Neo-'con' cook

"My shoulder blades are aching and my neck is stiff," I complained to V, as he dropped me at the bus stop today noon.
"The way you say it, one would think that you had to grind for idli in a grinding stone!" he scoffed.
I grinned. (Men! especially Malloo MCPs and worse if it is a Kottayam "Achayan".)
"True, I cant handle a quarter of the household chores my grandma did in her hey deys. She would use the grinding stone to make idlis for us when I was a kid."
Those were the days (late 70s, I think) before the mixer-grinder. At twilight, granny would grind the rice and urad dal in the grinding stone situated (the stone was too heavy to be moved) near the well - it was easier to wash it off with water drawn from the well. Again, days before water taps at home.
This was apart from her job of milking the cows, doing the bulk of the cooking, taking the cows out to the fields for grazing whenever a male hand was unavailable at home, cleaning the cowsheds (a job I later did with relish, which drew the following comment from granny some years back: "R** would remove the dung and wash the shed, when she was doing her M.A."), cooking puliyarikaadi (the health drink for the cows), feeding the fowls and overseeing their egg output (a separate old masterpiece on this will follow) apart from supervising various other functions inside and outside (such as the paddy fields) our house. Of course, she had help - my mom, maids, man-servants - but inspite of it all, there was a lot of work.

Whereas I had just come home after work at 10 p.m., grinded for the idli batter in a mixie, heated food and milk for the kids, dishwashed manually etc. etc. We were expecting guests first thing in the morning, and I checked - before I hit bed - if the guest room and bathroom were spic and span, and the toiletries in place.
The guests came, four in all, bathed, had a breakfast of idli-sambar and bread-omelette (the incurable perfect hosts that V and his mom are, my dear hubby is never satisfied with number of dishes on the meal table) and Banganapalli mangoes and bananas and tea, and departed for their destination.
End note: My granny is probably in her late 70s or early 80s now, but she still does a good deal of the work at home.