Practice before you preach

In the ’70s, Bangalore was not as big as of now. As villages were swallowed up by urbanisation, villagers had to desert agricultural activities. To eke out their living, many of them had joined industries as helpers. Some women choose to work as domestic help. They looked after the routine household chores of the rich and solvent people, from lighting the kitchen fire, sweeping the rooms, clean the floors, scrubbing utensils and the list goes on, on and on!

As the city grew, maids were in full demand. We were forced to search for a new maid, as our maid, who was working for us for a decade, quit her job because of age-related ailments. My mother started enquiring with other maids if they were interested in working in our house. Whenever such enquiries were made, the immediate counter-question from the maidservants would be-- are you a localite or a Gujarati? The locality had a sizeable amount of people from Gujurat as the city started to grow. Fed up by this counter-question, once I asked a maidservant why she asks such a question.

She replied, Anna we prefer to work in a Gujarati's house rather than in a localite's house as Gujarati’s cook only four or five days a week and the rest of the days, they eat outside. Unlike localites, Gujaratis have LPG cylinders, and hence scrubbing the utensils was easier as utensils were not anointed with stubborn soot. If they cook, they cook chapattis, rice with two or three subjis and are generous in giving the left out to us.

Whereas, in ‘70s the majority of the localites used firewood for cooking. Scrubbing utensils with firewood ash, to remove the anointed stubborn soot was arduous. Even if rice is left out, the localites would not give it to them as they reuse it by preparing chitranna or mosaranna the next day. Gujaratis during Dasara and Deepavali festival, give gifts. Unlike localites, Gujaratis also had a washing machine. Whereas, in a localites house, the clothes have to be manually washed. Gujarat's discard the clothes after a few washes and gave the discarded clothes to them. Localites preserve clothes and use them to purchase steel utensils. After hearing this, I advised her, Amma whatever it may be, being a localite, you should prefer a localite’s house.

Immediately she asked me, “Anna, if you were in my position, which house you would have preferred?” My inner conscience said that out of the above binary options, I would have opted for Gujaratis house. I said to myself, if I do not practice what I preach, I am nothing more than a hypocrite.