When I first stumbled upon a depiction of Sisyphus on the Internet, I failed to comprehend his predicament—might I say, its supposed dark humour was lost on me. Five years later, in the context of my own abode, I have come to perceive the absurdity of his situation—alas, I am the unpunished Sisyphus who never ceases scrubbing her premises.

Last October, the days leading up to my mother’s arrival—she was away for a long time—were spent cleaning the house vigorously and more comprehensively. The domiciliary articles that were not spared included, but were in no way limited to, the grilles of the balconies, curtains, rugs, fans, and vacuum cleaner filter. Now one might presume that Mother is a stickler for cleanliness and that I am the languid inhabitant of the house. The fact, however, is that I clean my living space and beyond every other day, for I am obsessed with cleaning—a problem that I attribute to my flawed reasoning, to my preposterously skewed sentiment about guilt-free pleasure: I feel that I am not entitled to indulging in my favourite pastimes if I have not put myself through some rigorous manual labour prior to the indulgence—an indulgence I shall have then earned. (There, I finally wrote it.)

Further, cleaning, at any given time, is equivalent to purging my mind of a self-imposed baggage of procrastination. This notion of procrastination, too, is hollow, considering that I find myself impulsively engaged in the deed, rather, every day—often before commencing a relatively desirable or important task such as eating a meal (I look forward to it) or creating technical content (my day job, so to speak); and not too long ago, soon upon reaching home after a two-hour commute from a former workplace. (How or why I came to thrust upon myself such needless baggage is yet to be determined.) When I am on edge, the deed also becomes an act of expunging unpleasant thoughts: watching a space scrubbed clean is akin to sanitising the mind. And oh, I also derive a vicarious pleasure from seeing a floor mopped.

One night, before last October, I was decluttering and cleaning Mother’s room in her absence, until after midnight, on an empty stomach. The visual result was one that filled me with pride and called for such a pat on my back. Nonetheless, the next day, when Mother saw the transformation, the hoarder in her was furious. And shortly afterwards, she scavenged the dustbin for her “precious” items.