Domestic, help!

Sun, May 4 12:35 AM

Prema, my maid, has gone on a sabbatical for 10 long days, and I've been brought down on my knees; every day I crawl around the house, mopping the floor. But before that, I pick up a jhaaru (from its resting place behind the fridge) and swing it around wildly, hoping that particles of dust get hooked to its swathes.

I'd asked Prema for a temp, but she said, "Didi, the way you live, I wouldn't let anyone else into your place." Evidently, my cupboard doors are open half the time (she has to shut them), and whatever valuables I possess (very little, I must hasten to add here) are usually strewn all over the place.

"Really?" I asked, stunned. "I'm that careless?" "You are," Prema smiled.

"But I'm sure you're going to be okay, I'll only be gone for a week and a half." It's not even been a week since she's taken off.

I'm a wreck. By the time I come back from work, my flat looks dusty and dirty, my morning jhaaru-pocha notwithstanding.

"It's okay baba, it's not that the area where you live in is more polluted than the rest of the city, it's just that you don't know how to do jhaaru-pocha properly," explained one of girlfriends, who recently cancelled a long-awaited lunch meeting with me because one of her four 'helps' had taken a day off. Anyhow, the whole of last week, I lived in social dread.

I didn't want any of my friends to suggest he/she drops by. When someone did, I had to play spoiler.

"Not for the next 10 days," I said. "I don't have a maid.

" Tiger muscled his way in one evening. "I've packed some Chinese food - thought I'd share it with you.

" My favourite, I noticed. Chicken in black bean sauce.

"Well, okay," I relented, "but let's eat out of the containers - I don't want my plates dirtied. Also, go easy on the water, will you?" Prema gets me bottles of water from my landlord's Aquaguard-fitted kitchen.

With her gone, I am rationing my consumption (it's impossible for me to carry more than two bottles at a time). In this weather, the worst thing one can do is refuse a parched soul water.

I'd been reduced to that. Tiger swore he would never drop by again (but at least I got to have the chicken in black bean sauce).

I have a cousin who lives in Singapore - single in the city. His Filipino maid drives up in her Toyota Corolla once every week to organise his pad.

The rest of the week he manages just fine. A friend of my mine who lived in New York for a few years - single in the city - says that, somehow, in the First World, you get used to not having help.

"I was the complete man there," he says proudly, even now. "I'd do everything on my own: cook my own meals, do the dishes, wash my clothes, hoover the house etc etc.

" But now that he's back in New Delhi ("How I HATE this city," he wails every now and then, followed by, "Ahhh, to be back in New York". Sigh.

Sigh. Sigh), he goes into a blue funk each time his maid takes off (which is quite often).

I've been calling him up a lot these days - though I dare not invite him over - to discuss our common household problems. It's the way we are brought up in India that makes us such suckers for a support system, we both agreed.

Our mothers spoil us too, he added, by doing most of the work. I tried to think back.

Yes, I remember how my mother used to rail ever so often about her being the "maidservant in the household". These days, it's politically incorrect to even utter 'maid servant'.

I'll just go with a very plaintive cry for 'help'.

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