“One at a time please!”
I sat bolt up, bathed in cold sweat. “Wake up! Wake up!” I nudged my husband. The poor man was enjoying a well-earned rest after a hard day. “What…” he looked at me, bewildered. “It talked,” I said. By now, thoroughly alarmed, he was wide awake. “Who talked?” he enquired. “That…” I pointed out. “The thing we hang our clothes on.”
My husband’s bewilderment now turned to alarm. I wouldn’t be surprised if by now, he was thinking, whether it was time to pay the mental asylum a visit. “Well,” he said unsuredly, “too much of the rich gravy for dinner surely did not suit you. Try and sleep. We shall sort things out in the morning.” I lay down, but kept wondering…what happened?
With the bright sun pouring in through the windows in the morning, I couldn’t help suppress a smile. Some ever-conscious friends in a WhatsApp group had posted two items – the first, a, well…overtly healthy person trying the weighing scale…and the weighing scale protesting, “One at a time” – the second, one friend asking another not to try getting up on the weighing scale, because “it will make us cry.”
I am a lover of machines. They never fail to amaze me. Most kitchen gadgets are love to me, it makes life soooo easy. But there is one, though not a kitchen gadget, which was bought to help us keep healthy – and which is used by me to hang clothes on – THE TREADMILL – I failed to fall in love with it and its concurring extension – the weighing scale. Both stand in the bedroom, contended, I feel, snobbish I’m sure, daring me to use them.
There is something called a love-hate relationship. I love the treadmill as it acts as a clothes hanger. I dislike it for its real purpose! My eyebrows furrow each time when I look at it and I feel it talks to me, calling me names – “fatty, fatso” and what not. But one day, sense knocked into me. Wanting to wear a pair of trousers which I once loved so much brought me to tears. I couldn’t fit into them! What have I done to myself? I wondered. With tears in my eyes, I stood in front of the treadmill. I felt it scoffing at me. Ashamed and with eyes lowered, I unfolded the treadmill. With trembling legs, I stood on the weighing scale.
I almost seemed to hear it scream at the pressure it was put under. Astonished, I looked at the reading. With the same tremor in the heart, I started the mill. “Oh Dear, is it just one or more?” the mill seemed to scream. Teary-eyed, I started … huffing and puffing. But the treadmill was relentless – “So is this a one-day affair? Have you decided to dump the plate?” - it seemed to ask. I did not find an answer.
Weeks flew by, then a month, and then months. In the beginning, I looked at the time, the 20 minutes on the mill being the longest 20 minutes of the day. I walked and walked, and the mill walked with me. Slowly I realised a magic developing. No longer did it seem that the treadmill was all against me. It was relentless as ever, drawing out every bit of strength that I could afford to put. But the mood seemed to have changed. It seemed to egg me on, encouraging me to take just one more step, speed up a little more.
I seemed to be developing a loving relationship with the mill. I was surprised when I suddenly called it “my mill” and not “the mill”. When on it, we fell into a comfortable companionship. Now my feet fly on the mill and the mill runs with me.
I eye the weighing scale beside the mill. The treadmill seems to sense it too. “Go on, try it,” says the mill. Timidly, but eagerly, I put myself on the scale – and what a surprise! The readings’ down by quite a few numbers. A happy smile spreads across my face. “Thank you,” I said, “Thank you for being with me.” And was it my imagination or did my mill just smile too?
Happily, I put the most desired pair of trousers and while leaving the room, turned back to smile at my beloved mill. It gave me a playful wink…I have never felt so fulfilled…
Mamata Bandyopadhyay is a homemaker based in Dubai
