The Surprising Meanness Of Those Who Have

G loves designer wear and occasionally I go shopping with her, not to buy but to watch someone drop five figures on a bag. Being middle class, I  still can’t wrap my head around paying so much for something that has handles and perches on a shoulder with zero return on investment other than envy.

After carefully selecting one that went best with her auburn highlights, we dived into the nearest coffee shop. Her phone rang. It was her cook who wanted to take two days off. Her glow of acquisition turned into a scowl of irritation and she snapped, ‘I will cut those two days pay.’ After she hung up, she calculated with a hard-nosed precision that would leave even Scrooge impressed, ‘She will get ₹314 less this month.’

I politely enquired when the cook’s day off was and whether she always took a lot of leave. G gazed at her French manicure and said that the cook didn’t get a weekly holiday but she takes one when she wants.

I couldn’t keep quiet. I asked G how would she feel if her employer treated her this way? She glared at me, feeling very insulted and said, ‘If you don’t handle these people strictly, they will take advantage of you.’ I almost wanted to puke and expressed my strident opinions on employee rights. When we parted, the air was frosty. I’m certain I won’t be invited to go shopping again.

She is not an isolated case. I know a frighteningly large number of folks who treat the people who work in their homes and offices badly. Who try to gyp them of small amounts in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘not being taken for a ride’.

In a hundred different ways we propagate a prejudiced differentiation in the name of charity, ‘The bread is stale, I will give it to the maid’, ‘You can reuse the tea leaves to make the driver tea’, ‘Don’t give him water in the glass we drink in, use this one’, ‘This kurta is stained, I’ll give it to the flood victims’ Why do we think that what we won’t use will be welcomed by someone economically deprived?

An orphanage I went to last month, told me they had stopped accepting charity in the form of second-hand things for what came was in such deplorable condition, they had to be thrown away. Now, they only accept money, for this commodity, even when torn still has value.

The startling thing is that people who act like this don’t come across as horrible adults, they don’t think they are doing anything wrong and they will never treat someone of their own socio-economic strata in this manner. In fact, if you meet them at a party, they will seem like responsible, well-mannered, good human beings you would like to be friends with.

As I am writing this, the doorbell rings and my maid walks in beaming. I ask about this brimming source of joy. She says someone in the chawl lost her son and in her grief sold her his computer for almost nothing.

Ah well, perhaps, to be human is to be an opportunist.

Still Figuring It Out’ a funny, sad, questioning take on adulthood will appear every Saturday on newsable.com. Arathi Menon is the author of Leaving Home With Half a Fridge, a memoir published by Pan Macmillan. She tweets at https://twitter.com/unopenedbottle. The views expressed here are her own.