Maid in India
HOME MAKERS in major Indian cities — and especially in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, — are not very happy with politicians just now. Not because of the cost of living or the spiralling price of onions but because the aforementioned have made their life rather challenging just now. How? Because the politicos have discovered that housemaids and domestic help have other potential in addition to the fact that they clean beautifully.
With the country going to the polls over the month of April, political parties are in the midst of a heated campaign with rallies, and neighbourhood community meetings the order of the day. And with each party wanting to stage a show of strength, politicians have dis- covered that they can rent the large population of domestic help to be part of their crowd of supporters at rallies.
For cash-rich political parties, “rent- a crowd- or rent –the-maids’ is the easiest and cheapest way to ensure their rallies are well-attended. A maid can be hired for a sum of Rs300-Rs500 for a sixhour shift where they hold the party’s flag and sing the praise of whichever politician they are working for on a particular day.
For them it is a quick buck in a situation where they have to work for as little as Rs3000/month for hard physical labour. We are talking about cooking, cleaning, dusting and washing clothes, among other things. Wily politicians have been quick to spot the opportunity and have landed in the hutment colonies where the domestic maids live. These days, entire hutment colonies are devoid of women because they are out campaigning!
The irony here is that the lot of them are working for political parties who have failed to bring about a long-pending legislation which will give them minimum wages, better working conditions, health and retirement benefits, among other things.
CRO(DUN)IT?
HE IS labelled the Willy Wonka of NYC but last week star French pastry chef Dominique Ansel was brought down to his knees, not by a formidable opponent in the dessert business but by a mere mouse.
Stuff happens and we have to deal with it but we are not sure how long it will take for the chef to get over the shock of having a You Tube video showing a mouse scam- pering around at his iconic Dominique Ansel Bakery in Manhattan. Barely had he gotten his wits around that when the US Health Department moved in to bring the shutters down on the bakery, ordering the team to take action about a “severe mouse infestation”.
That is not good at all, especially for a food outlet and if it happens to a bakery where fans wait patiently for hours for a taste of his delectable treats, then it is the worst possible news. Over the last two years the chef has been the toast of every foodie, food critic and food publication, thanks to the genius of the Cronut — a delish hybrid of the everyday donut with a French croissant. Ever since Ansel developed the Cronut, it has amassed millions of followers in various parts of the world, plus there have been ‘me too’ imitations of the Cronut too.
Last heard, the chef whose bakery was number 1 on Zagat’s rat- ings of top bakeries in 2013, was trying to clear the air, insisting that the bakery had gone in for a 7-hour deep clean and that they had not found any pest at all.
But customers who viewed the video on You Tube might not be convinced and we are wondering if Ansel, who is on the list of ‘Ten top pastry chefs to know’ has any idea how to deal with this storm in his kitchen.
POETIC JUSTICE
CONVICTS AND undertrials in Maharashtra have given up crime for a more noble pursuit: literature. Kavyabahar, a book of 128 poems written by convicts and under trials at various jails in the state was launched last week with great fanfare.
Written in Hindi, Marathi and English, the poems are about love, relationships, social issues and emotions and give a peek into the state of mind of the people who spend their life behind bars. This is not their first brush with literature. A few months ago prisoners in a few jails in the state became beneficiaries of a unique mobile library , ‘Granth Tumchya Dari’( a book at your door step), floated by the Kusumagraj Pratishthan, floated by the trustees of one of the state’s most renowned poets, V.V. Shirwadkar. The mobile library works by collecting lots of 100 books in a trunk and entrusting it to groups of book lovers in a locality, so that they get easy access to quality literature.
Prisoners in Nashik, Thane and Yerwada prisons of Maharashtra have been getting their fill of books, thanks to this library. We suspect all that reading and time spent in introspecting has catalysed the poems in the book.
More power to them, we say. Many say that a humane approach is critical in the rehabilitation of criminals.