When I moved out of my family home into my own place one of first things I bought was a plastic washing up bowl. It's more symbolic than it sounds.
To me, it, and all the new kitchenware I'd bought, represented a new independence and a break from the Indian culture on which I was raised.
I'd never seen a washing up bowl until I went to my girlfriend's house. English people, I discovered, put their dishes in this bowl, soaked them in hot water and, some time later, rinsed them off. It seemed to be the antithesis of the Sisypheon ordeal that was washing up in my house.
My long suffering Mum stood making hot chapatis while we ate, and somehow managed to finish hers first and be at the kitchen sink quicker than we could say alloo sag. (My pronunciation always slowed me down somewhat.)
There would be no after dinner conversation. The trays had to be washed - jaldi, jaldi - before the colourful culinary delights left stains in their steel compartments. Mum would stand, hunched over the sink, scrubbing the trays as they clanked, one by one, before her.
The plastic bowl, I observed, allowed my girlfriend's family to dispose of waste liquid into the sink, whilst keeping the washing up water relatively clean.
It was perfect, I thought. While the dishes soaked I could...listen to Radio 4, read the newspaper, have a glass of wine - do all the things we never did in our house. I could...be white and middle-class. All thanks to a plastic washing up bowl.
It wasn't long, however, after moving into my own place that I began to find the plastic bowl a bit cumbersome. I couldn't get much in it and I didn't get much out of it. It just became another thing to wash up. And while I let things soak I realised that I didn't care much for Radio 4, I never bought the paper and I didn't know how to drink wine without getting drunk.
I took it out of the sink. And my washing up bowl, for some time, became my fruit bowl.
Some say multiculturalism is a melting pot. I think it's more a plastic washing up bowl. And I've decided - and can only imagine its cultural ramifications - that I'm getting a dishwasher.
2 comments:
I got through my entire university life with one green plastic bowl and a knife, fork and a spoon - breakfast, lunch and dinner...
it was symbolic of me hating washing up and having a very poor diet..
The washing up bowl is indeed a great British invention. If you put in plates stained with brightly-coloured, MSG-filled curry-type things, however, they transfer all the guck to the bowl. And plastic's a bastard to clean, as you may have discovered.
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