[The Clothes Stand – Family Short Story]
The Clothes Stand – Family Short Story
“Mama we have become amir”, said Jayani. She was thrilled that her dad got a steel clothes stand.
This is a simple tool to dry your clothes on and can be dragged and placed where sun shines the most. It is light weight and can be folded and kept when not in use. She had seen a similar one in one of our more affluent neighbor’s home. Now that the brand new spanking clothes stand stood in front of her right in our back yard, I could visualize her filling up with pride.
The simple act of buying a clothes stand has moved her one ladder rung up in social status. As working parents we both have a huge list of work to be completed each weekend. We shifted to the second floor portion of our home few months ago. When we shifted we got in the most important things that we need on urgent basis, for example the television. But other things for which we were still using a work around or a jugaad were automatically pushed down the priority list. So, finally one fine Sunday, my husband cleared this item number two hundred and three from the TODO list.
This was a momentous occasion for my daughter. She has already done her mental comparisons without our help and had concluded that the neighbor being referred here had a more “alishaan” place to live as compared to us. Even though I felt we are doing sufficiently well enough to sustain this mad race to survive in National Capital Region, she thought differently. Phew! It is tough to build a brand image in front of kids, it is more easier to calm down an angry client who has just learnt that his work which is already 2 week late will take a month more to deliver along with five hundred known issues. Later on I shared with my full-time executive-MBA IIM graduate husband (post-single-kid), “Getting an IIM MBA degree did not do what clothes stand has done for your image in Jayani’s view.”
