Have some bhang to endure the silliness.

Happy Holi to all from a person who chooses to remain indoors the whole day.

My maid told me that she wanted a leave of two weeks for her daughter's wedding. It meant that my house would be totally under my control for a few days. My house has been under the rule of various maids for all these years. Each maid and each era were quite different. There were late-coming -maids, silent maids, talkative maids, indifferent maids and nosey maids. This list may make you suspect what kind of an employer I am to have so many maids and why they all left in first place.

When my maid took leave, my first instinct was to panic. When you have small babies, for all practical purposes your maid is your goddess and you are her devotee. Imagine, the goddess on whom you repose your total faith suddenly disappears.

But it was just my conditioned reflex to the stimulus. Panicking if maid takes leave is just like the dog drooling on hearing the bell. My kids are older now. And I have a dishwasher to save me from one of the most brain-numbing jobs. The other most brain-numbing jobs include sweeping, mopping, cooking, making kids study, grocery shopping, seeing patients, visiting in-laws etc. In short, anything that compels me to take any responsibility numbs my brain instantly. But the good news is that I can tweak most of these jobs in various creative methods like my maid does, to tide over the crisis.

While I got busy with cleaning, I found a lot of places where neither my maid’s thought nor the broom reached. Ms Shobha De would have called them ‘G spots’ or ‘Gupt spots’. It was quite evident that my maid was completely unaware of these secret spots. It occurred to me that I needed to downsize the contents of my house so that we can actually see and reach those places with the broom.

Ms Mary Kondo’s book came to my assistance and decluttering started with gusto. In the process, I held many objects in my hand to test what sparked joy in my heart. Nothing worked. To my surprise, not even clothes and jewellery elicited any spark, leave apart screwdrivers or gas cylinders. This meant that I have never understood myself and that my house would literally be empty in a few days. Meanwhile, I also noticed that food sparks intense joy in my heart, brain, tongue and stomach simultaneously. This was quite a revelation. Life changing magic happened while tidying up with Mary Kondo. Now I know that my motto in life is food.

My toil continued for many days. I was piling up and then organizing all the stuff in a ‘semi KonMari technique’ because doing it as pure ‘KonMari’ is not in a true Indian woman’s blood. We can’t throw a torn underwear, forget about discarding designer clothes.

I was doing all this work on my own because my husband had gone out for a few days on work. Kids were having exams. That meant I could not give false applications to their class teachers that they were suffering from viral fevers or their cousin came from America after 15 years.

I had to cook, clean, declutter by testing all strange things that I had hoarded over the years looking for sparks of joy, see patients and still remain sane. Sometimes I got confused while checking my patients if I was looking for a spark of joy or a disease.

In the end, I felt I had worked so hard to run the house that if I had had an affair with George Clooney as a reward, God would have got convinced that I had done it for some sort of family welfare. He would think hard and finally, conclude that I probably needed some white children to balance the colour palette of the household. By the way, Mr Clooney would have had a fair chance of sparking joy.

Decluttering your house can really boost your confidence. The horizons of my thought even reached Mr Clooney.

Mary Kondo did me one more favour. While I managed my house better than when the maid was there, I felt quite empowered being independent. I decided that it was time to empower my husband too. In my house, husband cooks now.

My maid returned after all. That day I slept heartily while my maid was cleaning. Once she finished, she told me that she was leaving. I told her that I was tired and had a little body ache and she should close the door and go.

‘Now that the winter is gone, just move your hands and legs a little bit and do some exercise. Your body ache will go’ she said.

Now you know why I have had so many maids.