Operation Clean-up

When I put my soiled linen for washing in the Washing Machine, least did I know that the machine will do mischief in the middle of the night. There were not too many clothes for washing, and I thought I would put them in the machine before I went to bed, and so I did. When I got up at about 4 O clock in the morning, I felt water under my feet, and I felt fishy. That is not possible, I was sure. I switched on the light and saw that the floor of my room was flooded with water. I knew it should be the washing machine; it had happened earlier too. The outlet of the washing machine had come out of the pipe and it had flooded the floor then. But this time it is a different story.

When I rushed to see what was happening to the washing machine, I saw the machine lying on the floor, and the broken water pipe was splashing water on the floor. It was pouring water forcefully, and I found it hard to stop it. After a little while, I realized that the tap for this pipe was on the other side of the wall, and so I rushed in to stop it, and it did stop. But what do I do with the already flooded floor. The water had been flooding all through the night, and none of the three of us took note of it. I went to sleep again, but soon realized that it was becoming bright, and the day was breaking. I got up from bed and began to sweep the floor, but I knew that a Herculean task was awaiting us.

It was about five o clock, and my provincial after getting up realized that the floor was flooded, enquired from outside what it was, and I briefly reminded him that it was the washing machine. Soon he came with his short pants, and so I, and two of us began to sweep the water through the kitchen, where the washing machine was placed, but it was an impossible task for two of us to drain so much of water. First I tried to push the water with a broom, but nothing much was happening, and so I began to collect the water in a bucket and was throwing it in the sink. But in about ten minutes I was sweating profusely, and my vest and short pants were wet with water and sweat; we both continued to push the water from both ends of the corridor.

The water had spared only two rooms towards the end, where the floor was somewhat raised, and so water could not go in; but in all other eight rooms, the water had occupied almost all the place. As we were draining the water, one of our other companions was having his sound sleep; his sound sleep could not be disturbed by our noise-making operation. But we did not bother about him, and continued our operation clean-up. After a full one hour of cleaning and clearing, the provincial was exhausted and sat on the chair, while I too was exhausted and wanted to relax for a while in my room. Before I wanted to sit down, I cleared the floor of all the clothes, bags and notebooks so that I could dry the floor with fan.

I had sent two lines about our early morning operation to one of my friends, and soon came a reply from her, saying that the operation was a proof of Jesuit team-spirit. I knew for sure that my friend really didn’t laud our team work, though in the case of operation cleaning it really was, in other cases, we are far from desirable team-spirit. Often we have been accused of upholding individualistic tendencies, and excelling in individual work, and struggling with common works. This point had come up for discussion on several occasions, but nothing seemed to be happening in this front. Maybe many more washing machines should collapse in each of our houses in order to bring all the members of communities to take up join operations, to strengthen our team-spirit.