Help

Prior to coming here, and even for the first month or so, I was certain that I could maintain my sanity—and write a dissertation--while meeting all of Kaia’s needs, tending to domestic chores and preparing meals. Perhaps, in my entire life, I have never been more deluded. With the intense demands upon my wife from her work and the tedium of trying to get things done here in a modestly efficient manner, heaped upon the everyday tasks of washing clothes, cooking food, cleaning the house, and on and on, by the end of last month I was a complete wreck. There is no small coincidence between the silence in my postings and the tremendous toll trying to manage this household and Kaia by myself, in this country, has had on my ability to think and communicate. I was seriously starting to lose my mind.

But as fortunate would have it, one evening at the nearby (authentic, but expensive) Japanese restaurant, the manager struck up a conversation about how we were doing in our life in Madras. I communicated to him about, perhaps, needing someone to spend a bit of time with Kaia during the day, just to help to give me some time to clean and cook, much less relax and write. He said that he might have the right person in mind. He would talk to her and pass along our number, if she was interested.

A few days later, a woman called and introduced herself as Joyce, a mother of three children, two girls and one boy, ages 11, 8 and 3. She had been working in the homes of expatriates for over 20 years and her English was impeccable—likely better than mine after a long day of babbling with Kaia. After inviting her over to our home for an interview, it was decided that we would do a one week trial period to see how Kaia and her got along. While I found her to be very sweet from the moment that I met her, one of the reasons that I have been so reluctant to hire domestic help is that I did not want to ‘manage’ them. It is very common in Madras to have domestic ‘servants’ (as they are called here) working in some capacity in people’s homes. It is said that the easiest life for any South Indian is that of the upper-middle class wife. She does not have to even lift a finger in regard to cleaning, cooking, shopping, childcare, laundry, ironing, you name it. All she has to do is manage the help. Perhaps it was my discomfort with being even associated with this kind of lifestyle, or the idea of someone calling me ‘sir’ that, even in the face of impossible labors on my time and mental health, led me to think pessimistically about this situation working out long-term.

We decided that, given the size of our apartment and the time that we needed help, Joyce would work ‘part-time’, which in these parts means from 9-3, Monday-Friday. Many domestic jobs require the women to be there from 8-6, or even later, six to seven days a week. This is considered to be full-time and, for this, the typical pay is 2,000 rupees a month, or about $45. If you do the math, it is about 19 cents an hour. A very difficult wage to rationalize, but person after person admonished me to ‘never pay more than 2,000’. This was going to be a problem for me.

As someone who is a firm believer in the baseline principles of a ‘living wage’, more than doing the currency calculations and comparing the costs of such services in the US or Japan, it would be important to ask Joyce what she considered to be fair and appropriate. She said that she was typically paid 4,000 rupees a month for full-time work (60 hours a week), and that this was good for her. Since we would not need her on a full-time basis, I suggested that we pay her 3,000 per month, plus 600 in travel expenses for bus and the occasional auto rickshaw. By this metric, she receives about $70 per month, but at around 60 cents an hour it is over three times the amount that an Indian family would pay for her work. Still it is not much, but she is happy, and in the economic structure of domestic help, she is most certainly in the upper tier of compensation. We also have helped with her children’s schooling with 5,000 rupees and, typically, will give one month’s salary during Pongal, the most celebrated holiday in these parts. Something that I have truly learned here is how tricky and contextualized the issue of fair compensation can be. Because we are being paid in US dollars, there are times when we will compare wages to others working in the US (often they are higher), but of course, here it allows us to live in an apartment across the hall from the President of the Meridian Hotel in Chennai. Unlike Japan or the US, where inequality is often hidden behind layers of materialism and silence, here it is right in your face, often literally as you look into the eyes of qualified, hard-working people with similar priorities, and realize that you will make more in one hour than they will make in one month.

Inevitably for me the issue comes back to the question of how you address these issues with your children. Of course, Kaia is far too young to have this conversation with, but there is something to be said for practicing humility and respect, and ensuring that it is clear that this wealth we have is truly a great privilege and something to be stewarded with the utmost modesty. What amounts to nickels does count for something with many people here, and it is not just those who are begging professionally on the street.

So long story short, Joyce has been a real godsend thus far. Just in the few weeks that she has been here, I’ve been able to write, think, rest and recover—things that seemed to far away just a short time ago. Asking for help is not the easiest thing to do, but there is something quite liberating in the act. Living here, I anticipate that I’ll be doing it more and more.

Why I Love this Time: Hearing him say ‘frog’, pronounced in Kaia language as ‘fuh’ga’, with an accent over the ‘uh’.