My friends in US seem to miss only two people in their life for living abroad and both of them start with the letter M -one is Mom and the other is maid.While the Indian women brood over the luxuries enjoyed by those in the west,they on the other shore roll up their sleeve for a fight saying that I 'm unpaid driver unpaid maid servant unpaid this unpaid that while you people just command your maid and have your own time.Most of the statuses would be this "Had a tiring week end ,had to mop, had to wash the dishes , had to do the laundry ". I am one of the housewives enjoying the luxury of having a maid at my command(?)but i wonder if I am the employer many times.
While I walk here and there expecting the arrival of my maid my face finally blossoms like the lotus that responds to the feather touch of the sun when she turns up.Once shown the sophistication of having maids we are unable to keep them at bay.I immediately vanish from the door and appear near sink trying to put the vessels one into another to make it appear as though I had not cooked for days.Clothes to be dried are dragged out from the drier and the bucket appears in the foot of the staircase to be spread under sun.Forgetting the purpose of keeping maids I rearrange things and put them in order, for her to sweep and mop easily.what all difficulties we have to face each day....
- We will not have any guts to command her to grind the masala in the ammi because she herself would have come to work after having done that in her mixer grinder.
- Usually these maids will be short or atleast become short when we ask them to dust high windows or remove cobwebs.They will not be able to lift anything heavy.
- We should appreciate her work now and then for the fear of loosing her service and patchwork should be done after she leaves.
- Over appreciation leads her to over enthusiasm and she may start arranging things by herself and save energy by switching off all the possible switches and there is always a risk of being scolded by our kid in search of his belt or tie on monday morning and our computer will show an improper shutdown while we lovingly open our PC to watch the movie we thought we had downloaded.
- We never mind the laundry soap lathering in the sink.After all her service is more worth it.
- We dare not speak anything personal when the maid is around because our secrets will not be secrets anymore.
- We should be their ATM and give them money anytime when asked and if we hesitate our post as an employer would be gone and that prestigious post goes to our neighbour who invades our house now and then for the want of a maid.
- We walk around the place now and then to ensure that the floor is mopped properly.
- She will never forget to give us tips on how to cook with limited vessels and when to change the broom and about the advantages of a fully automatic washing machine over a semi automatic .
- And one thing that will be hard to digest is that she will increase the salary by herself for every three months and grant leave for herself .
Friends I can hear my maid coming and I'm off to my duty.Get! set !go!... And one minute -now you say- Am I not the employer employed by my employee?!Actually she owes me some money from her salary every month.Grhhhh....
Of recent times I'm suffering from this OCD- carrying cell phone wherever I go to check the SMS notifications from the monster community FACEBOOK.Smiling to myself on seeing the funny statuses makes my children gasp in wonder what happened to their mom.Until the previous year I used to envy my husband for having a friends circle the men who studied from Lkg flocked together always SIGH.I was wondering if I could see atleast one of my friends.One day when Sasi came to my house by miracle she gave me the phone number of Rajini and that was a fishing rod with which I hooked to her but then came FB with the huge net with which I caught almost all my collegemates and also some of my schoolmates and also olivia mam who had started correcting my blogs as she had corrected my creative writing paper in semester and her comments raise up my spirits.
From the day I had listed reading as my favourite hobby I had quit reading to spend a lot of time in exploring the web and from the day I listed aerobics as my activity I had quit it for my typing activity I 'm amazed at the typing speed and I'm crushing my brain to add funny comments and so useful statuses(?!).I am sitting here typing with few extrapounds added to my weight.Aren't the videos posted sema interesting?When I wanted to show some to my kids,I am embarassed when a lady with almost no clothes on her, calls for chat with a sexy pose and my kid turns to me and asks "amma idhellama pakkureenga?"What should I say?and this is the case when we try to use some funny applications. we could see some pair passionately kissing and the kodumai is they ask "are u interested?"If that was banned in India I think we could enjoy facebooking with family.while here I'm trying to be as funny as possible my friend there writes why the whole family behaves very badly to her and I consoled her and commented to take things easy but it took time for me to realise that that was a funny status selected by her from the network .Did I not make fun of myself?
And as for the like buttons,i have clicked "like" to numerous pages like kolam where i try to learn numerous neli kolams but my frontyard will always have that simple lotus or anjupulli kolam.Then how could I finish my chores to sit and practise that skill?My friend is always busy in a recipe page raining the community pages with her comments but whenever she is asked about what she made for lunch she would say"Doesnt this thayirsadham and the spicy pickle make a great combination,Raji?.my hubby loves it".My another friend a dietician and nutritionist will be busy downloading recipes for pizzas and burgers.Another one who gives serious comments on parenting would be scolding her kid for disturbing her while she was typing.Most of my friends fill my news feeds with the farmville requests and I have an innovative idea for the zynga games.If they started a game called childville moms will go crazy over that but still there is a sikkal.Soon the children will want their parents to allow them to play parentville.
This is the place where we can easily damage our image.when I copied and pasted this funny status stating"if hardwork is key to sucess donkeys would have been kings"my friend asked if I was donkey or lion.I enthusisastically ,wanting to sound like kamalhassan in his interview(does anyone easily understand that ), wrote "lion which brays or donkey which roars" and the truth is that I myself didnot understand what I was saying.But before I could post another one, the hypothesis had been transformed into law that stated "Raji is a donkey".:) and there my niece is so innocent that she clicked a like button to a phrase that stated "I like it in the couch"thinking that it was about sleeping.LOL.My another friend was very curious to know about the status in her friend's page that stated "I am proud of my son"and the real thing behind was that the son wanted to make his dad proud by entering his dad's profile.
Now let's come to other matters .What all transformations we have had in this fb!
- People no longer laugh, they giggle,hahahaha...,LOL,grhhhhh....,muah...(thanks ninder)
- We write all a lot of abbreviations like OMG,BTW .........google is planning to introduce a dictionary of abbreviations in the near future.
- The spelling mistakes which we got red lines in our exams rules English now a days -" u r aw sum"
- all my young cousins,nieces and nephews are taking a lot of quizzes now a days .They would run away from me if I asked some GK questions but now they readily take quizzes to find how lucky their name was and what percent they get in love.If they scored 76% they persevere to take it number of times until they get a 200% and I think we would all be happy if that was done in their GAT or MAT.
- While the parents are discussing how to reduce stress during exams in their community ,the youth will be discussing how to prepare a bit and that would have bagged a lot of comments.Even I recommended my niece to have chitti as her boyfriend.Oh.. plz don look at me tht wy(a perfect Facebookian i am!)
Now to serious matters.I am frightened at the stories about FB in kumudham.They ring that there is a chance of getting emotional binding with other people and this is going to put family relations at stake.I have also read in newspapers that high schoolchildren use this as a tool to take revenge on their so called enemies and they use abusive words in public.But here I am entangled in this bond of friendship thoroughly enjoying with sweet friends like you who respond to my comments and also respect my privacy.HAPPY FACEBOOKING.Let us rock FB as ever...
