PicoBlog

I just found this site today. Hopefully the membership will show on your end as I am not in India and my bank initially declined my membership.

What you are saying is 100% true that the middle and upper class of India have household help, and it has been the silent saviour of countless marriages. We can't know what troubles are faced by the women who are of lower status and cook and clean for others all day only to come home and play the servant role there as well.

This is also why NRIs warn their friends about bringing a girl to western countries. They tell their soon-to-be-married friends that the girl will become influenced by the western culture and not want to perform traditional duties like before.

My best friend from uni is a Hindu. She was near the top of her class and is a brilliant mind. When I learned that her marriage had been arranged to one of my husband's casual friends here in this country, I was overjoyed. In those days people of the Indian Subcontinent were such a minority here that no division existed between us. Pakistani and Indian clung to each other for dear life!

That also meant that the men felt more pressure to assimilate to the ways of the new country. They encouraged their wives to work. There was much more division of household labour.

As time went on, the diaspora community grew. We few OG women saw our men changing. They still wanted us to work but to do it more quietly. My best friend by that time was the HR director of a multinational company and working from home. Her husband convinced her that they should seek visas for his parents so that she could get some help with the housework that he decided to abandon. When his parents arrived, I recall hearing them ask in my limited Tamil understanding "why does she keep herself locked in that room playing computer games all day?". Finally she ended up being not only the primary wage earner in the home plus the primary cook, cleaner and child carer, but she also had to pretend that she was a housewife and keep her work and income info to herself. Her mother in law talked badly about her on the phone saying that she was like a child waking up only to play video games.

Something similar happened to me. My husband contributed less and less to the household with each passing year until for the last few he paid nothing. He had tenants come to our home who were single men and of no relation to me. I paid bills such as mortgage, property taxes, home insurance etc which are high in our area. The tenants paid money to only him. He was having a great time, busting out expensive bottles of alcohol and karaoke sets once weekly while I cooked and tried to sleep by midnight to be ready for work the next day while thumping music vibrated my bedroom wall. These men were also his preferred choice for group holidays. If I was not willing to take road trips with groups of his friends, I was being a prima donna. I also often paid for the lodgings. I am a fool, I know. All of this would have stung less had I not been the only cook and cleaner.

We are now divorced. To this day he says that I did nothing during our marriage and he did everything, yet he has two tenants living with him now plus a business and a full time job and he still asks me for loans. The first time he used the washing machine after my departure he broke it. He also broke the kitchen faucet in the first week. The house is disgusting and the lawn is so overgrown that the city sent him a fine.

Meanwhile, I have so much peace. I leave a clean home when I go to work and I come home to the same clean home. There are no in-laws or guests to serve. I can sit and enjoy an episode of Curb your Enthusiasm with a glass of wine and my puppy in peace.

My only regret is that I did not divorce sooner. It has had no bearing on my ability to find a much more suitable partner. I now have a truly modern man. But my sons are carbon copies of their dad. They are beyond lazy and they have no thought to spend their money for anyone but themselves and their friends. This would be fine except that my youngest son (I am 55) broke down in tears to tell me that he doesn't think he will ever have a girlfriend. Countless young Indian and Indian (we are Indian/Pakistani) diaspora boys are becoming incels. And I feel that by not becoming more domineering over my husband for those decades that I play the major role in my sons' fate. I have tried to help them by inviting them to my home with my husband so that they can see what is partnership. But they feel that this is abandonment of their father, and they say that all of his friends have left him now that he cannot afford a grand home and never-ending flows of black label alcohol. So they feel guilty to leave him come to stay with me or even visit for a few days. What to do? They will need to figure this out for themselves.

Expand full comment

ncG1vNJzZmivn6Kur7XNoGWsrZKowaKvymeaqKVfpXy4scCppqehqpqxbrXNnKamqJWpsq%2BvxGagp2WZo7Gqrc1omqilnZq7tb8%3D