Why man needs a maid and must thank her every day

One of my earliest misconceptions I subscribed to when I arrived in India was that the Indian middle class were some of the laziest housekeepers on the planet. If a maid didn't show up for work, the dishes would pile up. The floors wouldn't get swept or mopped. If meals were prepared on time on a maid-less day, they were prepared under duress, almost spitefully. It appeared to me that a maid-less day constituted a major, natural calamity. Everyday routines were temporarily jolted out of sync until needs were prioritized and the necessary and dreaded manual labor performed. On such occasions, Indian males, who traditionally don't even enter the kitchen zone if it could be helped, would go about their business generally unperturbed while their spouses managed the labor shortage crisis. What kind of strange Indian Brady Bunch world was this? I thought to myself after bearing witness to the phenomenon and listening to countless stories of maids going AWOL for a single day or longer. I couldn't believe the extent of such codependency. Just put some soap in the sink and wash the damned dishes! Wipe the muck off the counters! Order out! A day or two without an indentured servant shouldn't kill you. Self-reliance should be a moral imperative in as many facets of our lives as we can muster. Or so I believed.

The first two years of living with my wife in Mumbai were maid-less days by choice. I didn't like the idea of a stranger coming into my home every morning and disturbing the flow. I cringed at the very thought of someone preparing meals and washing our dishes. I saw how it worked in other homes and I didn't like it. It was a hygiene thing. It was a privacy thing. So we made do without a maid. And every so often, a song would start playing in my head as I scrubbed the dishes early in the morning when there were no plates for my breakfast because I was either too lazy or too tired to bother with them the previous night. As I hung clothes, piano and orchestral strings would resonate off the chamber walls of my cranium. My plight was exemplified by one of the great songs by Neil Young, “A Man Needs A Maid.”

Not only a man, but nations are in need of maids. India has 90 million domestic workers, more than a quarter of the US population, servicing a sizable Indian middle class and its elites. By contrast, the UShas over 700 thousand domestic servants, not counting workers placed by agencies and private cleaning companies. Illegal immigrants taking on domestic work in the States may skew the true numbers even further. The fact remains, both nations are facing shortages of maids, and somehow our technologically advanced way of life has failed to lead to self-reliance on the home front. Personal gadgets like smart phones, or anything with a screen, have arguably allowed us to be more independent as we navigate through our busy days. But when we come home, we haven't advanced past the 20th century inventions of the washer-drier and dishwasher for performing the domestic heavy lifting. We are creatures of comfort; we'd much rather have somebody else running the machines. And everything else, from the sweeping and mopping, to preparing the meals. If we can afford it, we'll pass the baton gladly.

If godliness is cleanliness, then maids do the work of the gods. Even if our maid despises the work as much as we do, and I'm sure she does, I appreciate her despite the rushed job and a couple broken items over the past fortnight. I'm quite happy to hand over the responsibility to her for the next two years because I know when we do move overseas, we'll be back to working the mechanical maids ourselves, the washer-drier, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner and oven. Keeping a maid is part of the Indian experience, for all its good and bad points. Recognition of all the menial but important tasks they perform in the name of the job ought to be acknowledged more once a year every June 16th. They deserve our thanks every day.