Dishwashing and Patriarchy

Getting Rid of the Conditional Stains

Hello! I am back with a newsletter but before you start reading, I am so excited to share something with you all! I just performed my first stand-up comedy. I did so without even knowing that I would do so. I had written the script some time ago and I was planning to give it a shot once I have practiced enough. It was an event where strangers turned friends and all of us had the stage for some time. I gave it a shot without any practice or rehearsals. In fact, I did not even have the script with me. ( although that did have an impact on how I forgot the ending) I am so glad to have done this. I am attaching the link below-

Excuse the video quality, please. My phone has some issues. Maybe trust issues since a third party was taking the video from my phone :P Please let me know your thoughts about the same and if you cannot access the video for some reason, do let me know.


I was washing dishes one day when my househelp casually said, - “Bhabhi leke aao to aapko yeh sab nahi karna padega.” That was quite a lot of stereotyping and sexism but I would not explain it to everyone. I told her that today’s girls are not going to do this and one has to do their own work. Thankfully, she did not understand that she has to mind her own business and is still coming to clean my house.

As I was cleaning the dishes, I realized one very important thing-

It is very important to sort out the dishes and do the ones with the least amount of stains and loose stains first. The toughest ones should be given the last priority. Also, some would not lose the stain until it is very late or at all. It is important to move on and focus on what I can wash.

Photo by Tina Dawson on Unsplash

I used to do the ones with the most stains first and often, I would be exhausted when I came to the ones with less stubborn stains. This is also a hangover from the lockdown. Oh, you random person who ate the bat, F**** ***! I realized that it is the same with how things work in society. If we start improving some things which are very small, such as a man wearing pink and normalizing that, it would lead to a change that would not seem major but would be the seed of something more to come. That is the first minor step. Clean the tiny and less stubborn utensils to prep yourself for something bigger to come.

The second step involves washing the more stubborn and bigger vessels. When I wash them, I also need to use the steel scrubber at times. But hey, wisdom lies in knowing that if I use that steel scrubber on a nonstick tawa or pan, I would have everything sticking to that vessel including the baggage of my overwhelming guilt. I need to customize the cleaning tool for each of them. Sometimes, the stain would not go even if I rub it vigorously and empty vinegar and lemon on it. It would eventually go when it is washed several times.

This is true, especially for stains of turmeric. Turmeric is the age-old wisdom that thrives in our society. We know that turmeric is important and highly useful but we also know that turmeric should respect that Pizzas are Italian and turmeric has no role to play when it comes to making a delicious pizza. We do need the multifaceted experience and the utility of turmeric in our lives. Some elders are like turmeric. They would have highly useful information but sometimes, they would be stuck in the ideology of the conventions that they would literally scream at the idea of having a bar of chocolate that has turmeric in it. (Not kidding, look up the internet!) They would straight go to Ganga and wash their sins and if you are the culprit, wash you too! Hopefully, not wash you away in it.


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You can check out other several posts such as Trial rooms and Toothpaste, Gossip and Water Bottles, Travel and Movies, Chair and Footwear, Mental Health and Curtains, Fans and advertisements, Gardening and Economies of effort, Lights and Rejection, Bags and Batman, Doors, and Feminism, Driving and Friendship, or Humor and Instant Messaging! You can message me on Instagram at Blahblahblaharsh Also, if you reply to this email, I would get your message so do send me your ideas and suggestions.


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—Back to the post—

Turmeric goes out but it takes time. Sometimes, it would not go out and there needs to be an acceptance for the same. We need to either start living with the turmeric on the vessel or get rid of that vessel. This is important no matter how close you are to the vessel. Even if it is the one that your mother gifted you for your 25th birthday and made of gold, it still cannot function well with that stain of turmeric if you do not accept or get rid of it. Sometimes, the stain interferes with the process of making the food. If I have the stain of turmeric and I am making pasta, I definitely do not want it to influence it. The stain might leave a smell or flavour, depending on its strength. Then it is best to not use it or get rid of it. This is so beautifully portrayed in the case of Mismatched, the series on Netflix. The arc of Namrata is perhaps the most interesting and gripping one for me because it is new and it is also something that is not done often before.

Photo by Tamanna Rumee on Unsplash

The last one is the one that I used to make tea in. I am not a fan of teas and I definitely prefer having chocolate or Bournvita, but I do have tea occasionally and in the office because of the absence of options and time. The vessel is full of used tea leaves and tea powder. They are easy to rinse but the mark that they leave is the difficult one. You can use a scrubber of steel or wash them thousand times but what works more efficiently is just using the right amount of dishwashing liquid. These vessels require a lot more than the normal ones. Turmeric is indifferent to liquid. Then, it becomes very easy to clean the stain.

Some people are the vessels used for making tea. You need a lot of reasoning and constant scrubbing to remove the older coating. The whole process of dishwashing and conditioning is based on a simple idea- you need to uncoat things and make the vessel like new. If the vessel is new or like new, you can make anything in it, be it pasta, pizza, noodles, tea, or Hakka noodles.

I guess that is how life is! It is more about unlearning and removing the hard and stubborn stains in our minds rather than trying to make dishes with old stained vessels. The more frequently we wash it, the easier it is to sort it out and get rid of it. If we do not wash it often, hello trouble!

Until next time,
Keep smiling (or do not)

Harsh!

Customaries-

A super fun way of doing one’s job. I saw a ted talk that said that if you add fun to any job, it becomes much more interesting and enjoyable!