Kishore Singh: Whose mess is bigger?

I love lists even though they're mostly only useful when instructing you about pending tasks because who keeps lists of finished chores, though my wife says, in my case, there's very little difference between the two. I don't think that's true at all. Just this week: I bought her medicines, watered her pots (thrice - the other days the gardener did it), changed the cushion slips in the living room, changed the cushion slips in the bedrooms, summoned the electrician, negotiated with the electrician, followed up with the electrician for not keeping his appointment, supervised the electrician, paid the electrician after telling him he was a "useless, no good fellow" (my wife's words), filled up her visa form for the UK, poured her a cup of tea, poured her a second cup of tea when she couldn't find where she'd misplaced the first cup of tea, ticked off cook #1, ticked off cook #2, apologised to cook #1, apologised to cook #2, complimented the way she looked on Monday, complimented her dress on Tuesday, complimented her hair on Wednesday, complimented her cooking on Thursday (which is the day she made sandwiches because both cooks were sulking after being ticked off), complimented her again on Friday (I got that tip from The Dummies Guide to Good Husbanding), fixed an appointment for her car to be serviced, fixed an appointment for a garage driver to pick her car up for servicing, waited outside her dentist's to pick her up because her car was not back from servicing, made a list of things I still needed to do for her, checked off points that had been done or were works in progress, got ticked off because the things-to-do list exceeded the things-done list.

I'm constantly being given lists. My son has a shopping list that he manages to foist on me without the benefit of his credit card so I pay up on the vague promise of "squaring up" at some point in the future. My daughter gives me party lists mostly consisting of things her friends will or will not eat/drink/smoke, causing me to take breaks from work to keep them in good spirits and her in good humour, else she will either sulk, or rant, so the additional effort is worth it. There are lists of things my mother phones me to say my father would like done which are usually different from the lists my father writes up for me and as far as I know there are no tasks listed for my other siblings which must mean there is something about me that suggests subservience (I'd prefer diligence), since my chauffeur is not above giving me his own list that includes scolding his wife because she has not been attending to him, laundering his clothes or packing his tiffin.

I believe the government has been keeping lists too, ticking off its achievements, so I did my own tally to see what I'd hoped would improve from two years ago, and, of course, the dump across from the street is as full of rubbish, the electricity still goes off every time it's too hot, or too cold, or whenever there's a dust storm, which is almost all the time in Noida, the river still stinks, the traffic is a mess, the taxes aren't down, and there's still no Ikea in the neighbourhood, so I need my wife to know that Modi's to-do list doesn't square up and is in a bigger mess than even mine.