When I lived in India, people often told me, “Send your man.” Medical test ready for pick up? Send your man. Need some onions last minute from the grocer? Send your man. I had no man. But this I could not confess. Any self-respecting man, it seemed, had a man.
Sometimes these men were called “boys.” Sometimes, they were called P.A.s, as in personal assistants. Sometimes they were “peons,” but pronounced more like “punes,” making the Spanish conquistadors’ term for forced servitude sound worse than it already does.
