Diwali is around the corner. The biggest celebration of the season - the festival of lights, crackers, sweets, and savories. But before the main event comes its precursor - the Diwali cleaning!
Apart from being a health & hygiene activity, Diwali cleaning is also a practical demo in the subjects of archaeology, history, and mining.
You might not spot a single spider in the house the whole year but there is a cobweb, in every possible place, the corners, the beams, the pillars, the doors, the window ledge, curtains, wall hangings and showpieces. In fact, any place with a corner, there is a cobweb! How it got there is a mystery unresolved, but it is there.
The house itself seems to be generating dust – under the beds, behind and on top of the almirah, the table, on top of the shelfs, everywhere there is a thick accumulation of dust hiding, just beyond the reach of the daily jhaadu. Only excavated during deep cleaning.
There is an old English saying – “a rolling stone gather no moss”. Might be true for a stone but a rotating fan gathers dust, lots of it. The thickness of the layer of dust on its blades is the best indicator of the usage of a particular fan!
From the deepest recesses of the drawers, come out the chronicles of our shopping history - the bills. Many with the ink completely faded and some whose products may have been used and disposed of, but the bill has been retained, for what purpose, no one can say!
Of course, add to this our tendency of squirrelling away stuff for a later day. And that’s how we end up with lots of disposable cutlery (courtesy Swiggy & Zomato), a big plastic bag filled with smaller bags, old clothes which have lived their full life but still hoarded away as they await nirvana by becoming a pochhaa! Our deep entrenched habit of not wasting/reusing/recycling just ends with lot of unwanted stuff occupying all sorts of nooks and crannies in the house!
Diwali cleaning – the only time in the year when your apartment starts giving the vibes of being a bungalow in size. And during the course of it, we also decide to do the clearing more often, but as is wont with such pledges, doesn’t really happen. It is back breaking stuff, especially when at times you take a pause to catch your breath, look around and realize that somehow the house seems messier than before you started. But at the end of the day, also an oddly satisfying one!
Wishing all readers, a Very Happy Diwali!
P.S. Expect to see a lot of LinkedIn gyaan on the subject of cleaning in the coming days!
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