I dub thee Supandi!

As unwilling as I am to put behind my previous post written in a fit of morbid mood... I have to move on. If you haven't read my post on Is the world in wrong hands?, please do!

Moving on.. or moving back on to the humor in my life! I talked about how God thinks the purpose of my birth is so that he can have some fun with me! So I must not have set my hopes too high when I did a stint in India a couple of years back, but of course I did!
When I moved to India I was very excited by the prospect of finally having a maid! I pictured myself languishing in the lap of luxury while my maid waited on me hand and foot! Instead I was washing clothes and piles of dishes coated with grease in hot humid Chennai while my maid took yet another impromptu holiday!
And then Cheeky happened. My MIL had dropped her life to rush to our side to care for the baby! But knowing that no son of mine was going to be less than a handful I decided to get her a babysitter to help! So I called this agency and asked them to help me out! Sure enough they brought me a candidate. The first thing I noticed about her was her hair flying in all directions. But I was desperate by then (maid hunting is no fun I tell you) and returning to work in a week, so I hired her!
The hours she spent sleeping in the patio were far longer than the hours she spent working! And when we left the baby unattended for a minute in his cradle.. she would make a beeline to his side ... to ..... sing (of all things). I could not stop laughing unfortunately!
Then one afternoon we came home to find the carpet that adorned my living room in the parking lot. Wondering what prompted this flinging out of such a precious thing we dragged the heavy carpet home. To find out the lady had brushed it out and decided to put it out in the sun on the patio wall! So I told her, next time make sure you keep something on it so that it doesn't fall off!
The next day as I rushed home I was accosted by the security. He informed me that an aruvamanai had fallen off my patio and the maid had asked him not to tell me about it. Whats an aruvamanai? Its a huge sharp blade mounted on a wooden plank used in place of a knife. Kind of like the Veechu Aruval from all the morbid Tamil movies(very difficult to explain.. see the picture). I was shocked needless to say! Having images of all the tamil movies I had watched so far.. images of an actor flinging a aruvamanai at a villain to save the damsel in distress ran through my mind. Not to mention the pictures of cop cars that flit to my dazed and confused brain. I rushed home to question her. And guess what? The aruvamanai had been the weight to keep the carpet from falling off the patio wall!! The lady far from realizing the havoc she could have caused was worried about the broken aruvamanai! "I am sorry I will replace it" she kept saying! In her mind that was why I was yelling like a banshee? Because a 50 buck Aruvamani was broken? I was not sure whether to laugh or cry. I repeated this tale to a friend who aptly named my maid "Supandi". And that was how it came about that we started calling her Supandi. (A character in old Indian folk tales - is the basis of many jokes of instructions gone haywire in his foolish brain!)

For weeks I kept having dreams of being taken off by the police and languishing in the jail with Supandi by my side! Imagine that!

Still later (yes I let her keep her job, but couldn't get her to keep her wits), one afternoon my MIL called me and begged me to rush home. The apartment is flooded she claimed! On further inquiry I found that the Supandi had been cleaning the health faucet! If you are wondering how she managed to flood the apartment? She broke off the top of the faucet and the water came gushing out.. drenching her. Then she rushed out to get a mop to mop the mess (while the water still gushed). My MIL hearing the chaos rushed to the scene and asked her to turn off the valve. But the lady tripped and fell while trying to close that thereby breaking off the valve too! Sounds like a scene from a movie right? Needless to say I dropped my work and rushed home plumber in tow! Imagine what I told my colleagues "Supandi has hit again!"

A few weeks later sanity prevailed and the maid was let go (Finally I had decided to stop listening to her sob stories about how she needed the money and think about my freedom and sanity instead). She called my MIL a few weeks later to inform her she had gotten herself a better paying job as a baby sitter (did I mention that she was hired to be maid/ baby sitter at my place.. but seeing her antics my MIL wisely refused to let her handle the child). But still that bit of information hurt. I paid her a fortune.. but more fool them who hired her!! Apparently their life is a big joke too!
(pic courtesy: http://www.inmagine.com/, http://live2cook.wordpress.com, http://movies.sulekha.com, http://www.iclipart.com/)