Restaurant offers free meals to nannies who accompany patrons

BANGALORE: Recently, the restaurant Sattvam, which positions itself as a fine-dining vegetarian restaurant that serves sattvik food, started an unusual practice. It began offering free meals to nannies who would accompany families that came to the restaurant with small children.
To anybody who dines out often in Bangalore, this is often a familiar scenario: a family comes in with a child or children in tow, and bringing up the rear, holding diaper bags and water bottles, is a shy girl in a salwaar kameez.She's the nanny, and her job is to mind the kids while the parents enjoy a stress-free meal. Very often, the nanny is handed a plateful of food and asked to feed the children, and you can see the harassed young woman running after a screaming toddler and desperately trying to keep the child safe but out of sight. Forget being asked to share the table with the family, she is routinely not offered a bite to eat or even a glass of water. Some diners report seeing nannies come in with their own tiffin dabbas, out of which they have a hasty meal discreetly standing behind a door or by the restaurant kitchen.
"I really feel sorry for these young girls. They look extremely uncomfortable and out of place, and no effort is made by the family to make them feel part of the group," says Aparna Sachdev, a content writer and mother of a two-year-old. "Why bring them with you in the first place if their presence makes you awkward? Wouldn't it be better to just take care of the kids yourself?" she asks.
Unfortunately, it appears many couples don't bother about such niceties when it comes to the domestic help. And noticing their obvious discomfort at his own restaurant gave restaurateur Arvind Chowdhary, founder of Sattvam, the idea to create a space for them and make sure they get a good meal.
"There is a direct link between our decision to do this and the sattvik way of life. According to Vedic customs, a householder would make sure everyone under his roof had been fed before sitting down to his own meal. They say even the house lizard would be fed before the householder ate his own simple food," says Chowdhary. "We decided it wasn't right for anyone to go hungry while they were under our roof."
Chowdhary clarifies that while a few families do make sure that the nannies get a plate of the buffet spread, many do not. And to make sure that they don't go hungry, Sattvam started offering pre-plated meals to these women, at the restaurant's own cost. "We have a children's play area where they can go with the kids and sit down in comfort to have their food while the kids are busy playing or reading. This way, the kids don't cause a disruption in the restaurant and everyone leaves happy," says Chowdhary.
The concept of a children's area within a restaurant is not a unique one. Several restaurants and star hotels now create spaces where the children can be out of the way with an adult minding them, and many families do make sure that the nanny has a proper meal, says restaurateur Sajit Chacko of Umerkot and Tattv. "But there are times when I've seen the maids hanging around outside with the kids. I do feel bad for them, as well as for drivers who are often made to wait in the car for hours without being allowed to go for a meal. I wonder when we will be sensitized to this kind of thing as a society," he asks.
Restaurants like Sattvam are definitely taking a step in the right direction, and Chowdhary hopes many others will follow their example. "It costs us very little, but the amount of goodwill it creates is really heart-warming," he says.