3B
“
You should call your next column the Domes-
tic Life of Sharon, Tanvi, Tanya and Dhara,”
my roommate, Dhara, said. “Like ‘The Suite
Life of Zack and Cody,’ but less interesting.”
She’s lugging two trash bags out of our kitchen
to hand to our other roommate, Sharon, who’s
standing at the door with a sour expression on her
face.
“This is the worst part about going home for
break,” Sharon had said earlier in the day. “Clean-
ing.”
I observe them attempting to wrestle with the
bags, standing unhelpfully against my bedroom
door.
Out of all of my roommates, I am the least
“domestic.” It’s not that I’m untidy or horrifically
messy, it’s just that I’m not equipped with the same
level of housekeeping skills as them.
All three of them can make rice without burning
it, can prepare Chai that doesn’t look like sewer
water and spin perfectly round rotis, the ultimate
quality of Indian femininity.
Rotis, which I can only best describe as Indian
tortillas, but thinner, and their shape, hold a very
special place in the judgment of an Indian woman’s
character. Or, to be more accurate, the archaic
judgment of an Indian woman’s character.
Round rotis were a prized talent, but mine,
unfortunately, always turn out to be some abstract
shape, much to the embarrassment of my mother,
who has been trying to teach me to cook and clean
as adeptly as herself ever since I turned thirteen.
“What is wrong with you? What are you going
to do when you’re living and working alone?” she’d
always scream at me. “How are you going to take of
yourself? Who is going to cook for you?”
I would roll my eyes and make up some excuse
— usually that I had to “study” some more — to
beg off whatever cooking or cleaning task she had
assigned me.
Looking back now, as my roommates tidied up
the apartment and deftly swept the linoleum floor,
I realize how stupid I had been to ignore my mom’s
lessons. I am utterly ill equipped to function on
my own. My version of “cleaning” is just scrubbing
every surface with Lysol wipes.
When I was younger, I always assumed that
the reason my mother was assigning cooking and
cleaning tasks to me was because I was a girl.
Every time she would yell at me about vacuuming
the house on a weekly basis or washing off the dish-
es the sink, I would look at my brother lounging on
the couch unbothered and get angry.
But now, whenever I come home, it’s him doing
the very tasks that I had been asked to do when I
was his age. It wasn’t because I was a girl, I now
realize, but because I was, in my mother’s mind, a
modern girl. I would eventually be moving away
from my parents’ home and living on my own,
something that only happened in my mother’s gen-
eration when a woman was married off.
When my mom was assigned her chores by
my grandmother, her protests would be met with
scoldings about her in-laws would receive her lack
of cooking skills, how she would keep them and
her husband happy and how she could be expected
to maintain the respect of her marital home if she
couldn’t even do basic things like make a four-
course meal alone.
But my mom wouldn’t dare mention any of
these things to me, simply because she knows that
they’re not what me or any other girl my age, liv-
ing in this time period in this country, would want
for themselves. The fact that my roommates have
picked up these lifelong skills from their own house
doesn’t meant that they’re too “traditional” or
“old-fashioned,” it just means that they’re far more
prepared for the real world than I am.
My Cultural Currency: Domestic life
B Y TA N YA M A D H A N I
ON THE RECORD
“As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg
family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
to join people across the world to advance human
potential and promote equality for all children in the next
generation. Our initial areas of focus will be personalized
learning, curing disease, connecting people and building
strong communities.”
— Facebook CEO MARK ZUCKERBURG and wife PRISCILLA
CHAN in a publicized letter to their newborn daughter, Max.
***
“Very proud of the team, the way they’ve worked, the way
they’ve progressed. We’ll just stay at that. Closed quite a
bit of ground. Still more ground to close on, but knowing
our team, they’ll stay with it.”
— Michigan coach JIM HARBAUGH in a statement after the
team’s loss to Ohio State on Saturday.
elections this week
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHERYLL VICTUELLES
Chipotle: One of the finer things in life. Not only does the restau-
rant provide fast, delicious food (and in some places, and exotic
side of E. Coli) but they decorate their bags with inspirational
quotes as well.
THE LIST
JUDD APATOW
“Don’t be a jerk. Try to love everyone.”
GEORGE SAUNDERS
“Hope that, in future, all is well, everyone eats free, no one must
work, all just sit around feeling love for one another.”
AZIZ ANSARI
“Have you ever run into someone with no teeth and asked, ‘What
happened?’”
BUZZFEED, BUT BETTER
BEST QUOTES FROM CHIPOTLE BAGS
JONATHAN FRANZEN
“If you’re taking such an extremely short view, how are you even
supposed to see a pedestrian who’s starting to cross the street?”
STEVEN PINKER
“We will never have a perfect world, but it’s not romantic or naive
to work toward a better one.”
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Wednesday, December 2, 2015 // The Statement