An ode to my mop

Dr. Viyatprajna Acharya 

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Hah! What an ode! Out of all things, an ode to mop!

Well, the story begins with my nerdy maid. Once she pesters after something, she’ll not leave me in peace. 

Since childhood, I had observed that all our maids use to mop the floor with a bucket of water and a piece of cloth. Gradually mops of different designs had entered into the market but I never bothered to buy one, as I thought the old system does a better job.

But after a lot of mental tussle, I got a mop with a bucket, local duplicate of a reputed company. After all who will pay so much for a mop…a full one thousand rupees!

Maid was thankful and did her job. Her quality of work was good as usual and hence I thought probably she’s reluctant to have physical exercise unlike earlier day maids.

But then came COVID pandemic and the shutdown etc and I had to do all the household jobs on my own.  Usually, I used to manage only with sweeping the house when maid takes leave and try to avoid mopping. But now that the virus had bent upon making us more active, I picked up this new mop reluctantly and started doing the job.

Oh! What an innovation! Such a cumbersome work has become so easy! I could easily reach out the corners, under the bed and didn’t have to dry the mop by squeezing it hard. I felt like rolling on the floor to and fro after cleaning so well.

I thanked profusely my maid mentally and of course the innovators.

Most of us are rigid to change, change in most of the fields. Be it saas- bahu’s (Indian Mother-in-law and Daughter-in-law relationships are like that of Tom and Jerry from the very beginning) kitchen hacks, teacher-student’s teaching tricks or Medical Science innovations…”resistance  to change” is everywhere. 

How many times we have seen this resistance to change in the field of teaching when we slowly changed over from chalk and talk to OHP sheets, to PowerPoint presentations and now most recently to Online teaching!

How much ruffles we had to straighten while working in a diagnostic lab for upgrading a system from manual to semi-automatic to fully automated systems! Even changing a new instrument also sees a lot of resistance.

How much resistance we give to our well-wishers who want to advise us on living style or food! How many debates go on over a new Government policy!

But changes do usher in many good things that we would not have even imagined. We must work hard but should also know how to work smart.

Today I am an innovator of 3 devices for which patents have been filed and waiting for the world to receive them with open minds to ease our lives.

Changes may affect in an adverse way at times but we always have an option to divert to another conducive pathway lest we are open to changes!