Comfortable Serving But Not Being Served

Last night Anju and I got up from the table to put our dishes in the sink. Shanthi, the cook, looked at us and smiled, gestured to the sink and said thank you. Earlier, Anju got chastised by our hosts for helping set the table. The day before Shanthi yelled me at for rinsing out my coffee mug.

One of the other guests staying here is a young guy, around 24. He has lived here for the last two years working across the street at a new tech company and business solutions firm, Cognizant. He was up this morning cleaning his scooter because his dad was flying in to Chennai. Though only to visit with him during a two-hour layover, here he was at 6AM diligently scrubbing the sand and dung off of his ride so his father wouldn’t be angry. I asked him if he knew whether it would be okay to go in the kitchen and make myself a cup of coffee. He looked at me and shook his head, “Probably, but why bother? I don’t bother with such things.” Why bother? I was stunned. Here I was trying to figure out how not to be a nuisance to a woman who cooks and serves the hosts and guests from 6:30 in the morning till 10 at night by making it so that she makes one less cup of coffee in the morning for my sorry ass- and he says don’t bother.

Without a single note of malice in his voice, he summed up the problem I have been dealing with: I spent the better part of my adult life serving others. Whether as a cook, through community organizing, labor organizing or simply my day jobs with various non-profits. Hell, my tattoo reads Janatha ka nokar- public servant, or servant of the people. {The only title Ho Chi Minh ever allowed his propagandists to use to refer to him and ‘promote the revolution’. I believe they suggested over 30 names in 10 years; some were ‘leader of the people, father of the people, savior of the Viet people… you get the gist. But he repeatedly refused any name that put him as something other than a Vietnamese person fighting for Vietnamese people.}

The Naxalites of India, now a disreputable bunch of communist hoohas, now known for their ingenious ways of extorting money rather than the village-led rebellion they once were- used to chant some odd slogans including—Inquilab! Zindabad! Viva viva Vietnam! Janatha Janatha Janatha ka nokar! Long Live Revolution! And the rest you can figure out. {Did you know that the average Vietnamese farmer earned the equivalent of $10 a year in 1967? Old Uncle Ho paid himself $11/year.}

But it hit me; Vivek, the young man and his scooter, was no more a malicious oppressor of the poor as he himself fits the mold of a modern-day servant. We may call it the service sector- we may call it the technical assistance field- but much like a line cook or sous chef- he fulfills a role by serving the needs of some client needing business solutions in today’s ‘global’ economy. (Please let me know if there was ever a time the economy wasn’t global and I will stop putting that word in quotes) His company ‘farms’ him out to any number of clients worldwide, where he performs exactly what they need. He and others like him are at the center of the new economy, paid well by Indian standards but shortchanged at global prices.

In this part of Chennai, where three worlds are colliding between the drainage ditches, burning trash, expanding highway and IT complexes that remind me of Plano Texas, everything is about serving and being served. World one is the oldest part of this area, there are grass-thatched huts, open air with barefoot children walking passed piles of cow dung on dirt roads surrounding a tiny temple. There is a government-sponsored school that appears to be open only a few hours a day for the kids in the area. Across the field is world two- a concrete paved network of streets with one or two-room homes. The women in this neighborhood work across the street at a number of factories and the men seem to run various retail shops that surround a tiny temple. This was the first industrial push here in Chennai. World three are a series of concrete apartment buildings with big iron gates out front. They are named MSN Anuradha and Sree Tech- no temple. Our guesthouse is one of the older buildings in this part of the neighborhood. It stood here when there was nothing but a village surrounding a tiny temple. Something like 15 years back. It once held three generations and three siblings’ families. Now it holds up to 14 guests who work in IT, for NGO’s and the like.

A guesthouse that serves a new crop of servants.

And what are Anju and I doing in India in the first place? Working for NGO’s. Fulfilling one meaning of serving the people.

So what irks me so much about the situation that Shanthi and Shesh, the groundskeeper/fix-it man/ house assistant, are in? Anju pointed out that Shesh is not required to garden according to our hosts, but he does so with utmost care and attention to detail because it is clear that he enjoys it. And Shanthi makes food that clearly she enjoys to make (and to eat) not just what she is told to make. What I see at first glance is unfair options for work, Anju points out that in a country of 1.2 billion people, jobs are actually scarce. Doing what you can and make money while doing it- is no small thing here. She is correct. Whether during this ‘global’ age of economics or after the revolution; there will still be a need to finds ways to support oneself and family.

Even though one cup of coffee can’t shift the balance, I can’t help feeling compelled to make it.