Indians and their servants

The case of Devyani Khobragade has become a cause célèbre in India but I would contend for the wrong reasons. In December 2013 Khobragade, then Indian Deputy Consul General in New York, was arrested for visa fraud by the US authorities and for underpaying her Indian domestic help Sangeeta Richard. It was Khobragade’s treatment in being arrested at all, strip searched and held in a cell with common criminals that has enraged the Indian media and authorities. Richard has reportedly said that she worked 17 hours a day and at an hourly rate that was considerably below the US minimum wage.

The situation was quite nuanced with some uncertainty about Khobragade’s status – she was entitled to consular immunity not the fuller diplomatic immunity – Richard’s family being taken from India to the US for their own protection. Her current location and status remain uncertain. Eventually Khobragade was afforded full diplomatic immunity after a transfer to the Indian UN Mission, and then asked to leave the US. It appears that Khobragade’s husband and children, all US citizens, remain in the US. In retaliation India expelled a US diplomat, believed to be the same person who engineered the removal of Richard’s family to the US. What was troubling were the other retaliatory measures the Indian government set in train from downgrading security at the US Embassy, to closing the American Club in Delhi, to withdrawing the IDs of US consular officials, to threatening same sex partners of US diplomats with visa withdrawal following judgments in the Delhi High Court amongst others.

What was also troubling, to my mind at least, was the reaction in India, with support for Khobragade but limited attention given to Richard. It was as though Richard was the culprit here and not Khobragade. Ironically Preet Bahara, the US District Attorney of Indian origin himself, responsible for prosecuting Khobragade, was accused of unfairly targeting Indians.

Then a couple of days ago I read a column in the New York Times entitled “A Maid’s Pay and Moral Choices”, by Ellen Barry (http://nyti.ms/1ij4uKH) . The column highlighted a film made by an Indian, Nishtha Jain in Mumbai, which focused on the relationship between herself and her maid Lakshmi. You can see the trailer on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtWK_2jdmGg ). Jain is clearly not uncaring or callous, and calls herself a feminist, but there is strict divide between herself and Lakshmi. The maid sweeps around the feet of Jain who lifts up her feet perhaps without thinking, and later Lakshmi makes tea for both of them but sits on the floor to drink it when there is a spare chair. Jain pays Lakshmi cRS600 per month, that’s £6 or about $10, for 45 minutes a day. One presumes that Lakshmi has other employers. Apparently there are minimum wage statutes pending in the Lok Saba (India’s Parliament) but have stalled.

The film and the Khobragade case got me thinking about my Indian family and their servants. In the early 80s we as a family went on only our second trip to India. For me arriving was a complete culture shock akin to a similar situation in The Namesake film. We stayed in Kolkata at the 3 bedroom flat of my uncle who was then a very senior policeman. It was a unique arrival for us as our uncle was waiting for us at the foot of the aircraft steps and accompanied us through the formalities. I remember being completely jet-lagged; at the time I couldn’t sleep on planes and then slept for almost 18 hours.

After awakening from my deep slumber I got an idea of the household. There’s my aunt and uncle, their two children, a boy and girl, both teenagers, and at leading schools in Kolkata. My aunt speaks to us in Bengali only, and my mother or my cousins have to translate our responses. We are well provided for, 4 meals daily, including the new meal, to me anyway, of tiffin, served in the late afternoon. There is an endless supply of Campa Cola and somehow an Indian equivalent of Corn Flakes has been procured for our breakfasts.

My parents are having a great time; my father visits his former classmates, now often Professors at Calcutta Medical College, and my Mum her relatives all over Kolkata. Together we visit various relatives and there is a trip to Tarakeswar where my father was born. I still remember having the best ever shingaras (Bengali samosas) in Tarakeswar.

After a while one begins to notice servants in all the households we visit. Shockingly to us my aunt has a houseboy, Ranjit, who appears to be about 12. At first it’s rather good to be brought tea in bed in the morning, to be fed before leaving for an early morning flight, and welcomed home with snacks and drinks. I don’t know where Ranjit sleeps, there is no spare bedroom, but later realize he must sleep on the floor in the corridor. My aunt makes the meals but it is Ranjit who does the chopping and all the cleaning up afterwards. My brother asks my mother why Ranjit is there, and she is brutally frank in her response: “If he wasn’t here, his family wouldn’t eat”. It is difficult to argue with that but from a Western background where we make our own tea, our meals, clean our homes it is hard to justify. When we left my father gave my aunt money to give to Ranjit, perhaps trying to assuage some guilt.

Apart from Ranjit the household is reliant on many other servants. There is a permanent car and driver, to take my cousins to and from school, my uncle to work. We are dropped off right outside a cinema and picked up, and earlier in the day someone has been sent to buy the tickets. (Nowadays it is even easier, as one gives the driver a missed call to indicate time to pick up). My uncle has procured another car and driver for the period we are there for the size of the household has doubled. Endearingly one of the drivers calls my brother and me, Chota Sahib and Burra Sahib, a reflection no doubt of our Englishness. But a driver’s life is relatively easy, on duty but working perhaps only an hour a day, as Kolkata is a fairly compact city.

Most days a woman comes to sweep the floors, completely ignored by the household, and a man comes to clean shoes. I remember that at first I refuse to hand over my shoes but my uncle says “Look, we have this service, you should use it”. Although I didn’t see them a washing service must exist too, for all our clothes.

At my mother’s childhood home there is a cook, unfailingly kind, and several other servants. As soon as I arrive I get tea and misti. But some of the expectations of the servants are shocking; I’m playing cricket with a cousin on the roof, sometimes the ball is lost in a rubbish dump at ground level and a middle aged woman servant is sent to recover the ball. However there is affection between the masters /mistresses and servants; on a visit in the mid-90s in the middle of the afternoon after television services were “liberalized” the servants were watching Bollywood movies with my aunt. There was a degree of separation: my aunt was sitting in a chair, and I as a grandson of the house was offered a chair but the servants sat on the floor. All the servants’ lives are an open book: the marriage of one is being arranged and one hears about the qualities of one prospective suitor against another.

Employing servants so cheaply has certain costs: almost everything in the house has to be locked up securely. When my mother stays in her house her handbag with credit cards, cash etc has to be kept behind several layers of padlocks. (One is reminded that in Days and Nights in Calcutta, Clark Blaise’s mother in law spends part of her overseas vacations at locksmiths buying padlocks). In Amit Chaudhuri’s Calcutta he relates how servants can be quite brazen with some being caught in the act of stealing cooking oil and rice. For the single person there are added complications. One cousin with a busy job can only have a cleaner visiting when she is in the house; no one in India would give a servant a key to their flat or house.

There is also the issue of trust particularly when children are involved. Nannies (ayahs) are employed to look after babies and small children, but how can one leave a child with someone almost unknown? A friend in Delhi brought a trusted nanny from West Bengal to look after her young daughter but family problems (more frequent now it seems with mass use of mobile phones) meant the nanny had to return home. With a busy job and life finding childcare was very difficult as my friend was unwilling to trust to a new local nanny.

The level of disdain one might see for servants in Indian homes is also replicated in other environments. In almost every decent hotel or restaurant in India one gets standards of service that are equal to anywhere else in the world. But the Indian customer is often dismissive, rude and insensitive, frequently speaking in grunts, not being able to say thank you or please, and not making eye contact. In Indian eyes the waiting staff, often very well educated, English-speaking, is like a servant. I hope by contrast I am much better; I might have a conversation with a waiter or a coffee barista if there is time, and leave a tip for good service.

Indians coming to the West must have thought they had the perfect life; Western salaries for themselves but paying Indian salaries to their cleaners and nannies. I’m guessing many Indians in the US are now paying their Indian staff appropriately, or employing local staff. Who knows how many Indians will now have to learn how to cook and clean for themselves.