Basic questions I would think

Chaitra is the new maid that started with us a few weeks back. She's slim, pretty, has a sweet demeanor, is married with 2 young children (5 and 3) and speaks only Kannada. You can only imagine the number of blog posts I could write on the misunderstandings we have. She does understand a bit of Telugu as there are commonalities in the two languages and in the same way, I understand a bit of her Kannada. A couple of weeks ago, she brought an ID form for entering the complex. The form is in English which I don't quite get since most of the maids would not be able to fill out an English form. It might be because there are two questions that her employer needs to fill out. She asked me to fill it out for her. Each question proved to be a challenge.

First Question - What is your name.
She replies, Chaitra, I asked her what her family name was, she looked at me quizzically, that could be cultural though as I've seen a few people just use an initial for their last name. She said I could put down her father's name which I wrote down in my own spelling.

2nd Question - Her Husband's and Father's name.
Not sure why these questions are relevant even. Anyway I came up with my own spelling for the names.

3rd Question - Her address
She replies, Sobha Dalia, I asked if she lived at the complex, she said that they have a room near Sobha Dalia, but no specific address. So I put down a room near Sobha Dalia.

4th Question - What is your permanent address
Most of the maids live in temporary dwellings but their permanent addresses are in a village nearby. Chaitra wasn't sure what the full address was and said that it was on her other ID card and that she would fill it out later.

5th Question - Her age.
She wasn't sure when her birthday was exactly and I remember getting the same answer from my previous maid and driver, I guess there are no clear birth records for them. She said she was around 22 years old. If you remember from the beginning of the post, she has 2 children and one of them is around 5. When she is my age, she will probably be a grandmother. This seems to be the norm among the maids., they have so much responsibility at a young age.

She was still able to get the ID with the cryptic answers we put down. Most of the maids have ration cards or Voter IDs, maybe with either one of those, it is sufficent to get the security badge. There is also the communication factor, we don't speak a common language and who knows what she understood when I asked her the questions.