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Our gated housing society has some unfortunate rules regarding elevator usage. Residents, guests, live-in maids and drivers, are allowed to use the regular elevators, while maids, in spite of being registered with their government IDs have to use the excruciatingly slow, rattling and relatively dirty service elevator, whose original purpose was to transport large/heavy packages and renovation/fit-out material.

Today, the service elevator is being used for segregation, much like the type black people endured in America. These maids, they clean our houses, cook our food and look after our children. We trust them with everything, and yet we can’t endure a short elevator ride with them.

The security guard at the entrance of course knows who is a maid and who is a guest, because all maids are required to be registered for security purposes, and are given a code which they must use to enter the building. So the guard directs the maids to the appropriate elevator.

But sometimes, when the maids are in a rush to get from one home to another, because they need to be on time at each workplace, they will give into the temptation of using the regular elevator. Some residents, if they happen to be using the elevator at the same time, reprimand the maids for it and even threaten to have them banned from the premises, so they effectively lose their jobs.

But I have always wondered, how the residents actually know that the person in the elevator is a maid. How do they distinguish maids from residents and guests. I mean, this is a huge housing society with 500 odd families and people keep moving in and out, so it’s really quite impossible to know all the residents, and well there is no way to know who is a guest.

The Americans discriminated based on skin color and racial features, which are clearly visible. But how to do we distinguish a maid, cook, or nanny from a guest?

Some probably examine clothes to figure it out, but is that appropriate? I mean, many of the very same people demanding segregation on elevators, were incensed that Sudha Murthy was labeled cattle class an an airport based on her attire.

In our society a private tuition teacher’s bag was checked because a new security guard mistook her for a maid. The poor security guard was chastised for insulting the tuition teacher.

So that leads me to the pressing question, what really distinguishes us from our maids and why are we so eager to separate ourselves from them? Whatever rationalization we use to justify segregation, be it hygiene, economy (the electricity bill is too high if maids are allowed to use all the elevators), security, aesthetics, it’s our own insecurities that need to be re-examined.

They work in our houses, prepare our food and tend to our children. So why is it that we can’t tolerate an elevator ride with them? Are we terrified, that we are perhaps not really so different from them after all?