I have been living alone for the past one month now and let me begin by acknowledging that I haven’t learnt this much about life ever before in my life. By living alone I don’t mean just staying away from home. I mean managing your entire life yourself. The whole deal! The entire thingy about washing clothes, ironing them, washing utensils, drying them, cleaning the entire apartment and yes the greatest bane of all – cooking!!
I have been so pooped with all the responsibilities of living alone that I started doing some real intense contemplation. About the absolute necessity of all the abovementioned items and here’s what I came up with.
Washing Clothes: yeah! Unless you have oodles of money which enables you to buy a new set of clothes every day you live, you have to wash them and dry them so that you can wear them again. Unless of course you have resolved to live like a pig which I can assure you is not very welcome socially. So unless you want to be an absolute social outcaste, washing clothes is indispensable. Yes there is the obvious option of outsourcing this job to a hired maid or the local laundry but in the absence of a regular time table like mine, both the options are a tad difficult to maintain. So the best deal is of course to lay your hands on a washing machine and hold off the activity till you run out of the last good set of clothes that you have. Then when the opportune moment arrives, gear up all the steely reserves of resolution that you have and plunge headlong into the task.
Ironing clothes: This one is not a particularly disturbing problem in India because of the abundance of the roadside press-wallahs but once you have stepped out of the safety of the country like I have and land in a place like Indonesia, you will come to realize the importance of the innocuous press wallah in your life. Believe me when I tell you that my manhunt for a press wallah in these lonely streets of Indonesia has been nothing less than Bush’s for Osama and suffice it to say that we are both relentless in our pursuits. But while the latter is at a point of no return-or-progress, I have had to resort to “do-it-yourself” for a socially acceptable survival
Cleaning the Apartment: It was a day of great revelations that I finally understood why Ma would get so angry with me eating on the bed or the sofa? I thought she was being overly fastidious in my education of etiquettes and manners but what I didn’t understand then and I am woefully aware of now is that it is all a part of a much bigger picture. The joy of curling up on the sofa and eating that pepperoni and cheese Pizza while watching your favourite TV show disappears when the next morning’s reconnaissance yields a pig sty where last night’s dining area was. Even for someone who does not quite mind the whole deal about being a pig inside the confines of his four walls which he pays rent for, cleaning the place where one lives is not an escapable affair. I mean I could shirk the responsibility for a week but when the glass top centre table lost its ability to refract light through its thickness, I decided it was time I took up the mop and restored some credibility to the apartment. So yes, even this checks out in the list of bare minimum acts of survival.
Key watch: Never before in my life have I realized the pain of losing a key. It’s worse than the most humiliating day in your boss’ cabin. At least there you know that you can get back at him in your mind once the day is over and you are curling up back at home cursing his forthcoming generations to baldness. But what do you do when you realize that after that horribly long workday you have come back to the one place which you call home and God Almighty! You have lost the keys to the apartment? Once the initial phase of four letter words is over, the truth dawns that some action is called for. So unless you are Al Pacino in “The Score” or Richard P Feynman, you are in for a very trying time – one that will test the very core of your values and tell you whether you are a man or just that goddamned idiot who has to live alone!
Washing Utensils: I am absolutely sure that this task is an act of God to drive home the fact that no right comes without a corresponding duty. You have the total right and freedom to enjoy that bowl of dinner but beware for you have to wash the utensils so that you can eat again the next night. It is like the sword of Diocles. I could never quite enjoy my food because of this particular doom that awaited me after that sated belly. That was all rectified when I resolved not to eat until I had cleaned up all the dishes before I sat down to enjoy my meal. I now have a much more satisfying meal experience knowing that at least the cooking utensils are clean and only the ones I am eating in right now need to go under the tap. Amen!
Cooking: I can understand the man who developed the science of detergents to give us dish washing powder or laundry powder (though I would very much like to see him serve a life sentence for the same) but it was definitely a fiend in human form that first discovered that food needed to be cooked!! I mean Early Man was quite content in plucking fruits from the trees and killing his prey and devouring it without the need for “simmer for 5 minutes. Stir till light brown and serve with a garnishing of grated cheese”. And this becomes all the more frustrating for someone like me who has been brought up on a diet of some of the most aromatically stimulating, taste bud exhilarating, sinfully delicious cuisines (that’s the primary reason why Kofi Annan might just decide to pin Ethiopia’s starvation on my size). It is only someone who has been in my place who can identify with me in my reverence of Ray Croc (Mc Donald’s) and Tom Managhan (Domino’s). It is now when I have to taste the utter rubbish of my labors on the cooking range that I realize the root of my love for my Ma and my Grandma. It is here that I publicly acknowledge that you people were placed on Earth so that I could distinguish between good and bad (food). Thank you God for these 2 angels for I may have never known what any food other than instant noodles tastes like. Amen!
I heard that it was highly unusual for American kids to stay with their parents once they had hit the later part of their teens and most of them rent their own places to live. It was there only that I also heard that they did this to emphasize their independence. I bet that these poor fellows given the chance to speak up their internal feelings would just like to pack up lock stock and barrel and crash into their lovely bed back in their parent’s house. I know I would.
I have been so pooped with all the responsibilities of living alone that I started doing some real intense contemplation. About the absolute necessity of all the abovementioned items and here’s what I came up with.
Washing Clothes: yeah! Unless you have oodles of money which enables you to buy a new set of clothes every day you live, you have to wash them and dry them so that you can wear them again. Unless of course you have resolved to live like a pig which I can assure you is not very welcome socially. So unless you want to be an absolute social outcaste, washing clothes is indispensable. Yes there is the obvious option of outsourcing this job to a hired maid or the local laundry but in the absence of a regular time table like mine, both the options are a tad difficult to maintain. So the best deal is of course to lay your hands on a washing machine and hold off the activity till you run out of the last good set of clothes that you have. Then when the opportune moment arrives, gear up all the steely reserves of resolution that you have and plunge headlong into the task.
Ironing clothes: This one is not a particularly disturbing problem in India because of the abundance of the roadside press-wallahs but once you have stepped out of the safety of the country like I have and land in a place like Indonesia, you will come to realize the importance of the innocuous press wallah in your life. Believe me when I tell you that my manhunt for a press wallah in these lonely streets of Indonesia has been nothing less than Bush’s for Osama and suffice it to say that we are both relentless in our pursuits. But while the latter is at a point of no return-or-progress, I have had to resort to “do-it-yourself” for a socially acceptable survival
Cleaning the Apartment: It was a day of great revelations that I finally understood why Ma would get so angry with me eating on the bed or the sofa? I thought she was being overly fastidious in my education of etiquettes and manners but what I didn’t understand then and I am woefully aware of now is that it is all a part of a much bigger picture. The joy of curling up on the sofa and eating that pepperoni and cheese Pizza while watching your favourite TV show disappears when the next morning’s reconnaissance yields a pig sty where last night’s dining area was. Even for someone who does not quite mind the whole deal about being a pig inside the confines of his four walls which he pays rent for, cleaning the place where one lives is not an escapable affair. I mean I could shirk the responsibility for a week but when the glass top centre table lost its ability to refract light through its thickness, I decided it was time I took up the mop and restored some credibility to the apartment. So yes, even this checks out in the list of bare minimum acts of survival.
Key watch: Never before in my life have I realized the pain of losing a key. It’s worse than the most humiliating day in your boss’ cabin. At least there you know that you can get back at him in your mind once the day is over and you are curling up back at home cursing his forthcoming generations to baldness. But what do you do when you realize that after that horribly long workday you have come back to the one place which you call home and God Almighty! You have lost the keys to the apartment? Once the initial phase of four letter words is over, the truth dawns that some action is called for. So unless you are Al Pacino in “The Score” or Richard P Feynman, you are in for a very trying time – one that will test the very core of your values and tell you whether you are a man or just that goddamned idiot who has to live alone!
Washing Utensils: I am absolutely sure that this task is an act of God to drive home the fact that no right comes without a corresponding duty. You have the total right and freedom to enjoy that bowl of dinner but beware for you have to wash the utensils so that you can eat again the next night. It is like the sword of Diocles. I could never quite enjoy my food because of this particular doom that awaited me after that sated belly. That was all rectified when I resolved not to eat until I had cleaned up all the dishes before I sat down to enjoy my meal. I now have a much more satisfying meal experience knowing that at least the cooking utensils are clean and only the ones I am eating in right now need to go under the tap. Amen!
Cooking: I can understand the man who developed the science of detergents to give us dish washing powder or laundry powder (though I would very much like to see him serve a life sentence for the same) but it was definitely a fiend in human form that first discovered that food needed to be cooked!! I mean Early Man was quite content in plucking fruits from the trees and killing his prey and devouring it without the need for “simmer for 5 minutes. Stir till light brown and serve with a garnishing of grated cheese”. And this becomes all the more frustrating for someone like me who has been brought up on a diet of some of the most aromatically stimulating, taste bud exhilarating, sinfully delicious cuisines (that’s the primary reason why Kofi Annan might just decide to pin Ethiopia’s starvation on my size). It is only someone who has been in my place who can identify with me in my reverence of Ray Croc (Mc Donald’s) and Tom Managhan (Domino’s). It is now when I have to taste the utter rubbish of my labors on the cooking range that I realize the root of my love for my Ma and my Grandma. It is here that I publicly acknowledge that you people were placed on Earth so that I could distinguish between good and bad (food). Thank you God for these 2 angels for I may have never known what any food other than instant noodles tastes like. Amen!
I heard that it was highly unusual for American kids to stay with their parents once they had hit the later part of their teens and most of them rent their own places to live. It was there only that I also heard that they did this to emphasize their independence. I bet that these poor fellows given the chance to speak up their internal feelings would just like to pack up lock stock and barrel and crash into their lovely bed back in their parent’s house. I know I would.
1 comment:
All this makes you smarter! India will look more heavenly...Sach me...there are some things in India which make us realize their importance only when we miss them. Hyderabad ki bus...Mumbai ki locals, pav bhaji, etc etc....:)
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