Someone on LinkedIn shared this poster earlier today, applauding how far the quick commerce space in India has come, and how companies across the spectrum are boarding the train.
There were obviously lots of reactions and comments; some spoke about the business model, the feasibility of charging so less, some even raised questions about the word “maid” (common in India, and in the target audience Urban Company was trying to reach).
But what almost no one else spoke about was the main copy. “Your maid left you hanging? We leave your home spotless.”
How absolutely lacking in empathy this ad is, and what it tells me about the writer, the marketing team, the agency and everyone involved with approving it.
If you are not from India, let me tell you. Maids, or house servants, or house help, or helping staff – call them as you will, are treated the worst in urban India. Building complexes will come together to make sure NO ONE pays them more than the standard rate, that their holidays are strictly counted and money deducted if they take even one extra day, often made to do jobs they are not supposed to be paid for, will be served food in separate dishes (hello caste discrimination), won’t be allowed to use the washrooms of the household. They, who break their backs for Rs 2000-5000 a month, are often made to look the worst even if they ask for a monthly Rs 100 hike. (Try bullying the landlord who raises your rent by 10% each year instead).
Basically, not a class of people with a lot of power.
Now, imagine knowing this about your society, and choosing to still villanise this same class with the copy,
“Your made left you hanging?
We leave your home spotless!”
Yes, it is representative of how Indians’ speak about their days at the dinner table.
But do we not have a greater responsibility as writers, than to unthinkingly mimic cruelty? Could not the same message be driven home with kindness?
“Your help may need help too!”
“House help needs a leave? Leave the rest to us.”
But for that, we have to recognise that there is something wrong in how we address and treat those whom we employ for household chores.
Truth leaks. Even if you cannot see the cracks
There is a quote, attributed to Anaïs Nin but I have never confirmed it, that has guided my early 20s. There were the years when I was thinking a lot about who I wanted to be when I was older (re: had greater agency in my life), what Prakruti’s ideal version and self would be, what I wanted my everyday, my ever week, month and years to look like.
How you live your days, is how you live your life.
There’s another one, by Helena Bonham Carter, that’s been put up in childish calligraphy in my wardrobe:
I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.
Could I make my value, my philosophies, my ideologies, my politics, so much a part of me that they became one with my instincts? That I would never do otherwise. That I would never have to consciously think before I acted in the most natural, authentic way, that my good deeds and kind words did not look performative or practiced?
Because I knew early on – that who you are reflects, no matter how hard you try to hide it, in every thing you say or do. My dad, the most honest of professionals I know, will be the same wherever he goes – blunt, rude, in your face honest no matter the relationship. Doing the ‘right thing’ is so important to him, he cannot live in any other way.
This is also true in art, especially in everything you write.
One of the first writing tips I learnt from reading interviews of other writers, was “writer as you think”. In the early 2010s, I was just dabbling with the idea of long-form writing, driven by two things – my relatively greater command on English and my love for Bollywood gossip, which in turn meant I had a lot of dramatic pieces of information I thought I could fuse together from the only perspective I knew – a 20-year-old middle class girl from Malad.
Write as you think.
How could I? My thoughts were bland. Flavourless. They lacked punch or wit, charm or clarity. There were repetitions, unquestioned or truths and unresolved conflicts of ideas I had learnt first from my parents’ then at my convent school, from friends and acquaintances. In a world where 21 year-olds had already had their first boyfriends, first kisses, first overseas trips, I was yet to have a proper sleepover with even girl friends. Where my social circle was celebrating birthdays at Kino Cottage with their parents serving them shots, I was still taking my friends to a McDonald’s post college, exchanging gifts in the Ladies Changing Room of NM’s Vile Parle campus, and having to ask my parents for the money that I would need to do both.
A smallness of the world, made smaller by my awareness of how much more there was that life could offer.
This too showed in my words.
Years later, I would study what “code” is, how databases matter. How design tells a story. And another line stood out to me, “That we write into code our own biases.”
Who we are, reflected in what we build. That’s why Google’s search engine, built by white men with perhaps a very limited understanding of the world outside their whiteness, was racist for many years before they fixed it.
As a writer, this was key to understand not just myself I realised, but the world around me.
Just like a woman’s portrayal in a movie can tell a lot about the writer-director-producers and team who are responsible for that role, or even the actor for the way she plays it. Just like an off-handed joke about a woman’s body and whether she’s a “moped or motorcycle” will tell you a lot about the man who thinks like this.
What would you think of a person who laughs at a joke that they do not find funny?
In many ways, our stories, and the people who bring them to life, are also symbolic of what the mass culture considers to be okay. Acceptable, and can go both unnoticed, and unpunished.
It’s a bit of a shame that our mass culture is completely okay about the idea of villainising those who lack power, or best case, are blind to how words reflect social realities.
And that those with influence, do little to challenge that.