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Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Maid / Jhi....

In India all over, the maid woes continue. Its the same in Delhi, Kolkata and now here in Bangalore too.
The new maid is Bengali. Proper Bengali. Why the term Proper? That is because here in my complex there are these 'Bengali' maid who are actually Odia and pass themselves off as Bengalis. Not sure why they do that, I mean they could call themselves Odias too.

The colloquial term at home would be kajer lok, kaajer maashi or jhi , for the maid. I can understand the first. Not sure about the second. Because the maids come and call the mother of the house, Didi - maybe they became termed maashi , and the term kaajer was added to differentiate them the bllod relation - maashi, or the neighborhood maashi.

The third term - I have no clue. Bengali literature has mentioned daughters being referred to as Jhi. In similar texts, the son was referred to as Po. Terms like Thakurjhi is used nowadays - husband's sister. Not sure when the maid got termed as the daughter - Jhi.

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