The Vacuum In My Life
Sushmita Bose -
Saturday, November 15, 2008 5:11 PM
I'm beginning to dread Fridays. It's my off day. Technically, Saturdays are also off, but I've been working a 6-day week. So Friday is the only day when I have time to take my apartment to the washers and the cleaners. Literally.
I absolutely HATE washing machines. They drive me nuts. I don't even know how to operate one. There's a washing machine at home (it was part of the ‘furnishings'), but I have been studiously maintaining a safe distance from it. I wash clothes in the bathtub, like a dhobi, and hang them to dry on the tiny dining table that's fitted into my kitchen. I've spotted a number of laundries just off the road where I live. One of these days, I have to stop being lazy and figure out a washing-ironing arrangement with them.
I'd have gladly been a bai on Fridays, hunched over, swabbing floors. And I swear I would have bucked the trend and NOT bought a vacuum cleaner. But my apartment is carpeted, so I had to, like everyone here, buy one. A vacuum cleaner, alas, was not part of the furnishings.
A few Fridays ago, I went in search of a vacuum cleaner. First, I asked a friend how much the cheapest one would cost. "Well, I bought the cheapest one possible," she said, "that was around AED 200. You go for that too."
I spotted a specialised home appliances store in a shopping centre, and strolled in. The place was marvellously empty, and my heels made staccato noises on the tiled floors loudly. In one corner, there were a few vacuum cleaners stacked. A silver-grey one caught my eye, and I ran my fingers across the box. An Indian salesman emerged out of nowhere, and nodded his head approvingly. "You have good choice madam - you picked out the best model." It's also "cheap", he added, and carried a three years' warranty to boot.
"Really? But I don't know how to operate a vacuum cleaner - do you think I can handle this one?"
"That's what I'm here for - to show you how it works," he declared grandly (though I couldn't figure out which part of India he's from - he had such a neutral accent). "It's the easiest thing in the whole world. It's very user friendly, German technology and all." I don't think he quite knew what he was in for - he soon stopped smiling as I made him assemble the contraption, take out all the plugs and perform a dry run.
"I can't read the manual," I suddenly realised. "It's all in German."
"No, no, there's a section in English too... See?" he pointed out.
I did.
It cost me AED 330. The salesman gave me a discount; the "original" price, he told me, was AED 375. I asked him to keep it with him for five minutes while I went down the road to Choithram's to buy my quota of smoothies. There, peeping out of one corner, were many, many vacuum cleaners. Nervously, I inched across to the stash. The first price tag I saw was AED 138. Alright, it was smaller than the one I'd just bought. But damn! I'd spend much more than double on something I wasn't even looking forward to using.
I rushed back to the Indian salesman in the specialised home appliances store. "Can I return the vacuum cleaner? You see, I've just seen one at the supermarket that's selling for less than half the price."
"But you made me go through the entire demonstration, you can't do this to me now," the guy looked as though he was going to burst into tears. Of course, I couldn't, I sighed to myself, there was no way I could make a fellow Indian cry. I lugged the little thing that weighed a ton back home, my stupefied arms feeling as though they would give way any moment.
Today, even as I was writing this, there was major excitement all around me. There was a sand storm in Dubai. I ran to the office balcony to see light-coffee coloured swathes rise out of the ground and envelop the landscape. I remembered I didn't close my apartment windows. I'm probably going to go back to a dusty home. To think I had cleared all the dust away exactly 24 hours ago.
Anyways, like I said, I now have a vacuum in my life.