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.”