Few words are so filled with disdain as chakrani -- feminine for chakar or servant -- in Bengali. The only equivalent I can think of in English English, that is, when spoken by the traditional English among themselves at home, is 'foreigner' or 'immigrant'. But chakrani's connotation of servitude makes it harsher. Maid in English just doesn't capture that.
I suspect the Chinese for chakrani must be similarly pejorative. That would explain Lee Kuan Yew's comment during the recent debate over enhanced salaries for Singapore's ministers that "a really good dose of incompetent government" would not only place the island-state's security "at risk" but, horror of horrors, "our women will become maids in other people's countries."
MM, as acronym-loving Singaporeans call Lee (it's short for his designation, Minister Mentor), is a politician to his fingertips. No one knows better than him how to touch a raw nerve.
I was not surprised, therefore, to read Internet protests on the "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves" (Rule Britannia, in case you've forgotten) theme.
Whether or not they agree with him on higher ministerial salaries, Singaporeans are outraged at the "horrifying prospect" of their wives, sisters and daughters having to swab and sweep floors, make beds, cook, wash the laundry, clean cars and care for children for foreigners in foreign countries.
That is what foreign women do in Singapore. Not Singaporean women abroad. It would not have been such an emotive statement if the status of the person who does it had not been regarded as particularly lowly.
That's why I have a sneaking suspicion that the Chinese for chakrani must be equally derogatory. Just a maid's work wouldn't have aroused a similar furore. After all, period English novels show housemaids and parlourmaids and even the tweenie (the in-between maid) as pretty fresh-faced lasses with plenty of boyfriends.
But even the word maid, relatively neutral in English, is beginning to acquire chakrani overtones in Singapore. I discovered that when I needed a part-time maid. Many candidates referred to themselves as "domestic help", "housekeeper" or "home worker".
It somehow sounded more white collar, less manual. The reason, I think, for trying to emulate the terminological revolution which famously transformed post-war Britain's municipal rat catchers into rodent operatives has something to do with unsavoury reports concerning Singapore's 160,000 or so maids, half of whom are from the Philippines.
I am told Filipinos -- the usual Filipina sounds horribly derogatory -- are paid between $S300 (Rs 8,400) and $S350 a month, and that this is the highest. There is no minimum wage, and Indonesians and Sri Lankans, the next two categories, are paid much lower.
Lately, Indian Tamil and Darjeeling Nepalese maids have also come on the market. Employers have to pay a $S345 levy and submit a bond for $S5,000. These figures may have gone up but when I last inquired, the bond and levy earned Asia's richest government a tidy $S400 million per annum.
There are many reports of ill-treatment. The worst, reported in the Melbourne Age five years ago, was about a 17-year-old Indonesian girl whose weight fell from 50 to 36 kg during two years' work, and whose emaciated body bore the scars of 200 separate injuries.
"Repeatedly bashed by her employer with his fists, a cane and a hammer, burnt with cigarettes and scalded with boiling water, the young woman's skin had been turned into a patchwork of scars, bruises and open wounds." The Chinese employer was jailed for 18 years and six months and ordered 12 strokes of the dreaded cane.
It was thus all the more surprising to read of Madam Jiao Nuyong of Amistad Maid Training Agency responding to Lee by offering to train Singaporean women. "Singaporeans would make very good maids," she says. "They work hard, and although they complain a lot, they only do it behind their employers' backs." She thinks rich tycoons in China might like educated maids who speak not only Mandarin but also English, which they can teach the children.
But I do wonder whether the number of enrolment inquiries she claims to have received about working in western countries has more to do with Europe and America than working. There is hardly an Asian who isn't desperately anxious to uproot and move to the West. Being a housemaid may not seem too high a price for ambition.
As a practical Singaporean, Madam Jiao knows that rich Singaporeans might welcome poorer Singaporean maids instead of foreigners since there's no question of airfare, passport or home leave. "Parents can point out the maid to their children and say, 'See? If you don't study, that's what you'll become!"
Moreover, Singaporean maids will need less training since they -- even lower middle class Singaporean housewives -- are already used to teaching their own maids what to do. "People ask me, do you really think Singaporeans will clean toilets?" she says in Singlish dialect. "I say, look how much shit we oreddy take from our higher ups. No problem!"
Madam Jiao has a sense of fun. Perhaps she isn't Singaporean. More likely, the ad is a Singaporean joke.
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