Jump back in time - part two!

So now that Priya is ancient history, we can move on to her replacement.  I have an inkling by now that we may not be staying on in India for too much longer and I have started to lose interest in the whole thing!  Bad news!  I hired a maid apathetically.  I ignored my gut instinct and took her on in spite of the fact I suspected she was arrogant, unafraid and bolshy.  I turned out to be right, unfortunately.

she started working the day of The Ray's party and simply carried on from there.  Her cooking was not great - in fact it was not even good!  Her cleaning, although fast as lightening, was not thorough or hygienic.  Her ironing, although fast as lightening, was not crease free or smooth - are you seeing a pattern here?  Yes she worked like the clappers, but the work was slap-dash and sub standard.  I started getting her to clean and prepare ingredients and then I cooked them to make them edible.  A waste of time and money having her around if I am doing the majority of the work myself.

She had a couple of warnings, she tried to change.  What is that old saying about leopards and spots??!!

I tolerated and endured for a another few months, gladly running off on holiday just to avoid having to see this woman in my house all day.  the reason for not throwing her out - I have six weeks left in Chennai at this point - I need to grin and bear it.... or at least just bear it!

In the end even that was not possible.  I had a spate of health issues - I broke my toe, I needed a biopsy done and I fractured a couple of ribs (long stories all of them!).  You would think that having a maid in the house would make life a little easier right?  Wrong!  The woman chooses this time (hottest time in Chennai, traditionally used for visiting the 'native place') to abscond and absent herself from work.  She asked for a day or two as her daughter (14yrs) has kidney stones and needs surgery.  Liar! She returned on the third day after ignoring or cutting calls from the driver and me repeatedly.  Surprise!  She popped in to show what a good worker she is - I came home from school at 9am to find the house almost completely spotless!  She was racing around like a headless chicken to clean, clear and iron.  Then came the stinger - she wanted a 'loan' of Rs50,000 - just like that!  I refused, she said the office guys told her that if I said yes - they would authorise the load,  Liar!  She told me she needed it for laser surgery for the girl.  Liar!  She told me she would take the girl to her mother or her mother in law and come right back.  Liar!  She was gone for three weeks, and my friends (thank God for them) looked after my family and me.  They made meals, sat with me, took me to the hospitals, helped me dress and undress and made sure my kids were taken to school and brought back each day, we were fed and watered and that I followed instructions to the letter.  Good Friends - in fact - THE BEST!

The best part of the story is the outlandish list of excuses we were presented with both during and after she chose to return to work.  Here is a meaty selection - she had heart bypass surgery - Liar!  She had heart surgery and the stitches in her heart have become loose - Liar!  She had heart surgery but she will come back to work tomorrow.  she is fine - Liar!  She had a baby but the baby had to be taken out of her - Liar!  She eventually came back to work, found out she had missed a vital newsflash of our imminent departure and then tried to make me thing that PYT (who came to visit with her baby etc) was robbing me blind - Liar!

What makes me mad as hell was the fact that she thought that if we are leaving - she has the RIGHT to anything and everything in my house, whether I want her to have it or not.  She tried hard to make me give everything to her - but in the end, her greed and stupidity  and her deceitfulness were her downfall.  Good riddance!!

Jump back in time - part one!

 January 31st - As of 6.20 this morning - Priya is NO MORE!!  Priya is/was the cook, ironing lady and The Ray person in this house.  She babysat when I needed and generally ran the house when I am out.  She took in gas deliveries, water deliveries, dealt with the a/c man, electrian and plumber, ordered and paid for the meat etc etc.

She also cleaned the fruit and veg for me and cooked some food for the kids.  The food tasted quite good and the kids were getting used to her.

But - and here is the BIG problem - why do maids feel the need to bring their outside work problems to work? She has problems at home - all which involve her either leaving work early (usually on a day when the ironing is stacked to the ceiling) or not coming in at all - again on a day when I have plans!!  She calls in sick with alarming frequency - but she is not sick at all - her mother is a demanding harridan.  And this final thing - fighting and brawling in the street with another maid like a pair of wild animals.

On the day of the Charity Fair - again a day when I actually NEED the woman, she chooses to stop and have a cat fight with a maid from down the road.  They are separated by some drivers who witnessed the incident and then encouraged to go to the Police.  I would not care what is happening, except that I had left the house at 6.30am for school to set up the fair (with Nikh in tow) and have moved into PTA mode with a vengeance.  I had left clear instructions with both the driver and the maid about the schedule for the day - starting with Priya bringing The Ray to the school and supervising her until My Darling managed to leave his office (yes he works on a Saturday too!) and then enjoying the rest of the day with the family and hopefully spotting other maids that she knows and having a fun day.

Nah - too bloody simple - revised plan - fight on the way to work, spend the rest of the day at the Police station and pay over Rs1000 for wasting police time,come and pester me (with her crazy mother in tow)  at 6pm when I was trying to leave for a Mexican Fiesta party and try to get some money and sympathy out of me.  Me - I slog at the charity fair all day, My Darling has The Ray until good friends snap her up and My Darling can go back to work!

She thought she held the winning hand - The Ray has her birthday party coming up - 70 or so people in the garden - catered and entertained by your truly.  So she thinks I need her for all the work to come in the next couple of days.  Boy, is she WRONG!!

So she shows up to work the next day - after the mother has screamed and yelled at people on the way to work, outside our gate etc.  She says she cannot possibly allow her pure, innocent girl to come to work alone when clearly our driver is a menace to her and I am not caring for her.  In fact she accused me of keeping her at work till all hours every single day.  Those who know me also know that I send the staff on their merry way well before closing time on many, many days.  To be sent home mid afternoon is not unusual.  The million dollar question is - where was sweet, innocent Priya going between 2pm and 12 midnight, and then claiming that I kept her late at work and would not pay her overtime!!???  again - not my problem.  I told Priya that her mother would not be allowed inside my house even if she insisted on following her to work.  They also came four hours late because the old bat could not walk very fast.  She stood at my gate hurling abuse at anyone and everyone until I had to tell her to stand outside the gate or I would call the Police!

Things were not looking so pretty!  Ultimatum time - either come to work sans harridan mother or don't come to work anymore.  Priya called and said she would come to work and live with us (not an option!!) and her brother called and said she would not be coming to work anymore because I do not protect her well enough!! I said goodbye! HUGE SIGH of RELIEF!

The next couple of days passed in Bliss, bliss bliss!  Until I realised that we have a party to put on!!  At last count I have 49 kids, 6 babies/toddlers and unknown numbers of adults. all very welcome, but all are gonna have to take it as it comes. the cakes are in the oven as we speak. the cookies will be baked tomorrow, sandwiches made on Saturday morning; jelly pots made tomorrow and pasta, samosas, hummus etc on Saturday. I have no trouble doing it all myself.  I just wish I had had some notice of all the impending doom and gloom - I may have made slightly different plans - but probably not!

I called my old maid Amudha, I called my friends maid, Sarah, I brought in Amu's friend Eswari (who was Priya's potential replacement) and I had two maids from My Darling's office to generally clean and check the bathrooms all day.  A veritable army of help! Amu has always been diligent, and works hard though not always with good initiative!  But she was an able, trustworthy body in my kitchen while I was down in the garden.  There was a plethora of activities for the kids to enjoy - cutting, sticking, Bollywood dancing, gluing, colouring etc.  My many friends stepped int o run activities for me; My Darling was in charge of photos and food distribution and I managed the whole shebang!

Upshot - thank goodness it all worked out.  I had my driver supervise the million maids and make sure all right stuff came down at the right time, make sure the samosas were picked up, the safe ice was in plentiful supp;y and that all the drivers of our guests had tea and snacks through the party time.  He did a damn good job!  the kids seemed to have a blast, The Ray loved her shark cake, though some faint hearted souls were scared stiff!  The photos turned out well, thanks to another friend running around with my camera.  And I collapsed in a heap at the end of the day unable to budge for 48 hours!

Team Birthday Party in Action - job well done!

Another One Bites the Dust

Living in Chennai brings its share of the good and the bad!

Today was a definite showing of the 'bad'!

It wasn't enough that I chipped a tooth at a free lunch on Saturday - ended up at the dentist (shriek with horror!) for emergency treatment on Sat evening and have four further lengthy appointments for a subsequent root canal and crown. Clearly there is no such thing as a free lunch as this one is costing in the region of 25K rupees!

It wasn't enough that The Ray woke up with a hacking cough and could not go to school - (please God not another long winded cold!).

It wasn't enough that one of the household maids, PYT didn't show until I tracked, no make that hunted, her down and then I had to drop The Ray off to the dad's office!

The final straw was that we decided to terminate the driver. He was in a foul mood on the way back from Nikh's school and the clincher was that he deliberately spun our car sideways into an autorick that was not moving fast enough for him.

Okay - I understand the frustration of driving here - it is an activity you only undertake if you can zone out and go with the flow. The minute you are in a hurry, think about the rules of the road or rights of way ... you are doomed to disaster and potential wreckage. I find that the main thing that bothers me when I drive is that people tend to drift sideways. The lines and markings on the road are merely decorations (not even polite requests!) and disregarded by everyone - bikes, scooters, bullock carts, buses, autos and cars, vans, coaches etc etc etc. If it is a remotely plausible mode of transport, it will be on the Chennai roads and it is your job to watch out not ANY of theirs!!

The driver is supposed to be used to this. The last one, Snake in the Grass, was verbally abusive (in Tamil, thank the Lord!) to anyone who dared cross his path. He was however half psycho, so had to be deleted! The present (sorry ex) driver, Abs, appeared amenable, honest and relatively calm. Unlike Snake in the Grass, Abs was not interested in making small talk with Madam, partly because the common language was Hindi and Madam is not the hottest Hindi speaker! My Hindi is passable (very easily passable!) and clearly Abs passed on speaking with me. But this morning showed a whole other side to the man. My darling husband, asked him to visit him at work HQ on his bike, not our now auto-yellow stained car, and removed him from our environment. I must say he seemed genuinely apologetic and regretful, and the past 8 months have been relatively stress free, but this crazy attack on the snoozy auto driver does not bode well.

On top of this (there is more? - you may ask!) the new cook (2 weeks old) is driving Madam nuts. the pace of a snail and the intellect of a flea. The attention and memory of an ant and the will to learn of ...well... nothing. She has no will to learn. As a teacher and a relatively intelligent human, this lack of wanting to do my best and get something out of every experince is simply unfathomable to me. PYT is getting English lessons (at her request and my finance), she has asked for cooking lessons and remembers watching me make a dish and can virtually recreate it. Downside - I need her for The Ray. Kitchen duty is not her main priority - but it may become such!

Callous though it sounds, Madam had decided to keep her on while interviewing and scouting out a replacement. Terrible! But necessary! I am sick of spending my day, first shopping - no Tesco, M & S and Walmart here, 5 different shops just for the basics of milk, bread, fruit, veg and store cupboard or pantry items. Secondly coming home, purifying all the fruit and veg, cleaning and disinfecting all the other items and storing them and only then (a good half a day later), being able to cook anything. Add in drop off for Nikh and The Ray, pick up mid morning for The Ray, trying to actually meet people and stimulate a modicum of brain activity at OWC, IWA or some other such situation, and you find another entire day has whizzed by and you didn't even make the dinner!

Well, ever onward - all enquiries for a position in Madam's household can be forwarded forthwith!