Our tiny and very compact kitchen
was in the balcony of our 320 square feet ground floor apartment in a
single-building compound in Wadala, Mumbai since 1972 when we had shifted from
the suburb of Chembur in the then northern part of Bombay, which is now very
much overtaken by the growth of the entire megapolis. My father, Balapila Naga
Bhushan, was with the Ministry of Technical Education, Government of India and
worked at Churchgate, while my mother, Sharada (Indumati) Bhushan, was a school
teacher and later served as the headmistress of the Andhra Education Society’s
High School and Junior College at Wadala.
My mother had to be at school,
right on dot, for the morning shift that started at something like 0700 hours
while my father would leave home at 0905 am to catch the 0924 harbour line
local train to VT (as we knew it then) and onwards for a crisp walk to
Churchgate to be at his office by 1010 am. Their schedules never changed
through our school and college-going years during the seventies and early
eighties. My mother would be up by 0530 hours and would make enough of a polite
disturbance to nudge my father awake within five minutes.
They would not talk to each other in
order to avoid waking us up, me and my sister, Sarala. The two of us and our
parents always slept on coir mats through all the 70s. As we were told in those
years, that as kids we were privileged to wake up later, though not much of a
sleep-in, but we had to be up and about by 0630 or at the latest by 0645, as
though that was much of a luxury.
There is one image that I have in
my memory, through all these years, of the morning scene at my house, apart
from the one of my father making filter coffee, and my mother going through her
early morning routine of prayers, dressing up, conjuring up a magical spread of
food items for breakfast, school tiffen, and emergency snacks and savouries.
This other image is of my father quietly standing at the kitchen sink through the
early hour when my mother would need monopoly over the bathrooms and almirah
and the full-length mirror. During this time, my father would be silently at
cleaning up all the left over utensils from the earlier night, and would do a
complete washover of utensils to be used by my mother for preparing breakfast
and other stuff.
The magical aspect of it was that
my father could do it in an almost silent manner which is impossible for most
others, men or women. He would examine the cluster of leftover utensils,
analyse the threat factor like an airforce pilot and pick out the utensils that
can be first removed for cleaning without bringing down the other utensils.
These initial utensils would be wiped with torn-up newspaper to remove the grit
and wet layers of gravy or oil. Those were the days without the green scrub
pads or the metal wipers that we have now. There was no liquid soap and there
was none of the magical utensil cleansers that we have now.
My father always claimed that the
first wipe with the newspaper would make it easier to wash the utensils. The
second attack would be with some dishwashing powder. The entire cluster of
utensils would be coated with the dishwashing powder and kept aside for some
time, before finally washing them clean with tap water. This was not any
brandwala dishwashing powder. My father, as would most middle-class simple
households do, would go to the wholesale soap markets of Dadar, near Ranade
road, and would purchase a 5 kg pack of dishwashing powder. He had a routine
for storing it and using it carefully, but that’s another story.
I did not notice it much, but
after the entry of black and white TV and doordarshan and a whole lot of forced
programs, I realised that it was the lady of the house or the kaamwali bai who was supposed to do all
the cleaning chores in the household and not the man of the house, ie the lord
and master of the house. I had not known about this separation of tasks and had
always accepted that my father would clean the leftover utensils and make the
first round of coffee and whatever while my mother would get ready to go out of
the house to go to work at her job. My parents would share their tasks in the
evening and later at night, my mother would have crashed out to sleep early
enough to allow my father to clean up and get the kitchen and the bathroom
ready for the morning.
Much later, when I had left home
for my various research stations and started working, of a sort, and had learnt
about various other matters, I asked my father about it. Why would he, the lord
and master of the house, take up the task of cleaning the leftover utensils and
the menial tasks of making the first round of coffee, etc.?
My father did not think about it a
great deal but replied in a very matter of fact manner. “That is not any other
work. That is when I do my prayers and recite my routine of saying thanks and conveying
gratitude to god everyday for keeping us all happy and content. It is when I am
cleaning the leftover utensils out of my own intentions and not because someone
else has asked me to, it is only then that I am in service to my family in the
purest of ways. I keep reciting and repeating the god’s name and I have a long
list of gods to whom I say thanks to, and they seem to be happy about it.”
“The best prayer is in the act of
service without any expectation of goodwill or return. The best way to send our
prayers across is during that moment and not when one is sitting in front of
the prayer place, or when one is lighting incense or when one is visiting a
temple or when one is conducting a puja or whatever. Each utensil that I clean
is a manner of cleaning my inner self.”
On that day, when my father
explained it, I did not understand the perspective. I did not try to. I was
only happy that my father had done that particular routine because he wanted
to. Later, much later, in January 2009, he had returned after hospitalisation
and had been advised bed rest at my campus residence in Pune. He was staying
with me in my study room and the two of us had converted it into a bedroom. He
was restless at not being able to go about on his own as he would have done in
our small house at Wadala, Mumbai. He told me in a very tired voice, “Go and
get some 10-20 utensils from the kitchen sink and bring it over to the attached
bathroom here. Let me wash them daily. I need to do my prayers in peace.”
He passed away in March 2009 in
that study room at Pune without having been able to return to Wadala.
11 October 2019
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