Seeking Enlightenment through Bondage

When we got out of the tunnel I went looking for help, finding it in the form of an officious-looking middle-aged man in the airport uniform. I figured he was probably taking a break from emptying trash cans. “Excuse me, but I need advice. My two employees don’t speak English and I don’t want to leave them alone. Where do immigrants go?”

He pointed at one of the ceiling signs. “Well, you need to go pick up your luggage first. Then, take them to Customs and Immigration. They will let you stay with them if you want. Oh, and welcome to America!”

“Thank you. It’s good to be back home!”

I knew that. Every time I came back from India I had to pick up my luggage and let the Customs people paw through my clothes. And equipment. And souvenirs. Off to one side of the Customs area there was a similar area for everyone who didn’t carry a US passport.

I waved my hand at the girls and said ‘Come’, whistling ‘Immigration Man’ by the Beatles. No, they did ‘Tax Man’. I couldn’t remember who did ‘Immigration Man’. “Look at the world outside and let me in!”

The girls both spoke perfect English. Anyone from England would say they spoke it better than me. Tough, we weren’t in England and I spoke American like the native I was. When among strangers, though, the girls usually pretended to not understand English and I thought that wise.

Luggage was the usual crowd, the long wait, and the fight over who got theirs first. There was no option to simply wait until everyone else was done, as long before that there would be more planes landing and the conveyors would never really empty. The real reason I flew through Atlanta was because it wasn’t as bad here as Washington or New York.

Eventually we got to Immigration and we stopped at the ‘Translation Services’ desk.

“Hello, how may I help you?”

“My two employees are from India and don’t speak English very well. Do you have anyone who speaks Marathi? I’d like to avoid any trouble with you people.”

“Just a second while I set that up. There may be a delay if those translators are busy.”

She fiddled with her mouse for a bit, then plugged something in and then pulled it out and plugged it into something else, handing that to me. “This is a speaker phone that you can carry with you. It is connected to a English to Marathi translator. Please say hello to her.”

I took the phone and said “Hello?”

“Good evening, sir. I understand that you need a translator for Marathi. Is this correct?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“Very good. Is your Marathi speaker present?”

“Yes, they are right here.”

“Please allow me to speak with them for a moment to ensure that this works.”

She started in on that gabble that I couldn’t understand. I recognized the greeting and then they were off jabbering away. I did hear their names and “Programmer” and a couple of other English words, but otherwise it was the same as when they were making fun of me. I had no idea what they were talking about. They were all having a good time, though, with laughing, giggling, and tittering.

The translator shifted back to English. “Sir, there appears to be some confusion about why they are here. This does not matter to me, all conversations are confidential, but you may have trouble going through Immigration.”

“Why?”

“They say that you hired one of them as a programmer.”

“Yes. Rani is very good at what I need done. It’s cheaper to bring her over here, pay for an apartment, and pay her four times what she was making over there than it is to pay her employers. And I get far faster response if she’s in an office here.”

Getting programming services from India was dirt cheap; Digital Services would write any code you wanted in any language you wanted. Getting properly documented modules that did what we asked cost ... rather more. Eventually I’d gone as far as asking if I could take one of their programmers back to America with me where I could talk to her face to face every day instead of going through several layers of management who spoke neither English nor C++.

I had gotten nowhere with that until I mentioned it to a contact at the consulate. India had an overpopulation problem, and an American who wanted to take workers home with him was given all the expedited service I could ask for. Getting them their passports had been effortless. They may have trouble going home again, but then that wasn’t in anyone’s plans anyway. And, given the skill set I was talking about, getting a H-2B ‘skilled worker’ visa plus a H-1B unskilled labor visa from the US consulate wasn’t much trouble either.

“I’m not the one you have to convince, sir.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Not a problem, sir. And the other one, the housekeeper?”

“Rani said she wouldn’t come to America without her mother. If I hire her as a housekeeper it’s STILL cheaper than paying those bozos.”

“They say it isn’t right to be paid for serving you. They aren’t whores to be paid for that. You take care of them, they take care of you, that makes them concubines until you marry the daughter.”

“I’m not paying for a pair of whores. I’m paying for a programmer and a housekeeper. Anything else they choose to do is voluntary on their part. And I’m more likely to marry Raksana anyway.”

Raksana had something to say to that, then the translator came back on while Rani giggled and Raksana snuggled under my arm. Rani may be smarter than me and more beautiful than a spring morning, but she needed to eat better and put on some padding. Her mother was much more pleasant to hold.

“She says that showing you her skill in bed may have been a terrible mistake.”

“Well, if she wants me to marry her daughter, yes, it probably was, but I’m not complaining. It was her idea, anyway.”

By now we probably had a dozen people around us, listening to the conversation. Great.

“I would recommend that we leave all that out and just tell the immigration people that they are happy to be here as programmer and housekeeper.”

“Yes, I think that would be best.”

The thing that really scared me was that Raksana had told me during our layover in Rome that she knew how I could marry both of them. In India, the laws were based upon religion. Christian men were restricted to one wife. Moslem men could have up to four, as long as they could support them. In almost every state, Hindus were restricted to one wife just like the Christians.

In Goa, however, Hindu men were allowed as many wives as they thought they could handle, and both Raksana and Rani were Hindi.