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| Sunday, 5 December 2004 |
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The House by P. M. Fernando
Then, he told her, "Oh, you feel bad that I cleaned the kitchen and the toilet! Anyway, you were the one who spilled rice on the table when you tried to empty the rice from the dish on to my plate." Her face became small and she left the table with some of the dishes for cleaning and he took the rest to the kitchen. He did not like what his wife said. Even if the fault of spilling rice was his, he could not imagine that his wife would want to belittle him. "That was not love. If you love someone you wouldn't belittle the person you love, for whatever reason" he told himself. For the eleven months of his marriage, he had seen many of his wife's weaknesses and yet, never commented on any of them, but tried to make her happy and proud of whatever good things she did. "If she is waiting to find fault, this is not love. It's better for me to divorce her before we become three," he thought. Housewife His wife was an Arts graduate who wanted to be a housewife. He needed a partner with whom he could discuss his work and share his interests. An educated housewife was the ideal partner who would have mental freedom and ample time for him to have intimate talks from which he could draw inspiration. He dreamt of bedtime discussions with her and discussing the poems he wrote, inspirations, and insights. He told himself, "A bedtime chat would complete my day. It would be the best time of the day". After the honeymoon, one night he took a poem he wrote, to bed. It was about the carefree poor innocent children playing near a garbage dump. She did not even want to look at it. She said, "You ask me to make hoppers, I will gladly do it for you. Reading papers ? No! I am good only at burning them." Then, she turned on to the other side and slept like a log. He felt lonely that night and thereafter, he gave up any hope of sharing with her, his sentiments, interests and work. It became clear to him that she was not interested in what he did. One day, she told him. "You do your job. I'll do mine." Loved He loved his work more than the money he earned from it and wanted his wife to be "a partner in life: a partner in interests and works of her husband". But then, he began to realise. "Marriage is just a contract. That's how my parents lived. Father earned and mother brought up the children. They hardly sat together for a chat." Yet, he needed someone to share his ideas and interests and found a woman colleague a keen sharer of deep thought and a good analyst. He felt guilty at times talking to her intimately and told himself. "I am a married man. No woman should be closer to me than my wife." He could not understand why his graduate wife had no intellectual interests and one day he asked her. "What was your favourite subject?" and she said. "None! I just had to get a Degree. My father took so much trouble and spent so much of money to educate me. He always warned me, 'If you are not well educated, you will need plenty of money to marry a dumb guy and live a dumb life. I spent sleepless nights memorising notes just to pass the exams. I hated studying. I wanted only the certificate." He sympathised with her and came to accept her as she was. Curtains However, there were other things that he found difficult to accept. The wife was uncomfortable with the window curtains that he had carefully chosen to match the interior wall colour, the window height, and the exterior background. She said, "Your curtains are funny. They make me feel blue." He did not approve of the comment and yet, told her, "So, change it for the better." When he came home one day, he could not believe what he saw. The window curtains were replaced with white clothes pinned to the top window beam. With a proud smile, she asked him, "Isn't it great?" and he did not want to say anything. He just smiled while telling himself, "This is kiddish." On another day, he saw white patches on the walls of the sitting room. He had placed, paintings that had a light blue background to match the wall, in centered positions keeping to the level of the window. She had attempted to paste pictures she bought from a bookshop and the wall paint had come off with the pictures. She looked sad and he felt sorry, but he was so disappointed that he did not want to paint the wall again. His wife asked him to paint it, but he kept putting it off." Upside down He began to feel his whole life turning upside down and the pain inside him increased whenever he sat down to eat. He hated hotels and public eateries because of the maggots and dirty tables, glasses and plates. He could not drink in a glass that was not clean, shiny and dry outside. His wife took lot of trouble to wash the dishes clean, using plenty of water and yet, there was always oil or grease on the cups, plates and glasses. He showed her how to wash and told her. "The test of good washing is that it will dry by itself when you put a glass upside down. If there's a drop of water clinging to the glass, it is because of the dirt." Yet, every time when he sat at table, he had to wash the glass and the plate. Before his marriage, he managed house for several years in spite of his heavy work schedule as an editor and no one could find a speck of dust or dirt in the house. The faucets, toilet flush and drainages operated well. He knew that dirt, food, and mosquitoes would attract other pests and he trained himself to keep the environment clean, neat and tidy and keep insects away. But now, maggots were sitting on the food. Ants were invading the bread and sugar. Mosquitoes could not be controlled. Pain The pain inside him reached a climax when he got the smell of a cockroach in the tea cup at breakfast. He opened the pantry cupboards and, found that cockroaches had made nests in them. He could not live in that house any more and called up his office to inform them that he was taking a day's leave for an emergency. Getting into a working dress, he started his war against cockroaches, ants, spiders, dirt and dust. His wife became very angry, but said nothing until she noticed rice spilled on the table mat. Calling him a small kid, she wanted to pinch his ego, but she couldn't. After lunch he continued the cleaning. He then realised, "she doesn't have any skill, either to take up a job or to manage house. She must have been always with books she hated and had little time to learn even how to wash a dish. She cannot even hold a knife safely." He asked himself, "How can she manage a family when she doesn't have life skills? Am I to look after a child? Should I divorce her before it is too late?" Turned After dinner, while watching TV news, he turned to her and told her, "I have something to tell you." She began to tremble and waited to hear, as she guessed, what the news might be. "When I say this, you should not feel that you are not equal to me. It is true that I have learned many skills. I had ample time to learn house management skills as well as work skills and you did not have time to learn those skills because you were glued to books that you hated. That you are managing this house now, you will learn the skills in two or three years time. You were hurt because I stayed home and cleaned the house. I should have done the cleaning regularly on holidays and it could have made your work easy. Hereafter, I will help you everyday. But, do not belittle me to come to terms with your inability. She listened to him without a word and after he finished, she got up went to the room, came out with her bag, and left the house without a word. He could not stop her. She did not tell her what she had been going through for eleven months. Everyday she cried unable to manage household chores. She had messed up the house several times and she felt like a little kid. Often she asked herself. "How can I be his wife? How can I ever be up to his level?' She knew that she could not go on pretending for long and told herself. "One day, he is going to treat me like a little kid and that day, I will leave this house! |
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Husband and wife had their lunch and got up from the table. The wife
looked at the grains of rice fallen on the table around her husband's
plate and pointing her finger at it and made a nasty remark, "Who did
this, a small kid?" Her husband felt humiliated and took a few
seconds to react.
