Our first home after I got married was a rented apartment in a village sixty miles from Munich. We lived on the second floor of a three-storey, red-roofed building at the end of a street lined with similar red-roofed houses. There were fields on one side of the street, and one main road that led through the village. Every morning my husband drove a Ford Capri to his work some six miles away.
A smartly dressed young couple lived above us. Every morning, they set out in their purple VW to their respective jobs in Munich. The family on the ground floor had just had their second child. Through the floorboards you could hear the lady of the house vacuuming and running the washing machine. Through the kitchen blinds I could see her snapping neatly pegged sheets, towels and nappies on the clothesline. A pram holding the newborn stood beside her. The little boy played on a swing in the backyard that was bordered with huge sunflowers and bees buzzing. When she was done with these tasks, she would be at her desk attending to the bookkeeping for her father’s business.
I envied my two neighbors’ busy productive lives. I had never done any housekeeping chores before marriage, but I had taken notes on how to run a household from a book titled My Perfect Household. Truth to tell, the notes appeared like hieroglyphics in my new apartment. Every week, the neighbor downstairs dragged her mattress to the window to air it. I tried to do the same and almost fell out.
When a Swiss friend’s nurse paid me a social visit, I slaved: sweeping, mopping and vacuuming. Apparently, you can eat off the floor in Switzerland. Feeling at ease, I confessed, ‘I really don’t like housework.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ she said, nodding. ‘I saw dust in the corner of the baseboard.’
However, there was one household skill I had mastered – I could cook. Not because I had any culinary superpowers, but because I had the appetite of a trencherwoman. So it was a necessity. Also, though we had a Bierstube in our village, we had no restaurants.
Even though I was illiterate in housekeeping, I could read. My sister maintains that if you can read, you can cook, thus putting in a powerful plug for literacy. I tried out the recipes from the two cookbooks that I had brought with me from India, along with my trousseau of twenty-one silk sarees.
I labored over dishes from Indian Cooking by Mrs. Balbir Singh and the Time/Life Cooking of India and, just when my cooking was done, I would hear footsteps ascending to the top floor.
One day my upstairs neighbor said to me, “We smell the most divine smells when we return from work.” With such high praise I had to invite them for dinner. I included the family on the ground floor.
It took all day to cook the meal. Now I too had worth, but I immediately felt like an imposter. It is Mrs. Balbir Singh and the author of the Time/Life cookbook who deserve all the praise for selflessly offering their recipes – unlike some chefs who omit one crucial ingredient.
At 8pm the two couples arrived. When the bell in the kitchen pinged, I bore steaming aromatic dishes to the dining table. The neighbor upstairs was like a dog straining at the leash. He removed the metal cover of the biriyani, and I was afraid he would drool into the platter.
The neighbor downstairs piled his plate, including a fresh green chili that was only intended as a garnish.
The upstairs neighbor took a bite. His face turned red and he gasped, his skin damp with perspiration. I was horrified. I rushed into the kitchen for a bowl of plain yogurt and water to soothe his throat. I had wanted my guests to have an authentic Indian food experience, but I had forgotten that the only condiment in Germany is salt and pepper and halving or doubling measurements is beyond my mathematically challenged brain.
I looked at the other neighbor. He seemed okay.
‘Are you alright?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Yes, it’s delicious!’ He said, chomping his food.
‘But you just ate a green chili!’ I said. ‘Even I can’t do that.’
‘Did I really? I must have swallowed it.’
I can’t say that the evening was an unqualified success.
A few years later, we moved to the U.S.
Straight from the airport, my husband’s colleague’s wife who had invited us for dinner, gave me some commandments, including, ‘American women never iron.’
My heart soared with joy.
After we had settled into our new apartment, she dumped two tons of old Ms. magazines in my living room, clearly trying to raise my consciousness. I never read them, because I was already snowed under with a blizzard of English language magazines and books.
A short while after we moved in, we were in the Sears department store, looking for a pressure cooker. This was in dark ages before the advent of the microwave. In the basement we encountered a sales lady.
‘Pressure cooker?’ she queried, puzzled.
‘For cooking,’ I added, helpfully.
‘Honey, American women don’t cook.’
I was in heaven.
But like all snap judgements, I doubt that there is any truth to this.
A few years later, I was attending a meditation retreat. About a hundred people were gathered for the week-long event. Between meditation sessions, we were all expected to do some physical work. Ironically, I was assigned the role of Restroom Cleaning Supervisor. Seeing the dumbfounded look on my face, I was assured that there would be a posse of ladies and that I would be their supervisor.
All through the meditation, I was sweating bullets. There is such a thing as a kakistocracy. Then I had a brainwave and I listed all the tasks that the job entailed: scrub sink, sweep floor etc. and I put these tasks on strips of paper. My crew of ten could each draw a slip. This way there could be no complaints of favoritism.
I had to explain what was to be done for each task. I had been tutored here, and I referred to my notes, though it was a little off-putting when my staff, who were all taller than me, read the notes over my shoulder. Supervisors like to feel omniscient.
I discovered that even in restroom supervision, there are brown nosers: ladies who would bring me breakfast bars and cookies. There were others who would complain about the slackers. There were also rebels, and those who did their work without complaint. I gave pep talks and counseled the malcontents.
I learned a lot as a week-long restroom supervisor. Most of all, I learned that I was not cut out for the role. When I returned home, I hired a cleaning lady. And thereafter my home became, ‘Om Sweet Om!’
Ravibala Shenoy is a former librarian and book reviewer. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Quarterly Review, Best Asian Speculative Fiction, The Chicago Tribune, The Bosphorus Review of Books, The Superstition Review, Literary Mama and Funny Pearls, amongst others. Her writing has received multiple awards.