Our maid Chandana tells me repeatedly that she would like to come home with us when we return to America; that she has her passport and she is ready to leave. She will cook, clean, and generally oversee our household. The offer is tempting! She points out that she always got offers from her employers in the past, who worked for embassies and were traveling the world. At the time she got these offers, her children were young; they are now 14, 16, and 22, and Chandana thinks that now she could go to the west, if she got an offer.
Of course, from our western perspective, there are so many elements that I have trouble communicating to her. First, sponsoring someone to bring into the US would be an immigration nightmare…. Second, our kids are big and soon to be out of the house and in college. Full time help just to address the needs of Amnon and me? We don’t know families that have full time “maids” for two grownups. Many people have (as we did) full time help in the form of all-rounder babysitters (as we did with our beloved Cynthia for 22 years), but that is justifiable when you have 4 kids and 2 working parents. Chandana said she DID get offers in the past from people whose kids were grown. I try to explain to her that *those* people must have been fancier and richer than our family…”middle class” folks in the US generally don’t have that level of household help. We are not that “rich and fancy,” I explain to her. She looks at me blankly, and I realize the absurdity of what I am saying. Families in Westchester earn 50 to 100 times her salary. I am trying to communicate something that sounds like “no, Chandana, we are only BILLIONAIRES….the people that have fulltime help without kids in the house are the MULTI-billionaires….”
On my travels abroad, I like to bring back presents for Chandana and her family. This also raises the cultural and financial divide. Note that Chandana and her family (husband and 3 kids) live in our servant quarters, 3 small rooms on our rooftop. Adequate, I am told, by servant quarters standards. I think about the typical “souvenir,” cluttering space in our own homes, taking space on the mantel. What about “chotches” in these tiny spaces? A “keepsake” from the US that is a dust collector is silly. I also do the mental math; what percentage of their salary would it cost to purchase this keepsake? During my trip to the US, I purchased wristwatches for the whole family. These were inexpensive watches, but for Chandana, it would have been 30% of her monthly salary. Can you imagine buying simple watches for your family that suck up 30% of your earnings? The wristwatches hit the mark - they were functional, necessary, and a highly valuable gift. What should I get them from Australia? Aboriginal keepsakes? Art work? There are food-things, but exotic spices and condiments from Australia wouldn’t fit into their food repertoire. (Chandana cooks a range of ethnic dishes for us, but at home, they predominantly eat Indian food.) Clothes? Much cheaper in India; plus, Chandana only wears Indian garb. I end up falling back on the old staple….chocolates from a foreign land.
My own purchases in Australia for stuff that I need also look peculiar to my western friends. I got Glad brand plastic wrap that tears easily. I got pantyhose - - an item that I wasn’t able to find in multiple searches in India. I got socks…(When I was looking for socks in India, I found socks that were like gloves, with a place to put your big toe…This allows women to wear sandals with toe separators, even in the colder winter months. Can you envision putting on socks as though they were gloves?) I also got lots and lots of mosquito repellent with deet….that is what is recommended by the US Center for Disease Control, and it is not available in India to the best of my knowledge. (Is it in fact any more effective? Who knows….) And lint removers with disposable sticky paper. The “needs” list gets very specific, and very odd, after you have lived out of the US for awhile.
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