The Bai Chronicles - II : Itna paisa mein itnaich milenga!

Bai chronicles is back! And this time, I'll talk about a very touchy subject - Pagaar, as in pay. Now, all of employed India, indeed all of the employed world operates on an overworked yet underpaid model. (Is someone somewhere listening?) Even members of the mafia might perhaps believe that they need to be paid more for all that 'conscience killing', 'mental trauma', 'haunting nightmares', 'additional risk of hanging out with super mean boss' etc etc. Well in reality, if that last point did indeed have a yardstick for measuring proposed compensation, 'Is anyone listening again??? Please?'

But while all of us may have serious pay scale issues, most of us are not in that super enviable position that goes with bargaining capabilities. In my humble experience, negotiating one's pay and achieving the life, work and pay one wants is stuff dreams are made of, and only the high and mighty, who perhaps have a core competence anyone would kill for can hope to achieve that enviable state! But as it turns out, our Bais almost always have bargaining power. Especially the awesome ones! And while us pitching a 10% upgrade in pay would perhaps meet with a 'It was nice talking to you, but we'll get back if we have a spot vacant for you', vis-a-vis the maids in Mumbai, they manage to easily wrest out at least a 30% increment per job!

Now, there was this lady who came to work for us once. She came with an awesome recommendation from this lady in a neighboring building. Why did this lady send me this maid, well, once I wept out my 'dukh-bhari-bin-baai-kahaani' to this lady at a shop, and she commiserated with me over a tetra pak of milk. So this maid came over, and I explained all her tasks to her. She listened carefully. And then I asked her the all-important, pain inducing question. 'Kitna legi'? 'Hazaar rupya'. I was over the moon! A thousand bucks! Wow! a true bargain indeed. Given that this lady was trying to find her bearings in the 'baai market' and get herself some 'kaayam ka kaam... (permanent employment), I felt that I had found my very own 'Ramu Kaki'. I imagined myself several years down the line, in horn-rimmed glasses, a streak of gray hair on my well maintained tresses, sitting on my porch with a news paper, saying 'Mandaaaa, ek chaai lana zara' (Manda, can you get me a tea please). And I saw this lady, a few wrinkles on her face walking over with my tea in clean polished China, setting it down, and informing me that the grandkids have left for school and.... 'Total chaar kaam ke liye chaar hazaar maheene ka'. (For 4 tasks, 4000 bucks a month).

'What?' I screamed, almost. 'But we're two people in the house! And both of us leave for work early in the morning. Given Mumbai's sterling real estate scene, I honestly don't live in a palace! We both eat out. So why exactly did she want a thousand bucks to wash four and a half utensils and another 1000 bucks to wash 5 pieces of clothes? Most of my clothes go to the dry-cleaners anyway (thanks to the new fashion trend of jewel encrusted necklines! Bah). And since when did sweeping and swabbing, the legendary, hyphenated jhaadu-patta become two tasks? I gulped in horror, as she stood steadfast, unrelenting. I explained all this to her and all she said was, 'Itna paisa lagega itne kaam ke liye'. When I asked her to be reasonable, all she said was, 'Bhabhi, yeh address mein aake kaam karne ka paisa toh lagega na? Parvadega nahin toh aisa area mein rehne ka nahin. Mere ko bhi bhaada dena padta hai na mere ghar ka? (If you want to live in such an address, you must be willing to pay. If you can't afford the maids of this area, perhaps you must live elsewhere. I need to pay my house rent too, right?) "Chalega toh bolo. Baaki bahut log waiting mein hai." (Lemme know if it works, or else I have a long list of prospective customers!)

I accepted my relative poverty and thanked the lady for her time, as I trudged back to the kitchen and sadly looked at my 4.5 utensils waiting for redemption. I, for sure was not willing to give up a part of my salary so that Manda Baai could pay her house rent. I was not willing to over pay for what I believe is a highway robbery and a plain play on my weaknesses! After doing the dishes, as I sat with a cup of tea and the newspaper, I saw this piece that said that Prince William and Kate Middleton are having trouble keeping a maid, as no one is willing to do all that work for a mere 20,000 pounds a year! Suddenly I felt like a princess!!!

MUMMMM- BAI

It's sultry and hot outside. The sun keeps beating down on mere mortals like me most mercilessly. The time - 9 am. I am on vacation and my mind is wired that way now. Prospect of physical work, even if that means simply washing my coffee mug seems anathemic! And I feel thankful to the lady who waltzes into my house at half past 9, and cleans up the mess made over all of yesterday. For the world she is my 'bai', or my hired help, but for me, she's GOD!

Getting the perfect Bai is impossible. The hunt is akin to finding the perfect husband. Don't laugh at my comparison. Try living in a city like Mumbai, where half our life is spent running behind local trains and the other half is spent stuck in traffic. With the kind of building and construction work happening on every road in Mumbai, whether or not air is ubiquitous, dust and dirt certainly is. So, it becomes even more essential to have someone who will clean the house and leave it spic and span and shining day after day. Else it wouldn't take too much effort to convert a cute urban Mumbai house into a Gothic cobweb covered castle. Nah.. the enormous space of a castle can never belong to a Mumbai house. Or let me say that a sprawling Mumbai house is as much a reality as say the tooth fairy.

So, now that we know that the Bai is indispensable, finding the right and best one is the hunt for El Dorado. Each time you hire someone, you strike a compromise. It's either their pay, the work they'd do, or even their leave policy. Not that they have casual leaves and privilege leaves, leave policy here is whether they would go on informed leave or go AWOL! Simple! And once you hire them, soon you find that they do not really deliver all that they promise in the first place. So, utensils may still show signs of what was for dinner yesterday or the corners would be swept so clean that every week a petrified me would need to run armed with a broom, behind a genetically modified spider. And the minute you try expressing your displeasure, they retort Channel V style, 'Itna Paisa mein Itnaich Milenga'. That is still fine. You can put up with that statement and ask them to raasta naapo. The worst is when they tag you. Not Facebook style, but when they say you do a lot of kitkit. Now kitkit is an epithet they use if you express your displeasure, albeit much too often. And like gossip, this tagging spreads like wildfire in the Bai community and they are as close knit as perhaps the Russian Mafia. (Psst, some of their tactics are similar as well).

And then comes the whole chutti aspect. They have hundreds of thousands of relatives in their Gaaon. What Gaon, God knows. And they have to attend every wedding, every child birth, every birthday, Gaon devi's Puja, Ganpati's Puja, Grandfather's brother's wife's uncle's grandson's first food function. And each such jaunt would imply leave for a minimum of 1 week and a maximum of 'Kabhi aayegi? Maalum Nahin Bhabhi'. Don't even get me started on the hunt for a makeshift Bai who is called Badli. A Badli Bai is looked down upon, as if she is someone who cannot hold on to a steady job. And one can't even tell the Badli Bai to hunt out the errant spider, since she can simply walk off, and not give a badli for the badli bai. You get the drift?

The Bai stories can be plenty. But as I sit back with my coffee and the newspaper, I need to thank my stars for my current Bai who is a thorough professional and does a clean job.

I guess I spoke too soon, for my watchman just told me that the All Bai union has pulled out a strike and every Bai walking towards my part of the city is being forcibly told to walk back home or 'face the consequences'. Sigh! The house needs to be swept and swabbed. The sink is full of utensils, I wonder why I had that dinner party last night. The sun is still pelting down on us. Life could not get any better. And my Bai is missing.