As graceful as a grouse
Readers who know me will know that this entry is motivated by nothing besides the desire to title two entries in a row with Sondheim lyrics. So sue me. There isn't an occasion or milestone in life for which there isn't an appropriate Sondheim song. (It's a fun parlor game; try it.)
But, in a bid to make it relevant, let me complain about my maid for a moment. K had arranged with our amazonian maid, S, to feed me while he's away. Except she hasn't done any shopping, never mind cook, and today's a national holiday, and everything's shut, and I'm left rummaging in the cupboards and poking at dubious days' old pizza. I mean, it won't kill me (fasting, that is, not the pizza -- which might): I could easily hibernate through the winter with the blubber I'm packing. But it's annoying nonetheless.
When I first arrived at my first post, I was amazed by the bloated expats lounging by the pool complaining about how stupid their maids were -- didn't they realize what self-caricatures they were being? It took me six years, but now I'm one of them. I mean, I don't think S is stupid; I think she's actually very clever to have us paying her nearly twice the going rate for her to half-assedly run a grimy rag over the counters, and move all the furniture to her convenience, and devour all our cookies and chocolate.
I'll confess: I'm a bit of a control freak. And to have this rogue force in the house constantly moving papers and books from where I've deliberately left them, or leaving all the furnishings askew so that I have to run around every day putting it all to right is nothing less than a form of Chinese water torture. But what's the alternative? My liberal friend C chose to not employ a maid while she was here, not being able to reconcile herself to all the bourgeois implications. But, really, it's not as if the person C would otherwise have employed is instead now a more self-actualized and professionally fulfilled person; rather, she's doing some more dirty and dangerous job for a much lower salary.
So, yeah, perhaps we just need a new maid. I was fully in favor of that from about the second month here; K persuaded me to give her more of a chance. But now even he concedes, "perhaps she just isn't a very clean person" -- which, y'know, to my way of thinking is sort of like saying about an accountant "perhaps she just isn't that good with numbers." But how on earth does one find a clean person in Mumbai? I strongly suspect that if OCD exists here, culture directs it to take some other form than obsessive cleanliness.
That's actually a fascinating part of the culture here: not just a tolerance for dirt -- the ability to sit in a putatively nice restaurant with moldy walls and a water-stained ceiling and still think it nice -- but an acceptance of a higher level of disorder in every sphere of life. More than just about anything (other than sex roles), it's this aspect of life here that sometimes makes me feel as though I'm utterly losing it. Even if I personally prefer squeaky-clean surroundings, I can intellectually accept that the West over-sanitizes, and I'm really intrigued by theories suggesting Western high asthma rates and autoimmune disorders may come from providing insufficient challenge to infants' immune systems through our obsession with banishing dirt. But what possible benefit can come from admitting more disorder into your life? I just can't see it, and I suspect things would go a lot easier for me here if I could.
But, in a bid to make it relevant, let me complain about my maid for a moment. K had arranged with our amazonian maid, S, to feed me while he's away. Except she hasn't done any shopping, never mind cook, and today's a national holiday, and everything's shut, and I'm left rummaging in the cupboards and poking at dubious days' old pizza. I mean, it won't kill me (fasting, that is, not the pizza -- which might): I could easily hibernate through the winter with the blubber I'm packing. But it's annoying nonetheless.
When I first arrived at my first post, I was amazed by the bloated expats lounging by the pool complaining about how stupid their maids were -- didn't they realize what self-caricatures they were being? It took me six years, but now I'm one of them. I mean, I don't think S is stupid; I think she's actually very clever to have us paying her nearly twice the going rate for her to half-assedly run a grimy rag over the counters, and move all the furniture to her convenience, and devour all our cookies and chocolate.
I'll confess: I'm a bit of a control freak. And to have this rogue force in the house constantly moving papers and books from where I've deliberately left them, or leaving all the furnishings askew so that I have to run around every day putting it all to right is nothing less than a form of Chinese water torture. But what's the alternative? My liberal friend C chose to not employ a maid while she was here, not being able to reconcile herself to all the bourgeois implications. But, really, it's not as if the person C would otherwise have employed is instead now a more self-actualized and professionally fulfilled person; rather, she's doing some more dirty and dangerous job for a much lower salary.
So, yeah, perhaps we just need a new maid. I was fully in favor of that from about the second month here; K persuaded me to give her more of a chance. But now even he concedes, "perhaps she just isn't a very clean person" -- which, y'know, to my way of thinking is sort of like saying about an accountant "perhaps she just isn't that good with numbers." But how on earth does one find a clean person in Mumbai? I strongly suspect that if OCD exists here, culture directs it to take some other form than obsessive cleanliness.
That's actually a fascinating part of the culture here: not just a tolerance for dirt -- the ability to sit in a putatively nice restaurant with moldy walls and a water-stained ceiling and still think it nice -- but an acceptance of a higher level of disorder in every sphere of life. More than just about anything (other than sex roles), it's this aspect of life here that sometimes makes me feel as though I'm utterly losing it. Even if I personally prefer squeaky-clean surroundings, I can intellectually accept that the West over-sanitizes, and I'm really intrigued by theories suggesting Western high asthma rates and autoimmune disorders may come from providing insufficient challenge to infants' immune systems through our obsession with banishing dirt. But what possible benefit can come from admitting more disorder into your life? I just can't see it, and I suspect things would go a lot easier for me here if I could.
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