Having done my time both in the corporate and the Army one tries to maintain a few routines. Besides keeping fit and indulging in hobbies of reading, photography, gardening and writing.
I could never write during my Army days except for some ‘service writing’ but in the corporate world, one used to find time.
Those days reaching the office in time was a ritual. We would then get busy with the office chores. Housekeeping of the office was done before you entered it. If things are neat and clean then one gets time to think, reflect and concentrate on topics which touch your daily life.
Now, the scene is totally civilian. My dining table is my workplace. The whistle of the cooker in the kitchen adjacent, keeps reminding me of that. Once I am free from the morning chores in the garden, it is time to key write my blog.
Our maid times her arrival perfectly as I sit down to write. I keep an ear on her “cling clang” which she does while doing the dishes. Moment there is silence, it means you gotta get up for the first round called dusting. You leave the table and walk around, till she is done dusting. You return to continue where you left your half-written piece.
By now, your chain of thought has broken. You try to link your thoughts to get back on track again. Let me confess honestly, that once the chain breaks it is very difficult to return to the same flow.
You are back on track and now comes the second round called ‘Jharu’. Same routine is repeated. Leave your chair, keep remembering where you left and what you proposed to write. But then, you have to be a gentleman to get up. If you don’t, she gives a subtle hint. She switches off the fan. Oh Boy! You better vacate your chair before she uses her broom on you.
You keep an eye, if she has finished. Because there is hardly any gap between getting up from your chair for the third time again. This time it is for “Poncha”. With her mop in hand, she looks dangerous lest she wipes your face with it.
Now, you are engrossed in writing and don’t want to leave your laptop but she has to do her job. What she does is, she switches on the fan and turns the regulator to five. Fans in our house are not to keep you cool but to dry the ‘wet mopping’ she does. She does the same in winters too. Fans are run full speed, even when it is freezing cold.
You have to take another walk. She just doesn’t like you stepping over the space she just mopped. I now go and sit with folded legs on the sofa till she has done her job and that space has dried up. You move and she gives you a dirty look. Better sit like a statue or face her wrath.
By now, you forget what you were writing. Many times, you trash that document or put it in a folder named unpublished articles.
Mr Murphy keeps an eye as the moment the mopped space is wet, someone will step over it and leave footprints as big as footprints man left on the moon. They stand out so prominently. The maid just won’t look at them, or return to mop that place again. God forbid; you walk in after a round of the garden. Those footprints become louder than that on mars.
Same happens when you get some cement work done. Someone has to walk over it and leave their footprints in time. We had got the front rain water drain cemented recently as it had got chipped at quite a few places. Someone stepped on it.
The contractor had placed bricks as a marker for people and vehicles to avoid that area till the cement dried up. Next morning, what we saw was what we wanted to avoid. A cat had left her paw marks on the wet cement. Somehow, the contractor did not cater for cats. She left her pug marks of fame.
We had visitors that evening. The driver would have seen the markings. They turned the car so sharply that it entered the drain and left treads which were etched in wet cement.
How does this happen? Was it just a coincidence? Well, with us, things like this keep happening. You may feel angry but once the prints are there, there is no way they can be removed. Our maid too moves on even if she sees footprints on the freshly mopped floor.
Does this happen with you guys too? I wonder!!!!!!
JAI HIND
© ® NOEL ELLIS
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