Today's Maid: a Case of Reverse Exploitation

This is something I am writing with great reluctance. Cases of people abusing/overworking their maids are many. But our maid has been abusing us and taking advantage of our, well, erm, good nature. Today, we live in a smart world: a world without principles, loyalties, old-world bon homie. Therefore the concept of the household maid who comes, talks politely, does work, and leaves is no longer applicable. Or, so we feel.

We pay her the prevailing rate for sweeping and swabbing (floor only) and a bonus on festivals. The beginning, a few years ago, was encouraging. Then, insidiously, from coming every day she started coming every second day. We said okay because every time there was a valid excuse. Then it became every third day. The work also started deteriorating. She wouldn't sweep or swab the balcony and only passes the wipe perfunctorily over the floor. Some room she doesn't sweep, only swabs, assuming it will take care of the dust and fallen hair. (We are people in our fifties and a lot of shedding happens.) The whole job hardly takes ten minutes and she is out of the door after that.

Then, horror of horrors, she started coming once a week. The stories were the same: fever, chills, cough, back pain, and long wait at the local doctor's clinic. We realise we were being exploited. Cheated. In a month she comes only four times and takes full pay. Imagine!

We hold consultations - wife and I - about what to do. She is an old hand, and, being sentimentally attached, we don't want to be rude and ask her to leave. God forbid who comes as replacement. Stories abound about maids stealing gold, giving information about valuables to boyfriends, even killing house owners.

We are not decided about the exploiting maid, well, not so far. But she will have to go for the way she has been taking advantage of our leniency. And, before the once in a week visit becomes once in a month visit. Nice no? Go to place of work once a month and pick up your salary. Anyone said not done? I didn't know exploitation happens both way. Duh!

Some Progress! A Brief Note on the Magazines of the Seventies and Eighties.

There's some progress on the novel's side, at last. I am to glad to tell you that the painful sub-editing, copy editing (call it what you will) has finally reached the half-way mark. It has been slow progress because I could do hardly four pages a day, that too, not on all days. Some days, football came in the way. Yes, football. Other days, a lot of things: sundry maintenance work at home (e.g. protecting against the rain), poetry submissions (that don't bear fruit), Sangam House submission (a mystery), a short story submission to New Yorker (which they said would automatically not qualify for a reply). So that's understandable. With so many submission they must be tired. There are so many people writing, especially short stories, and all the markets have died out.

I remember those days - Illustrated Weekly, Youth Times, Mirror, Imprint, Eves Weekly, Sunday, Sunday Review, Debonair, Beautiful - all had space for short stories. Among the crop of magazines at that time I think Caravan and Frontline survive. The rest have been wiped out. Illustrated weekly and Youth Times had two pages for poems (Debonair too)! My God! Those were golden days for poetry and short fiction. Adil Jussawala's learned articles in Debonair were looked forward to. The late Santan Rodrigues' poems were read and appreciated. Salim Peeradina used to run poetry appreciation classes in St. Xaviers college. Kamla Das used to conduct poetry soirees at her residence in Bombay. None of these events or magazines exist today. I would send out short stories and poems to all these publications and keep a watch if they appeared, while waiting in the barber shop. Yes, barber shops then had quite a few of those magazines in their racks. Some of them were published. But, then I was a poor documenter of my successes. All of them got lost in the various movings I have done.

Today these magazines have been gobbled up by bigger media. The big newspapers shut down their smaller magazines, as they made no profit. These magazines were the hotbed of intellectual discourse in those days. People actually wrote letters to editors, bereting them for bad issues, congratulating them for good issues.

Where are those magazines? Where are those heated discussions? Football, anyone?

The World's Most Expensive Home Needs Plastic-sheet Protection

Look at the building on top, which is the home of India's richest man, built at a cost of roughly $ 1 billion. It's also the costliest house ever built. The house boasts of two floors for parking cars, two floors for guests, and one floor for a gymnasium and sauna.

And, then, look at the picture below. It is a picture of a slum where there is no water, no electricity and people shit in the open space around it. To make things worse, it gets flooded in the rains.

These days it is raining in Bombay, India's richest city, and the richest man has to protect his house with the same plastic sheet as the poor man. (See the blue plastic sheets on both buildings.) Perhaps, the rich man's architects have bungled, they didn't think that glass if not properly fixed would leak. So now they have had to fix the humble plastic sheet used by slum-dwellers on their wonderful architecture stretching into the sky.

What is obvious from the picture below is that our urban city planners and architects have also bungled. A one-bedroom flat in the city costs around Rs 1 Cr ($ 166 thousand). If a man buys a flat he is a slave to his employer for ever. (I was one of such employees.) If you can't buy a flat, you can live in one of the huts seen below.

The rich man I mentioned is the chairman of the biggest corporation in India. All his employees are required to work six days a week and, sometimes, more. He doesn't believe in charity. His hospitals and schools are the most expensive ones in the city.

The problem is seeing a corporate captain behaving thus, the lesser bosses have also started imitating him. Thus most of the offices of the corporation work six days a week giving employees neither free time for hobbies or for their children. The belief is that if you have political patronage you can do anything in India. Nobody can touch you. India is like a tinpot African regime (sorry Africa!) not a genuine democracy in the hands of these people.

Need I say more?