The rain pelted relentlessly against the rattling window panes and slithered its slimy path across their dusty glass. Thunder rumbled overhead and the skeletal fingers of lightning streaked across the sky, both eerily out of place in the (admittedly cloudy) daylight of 8:30 am. I lifted my head off the pillow and squinted groggily at my mother, bent over with her back to me, furiously mopping up the floor. I wondered vaguely at her energetic form of 45, simultaneously groping for that watch I remembered I'd tossed somewhere last night before I flopped into bed. She turned, and realising I was up, grabbed a handy book from my study table and flung it at me, which, narrowly missing my head, hit the wall behind me. "Get out of bed and help me clean up!" she snarled. "Whats up with you?" I enquired acidly, sidling out of bed a lot faster than I would have normally. "Water is seeping into every room. Hurry up." she said shortly. Fighting the urge to throw myself back into bed, I dragged my feet to the closest balcony and took in what was making my mother characteristically irritable. The balconies dont have a decent drainage system,the pipes being too narrow to allow a quick passage of rain water, so the water rapidly filling them was flowing into the house through the gaps under the doors, instead of through the pipes that were supposed to facilitate drainage for just such an occasion.
On closer scrutiny, I realised my mother was soaking wet and thoroughly bedraggled. She had hoisted the curtains at every window onto tables or chairs to prevent their lower edges from getting wet, and was currently using a broom to sweep the influx of water back out to where it came from near the balcony in my room. She'd either left the other rooms for later, or would have to do them again anyway, I realised, as I watched the water seep under the doors in the living room. And suddenly, unexpectedly, a flash of understanding filled me with remorse.
She'd sweep the water out and mop up the floor, and it would seep back in in no time. She cleared up the entire house everyday- put books back on appropriate shelves; clothes back in cupboards, or in the washing machine, or folded up in a pile to get ironed; papers in drawers or in the dustbin (even though that went badly wrong sometimes); shoes in the shoe rack; laying out the bedsheets and then the bedcovers on the beds- wheezing her asthamatic lungs out in the process, and by the same evening, it'd all be messy again- books strewn on the wrinkled bed covers that we were too lazy to take off and fold at night, papers sluggishly lying about the tables, clothes flung over beds, or chairs, or both, shoes waiting to trip people up bang centre of the corridor or even an odd shoe on the bed (in my brother's room, duh).
She asked us me to help her dust the house, I remembered guiltily. I hadn't done it. I was hardly listening when she was talking to me. And after a few days, the house was miraculously dust free one day when I'd come home. And I hadn't questioned that. It happened three or four times every week, and it never hit me as it did then, watching her battle the rain.
Is this an inseparable part of being a married woman? That one will have a family who really doesn't give a shit? Oh, they love you of course. No question about that. Yes. But they dont give a damn, I know, because I'm them, at least for now. My mother works all day, cooking, cleaning and then going to work - shes an attorney - and then comes back to an evening of tired argument about who will watch what on tv, because her 'stupid' serial, the only thing she watches, is unfortunately aired at the same time as the first half hour of the IPL, or the Manchester vs Chelsea final, or Roadies. So she misses it, because that 'mindless crap' is less important than what her children want to watch, and promises to herself that she will watch the rerun of her show tomorrow afternoon. But she is working tomorrow afternoon, trying to read through a case file while jotting down a list of items to order from the general store.
Is every Indian mother a washed out woman?
On closer scrutiny, I realised my mother was soaking wet and thoroughly bedraggled. She had hoisted the curtains at every window onto tables or chairs to prevent their lower edges from getting wet, and was currently using a broom to sweep the influx of water back out to where it came from near the balcony in my room. She'd either left the other rooms for later, or would have to do them again anyway, I realised, as I watched the water seep under the doors in the living room. And suddenly, unexpectedly, a flash of understanding filled me with remorse.
She'd sweep the water out and mop up the floor, and it would seep back in in no time. She cleared up the entire house everyday- put books back on appropriate shelves; clothes back in cupboards, or in the washing machine, or folded up in a pile to get ironed; papers in drawers or in the dustbin (even though that went badly wrong sometimes); shoes in the shoe rack; laying out the bedsheets and then the bedcovers on the beds- wheezing her asthamatic lungs out in the process, and by the same evening, it'd all be messy again- books strewn on the wrinkled bed covers that we were too lazy to take off and fold at night, papers sluggishly lying about the tables, clothes flung over beds, or chairs, or both, shoes waiting to trip people up bang centre of the corridor or even an odd shoe on the bed (in my brother's room, duh).
She asked us me to help her dust the house, I remembered guiltily. I hadn't done it. I was hardly listening when she was talking to me. And after a few days, the house was miraculously dust free one day when I'd come home. And I hadn't questioned that. It happened three or four times every week, and it never hit me as it did then, watching her battle the rain.
Is this an inseparable part of being a married woman? That one will have a family who really doesn't give a shit? Oh, they love you of course. No question about that. Yes. But they dont give a damn, I know, because I'm them, at least for now. My mother works all day, cooking, cleaning and then going to work - shes an attorney - and then comes back to an evening of tired argument about who will watch what on tv, because her 'stupid' serial, the only thing she watches, is unfortunately aired at the same time as the first half hour of the IPL, or the Manchester vs Chelsea final, or Roadies. So she misses it, because that 'mindless crap' is less important than what her children want to watch, and promises to herself that she will watch the rerun of her show tomorrow afternoon. But she is working tomorrow afternoon, trying to read through a case file while jotting down a list of items to order from the general store.
Is every Indian mother a washed out woman?
