Home keeping is grisly business, more so if you’re a cleanliness freak like myself. And with spring in, it’s really a tough grind. I wish sometimes that we could reschedule this annual cleaning ritual to good old Diwali season like we do back home, but that would be winter, and we’re at a high risk of breaking bones then, given how merciless Chicago’s winds and flurries can get, making that trip to the garbage unit rather deadly. So basically, springtime cleaning is a fixed routine one cannot escape from.

I usually begin by making a list of the nooks, crannies, boxes, cabinets and other quaint places that need tidying up. And if this piece of paper doesn’t get torn into bits and munched on by my little devil, I end up trashing it as junk myself, only to later realize I need to get started all over again. So this can actually take a while. And once the list is finally set, I put out all the trendy gadgets, wipes, liquids, brushes, and scrubs available, and try to put them to use on the many surfaces with every knack I could possibly possess. But I confess - I do have my precincts - I cannot lug that brawny vacuum all by myself to all those remote attics and wicked little crannies. And that’s when I can’t help but think back to the good old Indian broom - handy, robust, and good enough to dust cobwebs off ceilings, or kill cockroaches in a snap. And then I reminisce the olden days of glory, when I used to lead a laidback, comfortable life, courtesy my maid. But I also feel awfully shamed when I think of how I used to taunt her and remind her of a few specks of dust in that one forgotten corner.

Then there’s the laundrying. Winter clothes, formals, and those other special coloreds have to be carefully segregated, washed, and dried without crumpling. And if you accidentally hit the wrong button, you have to spend hours straightening out the crinkles, which is generally not an easy task to accomplish with lightweight irons. And when this happens, I feel helpless without the ever-faithful istriwallah who used press all clothes crisp and creaseless with his charcoal-filled, brawny box back at home.

Once the cleaning is done, somehow, there’s the clearing. I miss my maid all the more when I have to sort, bag, and empty the trash. I absolutely loathe the thought of carrying heavy, wet bags filled with soggy, rotting vegetable peels, and smelly leftovers to the disposal units, then cleaning the baskets, and lining them with fresh plastic. My poor maid took care of all that very painstakingly, and my association with all that garbage was limited to just filling it up.

Another major cleaning ordeal, if you have a baby in diapers, is emptying the Diaper Genie, which basically is a con-trivance - it makes you believe that its plastic liner is mal-odor-proof. So you pop open its bottom and roll out a stringed, tentacle-like diddie, and (unless you’re Shankar Mahadevan) you’ll probably choke by the time you get it to the dumpster.

And to top all this misery, my little daughter seems to bear an uncanny adulation for trash bags. She loves to drop perfectly healthy fruits, vegetables and any other eatables she can lay her hands on in them, and is quite happy to feast on tidbits of old, dust-covered, baby food droppings, bits of paper, or any other forbidden objects off the floor instead. She also likes to, depending on the day’s mood, decorate the kitchen floor with the minutest flecks of selectively magnetic onion peel, or douse it in dishwashing liquid. So my cleaning routine retreats to where it began, and so on.

There are times when this entire chore gets so dreadful that I end up having all that dirt ramble through my dreams. Those soapy spots on the mirror, those stubborn flecks of dust on the television, scraps of junk on the floor, and my daughter with her four-toothed smile, and handfuls of rubbish - they all come to haunt me one way or another. It seems like cleaning has taken over my life. I’ve come to terms with it, at least partly, and try to look at the rewards it offers. My travails often make for good story fodder at get-togethers, for instance, when I say that I can well relate to Monica of F.R.I.E.N.D.S and Jerry of Seinfeld, and add jokingly that I’m just short of having a clinical disorder (It’s always nice to leave people guessing anyway, so they won’t mess around when they’re in my house.) And then, I get my share of exercise with all the bending and stretching, so that makes up for my excuse of not being able to hit the gym.