As it now comes out, as it did in many other maid stories that rocked the Capital earlier, harassment is not always one-sided. As much as we condemn the so-called heinous act which the doctor couple meted out on their hapless maid, there are several instances of maids wronging their employers. With both husband-wife working they have little scope to do anything but surrender to the whims and fancies of their maids, fear as they do that they may lose her and not get another one.
There are scores of examples of couples being harassed by their maids, dragged into false cases and often being accused of crimes they would never think of committing. A certain couple in Bangalore relate their horrific experience when an agency-bought ‘fully trained’ maid (who incidentally came for a handsome Rs22,000 as agency fees and Rs9,000 monthly allowance) turned tables on them. “We used to treat Mary as one of our own. All her requirements were an order for us and we did it out of love for her and not because we felt she should not be asking for a Dove shampoo! But one fine day, she just disappeared. Worse still, she went straight to the agency and claimed that my husband tried to physically assault her and that when she refused to surrender, I beat her up,” 37-year-old housewife and a good friend Panna recalls. Panna had to visit the agency and apologise to Mary and also give her Rs20,000 as a compensation for a crime that never happened. Her husband lives in Canada and was nowhere near Bangalore when the said incident had supposedly occurred. But fear of the police and resultant complications compelled Panna to give in to this blatant blackmail. “Taking the issue to higher authorities would have meant an even bigger headache,” she says, and quite rightly so as it was a case of the maid’s word against her’s.
It is not the first time that fabricated stories of mercenary maids and maid agencies have come to the fore. A glaring statistic provided by a Government-based Maid Agency in Lajpat Nagar says that over 20 lakh maids work in Delhi and there is a demand for 70 lakh more (both temporary and permanent). It is this shortage that makes employers hapless and maids pricey. A colleague and mother of a two-year-old son had to request for a few days off because her house help and baby sitter suddenly vanished into thin air after having served at her place for over two years. And we know for a fact that this colleague was totally dependent on her maid for daily chores. She left without a warning and this mother was forced to take a sabbatical. Ask is that fair?
For a certain section of society there are catfights that ensue over maids. How to get a better maid is the regular topic of discussion. Even the Internet is deluged by this demand. According to Facebook, over 15 per cent of all status updates are on maids, most of them talking about immense harassment by wayward maids. ‘Please, please, find me a maid’ is quite common on this platform.
Then there are other issues that modern parents face. First there is this huge issue of security of their babies left to the maids, especially if they are looking for permanent ones. Everyone proclaims to be either from West Bengal or Jharkhand and often the police verification takes a long, long, time. Quiz them a little and they tell you that they belong to Midnapur and then some other place. But they will very seldom reveal that they are refugees from Bangladesh.
One maid agency contact in Lajpat Nagar testified to the fact that more than 60 per cent of these girls come from across the eastern border. Even if the employers don’t put their head to tracing the ancestry of their maids, they are put off with all the lies that accompany the help. Most times, they even lie about their family members. My colleague keeps narrating incidents when the maid has forgotten that her father was dead long back and would suddenly create a second father — just so she gets a few days off to attend his funeral!
Another pestering problem is the groupism that this section of the society is involved in. They are a tightly bound community and stand up for each even if a wrong is being committed by one of them. It is impossible to find a replacement if you have separated with your maid on not so good terms. God help you because the entire maid fraternity will ostracise you and even ask you embarrassing questions like “why did she leave?” Gone are the days when the owners had the right to ask their maids for a recommendation. Now-a-days it works on quite the reverse. It is you who needs a solid recommendation!
All said, with the growing incidents of crime that maids have been committing these days, it is an unfortunate fact that they have indeed become a necessary evil. And there is very little that one can do about this. Raise your voice and they threaten you with reporting it to some or the other NGO or even going to the police, whether or not you have done anything being alleged, the onus of proving yourself innocent is on you.
Of course, a cussed police and an overactive NGO brigade does not make things any easier. Ask the doctor couple who, it seems now, did not do anything that was being claimed by their maid!
Source: The Sunday Pioneer, 15 April, 2012
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