Flashback: Then and Now

 Flashback-3 years back

I was comfortably lounged on the couch with a large packet of Lays in my hand and a glass full of bubbling and popping soda in the other. I was single and being forced to mingle. With the intention of marriage and not anything else. I was being primed for the marriage market.  From learning cooking, to cleaning/dusting to walking demurely, I was tutored in all capacities by my over-zealous aunts.

But I just looked on, amusingly at their futile attempts, knowing very well that I will never be the perfect ‘marriage material’ girl. I was the perennial lazy slouch, the wastrel. My idea of cleaning the house was to foo-foo the cobweb on the roof from my comfortable perch on the couch. My idea of cooking is to prepare a bowl of Maggi and a cup of tea. Every day I would come back home from work exhausted and spent and hug the couch as if it was my best friend. My kind and thoughtful mother would get me something to eat and place it in my hand. Ah moms, they are the best. 

Yes, yes I know you must be thinking that I was a spoilt brat. And I guess I was, a bit, maybe. But all that was to change in few years.

Current Scenario.

Let’s first take a look at my relationship status. 

Mother to a 10 month old toddler who loves to pull drawers and scatter all the paper lying inside. She enjoys tearing paper to bits and eating them. She loves to open wardrobes and scan the clothes inside it, sometimes sitting inside the wardrobe shelves. I have to remind her often that those are not walk-in closets.

Wife to a husband who’s always on skates, dashing to reach a venue. A restless man, he does not find time to wash his own plates and often forgets to even dump his coffee glass onto the piling dirty vessels in the sink.

Daughter-in-law to a sweet mother-in-law who loves to cook and feed others, often keeping in mind the preferences of the person she is feeding. But who turns a bit eccentric when it comes to recycling. All the things in our house are stored because it will be reused at some time later. This has resulted in our house looking like we are having a mini junk yard sale, all throughout the year!

After a sleepless night which explains the red eyed, vexed mood in the early mornings, I drag myself to the bathroom to finish off the morning duties. And in the midst of my rituals, I see a speck of dust stuck between two tiles. I try to ignore it but it won’t allow my mind to rest in peace. Finally I give in to the temptation, and scrub the tiles mercilessly until the floor is sparkling clean. That is when I realized what I had become into. Unknowingly I had turned into a hapless victim of Obsessive Compulsive disorder.

All the symptoms were there, I spent most of my time dusting, sweeping, scrubbing and then scrutinizing for more specks of dust. I tried to introspect, to analyze my own actions on how I, an indolent and lethargic person could turn into a dust annihilating machine. But I found no answers, the change was gradual, slow but complete. 

As I came out of the bathroom, I saw the paper strewn around, the coffee glass on the couch, the empty plastic bottles waiting to be reused and I switched into my auto mode, picking and straightening things, dusting and keeping things back in to their rightful place.