So we had a few major issues at and around the house before the xmas holidays. Every 3 months or so we need to have some kind of staff meeting anyway as things start to loosen up more and more in the wrong direction, but this time it went a bit beyond the normal 'tightening the reigns'.
First we had an issue that was caused by the owners / management of our compound (TE). They decided to do some gas testing. We have a centralized system, not very fancy, it just means there is somewhere a central batch of gas cylinders and we all are supplied through gas lines from that battery.
TE had planned to test the system and had informed us that gas supply would be disrupted for a while on a certain day. No further details provided. A similar message followed for the next few days. So Sarala, who also cooks for us, just like any other day that week, would try on occasion of the gas was back on, and then start cooking. Midway through her cooking session, with Duuk playing around in the kitchen, huge flames came up from the stove. Sarala closed the knobs and ran outside with Duuk, where she yelled for help and waited - Nobody responded. Sarala does not dare to call us during office hours (so test we need to talk about that), and cannot really read or write, so she got her freidn who works with our neighbors to send us a still completely incomprehensible text message.
(We think it says: "Sorry to disturb you, gas problem, kit is fire suddenly, then I had to stop cooking, the maintenance people are here now, if you are free call me please")
Anbu fortunately came home shortly after. Checked the house and retrieved the fire extinguisher and the kids played outside till we got home.
Turns out:
- TE was executing pressure tests on the gas lines in our row of Villa's and should have send us all a message saying - DO NOT USE THE GASE BETWEEN X AND Y HOURS - instead of only saying there would be no supply
- In two other house sin our row people where also cooking, however in that case it was a white Australian Lady and a quite vocal Indian male - so they got attention from TE but Sarala was ignored
- Our neighbor across had a hissing sound outside the house and this was checked over by TE, Sarala was still standing outside the house with Duuk at the time but was ignored.
- Our Asian (Japanese)Neighbor, stuck her head out of the door, and asked the passing TE guys what was up and they said 'nothing'. She started cooking 1 hr later, and as the pressure was still on the lines also had huge flames and singed her hair and eyebrows and also had he little baby next to the stove.
- This whole event happened Thursday 3pm, we only had pieced together more or less the story by early Friday.
- No apologies, explanations, no house calls from TE followed.
- By Saturday morning Eelco was furious and on the phone again. He was told nothing else was done as 'nobody complained'?!?!?!
- The other neighbors in our row who had no incidents, where never warned to be careful when starting to use the stove
- And after 24 hrs of nagging and calls from severe of us we got a long and winded e-mail - with no real explanation, no apology, lots of excuses and a tone off - well nobody died so what?
- By now one of the owners of the houses, not TE, has organized a meeting with the gas company who did the testing.
Irony of it all? That same weekend TE organized a carpet sale in our club house, which they are not allowed to do - use it for commercial purposes for their benefit without the residents agreement - which they managed to advertise through flyers, 3 different e-mail lists, and personal door to door visits and billboards at all central locations……. Shows how much personal safety matters here!
So a whole talk with Sarala on safety, the use of the fire blanket, calling us and communicating better in case of emergency followed. Fortunately these people are used to the scariest cooking sets ups in their houses and so are pretty well equipped to deal with those. They learned the hard way!
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The Pyramid scheme.
Early December I come home to a Sarala in tears. She clear had been upset a while already, but with so many family problems I don't always want to ask. She starts telling me that she lend money to our drivers wife, a year ago (the drivers wife works at my friend's house also at the compound). The amount was substantial (~ 3 months salary), and the wife had asked not to tell our driver as she was using it to help out her sister or family, which he had refused to do. Turns out Sarala's husband had decided lending money would be good to make some quick money by charging a lot of interest.
Of course, he is piss poor at managing money himself, and hence had spend the money twice already in no time, leading Sarala to lend the money from neighbors to fill the gap - whom I understand are some sort of loan sharks.
The wife paid a few months, then had some other me regencies and could not pay again or not enough and now a year later less then half was paid off and Sarala's neighbors where threatening and wanted their 20% interest and Sarala's husband threatened Sarala and told her to solve the problem and suggested he wanted to go to the house where the wife works and confront the madam (my friend and neighbor). The husband also is an alcoholic and hence not the nicest to deal with.
So, instead of a nice catch-up lunch with my friend, we ended up in the midst of it. As our staff is alone with the kids all day I was worried this would be fought out over my kids heads and these ladies have no way to effectively deal with their husbands. Our driver is great as a driver, but once he found out he was definitely not supportive of his wife and in general he could improve on the supportive husband front, so…we could have tried to stay out. But with kids involved and dumb husbands…. Of course the wiser route would be to fire them, not deal with the issue and move on. Both my friend and I have still enough naivety or faith in the good of people that we wanted to try and fix things somehow.
It took a good few iterations to get some idea of what happened. Also the stories from the 2 ladies where far from the same. We had to tell security to stop letting Sarala's husband in and we had to calm down our driver also some to make it clear he would be in trouble if we found out any of this was fight out with our kids present. It was clear the ladies both where very scared for their jobs and what we would do once the story was out.
AT first we tried to get the ladies to get to an agreement together and then tell us jointly - with all 4 of us women present - that they were all ok with what was agreed. Of course that did not work - it just ended in monologues about 'don't worry about it we are sorry we said something' to 'this is just how it works in India' to 'I swear on my kid, the church and whatever'. In the end after 2 weeks of shenanigans we met with the ladies and had a mediation - it was not even hostile at all - both ladies where clearly scared and desperate. We told them who had to pay what, helped them with the amounts, withheld xmas bonuses and presents and made sure the amount due (with an appropriate interest not silly) to Sarala's neighbors which they confirmed back to me. Then followed a careful hinting to our driver that it was time to go sleep at home again and that things where sorted and done now - but never again - or termination is to follow. We also found out in the process that Sarala had caved to her husband and had provided her bank pas sot her 'woman only' account to her husband. After all that I have at least for now given up on my plans to help Sarala with her financial planning for her old age (which is imminent). If she caved to him every time - there is no sense.
We will see how long this lasts and if we scared them enough or not to better their lives - all 3 of them.
Safe to say that after all this we were extra ready for a holiday.
