The Law of Perpetuity of Dirty Dishes

Have you ever watched those chef types demonstrate their modus operandi for culinary nostrums via instructional videos shot carefully in phony looking kitchens?  If you have, you have no doubt felt disconcerted seeing the unconscionable aggregate of pots and pans they generate in the process.  I mean, the recipe in question is usually something ludicrously simple like daal tadka, and the dude goes, "iske liye aapko chaahiye 2 katori tuvar ki daal, 1 katori moong ki daal, 1 chhota chammach ghee, adha chhota chammach adrak lasun paste,  ek chhota chammach lal mirch powder, ek chota chammach haldi powder, ek chota chammach dhaniya powder, adha chhota chammach garam masala, adha chhota chammach jeera…" etc. while pointing at his table that is full of actual katoris and chammaches.  As if that weren't enough, he then proceeds to cook the daals in a separate cooker, fry the ek pyaaz kata hua, ek hari mirch kati hui, ek tamaatar bareek kata hua, etc. in a separate pan, make the tadka with the adha chhota chammach jeera in yet another separate pan, and then pour the finished daal into yet another separate bowl for "plating", leaving your empathetic self bleeding for the support staff who would ultimately be the ones doing the dishes!

That being said, let me say that it doesn’t really need a chef type with kitchenary intemperance to create a sink in a state of squalor.  It can and will inevitably happen in domestic circumstances as well.  All it needs is a sink.  Soiled pots and pans somehow generate themselves.  A classic case of “If you build it, they will come”.  Entropy.  It’s the law.  And the rate of entropy generation is somehow exponentially proportional to the number of kids.

I realize that by pitilessly mocking these chef types for their kitchenary intemperance, I might have given you the impression that our own domestic kitchen sink is always shipshape and devoid of pots and pans.  Sadly this remains a pipe dream that manifests only in my unlikeliest of hallucinations.  I have often wondered if it is truly possible to achieve a clean and empty sink in an environment with two kids with an uncanny knack for generating scads of dishes.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that it is like a limits to infinity problem.  A clean and empty sink, like infinity, is an idea that cannot be defined.  Just like infinity, we know we cannot reach it, but can still try to operate our lives with the mere premise of the idea, just like we can work out the value of functions that have infinity in them.