The Maids of Hindustan

I tossed with several ideas for the title of this piece…?Mermaids of Hindustan or may be Mere-maids of Hindustan and many more, until I decided to stay staid ,stoic, and to the point. The inspiration to center them in this article goes back many years, to a sales trip by train from Kolkata to Bihar during ?the nineties. It was narrated by a man on the opposite berth, a war horse from the corporate trenches. We took turns a-starin’, out the window at the darkness….the boredom overtook us and he began to speak…… stolen from the great Kenny Rogers. ?So here is how it goes…. in the early days of mentorship programs in corporate India, an amusing culture of arranged marriage for ‘mentors and mentees’ had sprung up. You were assigned a mentor that you suddenly inherited from a company memo. Some had two, one for a Monday to sober you down from your weekend binge and another for pressing you against the mission statement on the wall till you promised to stay the course. A lovely little underground economy of mentor-mentee match making had sprung up too. Those with faulty stars were baptized in the HR cubicles, till they memorized the mission and hallucinated the vision and later?ordained into the communion of mentorship. The mentor was like a distant uncle that you had never met and was suddenly forced upon you. Apparently, this man on the opposite berth , was assigned a mentor one day. He was to take some ground-breaking advice from his assigned mentor the next day. When he arrived the following day to receive his ten commandments of nirvana, the mentor was completely out of his wits, for his maid had not showed up that day. What is more, by the quirk of fate the elevators were not working and he had to scramble up the mount of Sinai to deliver his sermon . He delivered his sermon on an empty, burning belly, and the ill-fated mentee had to stomach much advice, that didn’t go well for his career. The mentor belched volcanic ashes?from his empty stomach ;a baptism of fire if you may. It may sound a bit exaggerated but ?I had to compensate for the intensity and profanity used in the original narration. All in chaste Punjabi. While you recoup from your raunchy imagination, I will regroup and conclude………. The Mentee was benched for a long time from the aftermath of that session and had to reboot his career after a forced shut down and restart. He told me that he would have broken the glass ceiling and turned into cosmic energy, if not for that fateful day. This prelude was thrust upon you, to bring home the impact of this workforce on our lives, that ‘brews our tea’ before we ‘boil the ocean’.

During the covid pandemic, corporate India recognized the yeomen service delivered by this workforce with unfailing ROI. People realized how difficult it is to go down on your knees and mop the floor and go for the so called ‘low lying fruits’. ?With swollen knees the use of jargons in corporate circles had come down by 70% as per analysts with swollen eyes. We will have more insight into this hypothetical data, as more studies are conducted and managerial faculties are applied to this workforce, and its impact on national GDP. One day when Six Sigma is honored on them by the gurus, we will see the true-blue mermaids with their memoirs and medallions. But as covid restrictions were eased and the maids were allowed to come home again, they picked up a lot of corporate slang from the folks who work from home. Like the other day, when my friend asked his south Indian maid to make Aloo Parathas, she said” Mere ko apne core competency ke bahar nahin kaam karna hai”( I don’t want to work outside my core competency). With a few more jargons and a good business plan she could ruin some careers. This far is still safe, but be warned, don’t ever teach them the tricks of excel, If you want to keep your jobs. Specially the pivots, that were used to petrify and edge out lesser mortals like me once upon a time. Some ‘pivot pirates’ started making it all the way to the corporate boards till they were beaten up by shareholders in AGMs, when they tried to explain falling share prices with pivot tables….. Technology can be a humbling experience.

?Some days when I feel like garbage as I wake up and can’t muster the energy to go out for a walk, the doorbell rings and the lady collecting the garbage has arrived at the door sparkling like the morning star. The guards relieved from their night duty are washing the cars and maids with hurried steps are making their way to their daily grind.... my three pillars of daily motivation. I have learnt to recognize people by the tone, texture, and intensity of the doorbell ring. Some lazy and labored, some intense and purposeful, some hurried and hassled. You are not home yet with domestic bliss if you don’t recognize the periodic harmonics of the door rings. Every ring is a dose of dopamine and ecstasy that you must learn to savor in this lifetime, that will help you prioritize how and who you open your pearly gates for. I have taken great pains to assemble the wealth of knowledge from my lifetime of research on this subject. The maid is did-dah followed by a did-did-dah if you don’t hurry up. The garbage collection lady starts with a dah-did-did and in two seconds end with a did meaning exit…roger out and the watchman is did-did . These are the ones I have mastered and care about “Grub, Garbage and the Guard”. ?Those that I don’t care to open my doors for, leave filthy messages on my WhatsApp and a lifetime of friendship and bonding ensues. The mystery of male bonding and friendship has been a subject of evolution studies for centuries.

I started working from home when it was neither fashionable nor a compulsion. In these years I noticed that there is a spot under my house towards my working room, where the maids of the area rendezvous after their daily domestic chores and exchange salivating secrets of all households in the locality. These stories endorse the lovely opener from Leo Tolstoy in ‘Anna Karenina’ “All happy families are the same, and all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways”. I am guilty of eavesdropping on these conversations, but how else would I learn the miseries of this universe. Sure, you agree, that someone has to do all the dirty work to educate the ignorant masses. ?I bear the added guilt of embellishing and amplifying the gaps when the background noise does not allow a clear path of communication. Being a technology enthusiast, I like the concept of padding with parity bits. ?I have mastered the art of storytelling and inventive layering to create a chapbook of stories for my bedtime reading after retirement. Empowered with these stories, I harbor the evil intention of crushing my opponents on the day of judgement. I think I am entitled and licensed to this path of glory, from years of toil, having my ears to the ground. Although not something that I relish, but certainly regale at the prospect of this unanimous victory.

?Maid scouting is one more in the long list of miseries that occupy urban chores, and my prayers with the maid scouts. Joint families that look like mini villages are a strict no-no to many maids. Male members of these families take turns at the main gate of residential complexes to poach the top talent of the industry. Apart from financial incentives that comes from the patriarch’s treasury, they are enticed with housie on Saturdays and birthday celebrations for the maids etc etc…. ?I have thwarted many such poaching attempts at my moat, and the gods joined in to rain curses from the heaven…………………… “Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life”. And I realized, even the gods don’t take this lightly.

Meanwhile, in the pell-mell of urban rush, as the sunrise gets late and lazy each passing day, I have missed the seasons winter footsteps again . The night guard who sleeps in the night, has handed his baton to the day guard who sleeps in the day between his musical gigs on the YouTube. Two maids are giggling past the sleeping guard at my wing, and one will reach my door soon…. did-dah followed by did-did-dah…. I need to hurry and open…………….. See you again soon.