Subject - Just an ordinary day!!
Subject - Just an ordinary day!!
Sunday is a lazy day for me. Not so for the visitors. Even before the sunrise people start coming to home. . Many of them are the regular visitors who visit at stipulated time.
The earliest one to visit is the maid. No, not the regular housemaid. This is our ‘cleaning lady’ who cleans our courtyard. She comes as early as five early in the morning. She sweeps a little area outside the gate near the road and throws water to clean the courtyard. She is an artist too!! A motif is drawn with colored powder at the courtyard. She is expected to draw different patterns on different days. On auspicious days she makes larger and more colorful ‘rangolis’.
My wife is very particular about it. I can see the arguments every month end when she come to collect the money. wife says she repeated the same pattern for two consecutive days! She denies and says why should she repeat the same since she knows more than 50 patterns ranging from peacock to sunflower!!!
She never wakeup us early in the morning. When we open the door in the morning all what we can see is the work done.
An hour or so later comes milkman. He comes by a small bike with a big plastic container attached at the rear. We have tied a small basket at the gate for him to leave the milk pouch. He also doesn’t go scotch free when come to collect the money at the month end.wife arguments could be anything from leakage in pockets and how last week a cat cut open the milk pack at the basket. What would the poor milkman do for the cat’s mischief? Finally they reached an agreement. He would ring the bell so that she could come and take the milk pack before the cat comes to know about it!
By seven or so the newspaper boy arrives. He comes by a bicycle. In fact I’ve never seen him coming. I always see him running away after throwing the newspaper at doorstep with surgical precision from the road. He has been always in a hurry as if someone is chasing him. I think from the reporters to the printing press to the delivery boy, everyone in the news business work in a hurry!! I wanted to stop him one day to tell that I wanted a different paper to be put everyday. I could catch him only at the month end Sunday when he came for collecting the subscription money.
Reading the news with a hot cup of morning tea, I heard a knock at the gate. “FLOWER” shouted the invader. Oh. Yes. It’s our ‘flower lady’ who brings flowers for decorating the Gods. She brings different type flowers for us to choose from. We have hand picked a few Gods from a million of deities and installed at the prayer room. The short-listed Gods to be offered flowers and other rituals everyday according to their specialty!
The Goddess Saraswathi, the goddess of learning is placed at the middle. There is Lord Vinayaka, the remover of all obstructions. There is Lord Shiva, the destroyer god. Lord Vishnu, the most popular god who appears in ten avatars. Then there is Goddess Lakshmi who is responsible for creating wealth in the ministry of Gods!
Flowers for all of them as a daily affair, created the ‘flower ladies’ all over the country. She has a big round and shallow bamboo basket. Flowers are placed over the leaf petals.
Then came the ‘Vehicle wash man’ with an ear-to-ear grin. I could count all his teeth in that long and wide grin. He had a reason to do so. For the past so many weeks I’ve been telling him in a simple language that he understands. NO. I DO NOT WANT YOUR SERVICE. But he comes ever Sundays thinking that I might have changed my mind. I repeated the same this time also. I was surprised by his optimism. I know he would come next week also to listen to my ‘NO’!
The next visitor arrived has the ‘right’ to enter the home without much of permission. He is our “Iron man”. No. He just presses our cloths. He does it with a charcoal powered 18th century Iron! It’s amazing how he does it without burning the cloths. He comes about twice a week. Collect all the washed cloths in the morning. The neatly pressed and stacked cloths are delivered by the evening. I like the warm smell of pressed cloths.
MY wife is not very happy with his washing cum pressing service. So she bought the washing machine and the pressing job alone is given to him. I do not know the reason. But almost all the ‘ladies’ in the neighborhood do the same. The ‘Iron man’ is slightly afraid ofmy wife. Her complaint is that he destroys the shirt buttons. “You should never run the hot iron on the buttons” she warns him regularly. We pay about 2 to 4 rs for every piece of cloths he presses.
Now this guy with the four-wheeled pull cart brings all sorts of vegetables to the doorsteps. He doesn’t ‘stop’ in front of every house. Stops at every four/ five houses or so. He has to deal with a number of ‘ladies’ simultaneously. Someone asks ‘How much is for tomato today?’ before he completes the answer come the next question ‘what about carrot?’. “What discount will you give if I buy 2kilo” questioned another. Everyone is choosing, picking and negotiating on a vegetable-by-vegetable basis. Imagine him handling five ‘ladies’ with all sorts of logics and questions.
He should know why tomato prices are going up and up everyday? He should answer why the cucumber color is differed from the one he has brought yesterday? Another one has come with a potato she has bought from him yesterday! “There was a worm inside” she declared showing the cut potato to the crowd for support. The evidence presented was examined one by one and declared “yes. Indeed”. The crowd threatened him that he would be ‘blacklisted’. He offered a free replacement. How would he know if a worm is hiding inside a potato he has sold?? He is a versatile genius. It looks more like Karpov playing chess simultaneously with that odd crowd. The game typically lasted for about 20-30 minutes. All the women let him move on after paying him the money. He moved on to the next inevitable attack by the next batch of housewives!
Here comes the most hated man in the neighborhood. The self-appointed night watch man. No one wanted him to patrol the lanes inside the residential locality. But he does it by himself. And visit every home at the end of the month for the ‘service charge’.
No, he is not hated for his self-style or for the money he asks. He spoils everyone’s sleep. He ‘patrols’ the lanes late in the night or in the wee hours. He does it by walk. Makes loud noise all the way by hitting the baton on the road. This is how he announces that is on ‘duty’.
As if that is not enough, a dozen dogs in the neighborhood start barking at him simultaneously. A few of the stray dogs chase him at times creating a mess of noises at the doorsteps. Everyone getup from the sleep with a rude shock. It’s very difficult to get a nice sleep after that. He is an old bachelor. No one wants to be bad with him. People bear him as an unavoidable pain.
The next visitors were the neighbors with their cute little girl. They came with a box of sweets to announce their new possession. They’ve bought the ‘latest model’ Television set yesterday! They wanted us to come to their home and see it. She explained me how it was better than the one bought by the other neighbor last week. I agreed to her fully, as I know a debate would be fatal to me. Our TV was not in the contest anyway as it was about two years old. We promised that we would join them in the evening.
The little girl also was exited with the new TV. She said there were a lot of cartoons in it. We liked her talk. She wanted me to lift her to see the items kept on the top shelf. Her mom said her no. I said she is only a little girl and she was just curious to see. I lifted and held her in my arms. She touched and inspected each items kept there.
She picked up a pen. I was relived, as this was not anything she would drop and damage. She started scribbling with it over my collar. I didn’t care, as it was on my old casual home ware. After a few minutes she called her mom to show what she has done with that pen. Everyone seen it one by one and broken into laughter. I looked like a fool and went to the mirror to see what it was.
She has written in capital letters on my collar - DOG
Just an ordinary day!!
The earliest one to visit is the maid. No, not the regular housemaid. This is our ‘cleaning lady’ who cleans our courtyard. She comes as early as five early in the morning. She sweeps a little area outside the gate near the road and throws water to clean the courtyard. She is an artist too!! A motif is drawn with colored powder at the courtyard. She is expected to draw different patterns on different days. On auspicious days she makes larger and more colorful ‘rangolis’.
My wife is very particular about it. I can see the arguments every month end when she come to collect the money. wife says she repeated the same pattern for two consecutive days! She denies and says why should she repeat the same since she knows more than 50 patterns ranging from peacock to sunflower!!!
She never wakeup us early in the morning. When we open the door in the morning all what we can see is the work done.
An hour or so later comes milkman. He comes by a small bike with a big plastic container attached at the rear. We have tied a small basket at the gate for him to leave the milk pouch. He also doesn’t go scotch free when come to collect the money at the month end.wife arguments could be anything from leakage in pockets and how last week a cat cut open the milk pack at the basket. What would the poor milkman do for the cat’s mischief? Finally they reached an agreement. He would ring the bell so that she could come and take the milk pack before the cat comes to know about it!
By seven or so the newspaper boy arrives. He comes by a bicycle. In fact I’ve never seen him coming. I always see him running away after throwing the newspaper at doorstep with surgical precision from the road. He has been always in a hurry as if someone is chasing him. I think from the reporters to the printing press to the delivery boy, everyone in the news business work in a hurry!! I wanted to stop him one day to tell that I wanted a different paper to be put everyday. I could catch him only at the month end Sunday when he came for collecting the subscription money.
Reading the news with a hot cup of morning tea, I heard a knock at the gate. “FLOWER” shouted the invader. Oh. Yes. It’s our ‘flower lady’ who brings flowers for decorating the Gods. She brings different type flowers for us to choose from. We have hand picked a few Gods from a million of deities and installed at the prayer room. The short-listed Gods to be offered flowers and other rituals everyday according to their specialty!
The Goddess Saraswathi, the goddess of learning is placed at the middle. There is Lord Vinayaka, the remover of all obstructions. There is Lord Shiva, the destroyer god. Lord Vishnu, the most popular god who appears in ten avatars. Then there is Goddess Lakshmi who is responsible for creating wealth in the ministry of Gods!
Flowers for all of them as a daily affair, created the ‘flower ladies’ all over the country. She has a big round and shallow bamboo basket. Flowers are placed over the leaf petals.
Then came the ‘Vehicle wash man’ with an ear-to-ear grin. I could count all his teeth in that long and wide grin. He had a reason to do so. For the past so many weeks I’ve been telling him in a simple language that he understands. NO. I DO NOT WANT YOUR SERVICE. But he comes ever Sundays thinking that I might have changed my mind. I repeated the same this time also. I was surprised by his optimism. I know he would come next week also to listen to my ‘NO’!
The next visitor arrived has the ‘right’ to enter the home without much of permission. He is our “Iron man”. No. He just presses our cloths. He does it with a charcoal powered 18th century Iron! It’s amazing how he does it without burning the cloths. He comes about twice a week. Collect all the washed cloths in the morning. The neatly pressed and stacked cloths are delivered by the evening. I like the warm smell of pressed cloths.
MY wife is not very happy with his washing cum pressing service. So she bought the washing machine and the pressing job alone is given to him. I do not know the reason. But almost all the ‘ladies’ in the neighborhood do the same. The ‘Iron man’ is slightly afraid ofmy wife. Her complaint is that he destroys the shirt buttons. “You should never run the hot iron on the buttons” she warns him regularly. We pay about 2 to 4 rs for every piece of cloths he presses.
Now this guy with the four-wheeled pull cart brings all sorts of vegetables to the doorsteps. He doesn’t ‘stop’ in front of every house. Stops at every four/ five houses or so. He has to deal with a number of ‘ladies’ simultaneously. Someone asks ‘How much is for tomato today?’ before he completes the answer come the next question ‘what about carrot?’. “What discount will you give if I buy 2kilo” questioned another. Everyone is choosing, picking and negotiating on a vegetable-by-vegetable basis. Imagine him handling five ‘ladies’ with all sorts of logics and questions.
He should know why tomato prices are going up and up everyday? He should answer why the cucumber color is differed from the one he has brought yesterday? Another one has come with a potato she has bought from him yesterday! “There was a worm inside” she declared showing the cut potato to the crowd for support. The evidence presented was examined one by one and declared “yes. Indeed”. The crowd threatened him that he would be ‘blacklisted’. He offered a free replacement. How would he know if a worm is hiding inside a potato he has sold?? He is a versatile genius. It looks more like Karpov playing chess simultaneously with that odd crowd. The game typically lasted for about 20-30 minutes. All the women let him move on after paying him the money. He moved on to the next inevitable attack by the next batch of housewives!
Here comes the most hated man in the neighborhood. The self-appointed night watch man. No one wanted him to patrol the lanes inside the residential locality. But he does it by himself. And visit every home at the end of the month for the ‘service charge’.
No, he is not hated for his self-style or for the money he asks. He spoils everyone’s sleep. He ‘patrols’ the lanes late in the night or in the wee hours. He does it by walk. Makes loud noise all the way by hitting the baton on the road. This is how he announces that is on ‘duty’.
As if that is not enough, a dozen dogs in the neighborhood start barking at him simultaneously. A few of the stray dogs chase him at times creating a mess of noises at the doorsteps. Everyone getup from the sleep with a rude shock. It’s very difficult to get a nice sleep after that. He is an old bachelor. No one wants to be bad with him. People bear him as an unavoidable pain.
The next visitors were the neighbors with their cute little girl. They came with a box of sweets to announce their new possession. They’ve bought the ‘latest model’ Television set yesterday! They wanted us to come to their home and see it. She explained me how it was better than the one bought by the other neighbor last week. I agreed to her fully, as I know a debate would be fatal to me. Our TV was not in the contest anyway as it was about two years old. We promised that we would join them in the evening.
The little girl also was exited with the new TV. She said there were a lot of cartoons in it. We liked her talk. She wanted me to lift her to see the items kept on the top shelf. Her mom said her no. I said she is only a little girl and she was just curious to see. I lifted and held her in my arms. She touched and inspected each items kept there.
She picked up a pen. I was relived, as this was not anything she would drop and damage. She started scribbling with it over my collar. I didn’t care, as it was on my old casual home ware. After a few minutes she called her mom to show what she has done with that pen. Everyone seen it one by one and broken into laughter. I looked like a fool and went to the mirror to see what it was.
She has written in capital letters on my collar - DOG
Just an ordinary day!!
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