Our cook, Yashoda, learned yesterday that one of her other part-time employers (also the one with whom she resides) was moving permanently back to Finland. Today. Mercifully, he is allowing her until the end of the month to find a new place of residence. Our servant's quarters are a potential new residence.
The quarters (as I'll refer to it going forward) for our apartment has its own separate entrance, consists of a room that is probably 8 foot by 12 foot, has a small bathroom with a primitive toilet (the same style we used while trekking in Nepal), a ceiling fan, and an entrance onto a small covered balcony. From the balcony, there is also an entrance into our kitchen. Based on this setup, we can actually lock our kitchen door such that she would only have access to her quarters, the small balcony, and the kitchen.
This entire situation opens up a number of questions into the culture and economics of domestic help, some of which have easier answers than others:
- Do we directly charge her rent?
- Do we reduce her salary to account for providing a living space?
- Do we add to her tasks (i.e., all grocery shopping, ironing, etc.) to "pay" for rent?
- Is it just assumed that it will be free?
- If we extend the number of days or meals she cooks (currently, she cooks a double batch of three meals per week), do we adjust the relative amount paid per meal? (i.e., if she's currently paid "X" and we double the amount of time she works, does that mean she now gets paid "2X" or is there some scale we take advantage of?)
- Where does she bathe? (Might seem odd and not really our concern, but there's no traditional washing facility in the quarters.)
- Is she relegated to the quarters at all times when she's not working?
- Do we lock our internal kitchen door each night?
- Is it assumed that the guys who clean the apartment and use the quarters as the storage area for their cleaning supplies continue to do so?
- What additional "rules" do we set around access or activities?
Delhi Time
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