Last night, at our weekly "ladies night" drinks one of my friends--a pretty blond--confided in the group that she's concerned she might not be able to stay in Delhi for much longer. "I've been volunteering at this organization and burning through my savings," she said. "They'd like to offer me a position, but the problem is the visa."
Ah yes, the visa indeed. See, India has a somewhat notorious two-tiered visa system. In order to stay here on an NGO-employee visa, a foreigner must earn less than 10,000 rupees (USD $170) a month. While many poor Indians do, in fact, subsist on 10,000 rupees a month that would be a pretty hard trick for a foreigner to pull-off. But, in order to stay here on a regular work visa, the foreigner must earn more than USD $25,000 a year and NGOs simply do not have that kind of money to pay employees.
So what ends up happening is one of the following: (a) the foreigner arrives on an NGO visa and discretely gets paid some extra money under the the table or (b) the foreigner arrives on an NGO visa and then burns through her savings. As my friend had already burned through her savings, however, option (b) wasn't really an option. And as the organization she works for is very concerned with the integrity of their books (because they're very concerned with the government trying to shut them down), option (a) didn't seem to be plausible either.
(As a side note, one of my other friends whose worked in the Indian NGO sector for a few years is convinced that this relatively new two-tiered structure is an attempt by the government to stifle civil society by depriving NGOs of their inflows of foreign aid workers. I suggested, perhaps, that the government was rather trying to encourage the hiring of Indian employees instead, but my friend is certain the impetus was more nefarious. For the record, I'm actually here on a translator's visa (given for my work in Spanish), so I was able to bypass the above salary requirements.)
Anyway, as we bemoaned my friend's fate, my Italian friend piped up. "Well," she said. "You can always be a human table. That's what my friend Natalie does for money and she earns like 7000 rupees for three hours work. Kate, you could do it too--she says they prefer blonds so they'd definitely take you both!"
7000 rupees (or, about USD $120) for three hours of work is a phenomenal amount of money here so naturally our curiosity was piqued by this intriguing job description. (And naturally, the jokes started flying: "Is 'human table', the Hindi slang for 'Giver of Blow Jobs'?")
But my Italian friend insisted that the job was above board--more or less. "Wealthy Indians will pay quite a lot of have foreign women at their big events: weddings, birthday parties, etc." she said. "It's not prostitution at all--actually, the men can't even get close enough to touch you! You're like a kind of bartender, see. Except they put you standing in the middle of a circular table and dress you up with a table cloth so you literally become a human table. And then you serve the drinks!"
Well, while this is a fairly hilarious image, the implications of this are actually awful, right? It means that some rich Indians are literally turning foreign women into objects of furniture in order to show off their wealth and power to their friends. This is, of course, not only incredibly demeaning to women generally to treat them as furniture, but also is a wretched crystallization of the idea that an attractive foreign women is a status symbol, while local Indian women are not. Gross, gross, gross.
But, well-paid. And word on the street is that my friend who, ironically, is volunteering with a women's rights organization, is seriously considering human tabling as a way to pay the bills if she can't supplement her NGO visa any other way. But I'm pretty sure I'll give this one a pass.
Postscript: I actually came across this article written by a human table in India this morning (which is where I got the photo from)! So apropos.
Ah yes, the visa indeed. See, India has a somewhat notorious two-tiered visa system. In order to stay here on an NGO-employee visa, a foreigner must earn less than 10,000 rupees (USD $170) a month. While many poor Indians do, in fact, subsist on 10,000 rupees a month that would be a pretty hard trick for a foreigner to pull-off. But, in order to stay here on a regular work visa, the foreigner must earn more than USD $25,000 a year and NGOs simply do not have that kind of money to pay employees.
So what ends up happening is one of the following: (a) the foreigner arrives on an NGO visa and discretely gets paid some extra money under the the table or (b) the foreigner arrives on an NGO visa and then burns through her savings. As my friend had already burned through her savings, however, option (b) wasn't really an option. And as the organization she works for is very concerned with the integrity of their books (because they're very concerned with the government trying to shut them down), option (a) didn't seem to be plausible either.
(As a side note, one of my other friends whose worked in the Indian NGO sector for a few years is convinced that this relatively new two-tiered structure is an attempt by the government to stifle civil society by depriving NGOs of their inflows of foreign aid workers. I suggested, perhaps, that the government was rather trying to encourage the hiring of Indian employees instead, but my friend is certain the impetus was more nefarious. For the record, I'm actually here on a translator's visa (given for my work in Spanish), so I was able to bypass the above salary requirements.)
Anyway, as we bemoaned my friend's fate, my Italian friend piped up. "Well," she said. "You can always be a human table. That's what my friend Natalie does for money and she earns like 7000 rupees for three hours work. Kate, you could do it too--she says they prefer blonds so they'd definitely take you both!"
7000 rupees (or, about USD $120) for three hours of work is a phenomenal amount of money here so naturally our curiosity was piqued by this intriguing job description. (And naturally, the jokes started flying: "Is 'human table', the Hindi slang for 'Giver of Blow Jobs'?")
But my Italian friend insisted that the job was above board--more or less. "Wealthy Indians will pay quite a lot of have foreign women at their big events: weddings, birthday parties, etc." she said. "It's not prostitution at all--actually, the men can't even get close enough to touch you! You're like a kind of bartender, see. Except they put you standing in the middle of a circular table and dress you up with a table cloth so you literally become a human table. And then you serve the drinks!"
Well, while this is a fairly hilarious image, the implications of this are actually awful, right? It means that some rich Indians are literally turning foreign women into objects of furniture in order to show off their wealth and power to their friends. This is, of course, not only incredibly demeaning to women generally to treat them as furniture, but also is a wretched crystallization of the idea that an attractive foreign women is a status symbol, while local Indian women are not. Gross, gross, gross.
But, well-paid. And word on the street is that my friend who, ironically, is volunteering with a women's rights organization, is seriously considering human tabling as a way to pay the bills if she can't supplement her NGO visa any other way. But I'm pretty sure I'll give this one a pass.
Postscript: I actually came across this article written by a human table in India this morning (which is where I got the photo from)! So apropos.
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