I wrote quite a couple of posts about maids in India, and in the nearly 9 years I have been there I had the very good, the good, the bad and the downright ugly, but there are things that no matter how many times you explain them, no maid will really grasp, not even the good ones like the one I have now. And frankly I gave up because it’s not worth loosing breath and saliva over these matters. If you are new to India, here is the list of the things you can if you want try to explain, consider a bonus if followed, but should not sweat upon.

- Draining baskets: at the exception of one maid, all asked for it, and I refused, because the basket in question is a giant space eater in which they will pile your washed dishes without any rhyme and order which could cause to breakage of your non steel glasses and plates. If you have a separate utility area where you can keep the damn thing out of sight, fine go for it, I never really had that luxury and the way I see it, the damn basket would cause me to use more expletive during the day having to move it around to use my tiny kitchen, or bump into it, for the few minutes it is used to drain a dishes each day…not worth the hassle. My Kitchen is modular, and I like it neat so I always store away the clean stuff promptly, but hey never stopped even my current maid for asking I buy one a million time.

- The other reason I do not want to buy one, is that my kitchen has a sink with a draining platform. The problem is that day in day out I end up with this scenario:

As you can see the draining area is clear and all the stuff are piled dripping wet on the granite counter. The reason being that despite my showing her how to do it right, explaining how to do it right and repeating a million time that the ribbed thing on the side of the sink IS the new draining basket my maid still soap up all the dishes one by one, pile them all soapy on the draining area, and then rinse them one by one and dump them on the granite. While the correct way would be to soap one, rinse it and place titled on the slots of the draining area, and take the new dish to repeat all over again. I had this draining system in all my flat but one, and in all the houses that had one I explained the system, only for the maid to ignore it, I even had a particularly cheeky one telling me that no there are too many dishes and it can’t be done, only for me to show that yes it could and be blurted to my face it is time consuming…that was the crappy Navi Mumbai maid I once upon a time told about if you were wondering. After so many years trying to explain how to stack the dishes…I gave up, they still don’t get it, probably never will. I just try to remember to clear them away fast and mop the counter dry so I get my workspace back and don’t get too much water leaking between the wall and the counter top as it has been sealed poorly, otherwise the storage area below gets wet.

- For them there is no such thing as too much soap, soap cleans, and more soap equals to cleaner. Don’t let them use liquid dish soap unless you plan on putting a dent in your budget, they can empty a bottle in a week (been there), get the good old desi alternative : dish soap bars, they will still disappear in a week, the difference is that a bottle cost about 90 rupees and a bar cost 15. And they don;t stop there, floor cleaner used in excess is apparently also better than just a cap for many, go for the cheap, or like me, go with none at all, the floor is mopped daily, and I’m not living in a hospital, so it doesn’t need to be 99.9% germ free, germs found in houses anyway help you build up immunity, and I do my wallet and the environment a huge favour. I would go for vinegar if it wasn’t so costly around here.

- Don’t bother confusing them with too many cleaning products, they will not remember half of what you told them, will end up using the same thing for everything anyway and you will loose your mind over it. I had a maid in Chennai who used the dish wash liquid soap to mop the floor I kid you not! Buy one floor cleaner, one dish soap, and a toilet cleaner and let it be, if you are a clean freak and want more stuff, keep it for yourself and do that speciality cleaning yourself.

- They strongly believe that huge bucket of waters poured all over the balconies and in the bathroom is better than moping these area. Even in my current flat, with my current maid where we have western style bathrooms with properly segregated wet and dry area she will wet it all over, never use a mop at all, and never even use a sponge to wash the basin. I tried telling all my maids to MOP the bathrooms, they simply don’t. Invest into a foam wiper blade thingy and wipe off the excess yourself to avoid breaking your leg. And never mind that they could clean a balcony with half the water, they still will fill the bucket to the rim and pour, water preservation is apparently not their concern.

- Back to the dishes, don’t bother trying to explain that a scotch brite sponge/scrubber can be used on the sponge side to clean melamine plates with patterns, non-stick coating pans and other fancy items with prints on them. The will use the green scrubber side for EVERYTHING even if there is nothing to wipe, there is one of Ishi’s tiffin box that lost a cartoon design in just a week, and I gave up buying non-stick pans eons ago, they will strip the coating in less than a month with vigorous scrubbing, never mind that nothing ever stuck to the bottom of said pan. If you have non stick stuff, clean them yourself if you value them, because no matter how many times you tell them not to scrub them, they’ll keep on doing it

- They have trouble getting the concept of dusting too, or they will bang a dry cloth on your furniture just spreading the dust somewhere else, or they will mop them with a dripping wet cloth. I managed to get mine to stop mopping them with a super wet cloth, but haven’t been able to make her switch to the proper microfiber duster that grab the dust without being soaked. Only WET cleanses, dry can’t do that in their mind. I even showed her how to dry dust…massive fail, she doesn’t get it, but since the dust accumulates so fast in India one need to dust twice daily, so she does it in the morning her way, I do it in the afternoon my own way. Don’t bother trying to make them use pledge, it’s costly and they won’t use it right and all it does is buy you around 12 hours of dust build up.

- if you are very particular about certain cleaning tasks and really really want them done a specific way, do it yourself, learn to pick your battle with household stuff in India, a spick span glossy home is not possible here, give the thing you don’t nit pick too much over to the maid, do the other yourself.

- if you don’t have a washing machine and care about your clothes, wash them yourself, the Indian way consist of banging them hard on a stone or the bathroom floor while wet, it will kill anything in just a few months, we used to let the maid clean them in the beginning, before we got a washing machine, the stains would not come out, the fabric looked worn out a few weeks after purchasing said item, and I even had neighbours reporting that they were constantly sewing button back on their husband’s shirts because the maid’s bang wash technique broke them.

- Remember that more than in the West your maid doesn’t come from a background where she will be used to multiple cleaning products, and gear, or know that certain items need to be washed with care. Provide her with tools she can understand, most maid will not get how to use a mop broom, so even if it breaks your heart to seem them squat on the flour to mop, let them do it. Each time I moved to a new place I always asked my maid what type of mop she wanted and what she was more comfortable using, the one I have now is the first one that asked for a mop broom and knows how to use it well, so we invested in a 800 bucks microfiber pad scotch brite one. It comes in handy when we spill stuff and both DH and I can mop the floor ourselves with it too, but if she was not comfy with it, we wouldn’t ask her to use it in the first place.

And more important than all for you not to loose your sanity is to remember than when you delegate a task, you must accept loosing a bit of control over it. You can offer tips, try to explain to a certain point, but that stops there.

I find myself very often reflecting on my life and surrounding, and am still amazed today at how things that were exotic growing up are really part of my daily life now and how what I grew up with is now the exotic. I get a kick out of it actually, in a good way, because I think both where I am now and where I come from is equally exiting and how they both contributed to make me the person I am right now, right this instant.
I also find myself wondering often about who read my blog, I know there is a fair amount of you guys out there, I get an average of 300 page hits a day, and I know from your comments that you come from many places and cultures, some find my living in India exotic and enjoy reading my take on it, some are Indian and are enjoying reading about my roots and my take on living in their own culture, thank you all for enjoying my blog.
Today I decided to give you some of snippet of what is pretty much a normal life to me, I think my whole blog pretty much reflect that, but summarizing it once in a while is a fun exercise.

- Where I grew up, leafy trees and pine trees were common, when I look at the palm trees around me I can’t help even 9 years later to think “wow  what would people back home think of that?” Palm trees are things you see during your beach holidays, not outside your apartment windows right? On the other hand, trees that loose their leaves in the Fall are now my exotic, I don;t see them around here, they are the thing I need to go on a holiday to witness.

- My kitchen is a nice blend of your average westernized kitchen and Indian one, the counter is too low for my taller frame, we have a gas stove sitting there that we back home would call a camping stove. I don’t have one but two “wok” or kadai as they are called here, a pressure cooker, continental style frying pans, a flat tawa, a concave one, and my sauce pans have no handles, I had a special plier to remove them from the stove in typical Indian style. My pantry contains both several type of lentils as well as pasta, noodles, peanut butter and nutella.

- I am a mom, my fridge door probably looks like yours in the west: full of post it notes, school craft project, grocery lists and ABC magnets. Inside it is full of veggies, fruit yogurt, Tupperware containers containing both Indian and continental leftovers. And of course I have a pack of French fries in the freezer for these emergency days, who doesn’t.

- Often on weekend DH and I call samosa, kachori and jalebi breakfast, we buy it from a chaat chop, the way my parents would go to the local bakery on Sunday morning to buy croissants and cinnamon rolls.

- I can’t make my own croissant, puff pastry isn’t available in stores, and all my best efforts to try making my own pastry have all failed miserably, even my grand ma questioned why I would embark on such a tedious work when stores sell it…uhm not in India! If I want a croissant we need to go to a coffee shop, they often taste horrible so I pass, and I don’t feel like spending 10 times the Swiss price for a good one in a 5 star hotel.

- Right now I’m wearing something close to my daily uniform wear: denim long shorts and a light cotton short kurta, East meet West. It’s comfy, and airy and I like it. You can live in India without wearing salwaar suits and dupatta everyday, or at all.

- Of course I have salwaar suits in my wardrobes, I wear them on occasion, but not all the time. In Winter you will find me cosy in a pair of stretch churidar and a cotton long sleeved kurta as often as you will find me in my good old sweat pants and long sleeved t-shirt…yes it can get cold in India!

- TV commercials come in English and Hindi on the English Channel…wait how cool is that, I watch TV in English! Where I grew up it was all in French, and if you understood German and Italian you could what the two other national channels, in the beginning my TV had only 6 channels, the 3 Swiss one and the 3 French national ones because we weren’t far from the border. When the cable came in the 90’s the only English channels were MTV and CNN or other news channels. So of course I get a kick of watching and hey understanding English ones now, I feel the same kick when a French movie comes and I can follow it without subtitles…ha!

- Now I am sure some of you might be wondering…wait her native tongue isn’t English? Nope it isn’t, I learned it in middle school, perfected it in high school and decided I wanted to have that one as my second language at a proficient level, so I practiced practiced practiced, without English I would never even have met my husband in the first place.

- I can understand Hindi and speak it a little, I’m far from being fluent though.

- When I run out of milk and eggs or anything basic during the week I buy it at the kirana store (mom and pop store), but we go once a week to the supermarket to stock up on groceries too.

- Back home we have the Alps, here it’s the Himalayas, right now they are both equally exotic, I can’t see them out of my window. But living in Mumbai we have the sea and beach. In my childhood days the beach was on the lake side and had just rocks for me to collect, Ishita doesn’t get rocks, she can collect seashells they are both super cool to collect for kids.

- Beaches in the Mediterranean area are super crowded with lots of flabby people in swimming trunks and bikinis. In Mumbai it’s equally crowded (and I mean EQUALLY) with fitter, more toned people wearing sarees, jeans and t-shirts, salwaar suits, and shorts. People on the beach in Europe sell ice cream, nougat, coconuts, French fries and donuts. Here it’s ice cream, fresh toasted peanuts, pani puri, cotton candy and corn on the cob, samosa, shaved ice, and pav bhaji. And of course when we go there we eat beach food…who doesn’t?

- My home is a mess, all homes are, you are likely to step on a clippo block and sit on a Dora doll.

- In Bangalore we often had monkeys coming in the neighbourhood, it might look fun, but it isn’t, they are aggressive, will go after your food if they can get into your home and it used to drive my dog banana. I get the exotic factor here. But I have friends in North America that have issues with bears and racoons going after their garbage and food and they aren’t happy about it the same way the sight of monkeys around made me crib. They went through my food stuff a few times when I was new to India, you then learn not to leave your balcony door open and feel grateful for bars on windows.

- We put stings of lights on the balconies for Diwali, and they come out of the box again in December to go on the Christmas tree.

- We have iPods and a docking station, we listens to English songs as often as Hindi ones, and I like instrumental music, both relaxation music and classical music as well as movie scores.

- Favourite Indian take out menu food: Naans, Afghani Chicken, Butter Chicken and kebabs. Favourite continental take out: Pizzas. We cook everything else at home or go to a sit down restaurant.

- Back home I was used to 4 distinct seasons, and each had their perks and pitfalls, I miss them now. But I have 3 nice ones here too: Summer, Monsoon, and Winter, even if in Mumbai the gap between the end of the monsoon and Winter often feels hotter than the Summer. Winter is that much sweeter when it comes. My favourite back home were Summer and early Fall and I used to hate Winter. Here I tend to dislike Summer, enjoy the Monsoon and absolutely love Winter.

- I may be living in India, but I am still Swiss, and I like it that way, I am enjoying new traditions, but I haven’t forgotten who I am, I just adapted myself to new surrounding. Christmas is still important to me, and I enjoy sharing that both with DH and Ishita, I put some twist on some of my family traditions and created new ones, that’s what families do. I’m not Indian, and guess what, I don’t want to be, and there is no reason why I should be so. Indians going abroad carry their traditions with them, celebrate their cultural heritage wherever they are. I am doing the same.