Saturday morning, 7:36, and I’m sleeping peacefully when suddenly the doorbell goes. I leap out of bed, pull on some clothes, and open the door still half-asleep. It’s the cleaner. Unfortunately, she doesn’t speak English and of course I don’t speak a word of Tamil. However, she adopted the English tactic of repeating what she was saying, but louder and more slowly. Needless to say this didn’t help, so I just thrust a bag of laundry and some soap powder towards her, then sat on the sofa feeling guilty while she washed away, like I’m the rich Western guy who has people do everything for him.
To compound my guilt, then the guy who brings me breakfast arrived. Then I had a horrible thought – what if she wasn’t the cleaner? After all, I had kind of thrust the washing at her. But, either way, she did the washing, so it didn’t matter. Very efficient too, it only took 15 minutes. I was suspicious as to how good a job she could have done in that time, but a quick sniff of my pants told me I needn't have worried.
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