Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh. Hey!

It was Christmas. The celebration for me was not Christmas but the fact that I got a day off, a day I can use to cross a few items off my never-ending list of chores-to-do.

For the past few weeks, I’m redecorating and resetting my portion of the house. It inevitably means cleaning/dusting/rearranging everything else in the house as well. That day, 25-Dec-25, it was the leg of cleaning. I needed to untie a few ropes that were put up as temporary dryline during monsoon. Yeah, it stayed up for almost six months. That’s not the story I’m telling right now.

So, it was just about noon. Mum and I got to the todo list: undo the ropes, wash them, dust all rooms once again and mop. Making lunch was next.

“Mum, let me take care of it. Why don’t you go ahead and get started with lunch? I’ll join you shortly,” I said.

My mum agreed, even though she’d never be satisfied with outcomes if she didn’t do the job herself.

So, one part was done. For the second part, I got up on the chair, undid the several knots I myself had put in a while back to secure the rope in place. Finally, it was done. I bend to get down and bamm. Within a few seconds:

1. the chair broke into five pieces: one leg, the seat and back gave up.
2. I fell but didn’t collapse, instead the jerk pushed me ahead and I hugged the wall as if I desperately needed a hug. It was face first, taking a huge shock to my face and right shoulder (the problematic shoulder). My face started buzzing thanks to the shock.
3. My knees were shaking, but I was still standing up straight. Squatting down or sitting on the bed did not cross my mind.
4. My big toe suffered a large cut and blood came out.

The crash was loud enough so my mum rushed back in. I was still standing on unstable feet, so she gently guided me to the bed. I sat down, mum examined the chair.

“Your weight was too much for the chair. I should have done it (the untying of the ropes),” she said.

Yes, mom! I know that you wanted to do the task by yourself. Yes, I know the chair was too fragile for my weight. I just thank Allah that it did not collapse when I was standing up straight. Imagine how awful that fall would have been.

“Look, there’s blood on your toe,” mum said.

She wiped it clean, and caressed my back and shoulder, making me feel like a child again. I had half a mind to just rinse my hands and feet and go to bed, y’know, to get over the shock and pain.

“Come on now. Get up and make lunch,” she said.

Of course!

And that was the end of it.

Mums!

Shabana Mukhtar