Random Ramblings of a Reluctant Blogger

The signs were ominous. Armed with three different cloth dusters, an apron and a bandana, actually a dupatta wrapped around her head, my wife was once again on her spring cleaning mission. Spring cleaning, though, is a misnomer. For, my wife’s OCD strikes one or even twice every week.

For her everything has to be just perfect. Each object in its place, neatly tucked away and the overall look pleasing to the eye and high on aesthetics.

It is not that I like to live in a haphazard and chaotic environs, it is just that I prefer a lived-in look to the place instead of the picture-perfect rooms fit only for magazines and insta posts.

The living room for example has a sofa set, a carpet,  a coffee table, TV and a few decorative pieces, with which I have no issue. But I find it very convenient and even contemplative to drop the bolsters off the sofa, make it a pillow, lie on the carpet with feet up on the sofa and the head tilted in just the right position to watch the TV and also to read a book.! This very sight petrifies my wife. And even before I re-tilt, the bolster is yanked out and a tirade of how unhelpful a creature I am follows. Pray what use is a bolster if it cannot provide calming sustenance? I, from my side, would rather have a book or two strewn on the sofa, a few papers on the coffee table and the tv remote somewhere within easy reach, maybe just on the carpet. The living-in feeling. 

But it is anathema to her idea of aesthetics. For her every object has to be inch-perfect in its own orbit and no amount of centrifugal or centripetal force should alter its position. My practical, easy solutions do not make a mark in our bedroom. I just cannot scream  ‘My Space’ and there are no not-go zones, so I am forced to live in the universe she builds. Talk about equality of sexes! My son, though, compensates for it.

Growing up, my son too had seemed to be taken in after his mother and he would trot around with a piece of cloth helping her in the cleaning mission. His shoes were perfectly placed in the rack and school bags all neatly tucked up. The thought that I would have to live with two OCDs horrified me. Fortunately he shifted allegiance as adolescence peaked.

Now his room is what every dream hostel room is. The study table, apart from the books, has everything, a no-longer-in-use TV remote, a tennis ball whose colour has transferred itself to the wall, gaming console with which he plays a version of yo-yo, a couple of spectacles, which have gone through a third-degree interrogation, some plates and glasses. His school bag has ensconced itself between the floor and the bed, a bed that also serves as a bookshelf.

If you perchance are searching for a book, you are more likely to find it on the mattress on the floor, under the pillow cover which is lying beside an empty water bottle. That the bottle had something to do with the fallout between the pillow and its cover cannot be ruled out.

The thing which my better-half doesn’t understand is that it is not chaos, but an order in a different form. It’s like if an amateur looks up at the sky and sees a chaotic scattering of the stars (not though from the cities), the seasoned one will pick up the Great Bear and even locate the Pole Star using its coordinates.  

Try as hard as I can, I cannot convince her enough about the theory of strings and the required dexterity to be able to find nirvana in such a situation. And if one thought that the seemingly impossible rooms would keep her off, one cannot be more mistaken. In, she will wade to emerge a few hours later, triumphant. The room would now resemble a sorted-out different universe altogether. That is till it encounters a Black Hole, which most of the time is just a couple of days away.

That doesn’t, however, keep her down for long and her idea of order kicks in. Every mission will throw up a challenging job for me. She will come out with a  bag full of papers in hand saying “now sort this and throw out what is not needed.” The funny thing is that every bit of paper suddenly seems important, and they all go back in, though this time all wrapped up and hidden from plain view. Till the next round of cleaning.

While I doff my hat to her spirit, she just hasn’t given up all these years, I cannot but enlighten her.

Order and Chaos are just a peripheral illusion. And the one who Distinguishes between this maya is a wise one.