Usha Alexander in Shunya's Notes:
Days later, another neighbor introduced us to her cleaning woman, newly arrived from West Bengal. ‘Does she speak Hindi?’ I asked. ‘No, she doesn’t speak Hindi or English or any language!’ the neighbor blurted with vague, exasperated disgust, while the short Bangla woman stood smiling shyly behind her; she was aware we were speaking of her but not of what we said.
I had heard such comments before in other middle-class Indian living rooms, when the workers whom we invite daily into our homes were cast by their employers as a mysterious band of them, their collective virtues and vices debated or condemned: they steal; they are lazy and don’t work; they are careless and clumsy, prone to breaking things; they’ve become ‘too smart’ and know how to play you. When our maid returned to work after being out just 3 or 4 days due to a slipped disk in her back, my neighbor remarked that ‘they recover quickly’ from illness and injury.
More here.