Farida’s coming at eight am is like a timer. The one hour she sweeps, mops, cleans dishes, I cook, run-the-washer, dust. Two extra hard-working hands doing the arduous stuff make me feel in control, even though we both know that the hamster wheel of housework will keep us running endlessly. I was trying to say, if I had run the washer then, three-quarters full with yesterday’s dirty clothes, I could have exercised in peace, but I decided for a quick bath, so I could throw in my clothes before running a full load and saving water and electricity, but when I came after the bath, Ana—her washroom is where the washing machine is installed—hustled me out as she had to write an online exam; and the whole load sat unwashed and I can’t help thinking what if afternoon water-supply is cut off? That would be fun, because my ninety-year old father would then shuffle around with a frowny-squinty look of disgust at my sloppy housekeeping, and with the weather getting colder, clothes—even spin-dried clothes take a whole day to dry—and then the folding them and keeping them in closet, the thought of all of it sitting undone made my head ache. These days my bones feel way older than I look and if I don’t stretch my body stays stiff through the day, creaking in strange places, like the first knuckle of the middle finger of the right hand or under the big toe of the left foot, weird clicks in knees and while rotating the neck. To distract myself I put on mobility exercises on youtube. Once upon a time I could do all this and more in one smooth eight-minute circuit. Now my outer quads are stiff as batons, my piriformis hurts, and I cannot touch my right ear to my right shoulder. My clavicles are as locked as my knee joints, my neck—it creaks—just like the microwave door. Despite this unbelievable rigidity I try out the dynamic toe-touches, hopping on one foot from front door to balcony and back, and mountain-climbers—groaning and panting and grimacing at my reflection in the hall mirror—an oversized orangutan clad in tummy-hugging potato-peel skivvies and loose grey pyjamas trying to do ballet. The husband comes in from his Sunday mid-morning walk and instead of offering to hold my elbows together to help me stretch my upper back, he demands tea. At the same time, my sixteen year old son who eats only proteins and raw vegetables cut in fancy forms—not the nice, spicy, fresh cooked mutton-stew and cumin-rice I make—enters the kitchen and inquires if I have marinated his chicken. I have not and he is affronted. “At least you can do that much for me, what else do I ask you to do?”
I tell him to be quiet and put my mobilized joints to work, lunging to take out the chicken, chopping raw chunks in bite sized pieces and then swivel and reach out for spices—coriander from top right shelf and shahi-garam masala bottle on extreme left and a little bit of sugar and red chilly flakes from the back row in the bottom—and start rubbing them in, when the tea which I completely forgot, boils over and sizzles and douses the burner, leaving a burnt tea smell, a spreading mud-colored puddle speckled with black tea-leaves on the counter. I throw a kitchen towel to mop the mess when my son, strides in and puts oat flakes and two ounces of milk and one ounce of protein in a ceramic jug so he can zap the goop in the microwave. To demonstrate his smooth and simple ease with kitchen work, he holds the bowl of oat mixture in the right hand and pulls the microwave hatch with just the thumb and fore-finger of his left hand. His smooth move is lost on the two-decade old Indian microwave, purchased a year before Ana was born—it even has a warm milk function—a vision of the mother not even stirring from sleep opening the door and popping the warm bottle straight in the screaming infant’s mouth made me buy it. As it turned out, I hardly used that function, because when the baby was born I had these very definite ideas of feeding Ana only warm-from-the-body-milk for a whole year. So I told myself the microwave would come handy when the kids got older, and like a Good housekeeping mom I would use it to make quick cup-cakes and cookies. But that too backfired—the texture was never the way it should be—and so we ended up using the microwave for only one thing. Re-heating. Or as my protein-eating son uses it, to make oat-meal. Milk-water-tea-leaves bubbled again on the burner on the cleared counter and my back was turned to take grated ginger out of the fridge, when the cool boy —who was crowding me in that seven by four kitchen with his measuring cups and muttered gripes—tugged with his manly fingers at the cracked and taped and bruised microwave hatch, leaving it to bang shut. I don’t know if I heard the noise he made or the noise microwave made first, but I turned and lunged forward (mobility when it matters!) and he was bent over to hold the falling door and the steel ginger box in my hand —with my week’s supply of grated fresh ginger—fell with a clang, it’s lid coming off and scattering pale yellow bits caught in tile-joints and counter skirting and under the 510 liters fridge. Then the tea (ginger-less) boiled over again. That was when I lost it—screaming at the careless son and the father who kept pleading with me to be reasonable, as this is an accident, no one needs to be blamed— and banging the sieve over the teacup, march off.
But I just asked for a cup of tea, the husband said, holding the microwave door I’d dumped in his hands. The son had put on headphones and was already swaying to his own music.
Illustration : Suman Mukherjee
