That Indian Head Bobble Thing

Sanju and I arrived back at her place at about 2:30am. Her roommate was out for the night, and Sanju had to get up at 5:00 to drive a Nepalese orphan to a train station. Lord knows how a Nepalese kid found his way to Bangalore, but the point is that when the maid came at 6:00, I was tasked with letting her in. You can imagine the look on the face of this maid when, instead of Sanju opening the door, it’s some White guy who speaks no Kanada. She at one point asked me some question, I think relating to the fan, but when I responded in English, all I got was the head bobble.

This maid lives in a shack next to the apartment complex, and by appearances, does pretty much everyone’s cooking and cleaning daily. Here, she sweeps and hand-mops, does laundry, and cooks basic Indian food. In the states, the idea of a cleaning lady has become a little more acceptable as of late, I guess, although I still think it’s pretty ridiculous. Personal chefs are more or less unheard of. But here all of this stuff is ubiquitous.

The result, though, is that there’s healthy, home-cooked food around here. I pulled that off, but it was never complicated food. Very rarely would I have anything baked lying around, and my pasta never had interesting pesto sauce in it. If I threw in some garlic powder, that was getting fancy. I do wonder how much we might benefit if cooking became a specialty like any other job. Right now we’re all culinary Marxists, refusing to eat alienated food except occasionally at restaurants. Maybe the Indians have this figured out–food is too important to do poorly, and few people have the time and talent to do it well. Let those few be the only ones doing it. Of course, India is helped on this front by the throngs of the impoverished, without whom this wouldn’t work. Maybe America just needs more dirt poor chefs.