This very well written piece brings up a subject that matters to most middle-class Indians - the servants who are the ubiquitous, if often un-acknowledged parts of our lives: http://www.ndtv.com/article/blogs/a-hole-in-the-heart-of-my-family-641504 It reminded me of a piece I wrote some years back on how LGBT people deal with their servants. Of course, I'm not assuming all Indians employ servants - the piece specifically mentions some gay men who don't. But I sometimes feel that one of the definitions of being middle-class in India is if you can at least employ someone to come clean the house or make rotis, so servants and what they might make of our sexualities is one issue that does come up - and sometimes, rather surprisingly, can become an important issue.
Here's the piece. Have people on these lists had interesting experiences where their servants and their sexualities intersected? Queer I – Coming Out to ServantsAlly Gator,Chennai, 22/3/2011 In Indianfamilies coming out as gay or lesbian is never like the pole vault, a singlejump out of the closet. It’s more a hurdle race: first siblings, then parents,aunts and uncles, the older generation, distant relatives asking marriagequestions, and then the final hurdle – the servants! It is startling howotherwise supportive parents can suddenly turn antsy when their kids come tostay with gay or lesbian partners, and don’t want them to share rooms “becausewhat would the servants think?!” To be fair,many gay men also have this problem, as a friend of mine discovered. He onlydates much older men, a genuine attraction, but also one with practicalbenefits since such older men usually tend to stay on their own, so it’s not aproblem finding a place to have sex. Except that these men sometimes haveanother hang-up – they require my friend to sneak in home, or to get up earlyand leave because, again, they have long time servants “and what would theythink if they found you here?” Since theopinions of servants otherwise rarely seem to count for much, this unexpectedconcern might indicate a deeper discomfort, perhaps heightened by classbarriers. People might be ready to deal with judgments from peers, but not fromthose they don’t put on the same level. Whatever the reason, this is oneproblem that gays and lesbians in the West rarely face. Even when families haveservants there, they are rarely of the long-term, live-in kind here, whereservants become like family – but not quite. And that gap is where theawkwardness lies. The stockimage for this is Kantaben, the elderly maid of Saif Ali Khan’s character in Kal Ho Na Ho, who reacted with suchshock to what she thought was his gay relationship with Shahrukh Khan’scharacter that she’s become a by-word for conservative Indians who can’t handlehomosexuality. R.Raj Rao, in a poem called ‘Opinion’, which Riyad Wadia madeinto one of the short films in his pioneering BomGAY, wrote of “Shantabai/ who comes once a day/ to wash yourundies...she thinks/ a man without wife and kids/ is cremated by the BombayMunicipal/ Corporation/ upon death... You wonder whether she’s making a pass.” Thisunderlines the uncomfortable nature of the employer-servant relationship withboth sides needing each other, but also resentful of this need. The employerfears being taken advantage of, especially since servants have access to theirpersonal domain. What if the maid, while cleaning, finds the porn stash at theback of my cupboard? What if she sees me in bed with my boyfriend, and tellsthe neighbours or, worse, blackmails me? I know several gay men who refuse toemploy servants, preferring the tedium of doing all the household choresthemselves, rather than risk giving an outsider such access. But what areservants likely to feel? The chances are that most are more concerned with youbeing a generous and easy employer, rather than who you sleep with. And heregays and lesbians do have the chance to form a different sort of relationship.Since most don’t have children they have that extra disposable income withwhich to pay better (and also, without families, they need less work). One ofmy gay friends has decided to invest in the servants that he knows he will dependon more and more as he grows older – sponsoring the education of the childrenof his driver, helping his maid buy a house and so on. Another groupof lesbian friends has a common maid who has over time become a key support forthem all. She asks about their girlfriends, cooks good food to comfort themwhen they break-up and keeps going to their different houses as they change,and now they in turn have helped her buy her own house. She may never deliver aspeech in support of their lives as lesbians, but has done as much simply byhelping them lead such lives. I have no idea what my own bai thinks of my life(she likes my boyfriend since he speaks Marathi to her), but her constant,quiet cleaning of my flat hugely helps me with living it. And when actuallyasked their opinions, servants can surprise us. Harish Iyer, a gay activist,tells me that when his bai asked him “tumhara shaadi kab hai harish bhau?” andhe replied, “jab ladka milega tab”, she simply nodded and said “achaa, meregaon mein bhi ek hai aisaa... Wohchakkka nahi tha magar ladka se pyaar kiya.” When he did finally find a longterm partner, one of the first people he called was the old lady who had helpedhis family when he was growing up. Years back, she had offered to help him finda boyfriend, and now she was happy he had, and told him: “mast hai...shaadimein bulaane ka!”
