Cooking, Cleaning and Corona
“The house was spotless, every surface sparkling as if it had just come out of the wash. The enticing aroma of cutlets frying wafted out of the kitchen. The larder was well stocked. Fresh cut flowers occupied a place of pride in strategically placed vases. The beds were covered in crisp colourful sheets, without a single wrinkle and the pale sunlight drifting in through the French windows of the balcony painted the bowl of mangoes on the immaculately polished dark teak dining table just the right shade of gold”
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Much as I try to attain this dream of household perfection, it remains just that… a golden dream what with the Coronavirus lurking just beyond the front door. Each golden summer day rises, making my heart sink that much further as I contemplate the tasks that lie ahead. My love for exaggeration and hyperbole seems to be exactly what the situation warrants, even though I have to tackle the chores not for a large joint family with several infirm members, but a rather small and youthful family of three.
I am not really cut out for household chores. Neither am I very house proud, nor do I claim to be a chef de la supreme. In fact, I relate rather well with the character of Samantha Sweeting from Sophie Kinsella`s ` The Undomestic Goddess`. While quite a few of the thing that I cook turn out to be edible, surprising even me, I am happiest left to my own devices, rather than having a list of domestic chores breathing down my neck like an invisible mother-in-law.
Nothing like a friendly worldwide virus to send people running for cover faster than you can say `Achoo`. But the one thing which
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the Coronavirus has taught us is to forget our own haloes and truly appreciate our domestic help -maids, drivers, laundrymen, gardeners who iron out many a wrinkle in our lives. While those of us living in metropolises rarely have the ‘Ramu Kaka’ esque live-in help of older times, we are definitely indebted to the ubiquitous ‘Bais’, ‘Mavshis’ or ‘Didis’ who form the unseen and often unthanked backbone of our busy world.
Household chores are unique in the fact that they are set to auto-repeat mode. No matter how many dishes you wash, there is still a single spoon sitting in solitary glory at the bottom of the sink, a towel lying on the floor after endless rounds of washing or a cobweb mocking you from the alcove right by the front door after you have shed blood, sweat, and tears and spent the better part of the morning meticulously cleaning every nook and cranny of the house, or so you think.
Eat to live, say the wise but in the times of a countrywide lockdown with the entire family trapped indoors with little to do, it seems that we now live to eat. While there is no doubt that breaking bread together is great for family bonding, BAKING bread together is what really forges bonds of steel. Cooking, therefore, is the greatest day to day challenges faced by most of us because we are now dealing with limited supplies. Not everyone can whip up a drool-worthy seven-course meal which is healthy to boot. Add diet fads, cantankerous family and huge appetites to this mix and it quickly becomes a recipe for disaster.
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Part of the trouble in most households is that women are expected to pick up the slack from the word go when it comes to household chores. With patriarchal roots embedded deeply in the Indian psyche, even emancipated women think twice before asking men to lend a hand no matter how sorely it may be needed. Though most modern mothers train their sons to help around the house from a young age, we have quite a few middle-aged gentlemen and silver-haired eminences at large, who cannot tell one end of a broom from another much less the difference between arhar and chana daal except when they are eating them. The words of a stand-up comedian stand out in my memory “There is only one expectation from a son in most Indian households….“bas who paida ho jaye”.
Women have chased the dream of perfection for generations. By setting unrealistically high standards for themselves, they unwittingly set themselves up to fail. Cooking, cleaning and child-care can sometimes form invisible shackles holding them back and though vast strides have been made in this regard in the past two decades, it is but a mere drop in the ocean of centuries of conditioning. Ironically, psychologists have observed that women with higher levels of education and income are the least comfortable when it comes to asking for help in dealing with day-to-day chores. Perhaps it is the ‘Superwoman Syndrome’ where they find it impossible to climb off the pedestal of perfection on which they set themselves. Also, being natural caregivers, they tend to hold themselves personally responsible for several situations beyond their control be it an imperfectly cooked meal, an imperfectly ironed shirt or a child’s less than perfect marks in a school test.
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Perhaps the Coronavirus has morphed into a great equalizer – it has taught everyone to pick up after themselves. Not indulging the rich or the poor, old or young, male or female, it has made us more sympathetic and enlightened us that household chores are, after all, work and pretty important work at that. Unpaid perhaps, unglorified certainly, but most of all necessary to keep the cogs in the wheel of life ticking smoothly. It has created bonds of shared work, trust and memories to cherish for the rest of our lives.
Even as I write this, part of my mind dwells on the menu for tomorrow, the unwashed dishes in the sink beckon as does the pile of ironing. But, I also have helping hands in my family telling me to get on with the writing while they teach themselves how to deal with the chores so that one day in the not so distant future we can look back nostalgically on this summer and realise that cooling, cleaning and Corona have brought us closer than ever.