It's kind of like a guilty pleasure.
The Indian feudal system, where the middle class and upper-middle class have servants — or respectfully known as "help." The bais, the laljis, the papus, the drivers, the maharajs who come and cook. The permanent ones who live with you. The temporary ones who just come, wash dishes, make food, and go.
It's such a luxury to have in India. But if you're living internationally and you talk about it, you almost say it with guilt. Like you're confessing something.
And then you come back to India, and the first few days, you feel embarrassed to ask them to do things. But within a week — sometimes days — you get so comfortable with them serving you. Bringing you water. Tea. Whatever you need.
It's like having a Tom Brady chef at your house.
Give them proper guidance, and your staff will make you the best amla juices, carrot juices, and anything you want in the morning. A very specific lunch. Dinner. Laundry. Everything.
Why does India have it?
A vast labour supply concentrated in the same cities as the wealthy. A cost differential large enough to make household staff genuinely affordable for a wide range of households — not just the very rich. And cultural normalisation.
In most Western countries, having staff carries a class stigma even for those who can afford it. In India, it carries no such stigma — perhaps the opposite. It's simply how life functions in the big cities.
Similar systems exist in parts of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Gulf. But India has a texture that those places don't quite match. The live-in arrangement. The multigenerational relationships. The intimacy.
When the staff go home.
When they go to their village — and they do, once a year, sometimes for two months, to see their wives and kids and tend to the small piece of land they have — the people who live in Mumbai are just helpless.
I find this comical, honestly.
Coming from the US, I can take care of things. I'm used to doing everything myself. But the people I know in Mumbai who've lived there their whole lives are at a complete loss. As to how life goes on. They are so used to the most basic things being done for them.
And when the staff comes back, life resumes. Like a switch flipped.
What actually happens over years.
Most of them have been with the same families for years. You trust them. You feel comfortable leaving cash out. They protect you. For any small need, they arrange it. They're your staff and your chief of staff simultaneously. Not educated in the formal sense, so you have to teach them things. But they're good at following instructions. Remarkably good. Once you teach them how to make a salad dressing, they remember. You teach them tacos, they'll make you tacos.
The families I know have been with their staff through marriages, illnesses, and children growing up. We gave money for our servant's daughter's wedding. For his son's education. They come to the doctor with you. They eat the same food you eat. They have essentially zero expenses — everything they earn goes home.
There's a whole economy in that. Mumbai money is flowing back to villages in UP, Bihar, and Jharkhand. Paying for school fees, land, and weddings. It's a real economic circuit that nobody maps.
The guilt is an NRI thing.
You've spent years in the US or UK internalising Western ideas about self-sufficiency and equality. The idea that having someone serve you water is somehow wrong. You should get your own water, make your own tea, do your own bed, your own laundry.
And then you come back, and your Western self is uncomfortable for a few days. Then your Indian self remembers that this is employment. These are real jobs. Real incomes. Real livelihoods that support real families in places where other opportunities don't exist.
It only feels feudal if you treat it that way.
If you treat it as employment — with respect, with genuine care, with fair pay and investment in their lives — it's just how India works.
And it works. Not perfectly. Not without its complications. But it works, and the relationship that develops over the years is something genuinely unique.
I don't think you can explain it to someone who hasn't lived it. The person who wakes up before you, who knows how you like your tea, who has watched your children grow up, who will be at your door at midnight if something goes wrong.
It's one of the idiosyncrasies of India that I find comical and sad and warm all at once.
And when I'm back in Mumbai, after the first few days of embarrassed hesitation, I stop making my own chai.