The idea of employing secondary help to assist us through our daily chores is an age old habit. The house functions on certain number of wheels and the maid is always one of the most integral ones. In today’s day and age our sustenance is dependent on them to such a great deal, that the day the maid calling and saying “Didi, main aaj nai aa rai” is our greatest nightmare coming true. We shower our maids with love, gifts and attention to make sure that they stay our life long buddies and stay right by us!

But has this relationship always been the same? With our mothers and grandmothers? I distinctly remember my grandmother being extra cautious with the house help and that made sure that the maids quit in 3 months as if they were routine. She’d walk around the house every time the maid was dusting or mopping, or sneak up on her every now and then to see where she was. I swear I think I have even seen her counting the utensils after they’ve left, on multiple occasions. It obviously evolved a little as the generation shifted to the next. With a few working mothers and a few home making mothers, the friendship between them and the maids grew a little. But just a little. The scrutiny, the fear and constant spying still remained. You could still see them walking one step behind the maids asking them to sweep the corner properly or yelling out for them to ask them why the piles in the cupboard were not according to her needs.

You can see the protective nature of the ladies in the above generations popping up every time a new maid comes into the mix. And quite often there would be two maids in the house, one the undercover agent and one the suspected maid. One was the right hand of the lady of the house and the other quite often easily dismissible. But as the times changed and so did our needs our dependence on our maids has changed too, hasn’t it? Back in the day, we’d always have someone at home looking after the maid as she looked after the house. I believe it was common for our mothers to tell us when we were younger “Beta maid ayegi, ghar pe hi rehna”. Now as we shifted towards nuclear families, our need for them grew even more and it even became okay for quite a few of the families to give a spare key to their trusted maids. Maid agencies popped up everywhere trying to pair us up with the maids of our dreams and the extent of our faith in them grew ten folds.

And now the maid is someone we just can’t do without! While we work away in the office we have a sense of calmness in our minds that the maid is doing the work back at home, and the mess created in the party last night would be cleared up once we reach. We also know that when we leave our kid with them they’d take care of them like their own, not that they wouldn’t in the earlier generations, but as we began leaving our homes more and more we pulled them into our lives harder thus discarding the need to go sneak up on them as they fold our clothes and keep it in the cupboard. But even then when our mothers pop up to see our houses or pay us a visit, we can see the same sense of scrutiny and protectiveness pop right up as they do their daily chores. But well, a mother will always be a mother!

So what happens when ROHINI’S (Chhavi Mittal ) mother MRS. CHOPRA (Deepika Amin ) and BABY (Shubhangi Litoria) almost have a face off?  Can you imagine what the scenario must be like? To find out, watch the next episode SITMaid in Heaven S2 E10

SIT Presents  Mother Vs Baby: Game On!

Written by
Fiza Anand