The Chronicles of Ujwala

One of the first things I wanted to do when I got here was to get a maid- especially once I figured out that there was no way to do laundry except by swirling it around in a bucket for awhile until the water looked more dirty than the clothes.

(Ujwala, 27 on the right, and her sister Swasti, 20)

We asked around, and finally our landlord's brother sent someone over. Ujwala showed up one afternoon with a younger girl, neither of them spoke much English. After a lot of hand gestures, pointing to the kitchen, calendar, and other practical things, and some giggling, I was under the impression that they would come back the next day at 2:00pm.

So of course they didn't show, but instead came back the day after, when I was not prepared to talk to them, with nobody on the phone to translate. The only word I knew for sure they understood was "money". So they came back later to negotiate, this time they brought another little girl, a relative of a neighbor, who spoke some English, and a four, who I have since found out is just some random friend. This time luckily Andy was home for lunch, so he called his friend, who translated with the small girl, and we worked out a deal. They would come twice a week, for $2000 IR ($45 US) per month. We originally had haggled them down to $1,200 rupees, but then our friends told us to pay them more, since they were cooking and cleaning, which we were glad to do. They would cook vegetarian food, make bread, do the swabbing, sweeping, and cleaning of vessels. Once a week they would wash clothes, but they think we wear way too many clothes, and wash too often, so they complained about this a bit.

The next day Ujwala showed up with three completely different younger girls, one of whom, Jennifer, spoke pretty good English. (Picture is of Jennifer, 16, her friend Bhageshree, 14, and some baby.) They were very confused about how to cook for us, since I didnt seem to have anything in the kitchen. They asked me where the oil was, then the flour, then the vegetables. Then the rice, then the dahl. Finally they conferred about this situation for a bit, then asked me what it was I was doing with myself all day..... and then the scolding. I had no food, no spices, no supplies, this state of affairs was clearly unacceptable. So after Ujwala scolded me a bit in Hindi, translated through Jennifer, we went to the vegetable stall downstairs, while Ujwala went to get all the staples needed to actually make anything of note.

Finally they made some food, cleaned up, and washed the clothes. The food was great, (Un-named lentil dish, fresh chapati, which is basically an Indian tortilla, and rice and some vegetables) and I took notes, so hopefully I will learn something about Indian cooking while we are here. But having a maid is definitely more work than I thought!