Secret Slobbery

Riya Agnihotri — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:18:08 +0000

Is this really necessary?

As I write this I can imagine that you are ensconced in your black leather reclining sofa, watching Saloni Ka Safar, sipping on a hot cup of garam masala chai that you especially prepared for yourself? You have finished all the housework and dusted every nook and cranny of your house. The laundry is drying and even the windows gleam.

You thought that you would rest for a while before collecting your children and bringing them home to eat their freshly prepared meal around your hundred seated, teak dining table especially imported from India. The flowers that you bought this morning in-between the chores, rustle gently in front of the window.

No? You’re not? You are actually trying to surf the net with your children trying to murder each other and your husband complaining loudly that he has no more boxers shorts? At the same time you are scanning the room mentally torturing yourself for not cleaning up earlier. Suddenly your child whines that he is hungry and you realise you hadn’t even thought of dinner and your fat bum hasn’t been to the gym in weeks. The chaos in your house renders it barely habitable and you wonder why you live in such a mess.

I know I do and so do millions of others! But people like my next door neighbour are the ‘cleanest’ people on earth and they have a baby. Their cars are washed and waxed weekly, I can hear the hoover most days and they leave the lights on in their kitchen at night so everybody in our cul–de- sac can peer in. I always look in enviously and with astonishment, not a stain in sight and definitely NO CLUTTER!

I then proceed to jump down my husband’s throat at the bloody mess in the house. It’s not all my responsibility.

But you know we all try to put on our best most uber- capable flawless front to the world, while inside we are dealing with a myriad of problems ranging from dealing with draining family members to keeping the house in some kind of order.

Apparently 99 per cent of us feel some kind of hideous pressure to perform and admit to occasionally feeling out of control from life’s daily chores.

We tend to feel bad about our secret messes, like lots of hair and dust occupying corners of laminate or wood flooring and a colony of spiders in a gap between two cupboards. I know when someone arrives unannounced, I go in to a state of panic about the toilet and hair I can see. I pretend to go for a wee and frantically clean the downstairs loo, and sneakily shuffle around the house picking up the hair entwined with age old dust and bits of chocolate buttons. Uhgh!

Just as Chunni’s and heavy gold jewellery constrained Asian women in the sixties and seventies, (before a large proportion of their children embraced the modern western attire of the Brits) so clutter-free minimalism constrains the Asian babe of the 21st Century.

We are still behind the ‘white natives’ because minimalism to us constitutes using gold plated tissue boxes and flashing lights around the pictures of our Guru’s, demi-gods or temples. But we are fast catching up with the craze for pristine white tiles and carpets to match. I have been to houses where bathroom surfaces are cleaner than their owners, because the poor clutter-free loons can’t ‘bear’ toiletries messing everything up.

Some Asians are keeping cleaners and not all of them are imported brides from ‘back home.’ A couple of mums I know, sheepishly admit to this luxury – but they wouldn’t tell their own mums for fear of a clip around the ear.

So you could be a lawyer with two cheeky children, a full-time job and a four bedroom house, but you will probably feel greater pressure to clean your home at weekends than spend quality time on yourself and the kids.

All Desi Mums, whether in a job or at home can feel additional pressure from various areas of their lives and often these are the direct result of community and societal pressures of the ‘role’ of the woman after marriage. This can prevent a woman taking tentative steps in order to ease her work load by getting a cleaner, nanny or au pair.

Such opinions are deeply ingrained and transcend generational barriers. So really what we perceive to be vastly improved circumstances for Asian women in this country, is really just a masque for belief systems that are still there and expressed subversively in religious and ritualistic practices.

Other exposure, like Asian television and radio, all portray certain stereotypes and images of the ideal female (perhaps unintentionally) and her role in the family. There are families in the United Kingdom that still stringently believe and except the chronic subjugation of women and this will take generations to weaken.
So what can we do to help ourselves and not be so obsessed by futile domestic practices?

• Start by accepting that a messy home is fibrillating with possibilities. It tells people (even if they drop cutting one-liners) that here lives someone with many more interesting things to be doing than putting away socks in alphabetical order of coutry of origin or ironing knickers (people do iron knickers!).

• A house in which everything is ruthlessly tidied away is the lifeless abode of an owner with no soul and harbouring a personality disorder.

• Clutter brings serendipitous finds: Divali cards for a Granny’s that live in the Homeland. Your child’s first scribbling, money, tickets to theatre shows that you loved, former fat pictures hidden under pile of books and many more illustrious discoveries.

• Hire a cleaner, nanny or Au Pair. All three if you can and don’t feel guilty. Our mothers barelycoped, had hard lives and no time. Such things are no longer luxuries and should be regarded as a necessity for any busy mother (If you work and can afford to or give your self a break and save money for this luxury ruthlessly).
* You don’t have to tell anyone; they can believe that you are superwoman and scoff in envy when they deliberately turn up unannounced.

• Cleaners can be relatively inexpensive these days and cost the equivalent of buying lunch for a week – what would you rather do make your own lunch or have someone come in once a week and sort out your home for you? You can even loiter with the cleaner if you ‘don’t trust’ cleaners – just don’t be tempted to ‘help them’. It will free up lots of time and save oodles of energy (mental and physical) and you could be doing other important things.

• Our friends in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have ‘home help’ in various forms: gardeners, cleaners, launderers, chefs and the list goes on so; ‘do it yourself and save money’ is NOT a Desi thing!

• Clinical Psychologist, Linda Blair, author of Straight Talking (Piatikus Books, £10.99) believes the, ‘more successful and ambitious the woman, the more likely she is to have an area of chaos in her life because she need a challenge’.

So there you have it, a disorderly house, emotional love life and a pathologically disordered diary is the sign of a woman who rejects a regimented lifestyle and embraces spontaneity. Thus your personal chaotic space can also be the symbol of your personal success and us Asians love a success story!

On a more positive note:

Stay clean, stay sane and go for self acceptance rather than self improvement. The latter is what causes emotional instability and a crazed perspective on life. Now I must put away these boxes before my mum visits….

By Riya Agnihotri

Riya Agnihotri, Writing and Information on the latest in child development, education, spiritual parenting, Teen parenting, home education, teaching, writing for children. » Secret Slobbery

Secret Slobbery