It's a game of musical maids

It's a game of musical maids

Musical maids

JAKARTA (JP): If someone was to procure a statistic on the
favorite topic of conversation among housewives in Jakarta, I can
say the topic of maids would win hands down.

For a newcomer to Jakarta the prospect of having the luxury of
employing two or three housemaids is incredibly delicious.
However the taste does turn slightly sour when one learns of the
mystery that lies behind holding on to them. An enigmatic
situation arises sometimes when their comings and goings are more
expeditious than the time it takes to gobble down a Big Mac.

All households have their fair share of trouble when a new
maid walks out on her second day of employment, flinging an,
"nggak betah (not adjusted) as she whizzes out of the door before
you can utter the "t" of "Tunggu" (wait).

While some of the residents are blessed with old hands who
usually absorb the shift in workloads during the change of maids
or rather "working guests" (as one exasperated lady expat puts
it), there are others who are not so fortunate.

Just the other day at a tea gathering a "fresher" to the city
was expanding on the teething troubles she had while settling
down in Jakarta. Besides the hunt for a good house and the
children's school, it was the bit of the maids that held every
teacup suspended an inch away from their respectively open
mouths.

She was in bliss for about three days after getting her first
batch of two maids. She must have walked under a ladder because
right on the third morning one of her maids came to her pouring
forth bucketfuls of tears. She had just got a message that her
mother was dying and she had to leave right away. Overflowing
with sympathetic gestures my non-Indonesian speaking friend
rushed her off with a month salary, asking her to call the very
next day. The next day she got a call from the maid saying that
now her brother had passed away and she would be back after two
days. Skeptic suspicions blistered in my friend as she realized
she had been taken for a ride. And as if that was not enough, the
other maid thereafter develops pusing (headache), goes to buy
medicine and never returns.

And so it goes on for us all constantly deciphering the
mysterious ways of our house-helps -- more baffling than the
Bermuda Triangle as someone describes it.

Life goes on in those households that have seen the death of
four to five fathers or three to four mothers of an old housemaid
and have decided to stop counting and play the game.

Then there is the hilarious story of the typical homely
housewife who loves her kitchen. She spends hours reaching
gastronomical perfection.

She recounts of how her two maids left at the drop of a spoon.
What stumped her the most was that they went to houses with lower
salaries. Much later she learnt through indirect sources that
they had left because they did not have enough privacy.

So now she has an official cook who is the king of the
kitchen. She is very efficient and needs no help but my lady
friend is practically a guest in a domain which once was hers.
And now if you ask her how the household help is, she says, "Oh,
great! The house is actually run by them. My family and I just
stop by to eat and sleep."

-- Pavan Kapoor