Blogger Internal Conflict Revealed

So, I actually posted something for about 10 minutes yesterday, then, on second thought, decided it was too whiny and took it off my blog for fear the thing would start to read like one long gripe fest. (It's hard to write interesting entries without some citing some kind of adversity or confusion -- something to give a little narrative arch to the whole thing, you know?) But now, on third thought, I am thinking that the post is not so bad because it is more about what a nutter I am than anything about India. So, the post returns here, although admittedly edited somewhat to assuage my worries about sounding too much like a little black raincloud. (Anyone besides my sisters get that reference?)

Today’s post [read: Yesterday's post] comes from the department of things that are not as nice as I thought they would be. In this case: having a maid.

First, let me explain how housekeeping works in my building and, I believe, many other places as well. I live in a flat on the 3rd floor of a building—the landlord lives on the ground floor. She is a widow and her son lives on the second floor with his family and he is the property manager. There are maybe 6 or 7 tenants at any one time in the rest of the apartments in the building. The property manager and his family also have a little dachshund (not a redundancy: the dog is little even for a dachshund) named Mishti. Even more than the Baskin Robbins, you can tell my neighborhood is ritzy because there is a pet store in the market. A family has to have really arrived in order to have money to spare on economically unproductive creatures, like pets and daughters.

Anyhow, a team of housekeepers (an indeterminate number of whom live in the building as fulltime staff) descends on the building each morning to sweep the floors, wipe them down with water, dust the furniture, take out the trash, and do the laundry. In the evening, they sweep and wipe down the floors again, take the trash out again, and return the morning’s laundry. The sweeping, does, I grant you, seem a bit excessive to me and I can't help thinking that the wiping down with plain water is just a complete waste of time since, after all, Delhi's tap water isn't exactly fresh from a pure mountain spring.

One of the big differences with housekeeping in the US is that you are supposed to be there when they are cleaning & unlock your room for them—it’s no problem if you’re not, but your room doesn’t get cleaned. The cleaners do not want to risk being accused of breaking anything or kid/penguin-napping or anything of that sort.

I don't like this because I feel very uncertain of the etiquette of the whole thing. Every morning, when I’m bleary-eyed in front of the computer, eating my muesli, someone comes into the room and starts sweeping around me. Should I get out of the way or will that make her feel like she is bothering me? Also, I don't want to walk over the areas where they have just swept or swabbed, but I also don't particularly enjoy standing on the balcony until the floor is dry. I feel sheepish about the slovenly Western clothes I like to put on at home. I mean, damn it, if I can’t wear tank-tops and shorts on the street I want to at least have nice cool appendages in the privacy of my own home. But, then, here the housekeepers are, doing actual manual labor, with nary a clavicle or a knee in sight.

Also, does the laundry need doing every day? I don’t expect that! I thought about keeping my laundry hidden or something until I had built up a little stockpile. But that would be completely obvious once the housekeepers got the laundry, and they might not approve of me meddling with their system. And, sadly, my sweat glands do not allow for me to stop wearing fresh clothes each day, so I can't cut down on their work that way.

But what really touches on some neurotic phobia deep inside me, is that I just don’t like that the whole thing cuts into my sense of privacy. Twice a day, every day I have to make sure that my room and I are in a state that is fit to be seen by a stranger. The cleaner knows when I’m here and when I’m not, by what time I can be expected to have risen and showered, whether I’m reading or napping or writing on the computer when she arrives. (It’s worse than even Santa Claus!) But I suppose I am just being a crazy hermit. I mean, (a) I don't think the housekeeper finds me that interesting and (b) what harm could come of any observations she makes of my life? But I can't explain it, I just feel cornered everytime she arrives.

Obviously, I can't ask the housekeepers to stop coming, because it would be cruel to deny them of funds purely for the sake of my strange ideas about the sanctity of domestic space. But I can also report that trying to hide from the housekeepers is not a practical strategy -- I mean, sure, you can fail to answer the doorbell, put then you have to stay in your room until you are certain the cleaners are gone, and that can be very tricky to gauge. My current strategem is to scurry immediately to the balcony when the housekeepers arrive, but to take a book with me so that I don't seem as though I am trying to hurry them. If that fails to restore my equinimity, I haven't ruled out escape through the windows via rope ladder.