Maidless In Mumbai
Think babies are hard work? Getting the baby’s maid to stick around is even harder.
When career-driven reporter Anu Narain has her first baby, she has a plan for everything—except the maid. The baby poops, pisses, cries and feeds all day and has arrived without an instruction manual attached. Anu’s mom and her mother-in-law move in, and they expect the maid to obey their commands like Commandments. The maid thrives on zero kich-kich, two kid gloves and definitely not three memsahibs.
Will Anu ever become a working mom when her husband has become a shirking dad and her house a railway station where every maid is a passing train? Will Anu use wile and guile to make her maids stay and the moms leave? Or will she succumb to that strange Indian malaise called maidomania?
Hysterically funny, unapologetically honest, and charming all the way, this is the diary of a Mumbai mom who dreams of only one thing—the perfect maid to live happily forever with.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Books / 2013
“Kapadia’s witty writing is also a satire on our dangerously maid-dependent condition, as well as the luxury that is available only to men —the luxury of not getting affected.”
“A laughathon that throws light on that all-important relationship between the Mum and the Bai.”
~ THE TELEGRAPH, CALCUTTA
“Payal Kapadia’s brilliant tongue-in-cheek book about finding the elusive perfect maid makes for a hilarious read.”
“Honest and funny, a plight of the urban working woman.”
