Mutual Dependancy: An ode to my didi

I did something notoriously thoughtless last Saturday.

As I had many exciting engaments to look forward to (like picking up my new bike, visiting my carpenter to see the development of our future furniture, amongst other things I should dedicate some blog space for soon) and as it was the long awaited weekend, I was enthuasiasticly getting ready to rush out to the world being my oyster. And no, the small annoyance of my jeans hanging still damp on the line was not going to delay me. I threw them over the heater for just two seconds.

Half a second was enough to leave brownish marks all over them, getting the room stinking of smoke from burning cotton. The state of them, even though they were my favourite jeans, didn't worry me half as much as the thought of what will didi say. Actually I wasn't even worried, I was simply terrified.

Didi, literally meaning an older sister, is something like a housekeeper, a helper, a maid. By my definition, however, didi refers to someone who basically runs your life, and sometimes I believe that this entire nation is run by an army of didis, just like the Soviet Union was really run by the innumerable babushkas.

Our relationship started, after she had once visited us in the still echoing house, with a shopping spree for household items on one fine Saturday morning. Before then I had never known the number of different kind of pots and pans, spatulas and kitchen things I didn’t even have a name for existed, and certainly I never realised how many of them one needs in their house.

By the time we moved to, and this was still early into the day, fiddle with rice cookers I merely gave up, handing didi the responsibility over the decisions which she quite happily took. Eventually the mission was completed with the brigade of amazingly helpful shop assistants flying around and in between the shelves. The very same ones who with the same determination ignore me when I try to buy anything.

Was it the moment when the mountain of buckets, mops, pots and only the Saleways's assistants know what, were (along with two amused children) already three floors down and in the taxi while I was only just handing a thick pile of rupees over the counter, or was it the first time  when I was rummaging through the cupboards in a desperate search for the location of the tea bags only to find out the cup of tea was already made for me, that I realised I was no longer in charge over my home affairs?

No longer I have a clue where anything lives in the house nor how to use that darn rice-cooker. And of course the children want nothing but rice and daalbat, a dish of lentils they call the food of gods. My opinion might differ from this slightly, but no, I don't get asked anymore.

She rules things and she knows everything: what I have shopped for, who I have been with, where and for how long. She knows and worries over our coughs and colds and intimate health issues. Where she used to leave as I came home, she now sticks around to the point I sometimes have to tell her to go. The evening a male colleague of mine stopped over for a drink, she gave him ominous looks and stuck around to a point it got awkward. She has started talking about "us" rather than about herself or me, and when she talks about me in a third person, she uses the phrase "my madam", emphasis on the word "my". (Will I ever get used to being called "Madam" is yet a whole issue of its own).

But can I complain as every day I come home to find the children picked up from school and bus, the food ready, the dishes, the laundry and shopping done, the floors and sinks washed, beds made and the things I didn’t realise needed doing, done?

Sometimes there is even cake. Despite the fact we do not even have an oven. So can I?

No, not really, even if I get gently told off for having holes in my clothes, for not having got my jacket washed often enough, for not eating well enough, for staying out too late, for not getting (those favourite) jeans sewn shorter as I step on them, for not being careful enough with the candles after having spilled wax on the carpet, and for a countless of things.

With a mad rush on Sunday morning, hearing didi's approaching steps on the path, I hid the jeans with the help and consultation of the children. No doubt she´s already looking for them and no doubt she will eventually find them. Till then I live in denial and fear, pondering who is suppose to be the boss in this house?

Being the only bread winner in her own household, I know she depends on me in the form of her wages, but I willingly admit to even a greater dependency from my side, and to the fact I can no longer even begin to imagine a life without her.