The wife is away!

The wife is away. I wake up groggily to do some feeding... um... chores. Where’s the bloody milk vessel? Where’s that damn knife to open the milk sachet? Where’s the blustering gas lighter? Where’s the effing knob to switch this on? Is it left for sim, or, right? Where? Where? Where?

I run cold water over a cup, rinse it. For the coffee, of course. My hands chill to the touch of water. The detergent, clammy to touch, the scrubber so squelchy, yetch. How does she do it?

Where’s the coffee power? I holler to my son. Where are the spoons? Why can’t everything be ergonomically placed? Assembyline style, asks the industrial engineer in me. There should be a system to this madness.

There’s water to be filled. I run to the bathroom. The tank’s ball valve isn’t working, so I have watch out or water will spill all over the bathroom. Is the milk boiling? I run into the kitchen. No. Safe. It’s near boiling with those little bubbles about to break.

Back to the bathroom. The tank is about full. Shut off the water; get doused though from the first part of a forestalled deluge. Sound and smell of incineration from the kitchen. The milk is all over the kitchen platform in great white tides of froth. Oh! Where’s the damn cloth she uses to handle these dorky things? Never mind, I will use my hands.

Ouuuchhhhh! I burnt about an acre of my precious epithelial cells. Quick. Douse it with more water.

Coffee is out of the question, I say as I look at the mess on my wife’s precious gas stove that she lovingly polishes to a mirror-like finish. Women, you know. Now I will have to use my knuckles to do that, or I will be a dead man.

Bread and jam, asks son. Yes. That’s easy. A cakewalk. Walk to kitchen. Put the skillet on the gas, glance pityingly at the white mess sticking to the stove. Well, let me eat first. Then I will do the cleaning. Spread four bread slices on the non-stick skillet. Non-stick skillets cost a bomb, wife had warned.

What was that song, ummm, “Christmas season, season, is a merry, merry, season. You can dance the Christmas polka...” It is the season to be jolly and I am doing this? What’s that smell?

Oh! What does this have to happen to me? Duh! The slices burnt and are stuck to the precious non-stick skillet. With my burnt hand I try to remove the damn slices and turn them over. That side is gone, a black mess. At least I can eat the other side. I turn four slices over.

Where are the plates? There should be something called ergonomics in the kitchen. I am an industrial engineer, you see, method study and all that stuff.

More smoke. The other side also has been burnt a crisp black. There goes my breakfast.

“Papa, breakfast, I have classes.”

I bribe him with a hundred-rupee note, “This is for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and don’t spend too much. Have idlis and dosas from the Udupi restaurant, okay?”

He looks at me strangely. I know what he is thinking. Papa can’t do anything right. Mummy always says that.

I am a wreck. The kitchen looks like the aftermath of the third battle of Panipat. How do women do it? She does this every morning, packs my lunch, goes and teaches children and comes back and does this all over again.

Thank god for women! As for the bread slices, I had to eat it. Serves me right!