Sep 26, 2005

We owe a thanks....

We owe a sincere thanks to so many people in the world. Can you guess who they are. The milkman, newspaper vendor, carpenter, plumber, auto driver and the very important maid servant.

She completes a lot of work in no time, far less time than the so-called "upper class" indolent women could ever imagine. But how many of us treat her with respect and deference?

This kind of supercilious thinking is existing in our society from time immemorial. If they come late, what do we do? Scorn at them. We never spare a thought regarding the problems faced by such people. The maid might have a moribund spouse or a 3 year old kid down with viral fever. We can definitely figure out if she is lying or is genuine with her reasons of coming late. The culpable ancestors treated her with disrespect and the family tradition continues. How many of our parents permitted us to play with the maid's kid? Was the kid even allowed into our respective rooms? Did we share our eatables with him/her? As a kid, when we had asked why the maid's child was not supposed to come into our room, did we get a perspicuous reply? Definitely not. As a teenager, when we had elucidated our view points to our parents about the treatment of the maid servant, what were we asked to do? Curtail our thoughts and go back to our books. When we were busy studying in our room, all that we could hear was the elders affronting the poor old lady.

If the parents have an insolent attitude, it automatically affects their children. They tend to assume that an arrogant response is natural and there is nothing wrong about it.

There are few maid servants who would like to pilfer, given a chance. In such cases, instead of blaming her wholeheartedly, we should also take responsibility for being careless. If we catch her red-handed, we should make it a point to talk to her in an assertive manner, find out what made her commit such an act and try to help her in the best possible way we can.

Some of you might contravene my view points. I'm not generalizing here that this is how the maid servant is treated in every house. I have seen women who treat their maid as a sister, chat with them and provide support. This attitude is shown by very few people in the society. If not respect them, atleast we must treat them as a fellow human being.

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