I am pretty good at finding things...

Every evening I return home to find it in such as state as if an elephant had run amok. Three pairs of shoes, clothes in all possible shades of blue and white, used bowls, mails which should have been discarded years ago and various other stuff lie scattered around the floor, making the house more lively and wild. The utensils lying in the basin become self contained eco-systems, with all kind of bacteria thriving on them.

Though I cite depression as a reason for not keeping my surroundings clean, the fact is I never really developed the cognitive skills essential for cleanliness. I think the chapter on cleanliness was somehow missing from my kindergarten course.

Cleaning, I have heard requires a lot of patience and hard work. Patience is a virtue and why waste it on something as mundane as cleaning? It can be utilized to better things like playing Age of Empires, an online strategy game.

Somehow things just keep wandering and they never go back to where they came from. A highly developed sense of smell helps me identify the clean clothes from the heap of clothes on the floor. I just clean the plate I need to eat and leave the other eco-systems to flourish. Every day I get a feeling of adventure and discovery. Be it searching for the TV remote or for the box of cereals. Or it could be the belt, shoes or the telephone bill that was due yesterday.

And when I have to clean, time suddenly slows down and I feel like clearing up the battle-field after a war. I scrub each utensil as if we were arch enemies. I pick up each thing on the floor and keep it where it was supposed to be, all the while keeping a poker face.