Sparking the joy as an air of festivity sets in
Ah! It’s Diwali time. Having undergone a body and soul detox through the Navratri fasts and pujas, it’s time to clean up your home. Indeed, Diwali and cleaning go hand in hand. It is so deeprooted in our psyche that it seems to have become a part of our DNA. When I was a kid, my mom while involving us siblings in the ritualistic cleaning, would constantly reiterate that Goddess Lakshmi graces uber clean and nicely decorated homes. So we diligently dusted every nook and cranny while hoping about the goddess in all her finery (an image conjured up by Raja Ravi Verma in his iconic painting) walking into our house.
But mind you, Diwali cleaning is not a simple labour of love any more. To start with, our houses are choc a block with bric a brac that require careful handling and specialised cleaning. Our designer furniture, carpets, curtains and chandeliers, all need our time and TLC (tender loving care) for maintaining them. Then there is a media-driven social pressure that requires our houses to be in ship shape all the time. Given our hectic lifestyles, time is always at a premium.
But please don’t sulk as yet for these are modern times, therefore, we now have an entire industry targeted at helping people to have a sparkling Diwali. Haven’t you noticed that come festive season and suddenly the print and electronic media has a large space or time slot dedicated to advertise products that help you to clean and shine window panes, ceramic tiles, taps and fixtures, flooring, brass and silverware. The latest entrant in the market are companies that hire out professionally trained cleaners who scrub and clean your kitchens, bathrooms, fans, upholstery albeit for a heavy price.
Gone are the days of my grandparents’ sparsely furnished house which had enough for everybody’s need (nobody was allowed to be greedy) and took just about half an hour to make it scrupulously clean. So when did the transition from our simple uncomplicated life to the current ostentatious lifestyles happen? As the present generation has more purchasing power than their ancestors, it is their ‘thrifty gene’ that compels them to buy more and horde for the proverbial rainy day. Needless to add, the ads, the online shopping sites, the purchase on credit schemes all goad you on to buy the biggest and the brightest products.
At the other end of the spectrum, however, the concept of minimalistic lifestyle is catching up and the reigning queen of this concept is a petite Japanese woman, Marie Kondo, who through her bestselling book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and the web series, Tidying up with Marie Kondo, has the entire world sitting up and taking stock of their belongings. She urges people to only keep the stuff that sparks joy but to also eliminate chaos from their lives. The Kondo’s now famous Konmari method makes us realise how much unwanted stuff we horde, which if passed on to a needy person can light up his/her Diwali. Imagine how much space, time (fewer things to maintain) and money (fewer things to buy) we will have if we only keep stuff in our house that is indispensible and as per Kondo ‘that sparks joy’. It will be a win-win situation and Diwali cleaning will be a breeze.
THE ADS, THE ONLINE SHOPPING SITES, THE PURCHASE ON CREDIT SCHEMES ALL GOAD YOU ON TO BUY THE BIGGEST AND THE BRIGHTEST PRODUCTS.
The writer is a professor at the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana