The hissing sound of the pressure cooker and the smell of cooked rice woke me up, and I jumped out of bed. I had overslept, and would be inexcusably late to work. I had to finish cooking, packing lunch for all, and leave instructions for the maid.
Added to it, I had oiled my hair the previous night and had to have a hair wash unless I wanted to go to office looking like a plucked hen. These thoughts ran in my mind at breakneck speed, along with the thought that some fairy godmother had taken charge of the kitchen… that is where I was getting the smell of food from. Could it be true? Or was it a holiday - was I allowed the luxury of wallowing in sleep for a while without running to catch the bus - was it a lazy Sunday morning?
The boundary between dream and reality was very thin. I heard the shrill ringing of the clock over the sound of the pressure cooker, over the olfactory sensations of food and over my racing thoughts… in my half-awake state. I had been dreaming… dreaming that things were being taken care of while I was running behind schedule. The first rude awakening was that I was not: I was not allowed to run late, by the grace of the alarm clock which promptly put me on auto-pilot. I could look forward to oversleeping, perhaps on the day the alarm clock fails to wake me up. But till then, fairy godmother remains a dream!
How many women of today, who are juggling their home and career, go through these thoughts day in and day out, balancing between running a home to perfection, yet managing to line the family kitty? When a woman goes to work, there are no excuses in her mind as far as the home front is concerned. And, of course, because of the glass ceiling effect, there is no excuse at work either, where she has to prove twice over, her capabilities.
When I went back to work after 12 long years of being a home-maker, I was very apprehensive: not because I had doubts about my ability to deliver; but about how the home front would cope. My daughter had been used to seeing me at home whenever she would come home from school: her day diary would run non-stop while she changed and had her snacks and milk. To whom would she chatter to when she came home?
I need not have worried; she may have missed me, but she coped. So did my husband, and my father-in-law. But then, I realised, their life had not undergone a metamorphosis: they still had their meals on time: my father-in-law still had his routine unhampered. The only one whose life had undergone a change was mine. I was the one who was juggling home and career, like I was juggling dreams and reality: the demarcation seemed to be fading…
When circumstances necessitated me to take up a job, little did I realise what I was letting myself in for: not that I had any choice. But the dust on the centre table,or the uncleaned bathroom or the bundle of clothes from the cleaners waiting to be put away, never seemed to bother anybody else but me when I came home from work. But by then I was so tired, it somehow did not seem to matter anymore. I somehow could not muster up enough energy to see if my plants had been watered, or they had been kept out in the sun.
When a woman goes out to work in the world, somehow her whole perception seems to undergo a change. I met people who are forced to work, and each one had a story to tell: stories about unattended children, people working because they needed the salary to pay their loan the next month, or people who have to escape from the confines of home.
Whatever the reason, when I woke up the next morning, I realised: whether a dream or reality, going out to work has to be out of choice: otherwise each step one takes seems one of lead.
So today, I have made a conscious choice not to let the dust on the furniture bother me, or the drying plants catch my attention. Today, I have decided to change track and join the rat-race: for if I do not, I will be constantly living a life of dreams, where one wakes up to the smell of cooked food, of timely help at home, and when I do wake up I will find stark reality staring at me in the face: when the alarm clock runs dead and I am behind schedule…
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