Its been over 5 years that I have been in USA and I am amazed at how at almost every Indian gathering women compare their life with that of their Indian cousins, relatives, friends and conveniently label it to be so much privileged and the only basis of that comparison is house help.

I mean  no doubt that house help can truly make your life easier in whichever part of the world you belong to but to begin with, the life here is so much less struggling than it is in India be it any area of life, work, travel, hobbies, sports.

Lets do some math here, a typical Indian women who has a full time job works officially 8 hours a day but that’s only an official number, given the work culture and deep rooted belief of getting work done for every penny you pay specially in midsize home grown companies that number is easily 9-10 hours.

Compounded with travel time in any metro city, that number is around 12 hours a day, so technically you are left with only 12 hours out of which you need 8 hours of sleep, so that leaves you with only 4 hours of your own time.

So, if you had no help and do it all by yourself the only thing you would end up doing is dusting, mopping, cooking, and given the storage space for electronics and gadgets you can’t cook for 1 week, neither your dusting would last for more than half a day given the amount of dust and open doors and windows that we have in India.

While here in America, you have storage space to keep food good for weeks together, you can do your vacuuming and cleaning and it would last you at least 2 weeks or even more if you don’t have small kids.

I could be wrong, but I feel women here frequent salons much more than they do in India, parties more, can pursuit hobbies, and all of this because the lifestyle allows you a lot more time.

And yet I see almost every other woman who moved from India or has seen both the worlds always talk about how blessed their Indian counterparts are because they have so much help.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about how in India, parents needs to travel for hours and get stuck in traffic to get that one swim lesson for their little ones or to go to a library which is hardly 1/4^th of any public library in terms of space and availability of books here.

In recent events we have seen people quarantining for months in a 500-700 sq. feet apartments in big cities in India vs. people here even if they lived in a small apartment could go out and breath fresh air.

Besides the very reason people moved here was better quality of life, more space better infrastructure, given a choice today how many of these women would want to go back and live in India even if they are given a 24×7 free maid , driver, cook or any other typical housework support?

And it does not end there, people are annoyed because “now maids in India have so much nakhara (tantrums)”, well would you work for same pay, same work all your life?

I mean you pay them for cleaning, dusting, mopping and then you want them to run errands, do your toilets, do other 10 things, seriously!

And let me tell you, while I am not generalizing, you the one reading is really not one of them but I know many of them who do this often.

The real difference between those poor household workers and we the so called class who can afford maids and support services is  only that we have been lucky to born in certain household, afford access to certain important things in life like education, health etc.

No one wants to slog dusting, mopping floors, cleaning toilets, drive in traffic for hours, cook  or any such redundant jobs, it’s just they were born in households that couldn’t afford to give them access to most basic things in life like education for them to learn any other skill.

Therefore, the least that we could do is thank these people who work for our families, relatives, friends in India and be little compassionate for our counterparts whose life can get a little better by hiring them and treating them well.