Guys and Cleanliness: A true story and a slightly dirty one...:)

My mom came down last weekend to Chennai to pay me a visit. I was informed of this happy news on the previous wednesday. With just three days left to D-dAY, I sweetly informed my roomies (who were extremely busy in watching an episode of BAYWATCH) that the house needed to be cleaned. The announcement was followed by a deathly silence for a minute (whether it was because they were shocked that they’d have to clean up the house or because i brought up such a trivial topic right when Pamela Anderson was running on the beach, im not sure about).We all looked around the drawing room from our respective comfortable positions (obviously we didnt get up from our seats) and Vinit remarked “oh its not dirty, maybe we can just give it a sweep on friday evening.” All of us looked at him admiringly and nodded our assents. Friday evening eventually had to come and i reminded everone of the task in hand.

Sportingly everyone joined in(i practically had to request, plead, beg, bribe, weep, threaten them into doing it) and mission clean-up was started. I took a broom and went into my room bravely, heart fluttering a bit. I could see panic in Naveen’s eyes as he took the onus of cleaning the kitchen. i closed my eyes, muttered a silent prayer and started the mission. Ull be amazed to know the things that were swept out that evening. Besides the customary dust, wrappers, packets, old broken pen caps, we also found a lot of dead organisms- cockroaches (two in my room), moths, grasshopper and an earthworm too, in the house(my guess is even they couldnt survive in the conditions). How we never saw any of this before will always be a mystery to me! I also noticed that a lot of webs and dust was stuck lovingly to the walls (dude, why do walls attract so much dust?) and the fan’s colour was a nice light brown(”it was white, wasnt it?”, kislay asked me, ”when we first came to the house” and we shared a moment of thoughful guy looks). After an hour, we held a meeting about who would volunteer to clean the bathrooms, but strangely noone did. It was decided that we’ll pick straws, and Raj was the unlucky one chosen. When he came out after cleaning up, he was ashen faced. I had to treat him to a full bottle of.. err lets just say it was an alcoholic beverage, to make the colour come back to his face. At the end of it all, we were proud to see our “spick and span” house.

Next day mom came. The first thing she said on entering was “My god, Neeraj, do you boys ever clean the house? Atleast you could have today, since i was coming” .I still dunno what to say to that. After all our efforts …..

The point is that yes, according, to her, our house was still not in “living condition”. Moms, umm all women in general would find it dirty. But how come we dont feel that way? How come we, and most guys, and i mean bachelors, are completely comfortable in these ‘inhospitable conditions’? We just dont see dirt the way women see it. Its not our fault if GOD didnt give us the ability to see, sniff and smell out dirt, the way all women do. Mom actually had the nerve to tell me that the wall clock was dirty. So?????????p.s I thought about all this for an entire night and have come to a mature conclusion. Next time she comes, ill ask some of my “opposite-gender’ friends to put her up at their place.