A Day In a “Bai’s” Life

I work as a Bai. I know a few of you may not know what a Bai is. A Bai is a woman servant working in multiple houses a day helping them to finish their household chores. Those who don’t know much of Hindi don’t confuse me with “Bhai” – which means Brother. I think Bai is a common household name in Mumbai- Maharashtrian areas.

So here I am to enlighten you with what goes on in a Bai’s life especially a Bai who works in a house where only Bachelors stay.

I reach this particular house that is a bachelor den every day early in the morning. Those guys are asleep. I don’t know what kind of job they do. But I have never seen them awake except for the person who opens the door for me half-asleep. No, I must say I have seen them awake during my starting days when I used to reach the house at 7.30-8 AM. And also the day they give me the salary. Later I shifted the time to 6.30 AM, when no one is awake and you know what no one even asked me why I am coming early.

I need to ring the bell 4-5 times to get into the house. Worse are those days when there is no current. I need to knock the big grill a number of times. At times I have left without doing the work. And the funny thing is what ever is the case most of the times only the same person comes to open. Let me call him Mr. X.

Once I get the entry, I will see Mr. X going back to his bed and covering himself up in a bed sheet. I know he is not fully asleep, for my sound of washing clothes and cleaning the utensils create quite a noise. I check the quantity of the clothes immersed in the soap water, if it is too much I don’t wash them properly. I don’t rinse the collars. At times I am not supplied with the soap. Then I call out to Mr. X.

“Oh Bhayya, Saboon Hai?” My shrill voice will wake him up.
“Kya?” He will ask, as he is still half-asleep.
“Saboon, Kapade Dhone Ke Liye Saaboon Nahi He”. I reply.

If there is a one, then he will hand it over to me. Other wise he will say in a guiltily voice.

“Bai, Kal Leke Aata Hoon. Aaj Zara Adjust Karle”.

Adjust!! How am I supposed to adjust? I have only a small piece of soap cake and if I use that, my hands are going to get hurt when I rinse them on cloth. So in such cases I don’t wash properly. How can I? You people say. I give a good rinse. And please note all these times the water tap will be on - water flowing onto the clothes in the bucket. I think it will clean the clothes properly. I agree it creates a lot of noise and is wastage of water. But then why don’t these people tell me about that. I wonder whether these people know anything other than sleep. In that wonder I remove all the old clothes from the strings in the balcony and put it on the top of a bag in the bedroom, as I don’t have any other place to keep the dried clothes. I don’t know what is in that bag, but due to the regular keeping of clothes on top of it the bag has gone into a U shape. Since I haven’t yet got any scolding for changing the shape of that bag, I guess it’s a useless bag. Onto the emptied strings I put the ‘washed’ clothes to dry.

Then I put my hands on the utensils. The kitchen is a mess. There will be leftover food on the sides of gas stove. Onions, Potatoes, Eggs or Green Chilies thrown out while the cooking of their favorite dishes. The remains of the cut vegetables, the onion and potato peel, shells and Yolk remains of the eggs eaten by Mr. G, banana peels, the cutting board all will be there spread on that 1.5 x 0.5 square meter of area. Oh God!! How much food these people waste.

The gas burners will have water steamed out of the pressure cooker on them. My job here is to clean the utensils, pick up the waste, and deposit them in the wastebaskets. Cleaning the utensils is a 2-minute job for me as I am expert in that. Then I collect all the clean utensils and dump it into the basket. Oh! I enjoy that sound. “Kling Kling Kling”. I can hear the grumble of Mr. S who is sleeping in the hall. These days I don’t see him. He must have left them.

Next is the real enjoyment. By this time I will be nearing my next timeslot for another house and I have to reach there. So I play hockey. This is what Mr. S says about my “Jadoo”. He is right, I consider the broomstick as a hockey stick only and dribble through the pseudo-turf (aka floor). You know I used to represent my school in the state games in my good old years. Hmmm those where days!! Now I play hockey with broomstick to make the two ends meet.

Cleaning the floor is the most dreaded job there. I have to face many a challenges. The unarranged chairs, newspapers flying around, the fan, the beer and other daroo bottles these people keep after their illustrious parties. At times I have even come across the chicken bones collected in the corner of the room. I don’t understand how these guys live. Huh!! Horrible!!

Amidst all these I continue to play my hockey. I have to, since if I do not do a hockey here I won’t be able to finish of my whole thing by 6.50 AM and reach that wicked old lady’s house by 7.00. She is very strict about the timings and scold if I do not reach at time. These bachelor people are good in those cases they do not scold me that much. All family people are like that. Find some kind of problems with us and scold. I even remember once Mr. X’s mother coming there and tried to modify my hockey into a slow motion. But since it was for 2-3 days I agreed to do it in a slow motion, but then I still had to compromise on my cloth washing capabilities. Otherwise how else can I satisfy all my customers?

I do clean the floor with water two times a week, but I have a great doubt that the floor is getting dirtier due to this. The reason is the cloth that I use for ‘Pocha’. Its is as old as me and has all the dirt in the whole world on it. I tried rinsing and drying it with all the kind of detergents. No use. My request to grant a new cloth has gone vain. Off late Mr. G had granted me a part of his Rose Turkish Towel, which he abandoned after it attained thrice the age of its retirement. That lasted two washes as my rough treatment brought out all the fibers of it only for me to go back to the old cloth.

My Last job is to pick up the waste, put in the basket and keep that outside. During this process I pick the plastic packets filled with left over foods, tea-dusts, egg yolks, etcetera, etcetera and run to the door, bangs the door behind me, put the basket outside and run down the steps. I can sense the irritation of Mr. S - caused by my banging of door.

Still I run… to the next house, and then to the next, then to the next – I live a whole day running. I have to. For there lies my livelihood.