The covid years saw a massive turnover of domestic helps in my house.
My permanent help left at the peak of COVID-19 to take care of her parents and then apparently married her longtime boyfriend, to whom she was introduced via missed call or wrong number.
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All the girls who worked in metro cities and had to return during COVID-19 beginning in 2020 took shelter in my house for a month or two. With every intermittent Travel relaxation, they flew back to their high-paying jobs in metros.
Restaurants, the homes of television actors, and IT couples hire them with big pay. The girls fancy these big cities. Moreover, the agencies that recruit them send them tickets. They speak English phrases and own expensive smartphones and toiletries. They maintain a good standard of living, many notch up compared to the girls who work in towns.
It is heartening to see girls embrace economic freedom, though some tread it responsibly, some with gay abandon and some realistically.
Some have taken me for a ride in the past two years.
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The girls. When forced to retreat to their homes in Bastis, they couldn't adjust nicely to the native homes devoid of Western commodes and sprays, so they started taking shelter wherever they could live in the towns.
Some landed in my abode looking for work, concealing their plans of flying back to their metro jobs once the air was clear of the virus.
They were fretting about waiting for a call from their agency. Their first demand was a WIFI password; my first demand was a year-long commitment, and both agreed.
They never told me that I was the stop-gap arrangement. None lasted beyond two months; Mantri Saheb used to come on TV to announce the lifting travel restrictions. These girls would come to me with a cooked-up story of a bereavement in the family and then fly directly to Mumbai, Delhi or Bangalore. The agent would send tickets on mobile, and girls used to abandon me mercilessly. It happened five times in two COVID years. One of the girls was waiting to elope and get married but had to seek shelter in my house due to coronavirus guidelines.
Nonetheless, she married in Sevoke temple and flew back to Mumbai as a man and wife. Their combined earning is Rs 50000/month, as domestic help in a TV serial director's house. Working in such homes gives them access to fancy jewellery, makeup and costumes, presenting a feeling of elevation from their grassroots.
As recently as last week, the help went home saying there was an emergency. A cousin died; I helped her pack the bag, gave her money, dropped her at the bus stop, brought her ticket, and stood under the scorching sun till her bus left the station. I did it less out of love for her and more as an appeal, a request to return, to not abandon me.
She followed in the footsteps of her predecessors, never to return; interestingly, she went back to her beauty parlour course. She was waiting for parlours to become operational and the training centres to resume classes. My home was a makeshift arrangement. My home became a referral centre in their network.
I got worked up with all this exploitation and tried contacting the agency to take their services.
The agency refused to entertain local clients as we pay less, and girls too prefer working far away from home. Some girls fear people from home harassing them for money and demanding frequent visits.
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I reached a dead-end finding ways to hire 24-hour domestic help; hence, I resorted to part-timers. The part-timer is my age and can fully empathise with a working mom's agony of running home, as she too has to come to work, leaving her kids at home.
Now that I am implementing and distributing the burden of running the kitchen/laundry to my family, they are pretty annoyed.
The husband blamed me for not retaining the girls, calling me inefficient in handling the workforce. I shouted back at him, saying I have a track record of each girl working with me for not less than four years; blame corona, not me, and I blame you, doctors, for not eliminating the virus that is causing chaos and havoc in homes dependant on 24/7 help.
The daughter watching us fight intervened and said, "Mom, I guess you married the wrong man"?
The son said, "She knows that; say something new, preesha."
She said no, I don't mean Dad is a bad guy
I want to say that Mother should have married a guy who owns a placement agency. He would have found domestic help for her and maybe jobs for us, too. Marrying a doctor was wrong, Mommy; you still have time.
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I was about to burst into laughter, but I hid it. I left the room to resume cleaning diyas for Hanuman Jayanti puja.
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It's time to bring food processors, dishwashers, rumbas and vacuum cleaners to the vanguard. It's the juncture to become less dependent on a third person to care for our homes.
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