Aches and Pains

My legs are aching, my thighs are unable to handle even the minutest of stretch, my hands are feeling heavier - yes, I am suffering. The reason for this recent predicament of mine was that I decided to clean the house after more than a week. For the entire stretch of last week, I kept postponing the cleaning, thinking it would be best done on the next day. Well, it reached its peak this Monday when I had to literally climb over little hills of dust that I decided that things were a touch too bad. So, out came the broom and mop, and with a handkerchief tied over my face (I am suffering from dust allergy, remember), I got down to the task. If at all I had any illusion about the size of our apartment, those were disspelled in those few hours. I realized that dust particularly likes balconies, any sort of string material like a wire, clothesline, etc., corners, and so on and so forth. The accumulation of dust is directly proportional to the inaccessibility of a place (Hari's First Law of Dust Formation). I thought brooming was tough, but to call mopping as tough would be an understatement. A week's accumulation of fat quickly burned off in just a couple of hours.

Another thing was our kitchen. Of late, it was beginning to look like a kitchen of a house where Hari resides alone. So, I decided to get it into its former glory, into the days when it shone from Ranji's continuous attention. I planned to scrub the entire kitchen clean with cleaning liquid including the granite top, steel sink, gas stove, etc. These activities take Ranji around 10 minutes at the most (I have personally seen it and timed it), but by the time I finished it was closer to an hour. In short, I started the whole activity at 9:30 and finished it by 2:30. One can say that I started the activity as a male chauvinist pig and ended it being a chivalrous knight because I realized how much she must have been going through, doing this almost on a daily basis. I have decided that, regardless of the aches and pains, I am going to be a better husband from now on, lending my hands to a few household chores. Of course, let us all remember that I am always bigger on words than on action ;).