Mistress of all she surveys

The mistress of the house, or burra mem, was not a housewife as we understand the term. She had the imposing task of managing a household staff numbering between eight and thirty servants, ostensibly employed to take care of the domestic chores with the lubricated efficiency of a well-run luxury hotel and so lighten the white woman’s burden. In reality the arrangement did not reach that pinnacle of achievement. The servants’ interpersonal relationships, religious taboos and caste-bound job definitions would make a present-day shop steward or personnel manager resign and start collecting matchboxes. As Charles Allen wrote in Plain Tales from the Raj: