Of Cooks and Shared Confidences

The situation concerning domestic helps in western countries is probably quite different from the one in India, so let me give you a little background before I go on. Fortunately or unfortunately, the elite urban class in India still has access and the hiring power to engage domestic helps of various categories – cleaners, cooks, drivers being the three prominent ones. Most have one, some hire two while the more affluent have an entire battery of domestic helps, sometimes the latter actually outnumbering the inmates of the house.

The other day (much before the lockdown) when my cook had taken leave without prior notice and I was bemoaning my fate to my close friend who is now settled in Singapore, she laughed. “Daya, at least you have a cook. I have a lady who comes in once a week and demands an exorbitant amount, and does all the mopping and sweeping within that time. She is smartly dressed, drives her own car and zooms off when she’s done”. And what about the cleaning and mopping for the rest of the week, I asked. “Oh, I do that myself,” answered my friend cheerfully during one of our long WhatsApp calls. That’s when I began to look at my absent-without-leave cook with slightly different eyes.

Anyway, that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. We working women share a peculiar love-hate relationship with our domestic helps. We need them and yet despise our heavy dependence since its one of our biggest weaknesses. And they know it. Familiarity breeds contempt is probably never more true than for this particular relationship. You may have had another emotionally draining battle of will with your rebellious teen. Or you could just be plain worried about that strange rash on your arms. Or, you may have just had a really bad argument with your husband and are left an emotional mess when he storms out of the house. As you sit amidst the ruins of a wrecked morning, the doorbell rings and in walks your rather portly cook. She takes one look at your tear-stained face and rushes into solicitous speech, “What happened, Didi?” That display of kindness and lively curiosity – born out of six years of knowing each other – is all it takes for the dam to burst and before you know it, you are pouring your heart out, as your cook listens with empathy, making suitable noises at all the right places. While you speak amidst sniffles, she carries on with her peeling and stirring and cooking, and at the same time listening intently.

Post the cathartic sharing, she briskly sets about making you a hot cup of tea, and then shares similar stories of her own – her idea of making you feel better. You listen, although you start feeling a wee bit sheepish for that impulsive sharing of confidences. But then, she’s been working with you for six years now – she’s almost family – you don’t think it’s such a big deal anyway.

In that respect, and especially when you are forced to become a single working mother if your spouse should get a job in a different city (as mine has), then the dependence only increases. And if your cook is as resourceful as mine is, and can help you source anybody from a gardener to a carpenter and also take care of your child on the days when you are running late from work, she does seem like godsend.

Fast forward a few weeks. You are seething with impatience and frustration as your cook-confidant is way behind her arrival schedule. Even though you had repeatedly reminded her the day before to be on time as you had to leave for a very important meeting in the morning, and she had breezily assured you of her punctuality, she was an hour overdue now. Worse, she wasn’t picking your frantic calls. Finally, a good two hours later, she walks in, and it takes all your willpower to not let loose a tirade. Her ineffectual and hurried apology does little to cool your rage. You end up speaking sharply, ticking her off for her tardiness and receive only a stony silence in response. That’s it, you decide. She’s out. You even imagine the scenario where you are grimly handing over her wages to her in the evening and telling her not to come from the next day.

By the time evening comes, you’ve decided against firing her although things are still cold and the status quo remains unchanged for the next two days. On the third day, flared emotions on both sides have cooled. When she arrives for preparing the evening dinner, conversation is resumed, a bit stilted at first and then with all the gusto of earlier conversations. And you feel a weight has suddenly lifted.

Psychologists may have their own take on this and give it complicated tags, but, for us women sharing one’s deepest concerns and worries with another woman comes naturally and spontaneously. Something that clears up the emotional muck and leaves you feeling light and relaxed. That is why it is not uncommon on Indian trains for two women, who were perfect strangers till they boarded the train, to exchange entire life histories and even intimate health details and how property disputes have torn the family part! The intense sharing of confidences lasts till you reach your respective destinations, knowing you may never ever cross paths again. But they also leave you feeling that you connected with humanity at large.

Back to my cook and her tribe – you love them, hate them, quarrel with them – but you can’t do without them!