This show is presented BAI

Nice tag line by MTV.

A Bai who works in a house full of only Bachelors. This one must be 40-50 yrs old. She reaches early in the morning. The guys are asleep. She doesn’t know what kind of job they do. She has never seen them awake except for the person who opens the door and that too half-asleep. She might have seen some awake during the starting days when it was at 7.30-8 AM. And also the day they give the salary. Later when she shifted the time to 6.30 AM, no one is awake and no one even asked why she comes early.

She rings the bell 4-5 times to get into the house. Worse are those days when there is no current. She will need to knock the big grill a number of times. At times she has left without doing the work and asks next day that why did we not open the door and we say ‘Khola to tha’. And the funny thing is what ever the case is most of the times only the same person (X) comes to open.
Once in Mr. X goes back to his bed and covering himself up in a bed sheet. If the quantity of the clothes immersed in the soap water is too much she won’t wash them properly. She won’t scrub the collars. At times when there is no Soap she calls out to Mr. X.
“Oh Bhayya, Saboon Hai?” The shrill voice wakes him up.
“Kya?” He will ask, as he is still half-asleep.
“Saboon, Kapade Dhone Ke Liye Saaboon Nahi He”. She replies.
“Bai, Kal Leke Aata Hoon. Aaj Zara Adjust Karle”.

Then she gives a good rinse. And please note all these times the water tap will be on - water flowing onto the clothes in the bucket. She believes it will clean the clothes properly. At times she must wonder whether these people know anything other than sleep. In that wonder she removes all the dried clothes from the strings in the balcony and puts it on the top of a bag in the bedroom, as there is no other place to keep the dried clothes. No One knows what is in that bag, probably the old tenant left it there, but due to her regular dumping of clothes on it the bag has gone into a U shape.
Then its the utensils. The kitchen is a mess. There will be leftover food on the sides of gas stove. Onions, Potatoes, Eggs, Green Chilies.. all thrown out while cooking their favorite dishes. The remains of the cut vegetables, the onion and potato peel, shells and yolk remains of the eggs eaten by Mr. G, banana peels, the cutting board… everything will be spread on that 1.5* 0.5 square meter of area. At times she yells “Oh God!! How much food these people waste”

Next is the real enjoyment chore. By this time she nears her timeslot for the next house. So she plays hockey. This is what Mr. S says about the “Jhadoo”. He is right, she considers the broomstick to be a hockey stick only and dribbles through the pseudo-turf (aka floor). Seems like she used to represent my school in the state games in her good old years. Hmmm those were the days!! Now she plays hockey with a broomstick to make the two ends meet.
Cleaning the floor is the most dreaded job there. she has to face many challenges. The unarranged chairs, newspapers flying around, the fan, the beer and other daroo bottles people keep after their illustrious parties. At times even chicken bones collected in the corner of the room.
Amidst all these she continues to play her game. She has to, since if she doesn’t she won’t be able to finish off here by 6.50 AM and reach that wicked old lady’s house (as described by her) by 7.00. Once Mr. X’s mother came to live with them and she tried to modify the hockey into slow motion. But since it was for 2-3 days it happened , but then she did compromise on washing clothes.
She does clean the floor with water two times a week, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the floor is getting dirtier due to this. The reason is the cloth used for ‘Pocha’. It’s is as old as the bai and has all the dirt in the whole world on it. She tried rinsing and drying it with all kind of detergents. No use. Her request to grant a new cloth has gone in vain. Off late Mr. G had granted her a part of his Rose Turkish Towel, which she abandoned after it attained thrice the age of its retirement. That lasted two washes as the rough treatment brought out all the fibers of it only to go back to the old cloth.
(Thanks Dhanush for your sharing your experiences)
Thankfully the Bai is clean, otherwise the one before this was a bio-alarm with her pungent smell that reminded me of the chemistry lab in school, while there have been others who come as a bundle of 2 or 3 (mostly younger ones probably it’s the safety factor) who are the catch me if you can types, they are ‘gone in 60 seconds’. Their strategy is like the commandos in movies, enter at once disperse in all rooms fully armed – Kill and Go.