
I upped it, not by much, INR400.00 per month (though this was a third as much again the amount I had been told to pay). Now, not realising how much interest there was in working for the only white girl in the area and not realising how much these girls talk, Flopsy, as I called her, immediately went rushing back to her place of abode and bragged about this raise to all her maid friends, all of whom worked for the Indian families in my colony, and all of whom then went round to their employees and demanded pay rises. Needless to say, when I got home from work, the ladies of the colony, who were already determined I was a lady of ‘questionable morals’ simply by the justification that I was white, were waiting for me in what can only be described as a lynch mob. Not the best way to ingratiate myself into the local community…
A few weeks later, I found myself in yet another unique situation in having to referee a fight between 2 sparring maids. Or as I prefer to call it, Flip-flops At 50 Paces! You see again, firangi naivety led me to think that when my maid, Flopsy, told me she was going back to her village for 10 days, I actually thought that this meant, 10 days, silly me! Being British and having that ‘getting on with it attitude’ I figured I could cope without a maid for this length of time, the clothes washing and ironing could be outsourced but I soon realised how spoiled I had become, how quickly the dust built up (it would take 6 months in the UK to accumulate the equivalent of 2 days of Delhi dust), how I was no longer used to preparing my own breakfast and how negotiating for vegetables even in Hindi still left the white-faced woman paying triple for her groceries. As 10 days stretched into 2 weeks, I decided to follow the advice of my landlady and find a new maid and soon found Kalpana, a whiz, who made me realise just how little Flopsy had actually done, or how much I had let her get away with. Kalpana wasn’t as reliable as Flopsy and only managed to turn up a certain number of days a week but the quality of her work was far superior and so this was a compromise that I was happy with and for the next 4 weeks, things progressed harmoniously, until Flopsy returned.

Anyway, having then calmed them both down and realising that something needed to be done, I was faced with the awful dilemma of struggling to make a decision as to who to keep in my employ. Flopsy to be fair was rubbish, spent more time hiding clothes she didn’t want to iron, flicking through magazines and ‘borrowing’ my nail varnish than actually working but, she did make me laugh. On the other hand, Kalpana, was excellent, slightly less reliable but rather dull. Anyway, I decided that for what I was paying them each per month I would keep both on, only it transpired that they couldn’t actually be in the same room as each other without scratching and fighting and in the end Flopsy stormed out and was never seen again!
Kalpana turned out to be a challenge of another type, but that is for another post. See: About Kalpana. https://memsahibinindia.com/2015/06/15/about-kalpana/