By now, we’ve all seen that viral video of the Indian family in Bali being caught for pretty much looting their hotel rooms. Reams of newsprint have been dedicated to the often uncouthly behaviour demonstrated by our fellow countrymen when abroad and what prompts us to behave in such a manner when outside our home. While reading all the outrage, I couldn’t help but wonder whether in certain quarters, reactions would be quite as smug, if treatment of domestic help, especially when we’re abroad, was documented?
It's been a couple of weeks since I returned from a family holiday to London, and while the headiness of a break filled with long walks, park dates, the English countryside and some quality time with my husband and my four-year-old, wore off during the first week back (blame it on looming Vogue India deadlines!), one particular aspect of the trip has continued to rankle me.
Allow me to backtrack a little. At my age (and no I don’t plan on telling you exactly what that is), dinner conversations on most Friday nights now tend to focus on our children, schools and often most vexingly, the nanny/didi/nurse. On an aside, how is it that you get a bunch of smart, successful women in a room (by this point, of course, the husbands have totally tuned off), and yet the topic will almost always go back to domestic issues?
Full disclaimer: this is not to say that I haven’t been a participant in these conversations, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see how stereotypical and tedious it must seem to everyone around us. (Even more comically, almost every mother feigns complaints about this subject, but promptly gets involved when it begins.) Almost like clockwork, when you share possible travel plans or an upcoming family holiday, pat comes the query—“So are you taking your nanny/didi/nurse?”
Now, don’t get me wrong, this column is no way a judgment call on if you have help with your child or not. Whether you travel with your help or chose to travel solo, as with everything parenting, I’ve realised the hard way that there is really no singular way. But yes, I am judging you when you don’t treat another human being with the basic respect he/she deserves.
Take for example, this scenario. It’s lunch time at a member’s only club in London, and the two tables next to us are filled with large Indian families including a few children. Over a meal of endless glasses of rosé and multiple courses (ours clocked over two hours and theirs continued), the child’s minder stood by the table at attention, with a backpack on her shoulders, almost waiting for a command. Here’s how I see it—if you have the luxury of travelling with your help, one option is to leave the child at your hotel or apartment in the care of that minder, but if you do bring your child and his/her helper along, at the very least, you can give them a seat at the table and offer them a meal.
In another situation, during breakfast at our hotel, a mother was berating her help loudly (causing a packed dining room to turn heads) for coming late, because her darling pre-teen daughter wanted cornflakes, and god forbid, the child (or the mother) actually get up and serve herself from the buffet.
Or then, that woman strolling down Oxford Street, hands-free with that designer belt bag around her waist, darting in and out of shops, while the help tags along behind her weighed down with shopping bags and other paraphernalia, not to mention a stroller, all the while trying to mind an errant toddler while mama gets her fashion on. These aren’t imagined scenarios, but scarily instances that I observed quite regularly.
Clearly, the families in question were well-travelled, educated and exposed, yet they chose a rather feudal, archaic way of treating the very people who made their lives easier. It’s with their help that most of us manage to work, step out for last-minute dinners and movies, and also get a few minutes of peace to shower and maybe read a book—let’s face it, all luxuries for parents.
There are, of course, exceptions—friends who I spent time with on this vacation made sure that their didis were included in all meals when present, were taken shopping for warmer clothes when temperatures dropped, and given time off for themselves. I know these seem like very basic things to do, but given the scenario, they seem almost imperative to highlight.
A friend who lives in Singapore would tell me how awkward she would feel every time she brought her daughter’s nanny back home with her. The nanny, whom her daughter refers to as Auntie, was often flummoxed why, on going to other homes in India, she was never offered a seat or even a glass of water. Her daughter, who was used to Auntie sitting at the table and eating with them, was equally confused.
We teach our children to call the women who mind them 'didi', but our behaviour shows a vast contradiction—we treat them nothing like we would a sister. On this holiday, I wondered several times about how the locals and other people present viewed this kind of behaviour. Having help easily available and accessible is a privilege—enough of my friends abroad remind me of that fact, as they juggle multiple children, busy jobs and household chores. So what kind of message are we sending out about how our culture views the people who take care of our children, who bathe them, feed them and put them to bed, and in a number of cases, leave their own to raise ours, if we’re refusing them basic dignity?
I’ve thought a lot about the didis and what they must think of us. We complain about their behaviour often enough, but never seem to check in on our own. We’re a generation who has studied abroad, debated class and society in academic settings, roomed with people from different walks of life, and been exposed to world views so different from our own, and yet it surprises me that back home, we fall into habits that really don’t belong in modern Indian society. Will it take a video for us to really wake up?
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