<b>Kishore Singh:</b> Why helps are indispensable

Having spent a little more time at home than usual, I have been able to observe its rhythms closely, and our mornings begin, literally, with a bang. Mary, currently Cook #2 on account of having taken premature retirement but returned after finding the task of being an unpaid help for her grandchildren not to her liking, is averse to the residents of the home sleeping while she is awake, so she announces her arrival with a banging of pots and pans. “Shut the door,” shouts my daughter. “Get up,” grumbles Mary to her, “or you’ll be late for breakfast again.” It is her life’s mission to feed everyone, including the dog, who has got fat because he gets no exercise and too much food. “Where’s my cold coffee,” my daughter asks. “I want my protein shake,” my son demands of Murli, who is Cook #1, though he is younger, and is also my wife’s assistant designer, and a part-time driver. “Good morning sa’ar,” Mary says to me, drawing the curtains, holding out a glass of warm water I am made to drink under her baleful stare, before she places a pot of tea and the pile of newspapers on the table. “Where’s my warm milk,” my wife asks — it’s always in the same place — “Where’s my turmeric water? Where’s my cut fruit?” 

Over the next hour, my daughter will try on a number of outfits and ask why something is not ironed, shampoo and dry her hair, swallow a hard-boiled egg while her mother tries to force-feed her fruit, match bags and shoes only to discard them, ask for money (“I don’t have change”), pronounce her driving licence/metro card/office identification card lost, and leave home in a rush, with Mary stuffing a tiffin into her backpack that apparently feeds her entire office; my son will return from the gym and demand to know how his car tyre got punctured, who’s paying his credit card bill (never him, of course), could someone get his office papers up from the car, demand the loan of my cufflinks, aftershave, socks, black coat, or driver, plough through a huge breakfast, and tell Murli to reverse his car and keep its airconditioning going.

The day maid arrives and sits down for a cup of tea with the driver, who likes to wear very tight clothes. Mary breaks up their cosy gathering, but Sonu the gardener turns up next. He doesn’t like gardening much, and disappears like the Cheshire cat, having marked his presence with his loud, floral shirts. By now, the dog is whining to be taken for his walk, and with everyone else busy, or flying off the handle, that chore is left to me. “Don’t dawdle,” my wife tells me, “don’t spend your time talking to the neighbourhood chowkidars.” There’s little point reminding her I don’t know what the neighbourhood chowkidars look like.

My wife’s progress through the morning can be mapped by the teacups she strews in her wake. She likes the pot to be full, but can never remember where she left her tea mugs, which no one else is allowed to touch, however, because she might have left them in the bathroom, on the terrace parapet, in her cupboard, or in the fridge, not as much through oversight as deliberately. “Who’s seen my tea,” she asks me. I count her saying this a dozen times before I leave for work. Of what happens at home afterwards, I can only surmise.