Domestic Woes

Well, now that we 3 (myself, Nippo and Paldy) have found this nice apartment, we are settling our ghar grahasti.
Though most of the weekdays are spent at work, on weekends we do all our cooking, cleaning and vacuuming. No weekend goes without our trip to the supermarket, and we keep talking about what to cook, how to cook, and which milk to purchase the advantages of wholemeal brownbread over sliced whitebread. (inspite of all my arguments these guys simply dont understand whats the best for them)

As you guessed it we have our fair shares of quarrels and allocation of household tasks always ends up in cribbing. With me being the only experienced cook (damn you can understand the state of the other guys here) I refuse to wash the dishes after dinner. Damn they should learn cooking themselves, till then they should observe me, and chop vegetables and clean up after dinner. (well with me bossing around like this, i always say my prayers before each meal, hoping it doesnt turn out too bad that i am made to clean up after dinner as a punishment)

anyways being busy with these household chores, makes us more and more like bitchy housewives (damn even me, i was cribbing bout the other two ehhh). Still more chores await us, like getting a phone connection, and BUYING A TELEVISION. (I bet we are gonna kill each other on that)

But the worst of all household chores i find is ironing clothes. I really cant iron a damn thing and on weekends ironing 5 shirts and trousers can be literally killing. Ironing away those creases, i always end up creating new ones and the process seems to go on for ever.

At such horrid times, I remember Kallu the Istriwaala. His ramshackle shop (or should i say bench, under a tin roof) was right outside the main gate of my apartment block. My first trips outside the main gate would be to handover clothes to Kallu at the age of 5. Thats as far as i was allowed to go. Kallu was a friendly guy, and as his name suggests was as dark as the coal he would use in his iron. (yes no electrical iron at his place, he would use old fashioned iron, which was huge in size and used burning charcoal inside to heat it) . To a 5 year old it was a fascinating sight, to see the orange glow of burning charcoal and him ironing away piles of clothes in great speed and making it look more like an art form.

While playing hide and seek and dabba eye spy (called dabba aais paais by the local marathi guys in my building) and the best hiding place was behind Kallus ramshackle shop.
One such day when i was playing and hiding behind kallus shop, my mum came looking after me, since i had my all important first unit test in standard 1. I was more interested in playing than studying (which i guess never did change with age) After searching high and low, my mum finds me there, and pulls me bakc home, and screaming and scolding me, that if i didnt study, i would end up like Kallu and be ironing clothes all my life.

Damn looking in hindsight, most of my life after that i was simply studying, (so i blame my lack of social life on this incident) and then all my life, I never did even iron a handkerchief (and damn when i tried it once at home, it ended up having more creases than before)
Now after all these years of studying, I end up here in london, and end up spending a nice lovely sunday evening ironing my clothes. (Damn its tough). I sacrificed watching the Brazil Australia match in a pub for this.

In hindsight, if a had disobeyed my mom, and didnt study much, i would be whiling away my time in dads business, whiling away my time and not adding a single rupee to his profit or revenues, doing all that crap, but ironing clothes.
Though Kallu is long gone, (his shop was demolished many years ago, and he moved a couple of blocks away, and then we moved elsewhere as well) I am sure when living at home no way would i ever iron a handkerchief.

Damn mom, you fooled me here, inspite of all this, there is little difference between your son and Kallu. (For one he sure could iron clothes much better than me, and surely much much faster)