The Service Industry

More on Ganesh later this week.

For now:

I am at war with my maid.

The service industry in Bombay is huge, because labor is cheap. There are just so many people here. There are so many people that there are people who do everything. There are tea boys (tea wallahs): guys who brew tea on the street or in a stall. You can stand on the street and drink a glass, or have someone bring the tea up to your office is a little plastic cup. You can buy fresh juice, or have someone make you a vegetable sandwich or a snack on the street. Snacks include roasted corn, roasted nuts, or pani puri/bhel puri/sev puri, variations on a chex mix sort of thing they sell here that you eat with crackers (puri). I saw a group of guys hanging out around a banana wallah the other day, looking like a bunch of people hanging out at a bar. They were all clumped around the table talking, but instead of drinks in their hands they all had bananas, and they were on a street corner, not in a bar.

Guys walk the neighborhood streets with carts of vegetables, so you can just walk out your front door and get potatoes and onions. There are lots of little stands set up all over the place where people sell vegetables. Produce comes into the city by train first thing, at dawn. The veg sellers buy up the produce at the station and then fan out over the city.

I think the tifflin wallahs have come up before. (By the way, I think a good translation of tifflin is tupperware.)You can live out in the suburbs and have someone deliver a lunch made by your wife or your mom to your office.

There are lots of tailors here. Sometimes it is cheaper just to buy the fabric and have someone stitch you a shirt than it is to buy off the rack.

There are guys on the street who will shave you, fix your shoes, remove your corns. You can get a tattoo on the sidewalk (I’ve only seen that once).

You can buy any cheap plastic thing imaginable. Women come onto the trains with trays and boxes of clips, bracelets, earrings, stickers, fake tattoos, and cell phone holders. There are stalls full of cheap clothing and shoes, hundreds and hundreds of them, in my neighborhood and downtown.

There are thousands of guys in this city who are paid to be doormen, who stand in doorways during business hours opening doors and looking official. There are thousands of guys in this city who are paid to be watchmen, and who just hang out at building sites all night. There is a guy who is paid to hang out at the front gate of the building I live in. There is a guy who is paid to sit in a chair in front of the building I work in. (I have no idea what his function is. I thought doorman, but he doesn’t open doors or help with the elevator, and I have never once seen him ask anyone why they are entering the building. His function is a mystery to me, but he must get paid to do something, because he keeps showing up for work.)

There are thousands of men in this city who are paid to be drivers. Their job is to drive a person wherever they need to go, sit with the car and wait for that person, and then drive that person home. So the driver may just end up sitting in a car for 6-7 hours, waiting. And that is his day. I feel like that would drive me mad.

There are lots of beauty salons, where you can go get any number of things done to yourself.

I have seen groups of guys sitting around aimlessly breaking rocks at building sites. Groups of guys digging a hole, groups of guys mucking about in a hole, groups of guys filling in a hole. Groups of guys messing with the medians of roads, pulling up dividers and leaving them in the way of traffic. Some one must be paying them to do these projects. I don’t think they are being paid well though, because who would pay 15 guys to watch one guy use a shovel? Ah, labor is cheap.

Everyone can afford a delivery boy, so everyone delivers. The laundromat, the grocery store, every restaurant.

I have been uncomfortable in the department stores I have gone into because bands of clerks rove the sales floor trying to help you decide what to get. You can’t just browse. Someone has to help you look through the stuff. The salesmen just hover. (Until I actually have a question about something, then they are nowhere to be found.) One guy kept aggressively trying on saris at me, even though I didn’t want any. I fled one store in frustration because I couldn’t just poke around; I attracted too much attention. If I pulled something out to look at it and tried to put it back, I had to explain why I didn’t want it to someone. And then I would have to endure several other suggestions, and several appraisals of what size I might be. Ok, no. I don’t even want who love me doing that. (Apparently my “perfect size” is large. Thanks.)

I have gone into cafes with 8 tables and 7 waiters. You can get a rik or a taxi to take you around anywhere for pennies, or, at least, quarters.

The office I work in has cleaning ladies who come in a few times a day and an office boy, a guy to make copies, run errands, and stay late to close up the office.

And everyone has a maid here. Even the maids have maids, I think. No one washes there own dishes, or cleans their own toilet.

So how did I get a maid?

A few weeks after I got here my neighbor asked if I wanted a maid. As it happened, I had been dwelling on how gross my floor was and I was considering going out and buying a broom and finally sweeping it. I had also been thinking about how much I hate washing a load of clothes in the sink after working all day. So I thought, yeah, I would like a maid. But then I though that I might feel a little weird having someone do all that stuff for me. Then I thought, well, when in Rome. Then I thought, still, someone going through my stuff. Then I thought, what the hell.

She comes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I think that she is, like me, somewhat indifferent to sweeping. Still, she does a better job than I would, so that’s ok. She cleans the clothes, which I love, and makes the bed, which is always a surprise. It is always a surprise because I never know what my bed is going to look like. Sometimes the top sheet is spread out and tucked in, sometimes it is loose. Sometimes it is folded up at the foot of the bed, sometimes folded up at the head. Sometimes it has been washed and hung up to dry. I guess it just depends on her mood.