Never envy a home maker!
|
Have you ever wondered about the travails that those at home have to face even as you lock yourself at your office desk from 10 to 5?
|
To be at home is not easy, especially during weekdays. By about eight, the school-going kids are off to study, and by nine or so, the working population is already on the road commuting in the thick of traffic. Before 10 a.m., therefore, the house is empty but for housewives and call centre employees who sleep like a log after duty during graveyard hours. In many flats and houses, you find only the old at home, because everybody else is off to work or college. And this pie
ce is about the travails that those at home have to face even as you lock yourself at your office desk from 10 to 5.
First, there is real work to do. The wet towel lying on the floor, clothes strewn all over the furniture, newspapers lying in a mess, lights, fans and geyser left on, are only a few of the things that need attention, because what most busy people leave behind is not order but chaos. Some people are blessed to have a good servant attend to washing and cleaning. But ‘good’ is rare to find; so, most people are blessed not to have any such help.
Then come the chores for the day – such as paying the metro tax, remitting electricity charges, depositing cheque, shopping and so forth. Most husbands, I’m sure, spend quite some time everyday thinking of what work to assign to their wives before leaving for work.
Attending to phone calls is easy if your phone is right on the table. Not so if you’re at home, when both hands are wet with soap. Ditto if you’re ironing clothes because there is the danger of saying ‘hello’ with the wrong gadget in hand, especially if you are absent-minded. These are points that often escape the attention of the one at the other end, so you have the yell as the first thing, “Why did take so long to attend!”
Old people sleep in snatches, they say, but an intermittently ringing telephone – oftentimes a wrong call or from credit card companies – can deprive them of some well-deserved sleep even in those short spells. If there are more phones at home, problem grows exponentially.
Then, there is always somebody at the door: maid, salesman, gas deliverer, postman, courier, gadget mechanic, flower vendor, neighbour and so on, and at times a friend or relative. If, as in many places, your apartment block has no watchman during the day, doorbells are a risky business, so watch out.
If the phone rang just at the time the doorbell too rang, you’re already distracted enough to compromise security. To compound the risk, there could be a service mechanic attending to your microwave oven in the kitchen.
Electricity Boards are usually cruel to the ones who stay at home, so power cuts are common during the day, and if you call the EB office, a standard reply may cite transformer failure, line fault or some such that is beyond your control or comprehension. No electricity means no TV, no fan and so your comfort zone gets eroded.
Daytime is again the chosen period for masons, carpenters, plumbers and AC installers to be working in one flat or the other in the block. So, some constant noise is inevitable on that score, even if we are not counting any major construction work in the adjacent plot.
It’s afternoon already, and the kids would soon be back from school, and there must be some snack on the table. But oh, the bank would close by three and you’ve to rush, and just after you’ve crossed the road, there is a vague doubt whether milk was on the oven before you left, or if you locked the door properly…
Thus, by nightfall, when everybody is back to roost, housewives and the elderly have already done something equivalent to a double shift, even if it meant sacrificing their own comfort, stopping a puja halfway, not reading to finish a story in a magazine, or watching a favourite programme on the telly.
To sum up, unless your house is one that you lock when you leave for work, it is a beehive of activity. Yet, that’s something that most of us won’t realise until it becomes necessary for us to stay indoor during weekdays.
Feedback to dmurali@thehindu.co.in
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Property Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
