I keep a messy house. Even when I have help, and even when I have just cleaned up the entire place inch by inch with my own two hands, everything is back to a jumble when I turn around. Clothes are mating on the floor. Leftovers have died because no one refrigerated them. Unwashed plates and pots and pans and cups pile up in the sink, because however much you rinse and dry, more tea and more snacks are being made all the time. It is a hungry house, asking for more like Oliver Twist.
Housework used to have a gender, ticked ‘F’ in forms. These days household chores are supposed to be divided regardless of who is doing them, man or woman. In the new woke world, with a lot of lip service being paid to equalities, men are supposed to be as ardent about loading the washing machine as once women were in ads for washing machines. So, yes, the ads are changing. But are men really taking over the kitchen with the same charm and wit they reserve for women travelling alone in plane seats next to them remains to be seen.
The truth is that housework, like they rightly showed in the Malayalam film The Great Indian Kitchen, is a dirty word. It is a never-ending, self-multiplying, bottomless pit. Yes, while expecting guests, after everything is spruced up, you yourself can’t recognise your premises. But within minutes the illusion is gone. Peanuts roll to the floor, cola is spilt, chocolate smears on a curtain, coasters wildly abandoned for naked wood where frosted glasses are concerned… After the party comes the nightmare: cleaning up, rubbing stains, tidying, pushing the furniture back where it used to be. No elves come to make your bed while you sleep. The business of living sucks at the backend.
With women having abandoned domestic chores and men not yet having conquered them, there is a blank silence where a kettle should be going off or a pressure cooker whistling. A middle ground has been reached; everyone is adept at ordering out. But as this relay race is being played, it is the expressions on boy-girl faces that are actually changing in real life. Men who make their own coffee, who stir the curry, who help the kids with homework, they are lining up for halos. While women get ready to praise and flatter the littlest attempt, they also have to gear up for the unbearable smugness on male faces.
Emotions run high. She knows she must co-opt him into unsexy terrains. He is doing this like a favour to the world, for the optics. Each looking at the other to pick up the slack with an airhostessy smile. Good luck with that!
Shinie Antony
shinieantony@gmail.com
Author