The Dinner Game

We went to a dinner party on Friday night. Eight guests, two hosts, one beautiful child in a fireman's hat. A famous cricketer lives downstairs. A famous actress's parent's live upstairs. Conversation is slow to start and never reaches momentum.

It's like every other awkward dinner party we've been to: we sit on the living room furniture in a square. Conversation eventually devolves into an exchange of stories about household help. Nearly every middle class Indian employs a maid--and if you're upper class you probably have a gaggle of maids and drivers and people to do your stuff. It seems to be the one commonality that we all share, and therefore the one conversational set-piece that allows everyone to contribute in some way.

I (proudly) have never had a maid. In New York, I got down on my hands and knees every weekend and scrubbed the floors. Music playing in the background. Light shining through my curtainless windows. Free therapy. But here it's crazy not to have a maid. Dust seems endemic to Mumbai and is wildly invasive. Friends tell me that if I didn't have a maid, the dirt would pile onto itself and form into fuzzy layers on my counters and floors and the leaves of my fern. So, we have a "bhai" that comes six days a week for two hours a day.

We all have our stories. Mine is about the fact that my maid refuses to iron. She will clean the floors, make the bed and wash the clothes, but she will not prepare food, water the fern, or iron. Period. One guy's maid only cooks when she wants. If dinner is requested after 7 PM, the only option is Maggie--Indian for Ramen noodles. Another guy's maid makes amazing fish curry.

People talk about how often their maid comes, how well they cook, how much they are paid, where they sleep...admittedly, it is endlessly fascinating. If only the maids knew how central they are to bourgeois interaction.

Food is served. It's paneer and peas, stuffed mushrooms, biryani rice, and hot, tasty rotis. Deep orange mangos, American-style brownies and ice cream for dessert.

We have to get home. The maid is coming early tomorrow.