How to wash dirty linen in public

Getting over with the disclaimer/Previously on the blog…: Pushparajyam Synoptics has been dead since 2016. 2016 was also the year I got married. But no, you nosey fucker. That’s not why I stopped writing. 2016 was also the year I started writing at work which made me want to save up all my remaining brain cells for the activity that helped me earn money and eat more food. So, why am I writing now? My brain cells are all dead. The question of ROI doesn’t matter anymore. Also, lot of offices nowadays give free food. Soda-infused rice and buttermilk with a hint of Hepatitis C, anyone?

On Marriage Before Marriage

Let’s go back to the year 2014 when I was in the second year of post graduation. I was 26 years old turning 27 at that point. We’ve discussed this before — on days I used to feel too old to be in college, I would tell myself that if Mohanlal and Mammooty can act as college students, so can I.

I had just pulled an all-nighter painting rusted ladders. As most of you know, if you are part of a committee and you are running a fest, you have to do artsy stuff on campus. And my committee was full of resourceful people. So instead a putting a lot of money into buying art supplies — we didn’t have much budget or a lot of sponsors too unlike the bigger committees — we went scrap-picking. Painted that shit, put all of it on a platform and pretended it’s the fucking Biennale of Shela Village, Ahmedabad.

After setting it all up, I came back to my room and looked in the mirror to see if I had any leftover existential questions to answer before going to sleep. Then I noticed that I had accidentally painted some of my hair yellow. Now you may ask, what does this have to do with marriage or dirty linen. We are coming to it.

I hadn’t slept for the past 24 hours, there was yellow paint in my hair and no paint remover or turpentine in sight. Then I asked myself — at this age, would you rather be sleep deprived and have yellow paint in your hair OR be married and living in Bangalore like a normal Malayali? I chose neither. I grabbed a pair of scissors, chopped off all the yellow hair — I had a lot of expendable hair back then — and went to sleep.

I woke up in the evening and went to get some Shikari chicken from the Honey9 stall they had put up for the fest. See, I can’t remember the names of my friends and family but I remember the chicken I had in 2014. As I was on my way, I got a call from a friend whom I hadn’t spoken to for some time. She had gotten married a year before and I had missed her wedding. We talked for a good one hour, laughed hysterically, and probably scared away a few birds from Shela village for good. Just before we were about to wind up my friend said, “Edooo Meghaaa, don’t get married. It’s a trap!”

On Marriage After Marriage

Today morning I woke up and found the motivation to wash the bedsheets that have been in the laundry bag for the past one month. I have a habit of announcing things before I proceed to do them, even when I go to the loo. So as usual, I announced my laundry intent. Suddenly, this man who calls himself my husband jumped up from the couch and made a dash for the washing machine. Apparently, he had ‘more important clothes’ to wash for the week.

Now, I don’t know if you’re getting the gravity of the situation. We do our laundry separately. So, bedsheets are no-man’s-land that get washed only if one of us takes the initiative to wash them. And here I am, thwarted at the onset itself after managing to pull out motivation from the depths of my body and mind to conquer that land which no one wants to landscape.

It’s not like I do not have ‘more important clothes’ to wash. I’ll have to pretty much go to office in sexy party clothes that I can’t fit into anymore if I don’t do laundry too. But, no.

Are you still not getting the gravity of the situation? Okay, let me tell you this. The laundry load involved a blanket that our cat peed in when he went on a territory-marking spree at 4 months of age. The cat is now almost a year and a half old. Do you get it now?

Then suddenly that old phone conversation with my friend rang in my head — “Edooo Meghaaaa…” 😀

On Marriage and Laundry

There are several pre-requisites that go into making me write a Pushparajyam post or any rant in general. I have to be angry enough to throw someone off my balcony. I should also be not angry enough to imagine throwing someone off my balcony and laugh about it. So here I am, writing about marriage and laundry.

In other news, if any of you are thinking, at least he does his own laundry – please don’t. If you are a working adult who still relies on a family member to wash your dirty linen, get the fuck out of my blog and go watch an Ariel ad. Also, wash clothes.