day off. She killed a series of her relatives at regular intervals – while a couple may have been true, the rest, my friends and the building supervisor assure me, were stories that I should have been able to see through – they all tell tales like this, I was assured; you have to be more strict. At last count, she had no family left and her aunt’s husband had died twice over. But who keeps count of sob stories, especially when the woman sobs as she tells the story?
But there have been other esoteric disasters that have inflicted her and her family. Her son fell in the gutter, her husband would do an occasional spectacular drunk, her niece had chikungunya, she had dengue, her mother-in-law had malaria and her pet hen, if she had one, had a nervous breakdown. The monotony of illness and death was broken occasionally by bouts of flooding, no electricity, autorickshaw strikes, bandhs and riots, just to spice up the week.

Lesson 3: Never allow the bai, aka the maid, to get friendly with the cat. I encouraged it. The cat watched the maid. The maid cooed to the cat. And I accepted one more excuse that the maid made, because she was so positive where the cat was concerned. The sympathy wave got me nowhere. She still left me maidless for longer than I could tolerate.

So one day, after the umpteenth death in the maid’s family and the umpteenth tine she had taken leave without keeping to her promise of coming back on a certain day, I sacked her. Which left us with a house that was not properly cleaned for over a week and dishpan hands from washing up after meals. Now that we finally have someone new to help with maidly duties, I have decided that perhaps the first lesson I should have learned is Lesson 4: Never sack a maid without having an immediate alternative!