It is late February and I am in the shower stall after swimming in the club’s indoor heated pool. As I revel in the warm water falling on my body, I try, defeatedly, to muffle my daughter’s voice in my head – Mamma, turn off the water when you don’t need it. I reach out to the shampoo dispenser and the next thing I know is that I am using the shampoo in my palm to clean the outside of the dispenser!

Really? Now I am cleaning objects in the public domain because being responsible for the house and family has given rise to this reflex to be useful – all the time. I cannot just enjoy and be thankful for the warm shower someone else is maintaining. No, I have to make it better. The incident makes me think of other occasions when such unsavory desires have surfaced. I remember being in a relative’s drawing room and telling myself that if I got up and dusted the layer of dust on the tables, I would become the crazy relative forever (if I am not already)☹.

I often find myself quelling the desire to correct the follies, foibles, and imbalances caused by mere mortals around me. It takes effort to restrain myself. I have told myself repeatedly that they are doing fine without my intervention. The funny thing is that I am not alone in this! I have a colleague who reached out to put cream on a teenager’s leg because the dryness on the skin bothered her. And other women in the office who will insist on getting food for a young adult taking a test because he was too much in a hurry to eat breakfast at home.

These are admirable traits of thoughtfulness and caring but it can be embarrassing especially when you are in a restaurant and start telling strangers on the road how to curb their children and/or dog and start cleaning the hostess’s china because you can do a better job.

It is time to learn to just ‘be’ and not ‘do’.

The lockdown making the distinction clear!