Why lose sleep over a little dirt and grime?

Everyone knows that old quote: ‘There’s none so blind as those who will not see’. In our home, we have, over the years, realised that it’s best for all of us to be a bit blind — to the grime around us.

It started out with just one pair of eagle eyes — mine — constantly alighting on surfaces that showed even the slightest trace of dust or dirt: tables, arm rests, tops of cupboards and even the mosaic flooring that could not camouflage evidence of the muddy comings and goings of man, man-child, dog and other sundry creatures.

Energetically and enthusiastically — maybe because the house was a reflection of my prowess as a homemaker, even if it was part-time, or maybe in some hidden corner of my soul I belonged to that one-third of womankind that reportedly likes housework — I would swoop in to scour and mop while the others in the household puzzled over what I was cleaning and why I forced them to move or raise their feet so that I could get to every corner of the house.

Wisecracks abounded. “Here comes superwoman with x-ray vision of a different kind! She sees smudges that aren’t there!” followed by “Maybe she’s a mutant — see, she has a broom attached to her shoulder instead of an arm! And she’s prescient too — she knows something’s going to spill before it does!”

When the inmates of the house were outdoors, I would scrub and straighten up behind them — and then welcome them with a satisfied smile, only to have them traipse in blithely to shed mud all over again.

Turning the tables

Initially, they were startled by the blast that hit them as I pointed out — at full decibel level — the many places I had cleaned up and how unfeeling and uncaring and downright mean it was to dirty them all over again. On a couple of occasions they had the grace to appear mildly penitent, but soon the tables were turned on me.

Disbelief took over. “Oh no, I didn’t dirty anything — show me where the marks are!” Most often, I couldn’t (having polished and buffed every surface to perfection in their absence) and so I was christened a storyteller extraordinaire. “It’s all in your imagination,” I was told on so many occasions that I came close to believing it.

Then I got wise — despite the temptation to have shining surfaces all around me, I started to keep all those stains intact until the offenders returned home. “There!” I said, and pointed with a flourish to the grubby footprint (or handprint) that was clearly not mine. “You did that — you clean it!”

That should have worked. It works everywhere else — or so I’m told. But in our home of the selectively blind, it didn’t. “Where?” I was asked with genuinely puzzled looks as the head swivelled here and there and the washcloth was waved around aimlessly. “I can’t see anything!”

“Give me that mop!” I snarled, and in a jiffy I had cleaned off the eyesore.

But the puzzled look remained. “It doesn’t look any different to me,” I was told cheerfully as they walked off in their soiled clothes to collapse on a brand new white bedspread that I’d been saving for a special occasion ...

That decided it. There was no beating them at this. Easier by far to join them.

Now none of us notices the dust and grime. Guests are welcome; friends and relatives can walk in whenever they please. After a while they get used to the slightly grubby state of everything around. Everyone is relaxed, everyone ‘chills’. You should try it sometime.

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.