Awkward experience #27: The maid came to clean my room on Sunday (yesterday). She only cleans it when I’m there because the host family doesn’t trust her to do it with no one watching. So she cleaned it, and did some other work, and during this time everyone from the host family left the house. So when it was done, she turned to me (I was studying at the table) and, using the word for “big sister,” asked me if she could go. At first i had no idea what she was asking, as the idea of a grown woman needing to ask permision seemed entirely, well, foreign. I asked what she meant, and she asked me if all the work was done. How should I know? She was asking me because I was the only one there…but it was incredibly awkward. I told her she could go, but I had no idea what I should have done.
In Hindi there’s an entire category of verbs that are used to describe “having someone do something.” So there’s one verb if you do your own laundry, and another verb if you send it out to have the dhobi wash it. One verb for sending something in the mail, another for having your servant do it. We don’t have this in American because we don’t have the same sort of culture of having servants do everything. I don’t know enough to know exactly how it came about (the caste system?), but it’s a very strange sensation to have the cook ask me every morning if I’m ready for chai and to have her bring me cookies when I get home. The cook was originally introduced to me as my host mother’s sister, so it took me a few days to figure out that there was actually a semi-rigid hierarchy. I don’t know what language to use with servants, though I’ve heard the host family use the medium-level of respect, not the highest level of respect.
I have to run, more later.
