Much ado about cleaning

I finally had the august opportunity to meet the person for whose welcome our house in Paris saw four well fed, pot bellied persons making war like arrangements for a whole of two days in an attempt to clean up all the mess that the flat in Courbevoie housed apart from the four people in question. It was the day of all days that usually comes once a month but for the last two months I had avoided the D-day by rushing away to neighbouring countries when the day came. Considering the fact, that the D-day beaches are very nearby when you consider my geographical location on the map of the world, I had every plans to rush off to the D-day beaches when these once in a month occassions came, but since it was clear that I would most probably be threatened with dire circumstances if I avoided it another time I finally decided to act and clean the house for the grand arrival of our landlord. It has been months since I shifted from the Indian hostel to this appartment with three of my colleagues, in a vain attempt to save some money. Alas I have spent everything on travelling Europe and presently my bank balance looks very much disbalanced. The day I moved into this appartment the smell of gross neglect welcomed me. A sight of the dining table was enough to give the landlord a massive heart attack. There was everything on the table and it looked like the sight of a mini explosion. Bottles and cans of used pickles and sauces were there. There was even a carboard case that was home to a shoe once upon a time. Now it was home to a whole host of masalas that were last used a decade ago. Though I do like my stuffs to be clean and my room to be tidy, cleaning up a community mess is not something which I am used to. The table was left the way it was lest it again decide to explode on me.

Historically I have been blessed with flatmates or hostel roommates who have had dubious records of being clean. Notable is the wonderful time that I had with the great Banner. Room number B-57 in IMT hostel was one of the smallest rooms that could accomodate two people. To meet the problem of space we had joined our two beds and hence were crowned as the undisputed presidents of some well known society of IMT which is best kept secret in a public forum like this. The space constraint problem saw clothes being heaped on the lonesome chair in the room. The chair seemed to be heaped in the same way as a donkey's back when being taken to the dhobi ghat. Books used to be lying here and there on the bed as were newspapers on which we sometimes slept too. These newspapers were hurriedly disposed under the cot to rest in peace with all the dirt of the world. And then once in a while came a frantic SOS call from the great Banner announcing the arrival of his parents. A call like this meant something much more graver than 9/11 for us because if his parents would have seen the condition of our room, the way we kept it, we would both have been shot dead at point blank for being so unclean. The SOS meant I had to run and push every item of clothing inside the big almirah and lock it up. If they would have opened the almirah once, they would have been buried under debries of fallin clothes of all kinds. The next step was to shove everything under the bed and if still unwanted things remained they would be pushed into the neigbours room. Equally unclean the duo of Bindra and Sohar never minded an intrusion into their room. Bindra's cleanliness record had the whole cleaning staff of IMT prying for his blood. He had happily forgot to clean a bucketfull of clothes that he had soaked in soap for more than a month. When he finally threw them all away, it was anybody's guess how many lesser mortals might have died of the stench. The next phase of room cleaning would be the jharu pocha wala stage with me struggling with the jharu and Banner doing the pocha. The speed at which we cleaned the room would definitely have put a high speed TGV at shame. The finishing touches were provided by lighting up a whole plethora of incensce sticks in an effort to shoo away the smell of stale cigarette smoke that lingered on in our room. The wallpapers of our PCs changed from a raunchy Monica Belluci staring at us to a picture of godess Saraswati in no time. And this is how I had saved my ass for a whole year and had managed reasonably well to portray myself to be a clean person to the outside world. Second year in IMT, was an individual affair, with people getting single rooms. I had managed to keep my room clean for the better part of that year and thanks to a lot of initatives taken at the begging of the year of putting up wall hangings and fancy lamp shades nobody ever raised eyebrows. Though in second year also a mount everest of old newspapers rested under my cot. In the latter part of the second year, we stuffed the mountain in Akshara's car and took it to the local kabadiwala and made a mini fortune of it. The money was enough to sposor a booze party for our group of friends. The next stop which became home for a few months was the guest house of Infosys during the training period at Hyderabad. All our combined efforts of keeping everything out of place proved futile by the constant monitoring of the housekeeping staff of the guest house. Bangalore also saw its share of dirtiness thanks to the laziness of us few souls who stayed in a house at BTM layout. The only saving grace was the cleaning woman who did not understand even one word we spoke and vice versa. It was easier to talk to an alien than the cleaning woman, but she did clean the premises and clothes of ours quite well. And now in Paris, cleaning the home is a ploy to keep the owner happy, lest he throws us out of the house into the cold streets of Paris in a winter month. The regularity of cleaning stays in sync with his regularity of coming to collect the rent. That means once in a month the house gets a full revamp with four hatta gatta naujawan becoming the opressed Cinderella taking up the mop and bucket and going around the house cleaning, mopping, strugling, falling and freeing everything of dust and stains including the table that looked like an explosion site. Finally after hours of fighting with the dust and stain and emptying a bottle of stain remover the house looked habitable and sophisticated including the table which no more looked like a blast site of age old curries. Expecting the owner to go ga-ga over our cleanliness initatives but when he came he talked about complex things his bank was doing in a french accented hindi. Later on he started talking about how he desperately wants to learn SAP, a skill that I havent been able to learn in so many years even after sitting infront of the SAP interface every single day. So if you want a clean up of ur house, u know whom not to invite. I am better at cleaning up entries from database these days.