Household Staff

This is my longest-standing draft article from India, so it makes sense that it kick off the catch up series.

During orientation, I asked a fellow new hire (who had lived overseas for awhile) if it was strange to have a stranger in your house all the time. He responded with something along the lines, "Sure, but you get over it really quickly when you don't have to make your bed or fold your own laundry." Household staff are pretty ubiquitous in Chennai, both for expats and for the wealthier locals. Nearly every officer currently employs someone or has in the past.

When we arrived, we hired a driver and an "all-around-er" (nanny/cook/housekeeper). We ended up having to let the driver go a few months later, but our housekeeper has been a wonderful part of our tour. It's going to be a real hit to our quality of life when we have to go back to being responsible adults: cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry... Aside from that, it's a crazy thought that we're in a position to fully employ someone (in many families' cases, multiple people) using solely our disposable income. It's quite the reminder of our comparative wealth to the local Chennaites.

The pictures feature our housekeeper's preferred floor cleaners (we have a vacuum, but she rarely uses it) and homemade dosas for breakfast.