WriteFluence

Thanks to a crazy virus that is making the world go haywire, something that may have never happened otherwise in some lives; has happened! I had never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would get to work from home in this lifetime. Of course I always fancied the idea when it wasn’t happening. Yet over the last few weeks, I’ve realized we should be more careful about what we wish for.

Like every frustrated working mother in our country, I always have hoped for this opportunity of working from home to be able to spend more time with my daughter who’s growing up at a pace that I am already depressed about. Now that I have this wish granted, I wonder if I was getting to spend more time with her otherwise.

Needless to say, I am grateful to the authorities for announcing the lockdown before the situation got worse in the country. But this ‘Work from home’ thingy may not be the most desirable pattern for many.

Work has doubled. The constant paranoia of wanting everything superclean has started to overwhelm me. I didn’t have a maid even before this phase, ‘cos I’m never satisfied with their lethargy. But I’m suddenly missing the ability to have a maid.

Bedsheets don’t fold themselves on their own. Clothes need too much attention even though the washing machine takes good care of them. You still have to put them manually on the clothing line to dry and then fold them yourself and put them back in the cupboard, whatever level of automatic your washing machine may be!

There’s less pollution outside as the world has come to a standstill but damn… I don’t understand where the floor in the house gets all that dust from. So the vacuum cleaner must be out every single day. My feet are getting so sensitive about the dust that I can’t avoid mopping every alternate day if not more frequently.

The next exhausting thing and the most exhausting one in my case, awaits in the kitchen. You start cooking lunch after breakfast and when you’re done with lunch, you have to start thinking about dinner already. After dinner, utensils in the sink make a grumpy face at you forcing you to bathe them before you’re done for the day. Grrr… It’s a vicious circle!

When you were physically at work (in your work premises, I mean) your breaks were still breaks. Your breaks now when you work from home have become your work ‘at’ home. You subscribed to a new channel on your DTH to watch your favourite series on TV, but the only privilege you get is to glimpse through Facebook or Instagram for the few minutes between the cooker being placed on the stove till it’s third whistle. You want to read that book you downloaded on your Kindle but your eyes have given up after being glued to either your work screen or your social networking screens for hours! You want to make time to learn something new but everything mundane is taking too much time to get done.

Perhaps, I’m generalizing. But WFH has become WTF for the working Indian woman, or for that matter an Indian. While the ladies feel obliged to take up more than the man in the house; men may be facing a situation wherein they’re putting in more than regular hours of work while working from home! (Oh sure, the time you spent in travelling to work earlier, now also belongs to your employer.)

Of course I’m glad we are the privileged few who get to experience this safety measure to keep us away from YOU-KNOW-WHO and also about the fact that “I still have my job”. Yet, venting it out somewhere is our Janam-siddh Adhikaar, right?

Disclaimer: Any opinion expressed in this post are the personal views of the author. They do not reflect the views of WriteFluence.in. Any omissions or errors are the author’s and WriteFluence does not assume any liability or responsibility for them.