When Deepa
visited from Baroda this summer, we invited her family for dinner one night.
As usual,
after dinner, I slipped on my rubber gloves and started dishwashing.
“I like
other chores but I don’t like dishwashing” she said.
“Well, I
like dishwashing” I said. She looked at me in disbelief.
...
The day
after my wedding, I sailed down to the kitchen to help my mother-in-law.
“Mummy” I
said, “May I help you?”
I was
desperate to make a good impression. I had married for love and I was still
unsure if she was happy to have me as a daughter-in-law.
She was
cooking a pot of chicken stew. Turning to me she smiled and asked me to taste
it to check its salt content. I felt honoured to be appointed as the salt-taster
of the family. I performed the assigned task to perfection – carefully wrinkling
my nose, making smacking sounds, and nodding in approval.
Then, my
mother-in-law casually pointed to the kitchen sink and asked if I would like to
scrub the pots and pans.
I looked at
the jumbled heap of utensils in the sink. Arranged together like that, they
looked like an extra-terrestrial metallic creature with handles sticking out at
odd angles.
I said,
“Yes, sure.”
Inwardly, I
said to myself, “God help me! I have never scrubbed so many pots and pans in my
lifetime.”
I remembered
how I had watched Auntie Lily meticulously scrub utensils in my natal home. She
told me stories from the past as she got rid of the grease on the dishes.
When my
mother-in-law realised that I was doing the washing-up for the better part of
the hour, she seemed concerned.
Then, just
as I was thinking about my bad report in her books, something wonderful
happened.
My new-brand
husband put his hands in the sink and scrubbed the remaining pots and pans
while I rinsed them.
Since that
day, for me, dishwashing became a time for bonding and less of a chore.
...
After all
these years, when my husband is no longer new-brand and nowhere on the radius
while I am dishwashing, I enjoy these quiet moments with myself.
It is an
occasion for relieving stresses of the day.
It is also a time for bonding with
the divine.
