My dear wife stood there and glared her trade-mark glare again, trying one more time to accomplish something she has attempted relentlessly for many years now - convert that semblance of potential energy in me into the kinetic form, early in the morning. This posturing has been happening a bit too frequently now, as the readers can also vouch if only they chose to go back and refer to some recent posts. The problem could be that I told her she looked impressive in her `glaring' posture and that compliment may have become an unintended incentive. Or it is entirely possible that those around her (why should I be the sole culprit?) are slipping up more often in the due discharge of their assigned duties. This is forcing her to take that patented stand, to yank the offending issues centre-stage, for a mutually acceptable and amicable resolution, obviously aligned with her stated position. She has been voluble in the past weeks about tiny, mundane issues of routine life causing serious problems to her lately - something I have maintained is an 'antithetical oxymoron'. That morning, another flaming trigger was provided - the gardener has been absent for four days and she wanted me to stir up and be the substitute. Hence the glaring.
Life teaches you that domestic trouble is par for the course; everybody has an inevitable dose now and then. No, I am not going to wash dirty linen in public. Bringing my dear wife into each blog in a sentence or two is more like an invocation I am used to and I do penance for that privately. Actually, that is one of the reasons I have not graduated to something elongated like a novel or increased the frequency of my posts, because there would be seismic consequences for multiple references. But this is digression -- domestic trouble is par for the course, meaning, problems bundled with having many domestic staff members are manifold too. And one cannot escape the fate of hiring a gardener, a maid, a driver and a handyman if one has an independent house, a penchant for relative comfort and some disposable income. Once you become a bulk employer in the neighbourhood with a complement of domestic staff, you cannot avert going into frequent tailspins and sustaining heart-burns, as we will see.
With due recognition of and apologies to the small minority of the tribe which is very punctual, extremely dependable and regular, let me venture to say that one inherently essential attribute of a domestic staff member is the need to take time off frequently and at the most inopportune times, if possible. Think of that day when your stickler of a boss wanted to borrow your car and driver for an airport drop at an ungodly hour and you had given the driver one month's notice of the impending event. On the D-day, even as `dawn' is only a vague and distant suggestion in the cold darkness, the driver calls frantically to deliver the shattering news. That he has to take the first bus to his village to deal with the critical illness of an elder, who is so distantly related that he might as well be in a parallel universe and the driver has to use a worm-hole to reach him! He is kind enough to return a week later, after you have incurred the red-hot wrath of your boss and are still assessing the extensive damage to your career. His, the driver's, first lament is lack of liquidity to even feed the family and his request for a hefty advance has to be catered to without demur. Otherwise, you will be like Arjuna with the bow poised and your Krishna doing an unscheduled vanishing act in Mahabharath. Only way worse, because those worthies were not stricken by Bangalore traffic at 2.5 kmph peak speed, compounded by the deadly hazardous particulate matter suspended right overhead.
The housemaids, who help our harried wives to hold the edifice together, have their own set of problems - many genuinely do and others pretend that they do. Invariably - again, there are exceptions, let me state for the record - they seem to be in wedlock with willfully under-employed husbands, if not hopelessly unemployable ones. One wonders how they all make the same choice! And, the situation is complicated further by errant, unsupervised children and mothers-in-law made out to be eye-gouging monsters. Either way, they toil for 48 hours a day as primary bread-winners to support the family - these people deserve to be mentoring investment bankers who seem to work as hard and late into the night, just to rehash the pitch book with no deals in sight. Not just that. To be left alone with their kids to lead their lives, they also provide a decent bribe to their menfolk to imbibe liquor and stay in a state of perennial, stuporous apathy. Confronted with emergencies, this tribe has to take time off and at the extremity, they resort to 'killing' the same non-existent uncles and aunts over and over again, to play on sympathies. When this becomes too repetitive, our lives face huge disruptions in multiple ways. Then the employers recognize the importance of maids, just as a freshly minted amputee learns to appreciate a limb of the body which has been forcibly separated.
The flare-up referred to in the first para of this post had come to pass due to our gardener playing truant, to attend his nephew's wedding. He returned to work 'temporarily' and sought additional indulgence for a niece's marriage. Surely he must have reasoned that one more nephew getting married so soon would have been less acceptable. When he encountered serious resistance from his multiple masters (poor chap, his was all part time assignments, which meant being reluctantly yoked to too many ploughs simultaneously), he was inventive enough to try something novel. He came with a bandaged foot (my wife swears there was a tinge of blood visible) and limped his way into our hearts, stating he had a cut with some implement elsewhere and needed medical rehabilitation. Then he went and told the other part-time benefactor that the unplanned incision occurred in our garden. When the employers chatted during some perambulatory movement which usually passed for exercise, truth surfaced. All he wanted was to have his way with time off, which he did. My wife, without realizing that untrained replacements would actually have a couple of real injuries doing what the gardener does effortlessly, was insisting I literally chip in!! Readers can hopefully comprehend my reluctance and empathize.
Our community's email platform, just like everywhere else, is fully leveraged by those sending out angry/insistent/pleading/resigned communication (1) seeking new domestic staff because they, the employers do not like the ones they have (2) same as (1) above but the issue being (not stated clearly for obvious reasons) that the domestic staff do not like the employers and have walked out wordlessly (3) levelling minor/major allegations against domestic staff and advising others not to employ them ever in the future at any cost (4) expressing deep disappointment and pain because an immediate neighbour in dire need did precisely the opposite of what was sought in (3), the very next day. An attempt to compile a list of `undesirable' domestic staff (a blacklist, if you will) didn't see the light of day because there were concerns that (a) employers may manipulate willfully to include names out of anger and unreasonable personal grudge and (b) anyway, the black list would turn grey shortly and lily-white eventually due to the acute shortage of domestic staff. That should explain why 80% of maids had at some point or other worked at 80% of the homes here.
But, this scribe heard confidentially from reliable sources that the blacklist did not emerge because some of the aggressive domestic staff made it known that if it was indeed published, there would be a retaliatory negative list of employers in the community, with detailed 'inside' information for each. Now, who wants his/her dirty linen paraded (not even washed) in public, that too by the domestic staff?
Life teaches you that domestic trouble is par for the course; everybody has an inevitable dose now and then. No, I am not going to wash dirty linen in public. Bringing my dear wife into each blog in a sentence or two is more like an invocation I am used to and I do penance for that privately. Actually, that is one of the reasons I have not graduated to something elongated like a novel or increased the frequency of my posts, because there would be seismic consequences for multiple references. But this is digression -- domestic trouble is par for the course, meaning, problems bundled with having many domestic staff members are manifold too. And one cannot escape the fate of hiring a gardener, a maid, a driver and a handyman if one has an independent house, a penchant for relative comfort and some disposable income. Once you become a bulk employer in the neighbourhood with a complement of domestic staff, you cannot avert going into frequent tailspins and sustaining heart-burns, as we will see.
With due recognition of and apologies to the small minority of the tribe which is very punctual, extremely dependable and regular, let me venture to say that one inherently essential attribute of a domestic staff member is the need to take time off frequently and at the most inopportune times, if possible. Think of that day when your stickler of a boss wanted to borrow your car and driver for an airport drop at an ungodly hour and you had given the driver one month's notice of the impending event. On the D-day, even as `dawn' is only a vague and distant suggestion in the cold darkness, the driver calls frantically to deliver the shattering news. That he has to take the first bus to his village to deal with the critical illness of an elder, who is so distantly related that he might as well be in a parallel universe and the driver has to use a worm-hole to reach him! He is kind enough to return a week later, after you have incurred the red-hot wrath of your boss and are still assessing the extensive damage to your career. His, the driver's, first lament is lack of liquidity to even feed the family and his request for a hefty advance has to be catered to without demur. Otherwise, you will be like Arjuna with the bow poised and your Krishna doing an unscheduled vanishing act in Mahabharath. Only way worse, because those worthies were not stricken by Bangalore traffic at 2.5 kmph peak speed, compounded by the deadly hazardous particulate matter suspended right overhead.
The housemaids, who help our harried wives to hold the edifice together, have their own set of problems - many genuinely do and others pretend that they do. Invariably - again, there are exceptions, let me state for the record - they seem to be in wedlock with willfully under-employed husbands, if not hopelessly unemployable ones. One wonders how they all make the same choice! And, the situation is complicated further by errant, unsupervised children and mothers-in-law made out to be eye-gouging monsters. Either way, they toil for 48 hours a day as primary bread-winners to support the family - these people deserve to be mentoring investment bankers who seem to work as hard and late into the night, just to rehash the pitch book with no deals in sight. Not just that. To be left alone with their kids to lead their lives, they also provide a decent bribe to their menfolk to imbibe liquor and stay in a state of perennial, stuporous apathy. Confronted with emergencies, this tribe has to take time off and at the extremity, they resort to 'killing' the same non-existent uncles and aunts over and over again, to play on sympathies. When this becomes too repetitive, our lives face huge disruptions in multiple ways. Then the employers recognize the importance of maids, just as a freshly minted amputee learns to appreciate a limb of the body which has been forcibly separated.
The flare-up referred to in the first para of this post had come to pass due to our gardener playing truant, to attend his nephew's wedding. He returned to work 'temporarily' and sought additional indulgence for a niece's marriage. Surely he must have reasoned that one more nephew getting married so soon would have been less acceptable. When he encountered serious resistance from his multiple masters (poor chap, his was all part time assignments, which meant being reluctantly yoked to too many ploughs simultaneously), he was inventive enough to try something novel. He came with a bandaged foot (my wife swears there was a tinge of blood visible) and limped his way into our hearts, stating he had a cut with some implement elsewhere and needed medical rehabilitation. Then he went and told the other part-time benefactor that the unplanned incision occurred in our garden. When the employers chatted during some perambulatory movement which usually passed for exercise, truth surfaced. All he wanted was to have his way with time off, which he did. My wife, without realizing that untrained replacements would actually have a couple of real injuries doing what the gardener does effortlessly, was insisting I literally chip in!! Readers can hopefully comprehend my reluctance and empathize.
Our community's email platform, just like everywhere else, is fully leveraged by those sending out angry/insistent/pleading/resigned communication (1) seeking new domestic staff because they, the employers do not like the ones they have (2) same as (1) above but the issue being (not stated clearly for obvious reasons) that the domestic staff do not like the employers and have walked out wordlessly (3) levelling minor/major allegations against domestic staff and advising others not to employ them ever in the future at any cost (4) expressing deep disappointment and pain because an immediate neighbour in dire need did precisely the opposite of what was sought in (3), the very next day. An attempt to compile a list of `undesirable' domestic staff (a blacklist, if you will) didn't see the light of day because there were concerns that (a) employers may manipulate willfully to include names out of anger and unreasonable personal grudge and (b) anyway, the black list would turn grey shortly and lily-white eventually due to the acute shortage of domestic staff. That should explain why 80% of maids had at some point or other worked at 80% of the homes here.
But, this scribe heard confidentially from reliable sources that the blacklist did not emerge because some of the aggressive domestic staff made it known that if it was indeed published, there would be a retaliatory negative list of employers in the community, with detailed 'inside' information for each. Now, who wants his/her dirty linen paraded (not even washed) in public, that too by the domestic staff?
3 comments:
Great stuff Varad. Just make sure Pramila stays far away from reading this. Else the glare may be replaced by a flying saucepan!
Your book is an excellent read. One never "finishes" it. Just keeps going back to it to read afew pages every now and then, for afew more smiles!
Keep it up! You're very good!!
We all need a dose of humour in our lives - thanks for providing that this morning. Good stuff.
Hi Raju,
That is an exact reflection of what we all experience - I am talking about the house maids and not my dear wife ! It is high time your satire is extended to cover the clan of our general service providers - like plumbers, electricians, lift operators etc. Fortunately,you can be forced to gardening but not the other tasks in the list.
Moorthy
Post a Comment