NEW DELHI // The co-founder of an agency providing domestic help to Mumbai homes has vowed never to send any of his workers to Bollywood stars after many of the helpers complained of abuse and bad treatment.
Anupam Sinhal, CEO of Bookmybai — a company with 50,000 housemaids, cooks and babysitters registered with it — described on his blog how 25 film and television celebrities had mistreated the domestic helpers he sent to them.
Mr Sinhal said one of his domestic helpers had been tortured by a celebrity client.
“Her domestic help returned to the agency with visible bruises on her body, but refused to file a police complaint,” Mr Sinhal said. He asked the celebrity about her behaviour, but she threatened to “write bad things” about his agency on her Twitter account, which she said had 400,000 followers.
Later Mr Sinhal found out that no domestic help stayed beyond a week at her home.
Another Bollywood celebrity refused to allow one domestic worker to attend their mother’s funeral.
“The celeb in question did not even allow the man to visit his home to perform the last rites of his mother, unless she got a replacement.”
Mr Sinhal said he was appalled by the stories of cruelty.
“We have supplied staff to 10,000 families. Ordinary families have treated their help all right. There may be some cases of employers yelling or complaining about the food served by the cook but nothing that we felt really concerned about,” he said.
It was the bad treatment by celebrities, 22 of whom were women, that surprised him.
“They refused to let maids talk on the phone to their families back in the village, they didn’t let them eat on time, didn’t pay on time, didn’t give them leave, and in some cases, if they went on holiday, they locked the apartment with the maid inside,” Mr Sinhal said.
One female celebrity who drives a luxury car and lives in a palatial apartment refused to give food to her maid. She told the maid to eat bread with tea three times a day.
“I think they have an inflated ego and sense of superiority. They feel they can get away with such behaviour,” he said.
Mr Sinhal said the maids would always refuse to allow his company to file a police complaint because “they are scared of being harassed in turn by the police.” They are also afraid of being branded as “troublemakers” and not being able to get work in other homes.
He said mistreated staff usually just shrug their shoulders, say what’s done is done and ask him to help get them a new job.
Initially, Mr Sinhal was thrilled to get requests from celebrities. But as the cases of abuse piled up, he had second thoughts and in the end he was so horrified by the litany of abuses that he took to his blog to describe them.
Most Indian families employ domestic workers if they can afford them. Given the ubiquity of the custom, it is odd that Bollywood has avoided exploring the master-servant relationship.
However, there was one exception in a 2009 film by director Raja Menon called Barah Aana (Short-Changed) which criticised rich Indians for the way they behaved towards their domestic staff.
The critically acclaimed film shows a driver trying to borrow a small amount of money from the tenants in the building where he works.
They brush aside his request, even though it is for his son’s medical treatment back in his village.
At the time of the film’s release, Menon said: “Some employers here don’t even call drivers by their name. They’ll just summon him with ‘Driver’!”
The 2008 Booker Prize winning novel White Tiger was also a searing portrayal of Indian contempt for poor domestic staff.
Drunk after a night out, a driver’s female employer insists on driving. When she hits and kills a beggar child who runs across the road, she compels the driver to sign a confession saying he was behind the wheel.
More recently, on April 16 in the Times of India, well-known columnist Aakar Patel lamented the Indian inability to live without servants.
Patel wrote that having servants dehumanised Indians, perpetuated caste hierarchies, and devalued physical labour.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae