Maids of honour

India, at least the metropolitan part of it, seems to have become truly upwardly mobile.

The case in point is my neighbour’s maid and her holiday schedule. Just the other day, my neighbour, an elderly lady who is usually bereft of anger, came in fuming. The reason: Despite all pleas, her maid was refusing to adjust her leave according to aunty’s convenience.

Aunty was asking her to take her 10-day leave a week later than the maid’s schedule as that would have coincided with aunty’s Singapore visit. But the maid said she was helpless because she had done all her bookings for her 10-day summer holiday.

You would think she was going to her gaon, as all maids usually do for the summers. But that was not the case. She was apparently leaving on a group booking to Nainital — all duly pre-paid and tied up with a travel agency. “All-inclusive” she said, knowing little about what it meant but knowing well that it meant not a penny more would be spent on the entire holiday!

I was as flummoxed as my neighbour was. After all, the maid earns not more than Rs 3,000 a month. Her husband would be doing likewise — when, i.e., he is not out of a job due to drunken misbehaviour.

Yet, she and 20 other couples like her are all set on an “all-inclusive” holiday, that too in such recessive times!

After getting over the shock of such aspirational mobility of the ration card section, I felt good that urban India had actually expanded its spending capacity to the grassroots level.

So much so that getting maids in Delhi has become quite a difficult task. They have many demands, including the two most audacious ones — provide a washing machine for clothes and only perfumed Vim liquid for washing utensils!

Mine one, of course, came up with a new one just the other day — an A/C in the kitchen and a washed apron everyday!

If one were to analyse the domestics scenario in the Capital in the last decade, he would know how drastically it has changed. A heavy influx from the north-east and the tribal areas of Jharkhand has elbowed out the cow belt population in this section.

And with the new breed, have come new rates. The price of a 24x7 housemaid has jacked up from Rs 2,000 some years back to Rs 5,000 if you are lucky.

Community bureaux have correspondingly sprung up providing maids from whichever region you are comfortable with — of course, at an equally upwardly mobile price.

Incidentally, most of these maids are Congress voters. On the 7th of May, most of them were on leave, to cast their vote and all of them voted the Congress. Ask them why and they would have little explanation except for being traditional voters of the Congress.

At least in South Delhi, the entire weaker section voted the Congress making one wonder how a segment, which was forced to give up most things on its platter due to spiralling prices, still did not think it fit to oust a Government that had perpetrated such financial constraints on them.

Come to think of it, the women in this segment are the real breadwinners. Braving beatings from drunk husbands, they work ceaselessly to give their many children a decent education, food, shelter and clothing. Many of the younger ones even manage to do computer courses and beauty parlour training to join what they feel is a more respectable job.

So it is sad that the literate ones, who have done their graduation through evening classes and open universities — working in the daytime and studying in the nights — do not get adequate openings to further their careers. In this context, the one going on an all inclusive holiday came as a breath of fresh air.

Published May 24, 2009, Sunday Pioneer, http://www.dailypioneer.com/178113/Maids-of-honour.html