After marriage among many other things the one which i have realized big time during the last one year is...the importance of a house maid!
I have stayed away from home close to 10 years before getting married last year. Most of the time was spent in hostels, where we were hardly bothered who the kaam vaali baai is who comes to clean our room. Anyways, room cleaning at that time was of close to zero importance. Though i still remember that the baaaiis in Jhansi were too good. We had Biniya Ji, Raamkali Ji..and few other Ji's....very loving and caring, and thoroughly genuine people who made life a bit easier in the hostels there, where sometimes we were devoid of the bare minimum requirements of a decent life like electricity...for days altogether in the month of May-June...
Anyway, coming back to the topic...yes, i stayed in a PG for close to 2 years and then also stayed in a rented flat for a year and a half before i finally bid goodbye to the bachelorette pad and got married. We moved to this satellite town of Delhi, and as a welcoming gesture, our 2nd floor neighbor came forward and recommended her own housemaid to us.
More than happily we accepted the offer, and thus started our tryst with Shyaamoli or Saanwari...(not sure what her real name is as she responds to both)!!
So unlike the genuine maids i had seen in college, maid here is a different story altogether.
6:30 in the morning when she rings the bell, it feels that this is the last time our door bell is breathing ting tong...it wont be usable hereafter! After giving her directions on what to make for breakfast...i retire back to bed (to the utter disappointment of husband who thinks that i should stand there and supervise her work...:O) ..Anyway, then starts her favorite game...vessel banging!!....Initially i thought that she is upset with something...or may be with us..and thats the reason she is in all tod doongi phod doongi mode...Alas, we were very sadly and badly mistaken. This is her normal style of working. In her normal course of work she ensures that enough noise is made while washing utensils so that no poor soul around is spared of her/ his sleep....
Now, in the beginning i tokofied her...as my morning need is too dear to me and i would certainly not let any housemaid to ruin it...but then slowly i realized, that telling her to change/ modify her ways of working is of NO use...yes of ABSOLUTELY NO use.....and there are multiple reasons behind it....
The most apparent and one which we thought was most easy to tackle was that she has a hearing problem. Yes, our maid "ooncha sunti hai". So if you say something at 60 dB, decibel level of the normal human speech; its just some distant sound which her ears cannot even detect....
To add to that, since she is hard of hearing, so to compensate that, she speaks at a volume which is a couple of notches higher than the rest of us normal beings.....overall effect, highly impaired communication.
As if this was not enough, maid happens to be one of the most obstinate female i have ever come across in my life. She will just not listen to you. So if i offer my ideas on any particular dish ...ok, when i say ideas...things like..."XYZ sabzi mein tamatar mat daalna"...."tamatam nahi daalna hai????..:O..:O"..."NAHI, nahi daalna hai" (stressing each and every word like i am in some akshar gyaan classes for firang kids)....you sit down to eat and "tamatam" is all over...!!
The beauty of her behaviour is, that while she refuses to take any instructions when it comes to cooking, in every other areas you better give her instructions otherwise you are in a soup!!
Any and every edible thing kept within 1 metre radius of the sink is MEANT to be thrown away in the dustbin. Yes, so if you have kept a bowl full of fresh sabzi by mistake somewhere even close to the sink area, swoooo..sssh..it goes inside the kitchen bin. If you have kept some freshly soaked mehndi (with all your efforts of mixing, grinding and beating an egg into it)...and it happens to lie in the above said high alert area....within a blink, the mehndi vessel will be all clean and shining....."Achcha, vo fenkna nahi tha, aapne bola hi nahi"....hmm...yess..my mishtake truly!!
Her halo is such, that when MIL calls, after normal pleasantries exchange the first thing she inquires of is..."aur tumhari kaamvaali theek kaam kar rahi"...yes, my dear friends, we sometimes spend more time discussing Her Highness than anything else.
Infact, few days ago at a cousin's place i noticed their very well behaved servants. who were responding to normal human voice and there was no noise outside kitchen signaling their presence. I was lost for a few moments...started day dreaming if such a scenario would ever exist in our household!!
Now, after all this many of you must be thinking, why do we not then replace her with a better bai.
We cannot do that, zimple reason being.....this one never maaros any chutti. Yes, Touch Wood. No matter how much we long for sophisticated, smart baiis....we cannot afford to loose one, who is regular...:)
So for now, we choose to live with Shyamoli hoping that some day she will cease to be her abnormal self...and change for better..:)
I have stayed away from home close to 10 years before getting married last year. Most of the time was spent in hostels, where we were hardly bothered who the kaam vaali baai is who comes to clean our room. Anyways, room cleaning at that time was of close to zero importance. Though i still remember that the baaaiis in Jhansi were too good. We had Biniya Ji, Raamkali Ji..and few other Ji's....very loving and caring, and thoroughly genuine people who made life a bit easier in the hostels there, where sometimes we were devoid of the bare minimum requirements of a decent life like electricity...for days altogether in the month of May-June...
Anyway, coming back to the topic...yes, i stayed in a PG for close to 2 years and then also stayed in a rented flat for a year and a half before i finally bid goodbye to the bachelorette pad and got married. We moved to this satellite town of Delhi, and as a welcoming gesture, our 2nd floor neighbor came forward and recommended her own housemaid to us.
More than happily we accepted the offer, and thus started our tryst with Shyaamoli or Saanwari...(not sure what her real name is as she responds to both)!!
So unlike the genuine maids i had seen in college, maid here is a different story altogether.
6:30 in the morning when she rings the bell, it feels that this is the last time our door bell is breathing ting tong...it wont be usable hereafter! After giving her directions on what to make for breakfast...i retire back to bed (to the utter disappointment of husband who thinks that i should stand there and supervise her work...:O) ..Anyway, then starts her favorite game...vessel banging!!....Initially i thought that she is upset with something...or may be with us..and thats the reason she is in all tod doongi phod doongi mode...Alas, we were very sadly and badly mistaken. This is her normal style of working. In her normal course of work she ensures that enough noise is made while washing utensils so that no poor soul around is spared of her/ his sleep....
Now, in the beginning i tokofied her...as my morning need is too dear to me and i would certainly not let any housemaid to ruin it...but then slowly i realized, that telling her to change/ modify her ways of working is of NO use...yes of ABSOLUTELY NO use.....and there are multiple reasons behind it....
The most apparent and one which we thought was most easy to tackle was that she has a hearing problem. Yes, our maid "ooncha sunti hai". So if you say something at 60 dB, decibel level of the normal human speech; its just some distant sound which her ears cannot even detect....
To add to that, since she is hard of hearing, so to compensate that, she speaks at a volume which is a couple of notches higher than the rest of us normal beings.....overall effect, highly impaired communication.
As if this was not enough, maid happens to be one of the most obstinate female i have ever come across in my life. She will just not listen to you. So if i offer my ideas on any particular dish ...ok, when i say ideas...things like..."XYZ sabzi mein tamatar mat daalna"...."tamatam nahi daalna hai????..:O..:O"..."NAHI, nahi daalna hai" (stressing each and every word like i am in some akshar gyaan classes for firang kids)....you sit down to eat and "tamatam" is all over...!!
The beauty of her behaviour is, that while she refuses to take any instructions when it comes to cooking, in every other areas you better give her instructions otherwise you are in a soup!!
Any and every edible thing kept within 1 metre radius of the sink is MEANT to be thrown away in the dustbin. Yes, so if you have kept a bowl full of fresh sabzi by mistake somewhere even close to the sink area, swoooo..sssh..it goes inside the kitchen bin. If you have kept some freshly soaked mehndi (with all your efforts of mixing, grinding and beating an egg into it)...and it happens to lie in the above said high alert area....within a blink, the mehndi vessel will be all clean and shining....."Achcha, vo fenkna nahi tha, aapne bola hi nahi"....hmm...yess..my mishtake truly!!
Her halo is such, that when MIL calls, after normal pleasantries exchange the first thing she inquires of is..."aur tumhari kaamvaali theek kaam kar rahi"...yes, my dear friends, we sometimes spend more time discussing Her Highness than anything else.
Infact, few days ago at a cousin's place i noticed their very well behaved servants. who were responding to normal human voice and there was no noise outside kitchen signaling their presence. I was lost for a few moments...started day dreaming if such a scenario would ever exist in our household!!
Now, after all this many of you must be thinking, why do we not then replace her with a better bai.
We cannot do that, zimple reason being.....this one never maaros any chutti. Yes, Touch Wood. No matter how much we long for sophisticated, smart baiis....we cannot afford to loose one, who is regular...:)
So for now, we choose to live with Shyamoli hoping that some day she will cease to be her abnormal self...and change for better..:)
1 people have something to say...:
ROFL!!!!!
Welcome to the married people's world :-)
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