In fact I had started this blog much before the diplomatic row between the two largest democracies, one more capitalistically inclined, was sparked over a socialist issue of wages and rights of a domestic worker. Before you begin reading, let me warn you this is a highly critical blog on the social trends and is written purely from an individual perspective on the issue.
My family and I have been without a maid / domestic help for the last 3 months after ours decided to take an open ended sabbatical. Though, not a live in maid, the time she has been away has been one of great introspection on the need and the role of a domestic help at home. That’s when I decided I should pen my thoughts and then came the controversy surrounding the Indian diplomat’s treatment of her maid. In the recent past we were confronted on a daily basis with news stories on the ill treatment of maids by the rich and the famous and also by the well-read and highly acclaimed citizens in India.
We have reached a stage when marriages might be made in heaven but their very sustenance is in the hands of your maid. Coming back from work to a home with beds undone, toys littered all around, dishes to be done, floors to be mopped, can be a stressful ordeal for a working, career oriented family and even prompt a review of the pre-nuptial contract clauses on shared job responsibilities.
The dependency on maids is something that I personally try and avoid particularly when you can make do without one. I understand the need of baby sitters when you have infants at home or a domestic help for a couple of hours a week to lend you a helping hand in tidying up your home. The last 3 months made me get back to the basics and also help teach my kids the dignity of labour, do your own beds, wash your dishes and keep you rooms tidy which they had come to believe was not part of their domain of activities. I gave up on my yoga and started to focus on my own version of wash-asanas and mop-asanas. They are as good for your body and soul as yoga, long distance running or pumping iron.
The dependency on domestic helps in India is an offshoot of the colonial era; unfortunately that legacy was passed on to our very own defence and bureaucratic community. This culture is so rampant that a memsahib beau with her maid in tow is a common sight. Unfortunately this dependency has made them indispensable which is definitely not a good sign. Over the years the role of a maid in or from India has been elevated to that of a Chamberlains of the Victorian era. The utilitarian aspect of a maid has given way to that of a symbol of social prominence. The more foreign your maid the more respected you are in social circles, call it a manifestation of reverse colonial hangover? ‘Chottu’ is what you call your youngest son or lovingly the domestic help if he is a young boy in most homes in the northern part of India and elsewhere. Chottu bring this, chottu do this, chottu do that, chottu fetch me this reverberates in any affluent Indian home.
The common argument for a full time maid at home I hear is a four dimensional one, people keep talking about quality space and time with their spouses and hence the help at home to take care of their little ones, wonder if the little one is not part of their space or time then the very fundamentals of a family are being questioned here. I have heard that the kids cannot eat or sleep without their maids wonder what these kids will grow up into, after experiencing a diluted motherhood since their childhood is so maid centric.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2013
‘AAP’ jaisa koyi mere zindagi….
This vintage Nazia Hassan song from the yesteryear Bollywood movie 'Qurbaani' has been reincarnated thanks to the surfacing of a new kid on the political landscape block in this glorious democracy called India where even the right to swing both ways is restricted by the judiciary and I’m not talking about the pendulum and simple harmonic motion.
They call themselves the AAM ADMI PARTY…Mango (AAM is incidentally Hindi for Mango too) is definitely an alternate to the banana republic we live in. Even though the likes of Arvind Kejriwal & co might not have given much thought while naming their party they have struck a gold mine in branding terms.
For the less initiated in Hindi not that I’m more initiated AAM AADMI PARTY means common man’s party. But the abbreviated version stole the show from day one. AAP was positioned in a way to identify itself with the ‘I’ generation, the irony being AAP on its own meant YOU in Hindi. So actually positioning ‘YOU’ in the ‘I’ generation can sound profound and at the same time can be an effective marketing ploy. And so it was. For all your ‘I’ gadgets to work one needed an AAP (phonetically speaking). Steve Jobs might have in some way contributed to an APP revolution with all his ‘I’ gadgets but Arvind Kejriwal has now a cult status with his own AAP. Move over the ‘I’ gen, ‘U’ is all set to take over.
Well actually my association with the word AAP started when Kejriwal was still a kid. Kejriwal’s school of thought might have been centred on AAP but my schooling itself was in an ‘aap’ school in Madras. Any school that was run by the erstwhile Anglo Indian community, who have contributed a great deal to education in India was generally referred to as an aap school, a name probably derived from the theory that aappam was sold by Anglo Indians in Royapuram. Though, it is now the malayalee’s claim to fame for a celebratory breakfast.
Aap had also a different connotation altogether in Madras Tamizh, which literally meant a peg / dowel but was used commonly and colloquially to represent a peg that was drilled up your you-know-where, and over the years was transformed into an euphemism for injustice being meted out in its crudest form. Well that is exactly what happened to the differently oriented citizens of India this week, literally and figuratively.
These final weeks of 2013 got the people of India dancing to the tunes of aap jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye (Somebody like YOU (AAP) make a difference in my life) but the judiciary had other ideas when they said ‘mere jaisa mere saath koi nahi!!!’ (No one like me with me anymore).
Welcome to the largest Democracy in the world!!!
Disclaimer: The above piece has been written in jest and not with an intention to hurt the feelings of people around me, I’m as over joyed by the advent of the AAP as an alternate option in Indian politics as I’m saddened by the curbing of the freedom of choice for the differently oriented people around me.
They call themselves the AAM ADMI PARTY…Mango (AAM is incidentally Hindi for Mango too) is definitely an alternate to the banana republic we live in. Even though the likes of Arvind Kejriwal & co might not have given much thought while naming their party they have struck a gold mine in branding terms.
For the less initiated in Hindi not that I’m more initiated AAM AADMI PARTY means common man’s party. But the abbreviated version stole the show from day one. AAP was positioned in a way to identify itself with the ‘I’ generation, the irony being AAP on its own meant YOU in Hindi. So actually positioning ‘YOU’ in the ‘I’ generation can sound profound and at the same time can be an effective marketing ploy. And so it was. For all your ‘I’ gadgets to work one needed an AAP (phonetically speaking). Steve Jobs might have in some way contributed to an APP revolution with all his ‘I’ gadgets but Arvind Kejriwal has now a cult status with his own AAP. Move over the ‘I’ gen, ‘U’ is all set to take over.
Well actually my association with the word AAP started when Kejriwal was still a kid. Kejriwal’s school of thought might have been centred on AAP but my schooling itself was in an ‘aap’ school in Madras. Any school that was run by the erstwhile Anglo Indian community, who have contributed a great deal to education in India was generally referred to as an aap school, a name probably derived from the theory that aappam was sold by Anglo Indians in Royapuram. Though, it is now the malayalee’s claim to fame for a celebratory breakfast.
Aap had also a different connotation altogether in Madras Tamizh, which literally meant a peg / dowel but was used commonly and colloquially to represent a peg that was drilled up your you-know-where, and over the years was transformed into an euphemism for injustice being meted out in its crudest form. Well that is exactly what happened to the differently oriented citizens of India this week, literally and figuratively.
These final weeks of 2013 got the people of India dancing to the tunes of aap jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye (Somebody like YOU (AAP) make a difference in my life) but the judiciary had other ideas when they said ‘mere jaisa mere saath koi nahi!!!’ (No one like me with me anymore).
Welcome to the largest Democracy in the world!!!
Disclaimer: The above piece has been written in jest and not with an intention to hurt the feelings of people around me, I’m as over joyed by the advent of the AAP as an alternate option in Indian politics as I’m saddened by the curbing of the freedom of choice for the differently oriented people around me.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Amazon the new 'Dron'acharya!
They revolutionised online retailing when they entered the scene in 1994 and exactly 20 years later they come up with another revolutionary idea that could change the way you get stuff delivered. They are intent on teaching the world at large an art or two on delivery.
Lo behold! The time when you can get your potatoes delivered directly to your couch is not far away if Jeff Bezos has his way. Couch potatoes can order Big Mac and fries with diet coke from Mc Donalds and a DVD on yoga from Amazon all delivered at your footstep. A balanced diet delivered with instructions on how to burn the unbalanced calories the exotic way. Now that’s one healthy life style to lead.
It might find its way from the delivery station to the doorstep via GPS and what not, from there on with an extended app it will find you on your couch for a couple of $ more. I like the Idea. I could tweak it a little once near my couch to fetch my TV remote and a beer from my fridge too. Forgotten school assignments, science projects, lunch boxes and even a fresh pair of socks could be delivered by drones.
But in certain parts of the world it could create confusion with regard to the identity; there should be methods in place to distinguish between the one with a lethal payload and a non-lethal one. From an Indian perspective it will be interesting to see some of the challenges that the drone deliveries will face and on the positive side there are a whole lot of potential drone applications too. In fact this whole concept of air borne basket delivery was an Indian concept. Go to a middle class high rise in Bombay you will find neighbours sharing stuff between different levels. That all important missing green chillies when the curry is on the stove are all yours with a simple tug at the rope and a shout and in exchange you might have to send some tomatoes on its way back, some kind of a mid-air re-filling of grocery.
Imagine a drone navigating through the thick ‘manja’ laden kite traffic during a peak kite flying season in Triplicane in Madras. The ‘manja’ might just be strong enough to snap a key communication cable on the octocopter and cause it to malfunction and thereby delivering the sausage that was meant for Kevin of Kilpauk to Krishna Iyer in Mylapore. That’s sacrilege unless Krishna Iyer is a US return with a German wife who loves her Frankfurters. We might have to allot a dedicated air corridor for drones or impose a no fly zone for kites.
In Kerala I find a better use for the drones, these are days when it’s hard to find someone to climb coconut trees, why not use a sickle attached to the drones to fly up the tree and do the job. An improvised version could be developed for toddy tapping too and be named the Drunken Drones! Ha Ha if you are thinking of patenting any of these, it’s too late mate. I’ve done it already!! But our comrades would be up in arms against the drones and stage a bandh on account of this. But Comrades, the bandh unfortunately will only affect the mortals on road not the air borne drones. They could come up with an inbuilt stone pelting recognition system to change the altitude once they spot comrades down below.
Drones in Drains is where I will put my money on next, when manual scavenging is still so rampant in several parts of the world why not use Drones with a basket to go down in and clean up the drains. The application of drones in sanitation would certainly be noble idea.
How does it matter if you don’t get that music CD, or a book or that mouse pad or that Pizza within 30 minutes? There are more worthwhile uses of drone technology that will serve mankind better. Why don’t people get working on that? And by the way, I would sell the toddy tapping drunken drone patent only to Mallya and he might end up bottling Toddy and call it Woodpecker instead of Kingfisher!!!
We should know more about the use drones than the Americans…after all ‘Dron’acharya the teacher of Drones was Indian!!!
Lo behold! The time when you can get your potatoes delivered directly to your couch is not far away if Jeff Bezos has his way. Couch potatoes can order Big Mac and fries with diet coke from Mc Donalds and a DVD on yoga from Amazon all delivered at your footstep. A balanced diet delivered with instructions on how to burn the unbalanced calories the exotic way. Now that’s one healthy life style to lead.
It might find its way from the delivery station to the doorstep via GPS and what not, from there on with an extended app it will find you on your couch for a couple of $ more. I like the Idea. I could tweak it a little once near my couch to fetch my TV remote and a beer from my fridge too. Forgotten school assignments, science projects, lunch boxes and even a fresh pair of socks could be delivered by drones.
But in certain parts of the world it could create confusion with regard to the identity; there should be methods in place to distinguish between the one with a lethal payload and a non-lethal one. From an Indian perspective it will be interesting to see some of the challenges that the drone deliveries will face and on the positive side there are a whole lot of potential drone applications too. In fact this whole concept of air borne basket delivery was an Indian concept. Go to a middle class high rise in Bombay you will find neighbours sharing stuff between different levels. That all important missing green chillies when the curry is on the stove are all yours with a simple tug at the rope and a shout and in exchange you might have to send some tomatoes on its way back, some kind of a mid-air re-filling of grocery.
Imagine a drone navigating through the thick ‘manja’ laden kite traffic during a peak kite flying season in Triplicane in Madras. The ‘manja’ might just be strong enough to snap a key communication cable on the octocopter and cause it to malfunction and thereby delivering the sausage that was meant for Kevin of Kilpauk to Krishna Iyer in Mylapore. That’s sacrilege unless Krishna Iyer is a US return with a German wife who loves her Frankfurters. We might have to allot a dedicated air corridor for drones or impose a no fly zone for kites.
In Kerala I find a better use for the drones, these are days when it’s hard to find someone to climb coconut trees, why not use a sickle attached to the drones to fly up the tree and do the job. An improvised version could be developed for toddy tapping too and be named the Drunken Drones! Ha Ha if you are thinking of patenting any of these, it’s too late mate. I’ve done it already!! But our comrades would be up in arms against the drones and stage a bandh on account of this. But Comrades, the bandh unfortunately will only affect the mortals on road not the air borne drones. They could come up with an inbuilt stone pelting recognition system to change the altitude once they spot comrades down below.
Drones in Drains is where I will put my money on next, when manual scavenging is still so rampant in several parts of the world why not use Drones with a basket to go down in and clean up the drains. The application of drones in sanitation would certainly be noble idea.
How does it matter if you don’t get that music CD, or a book or that mouse pad or that Pizza within 30 minutes? There are more worthwhile uses of drone technology that will serve mankind better. Why don’t people get working on that? And by the way, I would sell the toddy tapping drunken drone patent only to Mallya and he might end up bottling Toddy and call it Woodpecker instead of Kingfisher!!!
We should know more about the use drones than the Americans…after all ‘Dron’acharya the teacher of Drones was Indian!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
