It's been a long time since I wrote something here. Having fallen into a lethargy brought about by this stunning heat and focussed on survival and future plans, words kinda disappeared from my life...until today!
My maid came in requesting that I allow her to change her timings from morning to evening for a few days as she is busy scouting for a house that her father would buy for her. Ok, sounds reasonable...and then she goes on to say, he sold some land for a few million rupees...in fact just a little short of a million dollars and check this out, he only sold half his land!! So of course his darling daughter gets a house and some 50 odd tolas (don't ask me for conversions, the mind boggles simply at the thought of calmly paying cash for all this stuff) of gold, her older sister already owns three houses so she gets some 100 odd tolas of Gold.
Ok...and that's not all, apparently her brother has been dealing in gold bullions and has had some stacked up already so his sisters need not look far to buy their mighty tolas of gold. And then she says, I kept meaning to ask you if you wanted to buy gold from my brother but I feared that "Bhaiya" meaning DH, would wonder what these people are upto approaching me to buy gold....well I don't know what he would think about them but he would definitely be concerned for me if I suddenly started talking about buying gold bars and biscuits! When our house was burgled last year my first thought was for my "antique looking" Nataraj statue, thoughts of my gold only came much later but on the other hand my dear, I do have a lot of dreams and plans that require a lot of cold hard cash. So may be you could convince your "papa" to start a interest free, take as long as you want to pay back loan business!!! I would definitely sign up for that!!
All this while, she was calmly doing my dishes and was about start on my clothes....yeeks, the clothes I wear these days, especially my home-wear Ts are old, worn out, shabbily out of shape with a hole or two...simply because they are the most comfy clothes I can find to wear in this atrocious weather...hmmm, should I explain that to her? I mean, she might be thinking, forget buying gold, this woman seems to be unable to buy clothes even...Good God! What a sobering, saddening thought!
On a serious note, this is actually a common phenomena here these days...rural farmers and landowners are becoming millionaires overnight due to the urban sprawl hiking up land prices in the surrounding areas. The developers of course make obscene amounts of money so in comparison what these people receive is probably a pittance and the implications of this kind of progress...better left un-thought! But then again, who said progress and development is clean, cool and linear...it is a messy messy process and that's where we stand now as a country and a people...one more thing to ponder over if you wish to move back. Do you have the patience to live in a messily progressing country? Or are you too comfortable in an already developed environment? A maid with a millionaire father is a non-issue compared to everything else that you have to get used to when you move back.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
My maid came in requesting that I allow her to change her timings from morning to evening for a few days as she is busy scouting for a house that her father would buy for her. Ok, sounds reasonable...and then she goes on to say, he sold some land for a few million rupees...in fact just a little short of a million dollars and check this out, he only sold half his land!! So of course his darling daughter gets a house and some 50 odd tolas (don't ask me for conversions, the mind boggles simply at the thought of calmly paying cash for all this stuff) of gold, her older sister already owns three houses so she gets some 100 odd tolas of Gold.
Ok...and that's not all, apparently her brother has been dealing in gold bullions and has had some stacked up already so his sisters need not look far to buy their mighty tolas of gold. And then she says, I kept meaning to ask you if you wanted to buy gold from my brother but I feared that "Bhaiya" meaning DH, would wonder what these people are upto approaching me to buy gold....well I don't know what he would think about them but he would definitely be concerned for me if I suddenly started talking about buying gold bars and biscuits! When our house was burgled last year my first thought was for my "antique looking" Nataraj statue, thoughts of my gold only came much later but on the other hand my dear, I do have a lot of dreams and plans that require a lot of cold hard cash. So may be you could convince your "papa" to start a interest free, take as long as you want to pay back loan business!!! I would definitely sign up for that!!
All this while, she was calmly doing my dishes and was about start on my clothes....yeeks, the clothes I wear these days, especially my home-wear Ts are old, worn out, shabbily out of shape with a hole or two...simply because they are the most comfy clothes I can find to wear in this atrocious weather...hmmm, should I explain that to her? I mean, she might be thinking, forget buying gold, this woman seems to be unable to buy clothes even...Good God! What a sobering, saddening thought!
On a serious note, this is actually a common phenomena here these days...rural farmers and landowners are becoming millionaires overnight due to the urban sprawl hiking up land prices in the surrounding areas. The developers of course make obscene amounts of money so in comparison what these people receive is probably a pittance and the implications of this kind of progress...better left un-thought! But then again, who said progress and development is clean, cool and linear...it is a messy messy process and that's where we stand now as a country and a people...one more thing to ponder over if you wish to move back. Do you have the patience to live in a messily progressing country? Or are you too comfortable in an already developed environment? A maid with a millionaire father is a non-issue compared to everything else that you have to get used to when you move back.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
I'd say my patience for messy progression is growing little by little and I definitely identify about the clothes bit. My mother in law keeps trying to get me to alter my shirts because everything I wear during summer is 2 sizes too big. I can't take the tightly fitted short sleeve kurtas in this heat. And if it has a couple of holes, all the better for air circulation I figure.
ReplyDeleteYes! I've actually forgotten what it feels like to dress up...can't seem to tolerate anything on my skin except for the softest, thinnest, loosest stuff I can find...even face cream feels too much no matter how light it is or how thinly it is applied...when I think back to how much I loved dressing up in Cleveland...I feel sort of wistful!!Feels like that was another person!
ReplyDeleteLoved the blog! Had a good laugh reading about the maid and her "mighty tolas":D (btw, you do have your Nataraj statue, dont you??!)
ReplyDelete-Suchi.
Yes yes!! Thankfully the stupid thieves left the statue alone...they only carried what they could stuff into their pockets.
ReplyDeleteThis is mind-boggling. I kept wondering why she works as a maid with all that wealth floating around the family. But they say that the truly wealthy get that way by working hard and being tight with their money.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you in the comfortable clothing dept. And I can barely put some moisturizer on, much less make-up or the other beauty products most women use. There are times when I should make more effort, but when you've worked at home for 10 years the old standards tend to slip.
Incidentlly, I'm guest blogging today at wordsxo on this very topic! Called "Are You a Comfy Writer?"
http://www.wordsxo.com/2011/06/are-you-comfy-writer.html
Yes! The standards do slip alright. When I used to work back in Cleveland, my hubby would be continually startled with my credit card bills and would absolutely never encourage me to shop.....
ReplyDeleteHere he doesn't merely encourage but actually tells me to go out and shop...so you can imagine what a change this staying at home has brought about...although at times I feel wistful for the old dressing up days, for the most part this feels like the new normal and feels like it is actually a relief to not bother keep up with the whole dressing up rules!