There is a Jewish curse that says: "I wish you a lot of personnel!".
After hiring a driver, a cook, a cleaning lady and three gardeners, I am beginning to understand why personnel is the favourite topic of conversation at expat-gatherings... and yet, I am also experiencing the sense of responsability one has for these people, and the fact that we cannot change the fate of everyone in India, but we can contribute to those families in our care.

The picture above is of the Mali family (Mali = gardener); I do not know their last name, and I am suspecting neither do they, as it turns out they are illiterate and do not know their own age or what the birthdate of their children is.
The Mali's have four children, and one helper mali (far right) who probably is a relative of some kind. They live in the servant quarters behind our house, and have tended the garden for 18 years (!) already. We suspect that their son, Raj, is the only one who has had some education. Currently he is not going to school but learning how to be a mali from his father. Needless to say that we think all kids should go to school and that we will try to achieve that once we moved in.
The Mali's are Muslim's, except for helper mali who is Hindu. This immediately confronts us with the general belief that one's servants should all be either muslim or hindu, but never mixed; christians go with either.

The cook we just hired, Bishnu, will move in soon with her husband and 10 months old kid. Bishnu is from Bhutan, and her husband is from Nepal; they married for love, which is quite an exception in this part of the world. They are now living in two tiny rooms in the city for which they pay 2000 rupees per month (and he makes 4000 rupees, i.e. app. 65 euro's, per month with his job as guard at the embassy). For them, moving with us is an enormous step forward, not only because they will save the rent, but also because she will be trained as a cook.
My criteria for hiring a cook were simple: I needed someone who can speak english and who knows how to cook Indian; I could teach her the rest. Bishnu has never worked as cook before but she knows how to cook Bhutanese, Nepalese, Chinese and Indian - more than enough for me! She is adorable, and so is her husband. Training Bishnu to cook Italian, English, French, Japanese and Korean (which I can do), and training her to speak better english, will increase her value tremendously and will give her a shot at working for other expats once we leave. Bishnu and Harka were raised as Buddhists but converted to Hinduism when thwy came to India.

And there T and I were, picturing our own little soap opera :
The muslims cleaning the toilets and getting the beef as that is something the Hindu's do not do, the Hindu's getting the pork as obviously the Muslim's will not, the (former) Buddhists acting as mediators if the Muslim's and the Hindu's start fighting and us (being of Christian background) getting drunk besides the pool as we cannot cope with all that anymore!
But until the contrary is proved we are going to assume that all will go well and that our little enclave will proof that it IS possible to all live together happily ever after...and it will be nice to celebrate Eid (the Muslim Christmas), Diwali (the Hindu Christmas), and our own good old Christmas. All we need now is a Jewish guard.....