I am generally a good host and treat people very nicely whoever comes to my house. In our culture, we are taught 'atithi devo bhava', meaning 'Guest is next to God'. What we learn at young age are probably very strong impressions that remain with us throughout life. This makes me feel that all that I ever learnt in life was in the first fifteen years. Gosh,What went wrong after that!!! A lot I guess..College, adolescence, an abysmal interest in boys...But more on that later. Let me not digress.
As I am gliding on a self adulatory trip about my hostess skills, I must confess one such occasion where I did not do much justice to the situation. The guest in this case was my landlord, an elderly british gentleman, who's purpose of visit was to help me equip myself with the workings of the new washing machine, which he had just bought for us. I hate technical manuals and he had been kind enough to offer help. Moreover, he always says that it's my house so I better understand the workings of things. Very responsible thought indeed.
Now, I had had a bad day so far with a sleepless previous night (baby chose to wake up every hour), cranky behaviour in the day and no time for doing the basic of chores read bathing, eating etc. The first six months or more, of the new arrival's existence had been more or less like this only. The incredible optimist that I have always been (things are changing now),I tell myself every night "This too shall pass".(Moral from a fable where the king wears a ring which has such magical powers that if a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy. It has these golden words inscribed on it ).
Anyways, the landlord arrives in time for our discerning session on the recent acquisition. After exchanging pleasantries, he got down to work. I kept a few clothes in the machine so that while going through the manual, we could simultaneously test the effectiveness of the appliance. His love for such widgets and curiosity to learn new things in infectious. Not on this occasion though., considering the kind of day I had had. He passed me my copy of the manual and started going through the pages one after the other. From, safety instructions to understanding different parts and their functions and ofcourse cross checking the presence of those parts in the machine, from programme selecting options to drying options, from drying with normal settings to drying with customised settings, from activating childproof lock to what not (from this point onwards, I had lost interest and hated myself for calling him and not doing it myself ),we went through the length and breadth of the manual. I always wondered who would care to read such tomes. Now I know, who would. Finally, he decided to practically test this contraption through trial and error method. Every cycle that he wanted to test would obviously take a minimum read long and boring 25 minutes.
In between the second cycle I believe, I began shifting my weight from one foot to the other(non verbal communication is always stronger than words, I had learnt this in one kinesics class but I guess forgot it here). I fidgeted with the television remote (showing my interest has moved to other things ), switched off one light accidentally. Now trust me I was not doing any of these things intentionally. Probably my actions were stating my state of mind.
As he observed all this, he couldn't refrain from pointing out "Are you getting impatient, that it's taking so long". I smiled apologetically and emphatically counterclaimed a NO. Am sure he was not convinced as my body language was showing otherwise. He finally said, "You are an sensible lady and such behaviour is not expected out of you". I froze. Since the time school finished, no one had ever chided me like that except for my mum who of course was a perpetual critic. I was short of words. My first thought was anger at his upfront behaviour. My second thought was that I was in the wrong accompanied by feelings of guilt. My final thought was a lesson of a lifetime. No matter how bad your situation is (In my mind I have underlined and emboldened this statement No matter how bad your situation), you have to treat people well.
As Regina Brett writes in her book, 'God never blinks',"No matter, how you feel, get up, dress up and show up. I would add to this. Get up, dress up and show up but do show up well !!!
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