Social experiment
About two decades ago, I inadvertently took part in a social experiment.
I went back home to India with my baby son and little daughter to spend 6 months with my parents. K (my mother's current housekeeper) was hired from 8 am to 8 pm every day to help me take care of the children. So whenever I went on social visits, K came along to keep the children entertained and happy while I chatted with my hosts.
Was K, an employee and a poor / lower class person, a visitor in their homes, merely my appendage (like my purse) and hence to be ignored, or a person to be accorded a degree of visitorship through careful calibration of her status? Different households had different answers to this delicate question. Since she was physically present, there had to be a response. "None of the above" was not a choice.
In house A, they welcomed me warmly, offered me a comfortable armchair and I sat down. But I just couldn't relax ..because they didn't ask K to sit. If not an upholstered chair, they could have offered a mora (a woven stool) or at least pointed to a window sill or something, but they didn't. So she just stood. After a while she took the children out to the veranda. When tea time came, they were more than generous with plates full of a variety of sweets and savories. This time they didn't leave K out. She too got a plate full of goodies to eat; except, her plate was a bit smaller than mine and had fewer things on it. To give them the benefit of doubt, what if I had taken offence at my helper being treated exactly like me? They found quite a creative way to balance hospitality with acknowledgement of my superior status.
In house B, my host did a most unexpected thing, something I've not experienced in India. She seated me and K side by side and served us the exact same tea and snacks in exactly the same dishes. I was quite taken by her egalitarian approach and mentally tagged house B as my favorite.
In house C, there was a larger party with multiple visitors and their helpers. The visitors had lunch at the dining table while the helpers were served, later, in a separate room on mats laid on the floor (also a common way to serve honored visitors). I don't know exactly what food the helpers were served but even if their food was scaled down from ours, there were certainly generous portions of fritters, vegetables, fish, meat and sweets. The hosts supervised the meal themselves, asked again and again if everyone had had enough and pressed them to take some more.
K loved house C the best. They were so warm, she kept saying. It wasn't the exact egalitarianism of house B that impressed her so much. She was more touched by the bountiful spread and the care and concern shown by the hosts at house C. Not surprising. From my perspective, the difference between K and me is quantitative - I have more, she has less. It's something I think about, not something I feel. She, on the other hand, counting pennies and suffering indignities, experiences it through a thousand little cuts every day with every breath she takes.
I went back home to India with my baby son and little daughter to spend 6 months with my parents. K (my mother's current housekeeper) was hired from 8 am to 8 pm every day to help me take care of the children. So whenever I went on social visits, K came along to keep the children entertained and happy while I chatted with my hosts.
Was K, an employee and a poor / lower class person, a visitor in their homes, merely my appendage (like my purse) and hence to be ignored, or a person to be accorded a degree of visitorship through careful calibration of her status? Different households had different answers to this delicate question. Since she was physically present, there had to be a response. "None of the above" was not a choice.
In house A, they welcomed me warmly, offered me a comfortable armchair and I sat down. But I just couldn't relax ..because they didn't ask K to sit. If not an upholstered chair, they could have offered a mora (a woven stool) or at least pointed to a window sill or something, but they didn't. So she just stood. After a while she took the children out to the veranda. When tea time came, they were more than generous with plates full of a variety of sweets and savories. This time they didn't leave K out. She too got a plate full of goodies to eat; except, her plate was a bit smaller than mine and had fewer things on it. To give them the benefit of doubt, what if I had taken offence at my helper being treated exactly like me? They found quite a creative way to balance hospitality with acknowledgement of my superior status.
In house B, my host did a most unexpected thing, something I've not experienced in India. She seated me and K side by side and served us the exact same tea and snacks in exactly the same dishes. I was quite taken by her egalitarian approach and mentally tagged house B as my favorite.
In house C, there was a larger party with multiple visitors and their helpers. The visitors had lunch at the dining table while the helpers were served, later, in a separate room on mats laid on the floor (also a common way to serve honored visitors). I don't know exactly what food the helpers were served but even if their food was scaled down from ours, there were certainly generous portions of fritters, vegetables, fish, meat and sweets. The hosts supervised the meal themselves, asked again and again if everyone had had enough and pressed them to take some more.
K loved house C the best. They were so warm, she kept saying. It wasn't the exact egalitarianism of house B that impressed her so much. She was more touched by the bountiful spread and the care and concern shown by the hosts at house C. Not surprising. From my perspective, the difference between K and me is quantitative - I have more, she has less. It's something I think about, not something I feel. She, on the other hand, counting pennies and suffering indignities, experiences it through a thousand little cuts every day with every breath she takes.
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