The Maid

The maid just stopped by to clean the place. I’ve been telling Gopi I wanted a mop so I could clean the pigeon poop in the bathroom that fell in when I opened the window. The toilet leaks and it’s now just a mess. He refuses of course, they will hire a maid. All they ever do is complain about the help, I beg him to just give me a mop, but this is India and maids are a tradition. He told me to expect the maid at 7:30 A.M. and I was to point out to her the places I wanted clean, especially the pigeon poop.

At 6:15 A.M. I am awakened by the holler of the doorbell. It’s like something out of the Addams family. I believe it’s an Indian song/chant everybody here recognizes, but to me it sounds like the Moghul invaders are returning.

The Moghuls were the Islamic invaders from Afghanistan who set up shop in India in the 1500’s and were the last great empire on the subcontinent until the Europeans showed up for tea and biscuits. The Taj Mahal is actually a monument by a Moghul Emperor to his wife after she died, it’s not a Hindu temple.

So the Moghuls got me up in a hurry as that sound is nerve wracking to an American steeped in the fear of Jihad.

I answered the door in my pajamas, discomfited by my appearance. To my shock this short frail old woman with a scarf covering her head opened the door and barged right in. Now when I say old, I suspect she might be around 60, but looked like she was going on 100. She marched across the living room, picked up a stick twig broom about two feet long and proceeded to whap the hell out of the shelf.

This did not bode well. That stick twig broom was probably really good at sweeping out large pieces of whatever you wanted to sweep, but inside, on a dusty shelf, she might as well have used a rake. No wonder Indians spend half their time yelling at the help. I retreated to my room to dress properly and left her pounding away in the living room.

I tried to wake myself up and figure out exactly what I was going to do. Think Mark, think! I went into the bathroom and startled the pigeon on the window sill. It cooed at me angrily and flew off.

“Yeah, well I didn’t know she was going to show up this early either girl. Besides, this is all your doing.”

Having my grandmother clean up the pigeon poop in the bathroom was not something I wanted to do, but having her pound around the living room was useless, and telling her to go away might be insulting. How would I communicate with her, I know exactly two Hindi words, ‘hah’ – yes, and ‘nah’ – no.

One of the problems I find when I travel is that in the face of a new language I usually use the last foreign language I used on my journeys. In this case that is Portuguese as I’ve spent some time in Brazil. Let me tell you, nobody, but nobody in Punjab speaks Portuguese. I could probably get by in Goa, an old Portuguese colony, but up here it is Hindi or Punjabi with a little English thrown in. I’m constantly responding with Portuguese words to people talking to me in Hindi. But that’s okay, they don’t usually understand my English either.

The English here is fun to observe. People will be talking in Hindi or Punjabi, and then suddenly throw in four or five English words, just enough to make you believe you have a chance of following the conversation, before lapsing back into Hindi or Punjabi. The conversation might go something like this: blah blah blah blank CDs blah blah blah.

The signs on the stores are mostly in English surprisingly, even in the smallest villages. But the best part is the spelling. On one store selling kitchen appliances the main sign said ‘kitchen’ and the secondary sign said ‘kitchan’. I guess if you don’t know exactly how it’s spelled, try a bunch of different ways, one is bound to be right.

So I’m still rubbing the sleep from my eyes and figure it’s time to face the music. The maid is now in the kitchan throwing around pots and pans. Oh no, please don’t re-clean the bowls and utensils I use, I washed them very thoroughly with soap yesterday and left them to dry.

I straighten up my room and bring my computer out to the living room. Ravi is on the couch and demands to know what the hell I’m doing in his area. We’ve created kind of a Berlin Wall peace between us, I don’t go in his room and he stays away from mine. I walk out to the porch and leave my stuff there for the moment.

I finally signal the maid that I’d like her to follow me. I lead her into the bathroom and show her the pigeon poop to be cleaned. Also there were the exoskeleton remains of another bug that surprised me one night. In my panic I stepped on him, not thinking this might be one of Ravi’s relatives. I was so sleepy, and I didn’t know where there was a rag to clean it up that I just left him there.

The next morning I found a mound of tiny ants cleaning up the remains. They looked like they knew what they were doing and were enjoying themselves so I left them alone. A few of them had a large piece of shell and looked like they were carrying it off like the Roman Legion carrying off the spoils of Gaul. Out of the corner of my eye I sensed movement and noticed a small juvenile lizard, it had obviously been feasting on the ants. I marveled at the efficiency of nature and let it take its course.

So I showed her the pigeon poop and she indicated she knew what needed to be done. She went into the second bathroom and I began to wonder where the cleaning supplies were. I hadn’t seen any in my explorations of the house. I crept back into the living room. Ravi was gone.

“Ravi, I’ve got to stay somewhere while she cleans”, I announced, “I’ll be out of here as soon as she’s gone.” There was a ‘harrumph’ in the corner so I took that as assent and sat down trying to busy myself with nothing.

I hear much crashing around in the second bathroom. I think she thinks sound indicates work is being done. I hear water running and a bucket being filled. And filled. And filled. After a few minutes I wonder what the heck is going on and glance down the hall.

The maid has a monster bucket that probably holds 10 to 20 gallons if not more. It’s partially filled and she has a large rag that is so old and filthy I figure it was last used during the Moghul Empire. She moves back into the bathroom so I sneak a peak into the bucket. It is filled with filthy water that would make Ravi wretch. Where did she get it? Clean water flows from the tap. It looked like she’d gone outside down to one of the gutters by the roadside to get her water. She must have wrung out that rag into the water, and now she was going to use that water and rag to clean. Not a sign of soap anywhere. The illogic of the situation was alarming.

Then like a hammer it dawned on me, horror of horrors, she’s going to clean my bathroom with this. How the heck am I going to stop her? I can’t speak a word of Hindi. If I’m going to stop her, I’d better have another plan, but I don’t have a backup plan. How long has she been doing this in her life? Did nobody ever yell at her? She’s the maid? Or is she part of some nefarious plot to kill me? Gopi has done this on purpose. It is his revenge for me telling his employees to ignore his rantings sometimes.

So she drags the bucket into the bathroom and I go back to the living room to wait. I don’t want to stand there looking over her shoulder at what I knew would only upset me more.

After a few minutes I see her dragging the bucket into the hallway. What the heck? Is she cleaning the whole floor with that water? Sure enough she’d finished the bathroom and had then cleaned my bedroom floor with the same water, and now she was moving into the livingroom.

She indicated I should check the bathroom. I did so with my shoes leaving large muddy prints in the wet floor. The bathroom looked okay. Pieces of the rag had broken off and were lying in the corners, but I’m not going to complain. There were four drains in the floor but for some reason they were placed at the high points in the floor in order to allow the water to form large puddles. I guess Indian plumbers work differently. No problem, in this heat they’ll dry quickly.

I moved out to the back porch and pondered my next move. The best I can hope for in this situation is that she leave quickly and quietly. Don’t ask her to dust the table as
Gopi requested. Just usher her out once the floor is done.

She looked like she was finished and asked, “Tika?”

“Tika”, I responded. I have no idea what it means, but in these situations it is just best to smile stupidly and repeat what is spoken.

This seemed to satisfy her, she put her hands together in the Namaste position and left. Finally somebody had Namaste’d me, the maid.

I examined the house and mused about the floor. The pigeon poop now was a thin film covering the entire floor of the condo. I guess that’s a cleaning in India.