When I first read the following lines by Arthur Weasley (Ron’s Dad in Harry P, remember?) “Ah, yes, I collect plugs,” I was a teenager. I had smiled about it and thought “How cute.”
Molly Weasley’s husband is as different from mine as possible, but the boys have a shared love of plugs. In fact, mine has one-upped Weasly by a fair margin. He not only collects plugs, he collects wires (all colours, shapes and sizes) tools, voltmeters, solar panels, old car batteries, bulbs, inverters, electrical tape, nuts and bolts and everything in that zone that you can possibly imagine. I live in a workshop, or you could even call it a solar plant. We produce our own solar energy and someone in our family firmly believes that electrical wires add a great deal to aesthetics. Our storage areas are also packed with random power-packed devices that can blow, cut or weld, and that’s not all. We regularly receive innocuous looking packages from Amazon and even from China, because, guess what — we don’t have enough wires, bulbs and plugs.
Any empty drawer in our house seems to grow wires and it’s cronies — I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve opened a cupboard that wasn’t assigned to something in particular with the intention of keeping something in it and found that our never ending supply of plugs and co had overflowed and encroached upon that empty space too. I should add that the scientist in charge of these materials is a genius, a busy man, who couldn’t care less about how materials are kept. I mean if we can produce solar energy at home, surely, the mess shouldn’t matter right? Umm … Well, you know …
I used to be (notice the past tense?) a neat freak, someone who looked at jumbled up cables and felt nauseous. Not ideal, as you can imagine. There was this one time that I decided to ‘clean up’ one very important cupboard that belongs to my husband. Upon opening his treasure chest, I just stood staring at it for a few minutes and when I came to, I had a big garbage bag in my hand. This incident is not pretty. If you love wires, please look away.
I felt a warm sense of fulfilment and peace wash over me as I retrieved tired-looking wires, bulbs with broken filaments and tools that looked useless to me and tossed them. I found so much dirt and dust I thought I was cleaning up mini sand dunes, and lo and behold — after a full day of hard work, the cupboard looked clean. There were wires sitting nicely (UNJUMBLED!) on the shelves and devices and machinery without a speck of dust (Martha Stewart would be proud) and of course why would one need two screwdrivers of the same kind if one would suffice? Minimalists could write essays on how wonderfully I downsized his cupboard. I remained mum about this feat when I met him later that day but every time I passed by the cupboard I would give it a loving, secret look and open it up and smile while waving my arms as though to say “Here you go!” I think I might have chicken-danced at some point too.
A few days later …
“Who messed my cupboard?” he asks, while rummaging through his stuff.
“MESSED? Are you serious?” I respond incredulously, finally hoping to get due acknowledgement.
“DID SOMEONE THROW MY OLD TOOLBOX?” He says in a voice that gets ever more menacing.
“You mean helped you cleanse your mind and life of clutter as you embrace a more minimalistic life?” I say weakly.
I can’t tell you what happened next because I have feeling my editor will not allow swear words. The above happened many years ago, but its echoes have been far-reaching. We’ve spoken (read: argued) about my ‘cleaning’ many times — especially when something’s gone missing. As a result I now have selective vision that automatically blurs out the wires. Somewhere along the line, however, we learnt (nah, still learning) what compromise actually means and maybe the wires (and the man who works with them) — are cute after all!
— Mehmudah Rehman is a Dubai-based freelance writer
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