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.”

1 

3 

5 

2

4 

Wednesday, December 2, 2015 // The Statement 

