Maid for each other

If you are married and believe you two are really “made for each other” then better you now become MAID FOR EACH OTHER.

That’s so unbelievable; you can watch TV, same news, idiotic movies, lousy songs and saas-bahu serials for hours every day but cannot assist your beloved wife in washing dishes at night. It’s a crime that your wife washes tons of dirty clothes on a weekend and you are surfing channels or reading paper or in facebook. I feel terrible now and get surprised why women (mothers, wives, sisters) don’t raise their voice against this all, atrocities they suffered, for years they have been working like hell for our well. For some known reasons in last thousand years our older generations revoked all freedoms from females, hence poor they lived all their lives confined to limited premises , they had no choice but to work in house : clean ,cook , wash , cook , dish-wash , no rest , cook clean , dish-wash and no rest. All of us saw our mother just working in home and working for us, for our comfort forgetting herself completely. And yet she felt absolute joy.

Things changed rapidly in our country in last two decades I guess. Most of the women are getting, similar education and opportunities to work in every field, socially too now almost everyone has accepted working women. A working wife was not considered as a brilliant idea till 10-15 years back some of you  would easily recall. “वो मर्द नहीं जिसकी घरवाली घर के बहार काम करती हो”

Nowadays:

Now when everyone’s wife is in (which in some sort have contributed to the uncontrollable inflation rate, later) this 9 to 6 job, it’s insane to expect her to do house work as well (just as our mother did) She cannot cook after her office; her back ache is severe, her always paining knees. Her never going headache) I wonder if all the doctors, orthopedics are naives now a days, they simply say it’s the lubricant fluid in the joints which is “drying up”, a slip disc or a migraine. The easy solution is, wake up little early help her in cleaning, preparing breakfast, packing lunch etc. Your working wife alone cannot clean the house every day before she too goes to work. Similarly help her in cooking dinner and washing dishes after office. Simple isn’t it. It’s a team game now and only one player plays and wins every day is not possible. Work at home together, rather hitting expensive fitness centers, burn hundreds of calories when you bend your upper body portion , those six flabs (six packs) whiling cleaning the floor. Strengthen your forearms and shoulders in washing clothes every day.

Employ a Maid:
Rather than helping your wife with house hold work and or may be your wife’s refusal to do anything before and after her office left you with no choice but to quickly employ a maid. A maid, who brings your morning tea, prepares your breakfast, packs your lunch, then washes your clothes in washing machine, cleans your house, cooks dinner and washes dishes afterwards and you surf TV.

Why I'm  against maids:

• You don’t know where your maid lives? 
• You don’t know if she/he is not suffering from any contagious or transmissible diseases.
• You don’t know, for god sake when the last time she had taken a bath? And yet she cleans her hands while preparing the dough for your chapatis.
• Do you ask her everyday if she washes her goddam hands with soap, before she touches your kitchen? You can’t imagine all kind of sick people living in this word.
• Do you check him/her if while cooking food she/he has not tasted the food with the spoon several times? I have seen one maid doing this at a friend’s place. You must have heard the story about the Pani Puri walla in Mumbai recently.
• Do you ask her if she talks/leaks your whereabouts with others when you are not in city? A sever threat to your house, family’s safety.
• Will you ask your maid if she knows Shiney Ahuja episode? You will never enquire about your maid and she then erode the shine, I bet.
• Do you know if she’s not a runaway maid and won’t kidnap with your little kid seeking ransom? I read in newspaper this happens so often in Delhi and all metro cities.
• Do you know while you are in office your trusted maid wont rent out your healthy baby to beggars? Those who live in Bangalore must have read this news last year.
• Do you know if in your absence maid mixes sedative in milk and feeds it to crying baby so she and the baby can sleep silently?

I am actually not against anybody you employ. But for me if it is something as close as cooking my food in my kitchen, someone touching my cooking utensils, someone entering the kitchen it becomes a matter of hygiene and a health issue for me and my family. I see people employ maids, for their little ones, imagine untidy, weak, poor , frustrated baby sitters taking care of them. If you still don’t understand, go for it, get prepared for the worst , I wish nothing as I mentioned above would ever happen to you under your strict supervision.

Unless it’s the maid in Manhattan stuff :) or the lubricant in both of your knees has really dried up , MRI scans too recommends complete rest, I suggest do not employ any maid for anything. For her(your wife) : Ask, force, beg your parents to stay with you if she is a working mom. For him(husbands): Do all your work yourself if needed , help your working/ nonworking wife with every house hold work she does and see if two of you are really made for each other.

Exceptions: My thanks to the most humble cook ever “Bhai-Ji” I have seen. He cooked food for me for three years in my college days in my rented room in Dehradun. He was a funny character, man of hundreds of hilarious justification, liar at many times, but still cooked awesome food with limited resources. I never used to ask him if washed his hands after he drank his "दारू का पउवा" in one shot (country made local spirits) before washing dishes in that icy cold water in winters. And I never asked if he took bath or whatever , he even came to cook, drenched in water in many rainy seasons…



                                 


                                   


Photos courtesy of www.cartoonstock.com

The Dark Night

Tonight at 15th June 2011 more than half the of the globe will have the bright chance to watch one of the darkest Lunar eclipses in past 100 years. I wanted to be a witness of this great celestial arrangement , so  took two pictures before and after the eclipse from my cellphone and pasted them here..I hope you will appreciate the spirit of this observer , its 1:40 AM going to bed now.

lunar eclipse 15-16 june 2011 in india

~bhupendra

Narrow Bridge Ahead

Sharing my frustration as an Indian citizen makes me feel light, I wish you also feel the same in every line you read, when you walk by this "Narrow bridge Ahead”.

This time I am at a BeSNL office where I had to go last October to get our broadband connection fixed. That day sharp at 11:30 AM  I reached our nearest bsnl telephone exchange building to file this broadband complaint. You know that government offices start work only after 11am or so and that too if they wish so. So in a sense I gave them 30 extra minutes to do their early morning initialization, I really did this calculation, everyone does in India. 

I took it as a challenge else I don't work when I am vacationing at home. Getting this stuff done at besnl office would be a tough job I knew it from the beginning so I was prepared. One has to master this art of talking to government officials. Any plain SR, complaints numbers just don’t work. To explain problems you remind them that your telephone connection exists somewhere on this planet and when can his highness (Line Man) visit it.

That whole building was silent like hell; nobody was there in office, no one to help poor victims.  I was amazed, that’s unusual such a populated, polluted country and empty office, no human smell, for a moment I thought I was in Siberia.  The office however was open, so I entered the first room, lying there was one big table, two chairs , several connected disconnected telephones, hundreds of meters worth of telephone wire, big iron rack , yellow , red colored blinking LEDs indicating that exchange was still functional.  First, I thought maybe it was some holiday which certainly wasn't, just a week back it was Dushera and still more than week for Diwali to come. I entered the second room, which too was a big hall, smelled like a dampen hideout , cobwebs ruled it's corners for years and it perfectly the room waited for Diwali .Surprisingly it was a recently built government exchange building which now looks like a malnourished poor Indian baby , who didn't  get enough of cement and steel in those nine months when they were raising it. 

At one corner, I saw one 8-9 yrs old kid sitting on that office chair, busy with some comic book. I thought of asking the name of the comic book, but I didn’t, so I asked him,"bhai do u know if anybody in the office today? I have to file a complaint for broadband who will take that? He replied from his comic word, "Papa is coming in five minutes" rudely in Hindi.

Then all of a sudden, I heard a loud bang, like someone slammed some door badly. I came out and found it was precisely the door of that filthy looking toilet next to the first hall and saw this man standing next to this filthy washbasin, washing his hands. His looked sleepy but relaxed, flamboyant like of any government employee, dressed in his space suits (I mean pajama and undershirt/baniyan) confident, his mission was accomplished. His every day's first job in office was done well. It took me a fraction of second to understand his daily routine in office every day, such a bloody idiot he was looking, how can such people are eligible for salaries, is he the in charge of this building ? I didn't see anyone else,damn what will happen to this office, to his children , to this country, how can he teach anything to his children.

I saw his face, I recognized him immediately he was our area's line man, "RatanLal”, submerged in that basin he asked me, "What’s the matter, why have I come?  I said, Uncle, our broadband isn’t working properly for 4 days. He said, “What happened did you check if all wire connections are okay” as he wiped his hands with his pajama, I said yes. 

He then said, did you bring your modem here, I said no. Get your modem quickly, he ordered, "I have to go in another 1 hour". So in no time, I went back to home in my bicycle and handed him the modem. The idiot then said did you bring the Power adapter too? I said, No, you only said Modem, you didn’t mention adapter.  Don’t you have one here in exchange, it’s an exchange, and how will you troubleshoot it”. To this he added, if you want me to check it, you will have to get the adapter else it’s your wish, I got furious but ignored my anger, went back home again, brought the power adapter gave it to him. He finally tested the modem and claimed, it’s no problemo. He said, there might be some problem with the computer; everything is fine with the modem. I showed him the connection LED in modem which is not blinking at home , so I politely asked him if his highness can do some basic check, may be some problem at their end, may be some problem in the wire ,a loose connection may be ,  to this the fella started shouting , you don't believe us, you are genuine only we are liars , we are your enemies , I have knowingly broken your connection , blah blah…. Now go wherever you want to go I will not check your connection. Go to even SDO office, file your complaint there, I will not take your complaint now, that Lion/Line king said.  He challenged me openly that he will not fix it now; he had screwed up my day by that time anyways. 

Back home, I shared this whole incident, I was advised that I didn't do the correct thing in having this argument with the lion king, you should never have fights with Line men, they can do anything, they can even disconnect the line completely. One such powerful line man told me ,they can even increase the telephone bill by doing fake STD/ISD calls from your number without you noticing it. 

I then went directly to the SDO office, fortunate to found the Assistant Engineer there, in his 50's he looked to be a calm man, he at least asked me to sit down. I used a different tactics with him, I started speaking in English, I gave him my introduction as an educated computer engineer :) , that's exactly what I told him that Sir, I am an educated computer engineer , who's in IT field for almost 6 years, I know what is customer service. I told him that it had been my worst experience as a BeSNL customer; the line man at the exchange didn't take down the complaint, shouted, refused to fix it and finally disconnected our telephone line completely. AE sahib listened to me completely, called the line man on phone and politely asked him for a cease fire. He literally urged and requested the Line man to visit our place and see the broadband issue. Three days and after a million telephone follow-ups, finally a 3^rd party outsourced field engineer came and fixed the broadband connection.  

I'm sure the "RatanLal" never cared about his yearly performance appraisal if they have such a thing in place, he probably might not even know what is performance. All what is expected from most of the government employees like him is to stay alive, minimally active at work, dump the assigned work for the heck of it without bothering its urgency, quality and that's enough to get salary lifelong. 

Long ago, in British India there was one Railways bridge over a river in a village; it did have a “Narrow Bridge Ahead” sign board warning in place enough to warn the stupid, uneducated villagers to not use this bridge for river crossing. Poor villagers thought and expected that infrastructure in villages will improve after Independence, when they will have their own governance. Many years after independence, new government understood poor villager’s demands and took a substantial patriotic step and replaced the old “Narrow Bridge Ahead” English warning message by national language सावधान !! पुल आगे संकरा है !  that's it. 

There are still thousands of such narrow bridges in India, leaders and government are just busy doing scams, fooling citizens ,stashing money in European banks as British did for centuries. I don't expect any Indian to expect India to expect it coming out of all troubles you know what I am saying sooner or later.

 ~bd


Disclaimer:

The characters in this writeup are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental , but the experience is real.