Roommates are like social mirrors. For they show you how socially misfit you are from time to time. Well, maybe not socially, but definitely adjustment challenged and suffering from idiosyncratic symptoms. As for me, I did not know there were so many adjustment issues I had till I actually started to live out of family. In a way it is so humorous that it makes me wonder if it’s really me. I mean... there is nothing good or bad about it. We are brought up with a certain set of values, learning to do certain things in a certain way, and when u live for 20 odd years with particular habits, it is more than a little difficult to get rid of them. Living with roommates for the last 2+ years have taught me the following things about myself that I did not know I had within me.
1. i am sometimes a little messy, but still I hate disorganized surroundings and I see myself going red when I have to search for things which I know I put in the correct place, but were moved by one or more of my roomies.
2. I hate it when people mess up my bed or climb onto my bed with dirty feet. I hate it when people use my bed as a table or a storage ground when they see that I’m not around.
3. Equally irritating is the habit of people not brushing their teeth in the bathroom. And just in order to vex me, my old roomie back in my last few MBA days (I better not mention the name) would make it a point to prance around everywhere in the room with her mouth full of foam, giving me that very smug “I don’t care” look. Brushing is an activity that barely takes a few minutes, and gone are the days when taking the daantun and walking by the fields was a form of morning socializing in villages. Yet no matter what, she had to carry the brush with her and make rounds in the room, sit and jump on the bed, make faces in front of the mirror, making sure that it irritated me.
4. When I come back to my room from a day’s long work (or classes previously), I HAVE TO have my space. I seldom like getting back to the room and being greeted by a horde of friends who dropped by to say hi. What more, I prefer keeping mum and not starting to talk the moment I am back. Back at home, this would be a major problem as my mom would never understand my need for peace and silence. "Did you perform badly in your exams?" "Did you have a tiff with someone?" "Did you forget to do your homework?" My need for silence would always be misinterpreted as the occurrence of something ominous in life.
5. I hate loud music. I hate people screaming, even if in happy moments. I hate people who speak with a loud voice. It is something I just cannot live with. I hate people bursting out into a sudden rage of loud laughter, especially when it is not necessary to do so. I hate people who use their loud, brash or shrill voice to make a point till the opposite person is irritated enough to let go. (Ok ok I agree I do that too, but that happens only when I’m pushed too much against the wall)
6. I have to fret about the diminishing grocery and the food in the room, needing an excuse to go to the grocery store just to make sure that the pantry is always stocked with food or its raw materials. That’s because I’m a die-hard foodie :-)
7. I cannot tolerate people jumping on beds. Or chewing gum without as much as even a break.
8. I have to put an alarm, even though I never wake up to it. Sometimes even before the alarm rings, I wake up and shut it off, just so that I can sleep in peace. My roomies have always insisted that if such is the case, I don’t need to put an alarm and let others sleep in peace. But I have to set the alarm early morning, just so that I do not suffer from the guilt of having slept late. Never mind the fact that the alarm has never been able to wake me up.
9. I cannot tolerate people wearing outside shoes inside my room, especially more so if they are covered with dirt and mud. Yet most people do not understand this, thinking that the flooring in the room is a suitable substitute to the concrete on the roads, or just because they are too lazy to bend down and remove their laces, or because they are more scared of bending down and wearing them back again.
10. Nothing bugs me more than food being wasted, morsels left uneaten on the plate to be trashed, pieces of vegetables, helpings of cakes and desserts just because you were too full to stuff yourself anymore. Of 2 cups of milk being wasted because it is long past the expiry date. Of half a dozen slices of bread left unforgotten in the hinterlands of the fridge, now with patches of moss green all over. Of your soiled and discarded plate with a few morsels of rice and the curry the cook had toiled hard to make. Of the chicken leg with enough quantities of succulent chicken to chew on. Nothing pleases me more than seeing a thoroughly cleaned up plate. And nothing bugs me more than seeing a plate that looks like the remnants of a bomb blast explosion, with food everywhere. Perhaps this is a subconscious thing driven into me since childhood, like it happens in so many value-driven middle class families (I should be thanking my father for this particular habit). I have been told time and again that food is goddess Annapurna, and wasting food is sacrilegious. Every time I would be running late for school and my throat felt too dry to shove down that piece of bread or dosa or whatever, I would be given oodles of gyaan about how privileged I was and how children my age were poverty stricken and dying on the roads. Anyway, I guess the same thing has remained with me for years. The bottom line is, do whatever, but do not waste food just because you were not sure enough about how much you could handle.
10. Nothing bugs me more than food being wasted, morsels left uneaten on the plate to be trashed, pieces of vegetables, helpings of cakes and desserts just because you were too full to stuff yourself anymore. Of 2 cups of milk being wasted because it is long past the expiry date. Of half a dozen slices of bread left unforgotten in the hinterlands of the fridge, now with patches of moss green all over. Of your soiled and discarded plate with a few morsels of rice and the curry the cook had toiled hard to make. Of the chicken leg with enough quantities of succulent chicken to chew on. Nothing pleases me more than seeing a thoroughly cleaned up plate. And nothing bugs me more than seeing a plate that looks like the remnants of a bomb blast explosion, with food everywhere. Perhaps this is a subconscious thing driven into me since childhood, like it happens in so many value-driven middle class families (I should be thanking my father for this particular habit). I have been told time and again that food is goddess Annapurna, and wasting food is sacrilegious. Every time I would be running late for school and my throat felt too dry to shove down that piece of bread or dosa or whatever, I would be given oodles of gyaan about how privileged I was and how children my age were poverty stricken and dying on the roads. Anyway, I guess the same thing has remained with me for years. The bottom line is, do whatever, but do not waste food just because you were not sure enough about how much you could handle.
Quite a long list, and I am sure I am not one of the better people to live with, or even be a guest to. But these idiosyncrasies make us what we are. We learn to live with some, while there is only so much that we can push ourselves. Any thoughts?
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