Cleaning it up

So when Mr. Varkey told us that our house would be the venue of the prayer meeting this month, it really spent a chill down my spine. First of all, the house resembled an amazon jungle. Second, we did not know what a prayer meeting actually looked like. I have been only to one and that too, I had reached there at the fag end - while they were distributing the prizes. (I was supposed to collect a prize, you see;-) )

We were in panic mode, especially mom. She was tormenting papa and me with a volley of questions about the time we had spent at the prayer meeting mentioned above. That was about three years ago and now I don't even remember where the house was.

I thought I'd be able to escape as I had the GAIL test on Sunday. Then, all of a sudden, my dad's cousin's wife died and papa decided to attend the funeral. So my test got 'cancelled'. Now I'd have to help mom with cleaning.

Hercules would have had an easier task with Augean stables than me with my room. I had a great collection of little pieces of paper that became useless as time passed, lots of books (starting almost from my kindergarten. There are some missing, but that can be managed.), too many clothes (I don't like to this, but most of them are not to my taste and the rest are not to my shape.) and other waste materials you can reasonably expect to find in a bedroom. The bathroom attached to the room was another story. I will not describe it simply because I do not find words to describe it. I guess it would suffice if I say that it was grossly multicoloured.

Then I had to clean the showcase in the main hall as well. That was the most tricky part.It contained bills and receipts dating back to the Gupta empire and any mistake I made while discarding any would have far-reaching implications. "Be careful!" my mom said. I adopted the motto "When in doubt, do not throw" I recovered many things, including an 18th century photograph of pop and my sis standing in front of the Agra fort, a 17th century photograph of all of us in front of the Gateway of India. And I had been thinking that all these valuable historical records had been lost forever. I even got a horoscope of a guy who was born about fifty years ago. Nobody had any clue as to how it ended up where we found it. I washed the statuettes of St. Joseph and St. Mary; Infant Jesus now shines in His lily-white dress. I found that St.Mary's crown actually had red, and not brown colour in her crown.

"Mom, do you know what this is?" "Coal-tar?" "No, mom! It is dirt from my fan!"

Half an hour later, when Anju came home: "Guess what this is?" "Carbon particulates" I gave up. Was never strong at organic chemistry and I feared she would start naming all the organic compounds, starting with the aromatic ones. If not cancer, they would give me at least a headache. I ran away to my room. (I bet she smiled. She is always studying organic chemistry when I go to her room and maths when she comes into mine. I am getting suspicious!!!)

When I finished all that, I gave everything a wash and a scrub. It looked so neat, I thought I would faint. I had a rather brilliant idea of restricting the entry to my bathroom forever, but then decided against it as I would be accused of violation of human rights.

I went shopping after that. Had to make an egg omelette for having lunch. My mom was hard at work, and so she had not prepared anything except rice. I bought cutlets and biscuits. Mom had forgotten to buy paper napkins and so I had to run around finding a shop that sold them as most of the shops I knew had run out of stock.

I was panting when I reached home. Mom looked happy and told me I had lost a great deal of weight. (I know this meant that I still had a lot more work to do. Mom should be made a General or something. She surpasses even Dale Carnegie at everything he wrote about.)

After all the work was over, I resumed reading the 'Bandit Queen'. After reading for five minutes, I went to mom and told her: "Mom, you know, this doesn't feel like my home anymore."