International Mumbai: Justice comes in all shapes and sizes

Note: Please read www.hannahdobie.blogspot.com for more on my 2012-2013 experience in Guwahati, India.

I often wonder how many people are judging me negatively for first living a rather impoverished lifestyle in Guwahati when I was here before, and now living something decidedly more upscale in Mumbai. I know this much—I certainly judge myself.

These days I go to country clubs and swim. I go shopping in lavish malls with friends I have made. (I hate shopping.) Whenever I want to, I sit in a Starbucks or a Pinkberry and throw down a latte or a frozen yogurt. The family I am staying with has three maids and one driver who are always ready to do anything I ask them. I can get anything in Mumbai that I can get in the States, including peanut butter. In Guwahati, which was one step above camping out, they didn't know what peanut butter was. After this summer, I believe I will have seen two completely different sides of India.

I love to immerse myself in a culture, and I have done my best here, but I really cannot put my finger on what the culture is here. I like to live that simple life and I like to really challenge myself by living in a completely different environment. But here everything is ultra-commercialized—even Indian culture is commercialized through a kind of Western lens. In Guwahati, I would wear Kurtas and other Indian attire because it was appropriate. Here, I have never felt so much pressure to be “stylish” in my life, and I am in a sorority at Wake Forest University :). In Guwahati, I ate Indian food a lot. Here, people are cooking me western food. Nobody is seriously practicing religion, whereas in Guwahati there was an encounter with a god breaking out on every block.

There are certain similarities. Indian time still exists; even in Mumbai everything always starts late. But still, here are the images I carry around of this place: it is three girls carrying huge brand-name shopping bags as they leave a high-priced mall and walk past a little boy begging on the street. Another image: I walk into the kitchen at 11 P.M. to get some water and see that the maids are sleeping on the kitchen floor. Or maybe it’s walking down to the parking garage in Maker Maxity, the office complex where I work, curious to see what it looks like, and finding hundreds of drivers waiting and waiting in the extreme heat for the next time their boss, who works in an air conditioned building and gets paid millions of dollars, calls.

We have three maids where I live and I have gotten to know them well. They come from villages on the other side of India. They are Christian, and had some education in Christian schools in their villages. Through various Christian agencies, they (and thousands of others) have been brought to big cities like Mumbai to work for the wealthy. They get one month of paid leave a year. Otherwise they cook, clean, wash clothes, and do everything possible. And let me tell you, they are incredible at what they do.

Of course, not being used to this, I have had a difficult time learning how to let them do something, ANYTHING, for me. I go out of my way to be kind to them—I let them come in my room and watch their favorite TV show, hoping no one in my host family finds out. I often get up after dinner from the table and start taking my plate to the kitchen, but am reminded that's for the servants to do. "Why do you think we pay them?" my host family asks me. The maids make me a lunch every day, which is Indian food, and one day I wanted instead to make my own peanut butter and banana sandwich. Which I did. But that was not supposed to happen. Which was explained to me. The next day, the kind servants packed me a lunch as usual. In it was a peanut butter and banana sandwich. How I do love them.

Every day I make my bed. And every day the maids undo it and remake it after I have left for work. One day I hand-washed some of my shirts, and then got yelled at by one of the maids: "Why did you not ask me to do this? Don't do that again!!!" The maids WANT to work. They are proud of they work that they do.

Stories of me doing something wrong with the maids are endless around our house. Usually the maids just laugh at me, but they and the family are also capable of yelling. So I CONSTANTLY try to convince myself the following—this is a different side of Indian culture. And I should immerse myself in it, right?

Then again, the whole scene gives me so much anxiety. I am always feeling bad every time I ask them to do something. Let’s just hope letting them watch TV in my room stays a secret. I know I'm not going to change the world with our little television get-togethers. But I guess every revolution starts differently.

Sending a peanut butter and banana sandwich your way,

Hannah Dobie