The cleaning lady

She rings the doorbell and then is patiently sitting on the steps in front of our door till I come out wrapped-in-a-rush in something resembling a piece of clothes and open the door for her. She leaves her chapels on the ground floor and comes barefoot. She is very short and shrunk; with dried up hands, burnt-sugar-color skin and the golden rings in her pierced nose and ears. She wears a saree put on in a “I am too old and I do not care” way with the always non-matching blouse, once very white but now doubting that fact with its very being. With a characteristic gesture from behind of her head now and then she adjusts the palu that covers her entangled hair, still impressively dark yet half-half mixed with gray strands.

She produces the most innocent smile in the world looking up at me. She replies to my namaste and I rush back to the shower. I try to keep our interaction to minimum so not to piss my day from the early morning. Some months back when six of us staying in the flat realized we were too ambitious about keeping our floors reasonably tidy DIY-style and we decided to get a cleaning lady I thought I could work on her.

From the experience with the cleaning lady at Lajpat Nagar I knew that the price for having your floors clean might come out too high. That lady at Lajpat had too much of an agenda: she came mostly in the morning when everyone was asleep so she could enjoy the increased degrees of freedom when getting around the house. She could come any time as she pleased and she perfectly knew that if she came just before the last of us was about to leave for work – she had to strike with her brush a few times, get to hear her - “Bus, bus didi, I am leaving!” – and feel done for the day. And I really did not know what to appreciate more – the days when I would get waken up by the horribly trembling dishes and the sounds of pouring water at the kitchen or the days when I would come home and find all my suitcase-household exactly the way I left it and not re-arranged to her taste. Later on when I moved out I got to hear about the instances the of her chatting with a friend over a cup of coffee at our living room as discovered by Markus one fine morning; being suspected in depriving Anya from some extra thousands rupees; throwing away Thomas’ airplane ticket; watching Roel sweetly wheezing in his sleep; wearing Stephanie’s flip-flops while cleaning every day and who knows what after all. And the cleaning lady is still there, by the way, because… how to explain that… If you ask people living here they might say she has not done anything awfully major …You know when u miss some bucks and you are not sure where you lost them how much empathy can you expect from your flat mates are how much are they are going to be motivated to do something about it? … Settling the issues in-house is not an option either, as the there is a circumstance seriously hampering the communication with the cleaning lady: the fact that she does not speak any English, persistently tries to make herself clear in Hindi and acts as if she has no clue what you mean when you operate with self-evident gestures and signs. And then the bargaining power is on her side, because you have a poor clue on how to get another one that would do a better job and … how to this and that… She knows it all, this sly woman, and therefore she acts as she pleases…..

So, I felt that there might be some potential in working on the new one we got in Malvia Nagar – slowly but surely I will make sure she knows how we want it and she’ll be doing it the right way. I remember the piece of advise by an Indian guy in the begging of my stay, “”Do not treat your cleaning lady nicely, otherwise she would sit on your neck and let her legs down”, as we say in Russia.

The lady seemed way more decent that the one at Lajpat. She came more or less every morning except weekends which we asked her to skip. She looked really humble and did not give any of those chicky looks the young one in Lajpat used to. Karo was practicing Hindi with her and treating her to some fruits now and then.

The only problem I had with the cleaning lady – I wanted her not only to clean but also to make stuff actually clean. This was the major stumbling block in our relations. Following her routine, she would go around the house with a long pile-short handle brush and then she would wipe the floor. However, if you do the floor in the whole apartment without washing the mop a single time then making stuff clean appears at least cumbersome, if possible at all. At least those of us who woke up early knew she came and was working, the rest just wondered later when looking at the floor – has the cleaning lady been here today?

The best stress-free technique in dealing with a cleaning lady is to let her be. Instead, I was watching whatever she was doing. That way I got to know she sweeps whatever got dropped on the floor – business cards, rechargeable batteries, pictures; that she pours out the dirty water she used for washing the mop directly on the dirty dishes carelessly left by us in the sink; that she that and this. I was inexorable with her.

Didi!
She, then sitting on the floor and sweeping, would stop and look up me.
Come, come here! - I would ask her to get back with an inviting gesture.
She would give me a blank look: what do you want from an old woman?
Come, come, didi!
She would come up
See, what is this? - I would point at a bunch of hair mysteriously glued to the marble floor. - What is this? Is it how you clean? Please, clean it again!
I never doubted she would not get a word of what I would say, but I am very convinced she would invariably get the spirit of my speech. So, pouring reproaching words on her were my strategy to show that I care to check her work and there is no easy escape.

At times she was really trying to argue with me
Didi, come and clean the whole room again. The floor is terribly dirty.
A-la-la-la-la-la-la. - She would chatter back.
Come, come.
A-la-la-la-la-la-la. - She would say something again.
Di-di! Co-o-o-o-ome! I would firmly answer and the poor one had no other options by obeying.


I was trying to teach her to clean up the doors and the net on my window - really clean and not to smash the mop against either as they do it here, to wash the mop a few times while she is cleaning, to properly squeeze the mop. Yet all in all, the floors did not get much cleaner. Persistency and commitment of all was a prerequisite to make it work. If you scold the cleaning lady, but someone else would just smile, it is hard to keep her working. So, I got tired of spending some of my precious morning time on her. I just let her be…

Have you seen my big towel? Karo looked concerned with the missing thing.
No, why?
My big white towel with blue stripes? It was drying on the balcony and it is not there any more.
Karo never saw her towel again. But who knows what can happen to a towel and why.

Some months later Ioana spent an hour choosing chapels, bought a very sweet pair, but got to wear them a few times. The chapels with a red flower mysteriously disappeared from the flat.

A few days ago, one fine morning I was getting ready to leave and by chance spotted 4 bananas on the table - no more no less. The cleaning lady came, cleaned and left. Back to the kitchen later I found 3 bananas on the table. I knocked Claudia’s room to ask about the bananas but she was not sure about the quantity. For some reason we moved to the girls’ room and… the place on the floor taken by a pair of Danny’s chapels which I spotted there earlier that morning was empty. She took them!! I Later on I realized that the same fate befell the T-shirt that used to belong to Kasia and then to Ioana and that morning was lying on the stool at the living room. The lady really had an eye on the abandoned stuff and she really seemed to get a clue that people left. I got freaked out by the very thought that one fine day I may not find something I used to have or that I would even never notice that I am missing something. On the way down I stopped by the neighbor’s living downstairs who got us in touch with the cleaning lady.

God morning, mam! Very sorry to bother you so early! I just wonder if our cleaning lady does your flat too?
No? She looked confused.
Well, you know… we are missing a pair of chapels from this morning and they were there before she came.
So, I wonder if you can communicate that to her if you get to see her around
Oh, but she is not that kind. She had been working in the locality for a long period of time. - The mam looked suspicions and was confidently this-and-thating. – Did you have them close to the door? Could the sweeper get in?
No mam, they were in the most remote room and the sweeper never gets in. So, you could tell her, please… - and I left.

I felt my whole day was pissed because of that miserable woman who made me feel insecure in my own house. I shared the story with many that day I guess, so I happily forgot about the incident by the time I got back home. When feeling the keys in the dark I could see a black spot on the floor in front of the door. I opened the door, switched on the light and saw a pair of chapels put on a red plastic bag lying there. Even if we might get back the T-shirt, the towel, the other chapels and whatever else just by claiming it, what can we do now to keep the floor clean and the flat safe?