MINNESOTIAN MAIDS

For me, it's very different to have maids. Luckily (and unluckily), the maids that my family has don't do everything and are not here all the time.

            Two maids come every morning, around 8:00 or 9:00, to help with the house chores. They wash the dishes, do my family's laundry (I do my own), wash the floors and occasionally prepare meals.

            Throughout the day when we have dirty dishes we just rinse them and leave them in the sink. For metal dishes, which are generally used, we rinse them and then place them in a tub below the sink. This helps to keep the kitchen clean. The maids don't do all the dishes though. My mother helps to make sure that there are not too many dishes by washing a few now and then throughout the day. In order to get hot water to wash the dishes, you have to turn on a water heater that is in the kitchen. Because it is small, the water heats up quickly and then is ready to use. The soap used for dishes is a soft bar. You take a small washrag and pick up some soap, then use it on the dishes.

            For the laundry, the biggest difference for me is that there is no clothes dryer. My family does have a clothes washer-which I am very happy about-although, many people here hand wash their clothes. The washer is just like any 'normal' one from the US. However, since there is no dryer, we hang our clothes on rods in the balcony. Because we live on the seventh floor and it is usually windy, the clothes dry very fast (totally dry in around 24 hours). My family told me that right now, during Monsoon Season, clothes take the longest to dry because of the moisture, but for the rest of the year they dry even faster.

            All of the floors in India are hard. No carpet. In college, they are all just plain concrete. In most homes and businesses, however, they are made from marble or a marble look alike. The reason for no carpet is the humidity. It would be very easy for the carpet to get wet and in turn, moldy. Many houses do however have rugs to have a glimpse of carpet. However, it is not needed as much here because the hard floors do not get cold in the warm weather (unlike Minnesota's winters). The maids in turn wash the floors daily. Not with a mop and a bucket though, on their hands and knees with a wet towel. We have a rug here, so the maid washing the floors hangs in on the balcony railing to make sure it stays dry, and then washes the floor underneath.

            Sometimes when my mother is really busy she has the maids prepare meals or parts of meals for the family. This doesn't happen very often, however, and when it does, the food is not as good as when mom makes it.

            Whenever the maids are here, I try to stay out of their way and try not to disrupt their normal routine. Most of the time, I am at college when they are here, thankfully.

            I've never had a maid before so I wasn't and am still not quite sure how to act around them. They treat me very well though. My family told the maids that they had to be extra nice to me, so I wouldn't get a bad impression of the maids in India. They said that the maids where I am from in Minnesota are very kind and do anything we tell them to do. When I told my family, "People don't usually have maids in Minnesota." They said, "We know that, but the maids don't have to!" We just laughed.

            Overall, it's nice to have someone do the 'dirty work' for you, but I do enough to make sure I don't take advantage of them. I'm sure as time goes on I will become more comfortable with them and them with me. Nevertheless, as you can probably tell by the above conversation my family and I are already close.