Oh boy, oh boy, oh Bai!

A few weeks ago a visiting aunt who’s been living in the US for over the last twenty years dropped in for tea. As we chatted over some hot ginger chai and crisp samosas, my cook ventured into the living room to enquire if we’d like some more tea.

“Ah what a blessing it is to have domestic help!” my aunt sighed wistfully “Back home in Seattle we have to do everything ourselves and even getting someone to make a cup of tea for you is a luxury! You’re so lucky!”

I glanced warily at my cook who shot back a pleased smile and trotted off to the kitchen looking mighty chuffed. She had finally showed up for work that day after nearly a fortnight’s absence during the course of which she had been systematically dispatching members of her extended family to join the heavenly choir in the sky and subsequently taking leave as a result of the multiple illnesses, deaths and funerals in her family. The month before that it had been a mysterious illness that had afflicted her, before that she’d had a wedding in the family and before that the roof of her rented room had suddenly collapsed one fine night necessitating a week’s leave. Just that very morning, fed up with her litany of excuses (impressed as I admittedly was with her creativity at storytelling) I had threatened to give her the boot and she had miraculously chosen to turn up for work instead of attending her chachi’s mami’s first cousin’s husband’s funeral.

As my aunt went on about the luxury of having domestic help in India I found myself thinking about my unending bai woes over the last couple of years. Back when I was footloose and fancy free, or for that matter even after I had settled for matrimonial bliss and set up my own home, bais had never really figured on my list of worries. A spot of cooking and a dash of cleaning were good enough to fit the bill and on the many days that the bai didn’t show up for work I was only too happy to experiment with some cooking or try out the hip new eatery in town while adeptly ignoring the dust bunnies and the mountainous stack of laundry at home. We existed in blissful oblivion, the bai and I.

All that changed when my baby came into the picture and I began spending significantly longer stretches of time at home with her. All of a sudden managing the home front and ensuring that the domestic machinery was ship shape assumed utmost importance. Grabbing a masala chai and a brun maska on the go was no longer a viable option for breakfast when you had a baby demanding to be fed. Dust bunnies needed to be banished into oblivion and the pile of laundry (now multiplied manifold with baby in the picture) screamed for immediate attention. The bai suddenly became the fulcrum on which the domestic chakra needed to whir without a hitch. And not just any bai would do, it had to be one who was clean, sincere and efficient. And one who showed up for work.

I found myself floundering in the Bai Market as I desperately searched for such a domestic diva. It all began with the Great Bai Hunt, which required you to keep your eyes peeled and be on watchful alert when you were out and about. I found myself carefully assessing the various bais on display in my society. I drew up a list of parameters and must-haves against which I ranked them based on their appearance. Finally, satisfied that I had perfected the Great Bai Hunt to a finely honed art, I approached the top choice on my list of prospective bais with what I thought was a suitable job offer.

“I’m not a bai, I live here!” barked the lady in question turning a delicate shade of green and shooting me a poisonous look that turned my intestines into jelly. She marched off to another group of ladies nearby and began speaking to them in an aggrieved tone while simultaneously throwing more poisonous looks my way.

“Please find me a bai!” I whispered in desperation to the watchman as I sped to the safety of my apartment, deciding to abandon any further plans of the Great Bai Hunt.

The watchman rose to the occasion rather admirably and I soon found myself facing round two in acquiring a bai; the Bai Interview. Prospective candidates began streaming into my house in response to the job vacancy. The interview process itself was mercifully short. I would open the door to find myself being given the once over by a pair (or sometimes two) of beady, knowing eyes.

“What is the work? How much time? How many people? How much money?” the bai at the door would bark out the questions in a series of staccato bursts before shaking her head disdainfully and marching off.
Many bais came and went but no one seemed remotely interested in taking up the job. My confidence sank to an all time low and I began seriously doubting my ability to hire, let alone retain any help, when one fine day in response to my meek answers to the standard interview questions, a bai actually acquiesced to take up my offer.

“I will only work for two hours, accept X amount of money, take Sunday off and have two cups of tea with four teaspoons of sugar each, if you want me to work here” she declared walking in and looking around with an air of detached contempt.

“Fine, as long as you do the job well” I said meekly, too dispirited to negotiate.
“When can you start?”

And so began my tryst with round three, the most complicated round of them all: Hold On To Your Bai For Dear Life! For after months of painstaking training, supervising and offering a variety of retention incentives, just when you thought that things had finally fallen into place and when you least expected it, the bai would quit for the flimsiest of reasons and vanish into Bai Oblivion, setting into motion yet again the Great Bai Hunt for a new bai.

After many years of handling the process of searching for, hiring, training and losing bais, I have finally reached a happy place where it really doesn’t bother me anymore. Unlike old times when I would go through a despairing cycle of shock, anger, regret and what-ifs, the disappearance of a bai now merely gives me cause to shake my head with a reproachful tut-tut and with steely determination I venture forth yet again into the Bai Market. Of course there are stories (not mine, I seem to have been blessed with more than my fair share of bad maid karma) of the faithful retainer who’s been loyal to the same family for years at a stretch and I live in constant hope that I too will one day find such a domestic goddess. Until then though, I make do with what I have and keep a watchful eye on the clock every morning as I pass through the dreaded hour between 7.00 and 8.00am during which the course of my day will get decided; will the doorbell ring heralding the arrival of my bai or will it be the phone call instead informing me that Sopu Kaka’s maushi’s brother has had a heart attack and there will be no bai in the foreseeable future.
And when the bell does chime and the bai walks in and later as I sink with gratitude into my first cup of tea for the day, I realize that for better or for worse I am stuck with my bai, and all said and done having her around does take the bite out of daily domestic drudgery a fair bit. Here’s to all the bais (or the lack of them) in our lives then, all those formidable ladies who are a daily and integral part of our households and who still have the capability to make all the visitors from abroad go green with envy!

Originally written for "The Punekar"

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Manasi Vaidya, Author of "No Deadline For Love"
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Random ramblings from my shatteringly mundane existence

Yeah, its been one of those days. You know. One of those where everything seems to go wrong and Murphy is disturbingly all pervasive and at the end of which you just want to kill somebody. The last couple of weeks have been a series of one unmitigated domestic disaster after another. At last count, one maid was yet to recover completely from an attack of dengue, the other was seen merrily traipsing off to explore greener pastures without so much as a by-your-leave and the friendly neighborhood rogue, otherwise known as the dhobi, burnt some of P's best shirts and promptly vanished into thin air leaving us dhobi-less and with a drawer full of burnt shirts.

The making of 'Oh boy, oh boy, oh bai!- The Sequel' is currently underway and our life currently, minus the tenuous support of domestic and other peripheral staff is in a state of gentle disintegration . In other words it is an unholy mess. The mornings start with several rounds of interviews with aggressive women in the locality masquerading as bais. I open the door with a deep feeling of dread, akin to that faced by the meek spirited job seeker when faced with the nail-chewing-for-breakfast prospective employer to find Petulant Padma or Sulking Shanta at my doorstep. You recognize them instantly: the flared nostrils, the knotted brow, the ferociously clenched jaw and the beady look in the eye. The lark that sang merrily on many a gay,dewy morning certainly never made the acquaintance of these formidable ladies.
"Bai chahiye kya?" barks Petulant P or Shady S, as the case may be, and so begins the interview.
"Er yes" you meekly submit.
"Kaam kya hai?" continues PP/SS and then goes on to ask minute details of the work involved, the timings, the pay, only to shake her head in the manner of a displeased bull disappointed with the performance of the matador in the ring, before strutting away. Some, of the less forthright variety, promise to get back only to vanish into oblivion thereafter.
I shouldn't be surprised really, given my many years of bad maid karma (right up there with the bad boss karma that affected me quite regularly back when I was working), but I continue to live with that faint glimmer of hope that someday a gentle, loving, matronly sort of woman will land up at my doorstep to lovingly share in the domestic chores. Until then I will continue being afflicted by the Petulant Padmas and Sulking Shantas of the world.

The recent hobnobbing with these unfriendly sorts has made me wonder whether the world has become a ruder place in recent times. Last weekend we were at a sports shop trying to buy some badminton rackets when the shopkeeper trotted up and barked at us to expedite our shopping immediately because the shop closed at 1'o clock sharp. On being asked why on earth the shop needed to close in the middle of the day on a Sunday we were curtly informed that 1pm to 4pm was siesta time for the owners and the shop downed its shutters come rain or a deluge of customers. He was rather aggressive about the whole thing, unscrewing the shop shutters even as he spoke and we beat a hasty retreat for fear that he might decide to guillotine us with the shutters if we lingered too long. The entire neighborhood seemed to be a fan of the 1-4pm siesta and all the other shops were downing their shutters as well so we popped into a nearby, busy restaurant for a quick bite. Frenzied crowds were thronging the place and as we searched for a place to sit or a waiter who might help us with the waiting system, a crusty old waiter affronted us with indignation oozing out of every facial feature.
"Kyaa chahiye?" he barked, swinging the menu he was holding in his hand like he'd like to swat me for crowding his space.
"Ooooh I was thinking I'd rather like to have a bath with some of that lovely mineral water you have on that tray there!" I said, only, of course, I said it in my mind.
"We'd like a place to sit" I said to him as politely as I could manage.
"Jaga chahiye to dhundo! Yaaha pe khaali peeli khada hone ka nahin mangta!" he rapped out sternly, turning on his heel as I gaped after him. Taking the levels of customer delight to new pinnacles and all that.

Then there's the afore-mentioned dhobi, the charming Rajkumar, who in times gone by would land up at our doorstep with a becoming scowl and his trademark "Kapdaa hai kya?" A reply in the negative would unleash a series of under the breath mutterings and grumblings as he sulkily stalked away, and a positive reply would get you a long suffering why-can't-these-slops-iron-their-own-stuff sort of look accompanied by an overwrought sigh. Really makes me miss my good 'ol society in Bombay where I had overcome my bad maid karma to get some wonderful staff and a happy and non shirt burning dhobi to boot. Sigh. Well, man, or in this case, woman lives in hope and we shall, hopefully, overcome these minor domestic glitches soon. Aah and now I must rush, for the doorbell has chimed as I type these words...onwards ho with the interviewing of maids then. The heavy breathing and gentle grinding of teeth I can hear from the other side of the door seem to indicate that Raging Rekha, or possibly, Depressed Devki, may be at the door,

Oh boy, oh boy, oh bai!

The last few days have been less than cheerful with one crisis after another on the domestic help front. Domestic worries occupied less than a tenth of my mindspace before Nikki was born, what with our needs being minimal, us being hardly ever at home. A little bit of cleaning and a decent enough dash of cooking was enough to fit the bill. So it didn't really matter if the bai didn't turn up one day, or decided to go on an extended leave which stretched on for a few months, in the old scheme of things bais were highly dispensable. If matters really came to a head I could always get another one. And unlike now, when any serious bai-related issue is capable of sending my BP soaring sky high, back then the inevitable skirmishes with maids were great sources of amusement. I could write a book filled with all my bai anecdotes! Like my tryst with Chameli the cook, the fashionable diva always dressed in red (red dress, red shoes, red handkerchief, red mobile!) who developed a crush
on P. A typical scene in our kitchen went something like this:
Chameli, in a sweet, sing-song voice: Bhaiiiiiyyaaaaaaaaa!
Me, venturing into the kitchen: Haan? Is the food ready?
Chameli, giving me a disdainful look: Bhaiyya ko bulao! (Call P!)
Me: Huh? Why?
Chameli: Khaana taste karana hai! Unki pasand ka hona chahiye na!( P needs to taste the food, it has to be his liking you fool*)*this last bit being expressively communicated through facial expression.
The redeeming factor with Chameli was that she was a fantastic cook, but since she was prone to bunking way too many times she didn't last too long. Then there was shy Savitri who came to work for us when we'd just moved to Bombay. Now Savitri was a cleaning lady, so she did the sweeping, mopping et al. But Savitri was also newly married which meant that she did all of this sweeping and mopping dressed in a traditional, nine yard silk wedding sari with jewelery and bangles dripping off every inch of her being! Visitors to our home in the early hours of the morning could have been excused for thinking that they were either hallucinating or that the members of this home had exchanged roles: the woman of the house mopping floors, while the maid dressed in a grungy tee and tracks (oh all right, I know I could dress better at home) read the papers on the couch. P had even nastily mentioned once that we could start a "guess who's the bai?" contest for his relatives who'd only ever seen me at our wedding. Anyways shy Savitri got pregnant soon enough and quit all her jobs for the joy of motherhood.

Bai-tales were always the one thing that could get you an instant connect with otherwise snooty neighbors, everyone had their own tales of woe and long conversations could be had with anyone about domestic disasters thanks to an errant bai. I remember a team event at work where everyone was asked to share something that was bothering them that very moment. Our VP marketing shared that she had fired her cook that very morning after finding a stapler pin in her cheese sandwich (!) and her remark opened up the floodgates for the rest of the women in the group! Pretty soon the team event had converted into anguished women ranting about their own tales of domestic despair. (Domestic issues don't seem to bother men that much I've seen!)

This merry, carefree attitude when it comes to bais is now a thing of the past with the dawning realization that I need reliable, long-term help for longer hours if I need to get things done outside of baby related stuff. Also seeing that Nikki is all set to fly, er I mean crawl, anytime now makes it even more imperative that I have an extra set of eyes and hands around for preemptive damage control. With this noble thought I set out on a bai finding mission, hoping to find a clean, trustworthy, good-natured, sincere woman who could cook and help a little with Nikki. I might as well have gone hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack instead and the chances of finding that would have been higher. Who knew it was so damn difficult to get good help in these parts?! Either they had a problem with the hours, or the work or both. One woman demanded a monthly salary of Rs 13,000, no less and another wanted to know if an annual foreign vacation would be part of the deal. This is one of the disadvantages of living in an apartment complex with too many expats, poor souls like me are just not fit to compete in the bai race! Anyways after nearly two months of domestic help due diligence I seem to have managed a decent find and she will be coming on board soon. Wish me luck! This is also the first time I'm keeping help who'll be around for the whole day so tips and advice from all of you more experienced folk out there are also most welcome! Knowing me I wouldn't be surprised if I find myself with just the same lack of time a few weeks later while the bai gets progressively more knowledgeable on the happenings in tellyland ;)