The Oh is obviously in brackets because even though people might not vocalise the sound, it’s very much there. Why have I chosen a topic and a profession that is as old as society if not the hills? Well, being a recent entrant into the ‘housewife’ category, I can say that I have seen both sides of the coin and ‘housewives’ get the rawest, dirtiest, most unrewarding and painful end of the deal (co-operative husbands notwithstanding) By the way I also intend to address the term ‘housewife’. Let’s see what this unpaid labour does the minute she wakes up-
1. Put out the tea kettle (so that it’s on the boil by the time she finishes her ‘stuff’)
2. Before the rest of the household wakes up (children, husband and in many cases in laws) prepare tiffin boxes (one short break and one long break so that makes 5 lunch boxes for 2 kids and a husband)
3. Also get breakfast ready
4. Meanwhile dishes, vessels are quietly piling up
5. So after the morning hurricane leaves, the lady/ mother/ maid/ daughter in law silently picks up after the rampage- night clothes, water bottles, uncapped toothpaste tube. She folds fluffs up pillows, spreads fresh bed-sheets, and dumps the laundry in the washing machine.
6. As the clothes are being washes, the clothes line needs to make space, so she also has to fold the dry clothes and keep them in the respective wardrobes. There, major work done.
7. Now how about some coffee or that tea? By this time it’s already 8.45 to 9 am.
8. Lovely, just as she is about to have that first hit of the day, ding ding (that’s the door bell)
9. Oh it’s the mopping, cleaning.
10. Ok now, so she has to segregate clothes for hand washing, sort out the bedrooms a bit, out the keys away so she can do her job.
11. Ok now for that tea that has gone colder than dal tadka.
12. Its 11am. The cleaning lady has done her number.
13. How about some breakfast now? Oops she has to go to the gym
14. Off goes Our Lady of Hard Work and spends an hour to 70 minutes sweating it out.
15. Have a bath, some more clothes…….she remembers to also put out the morning lot of threads to dry.
So before she can really out her feet up, it’s almost thirteen hundred hours.
Some more reading and then cheers, its fifteen hundred hours and thirty minutes.
Time for the hurricane to come back home, so you have school bags by the door, shoes, socks flying and kids heading straight for the fridge……
I. So while the lady tells her kids to wash hands/ feet/face, she is frantically trying to get some snack ready for the hungry stomachs…
II. So while the snack is cooking, she empties the lunch bag and dumps the smelly lunch boxes intot he sink
III. The snack is ready, the boxes are washed and drying nicely, the kids are happy and satisfied
IV. Then she collects the plates that the snacks were eaten in and washes some more.
V. What’s for dinner aai? Asks the daughter and the Lady of the House remembers that little end-of-day-chore.
DINNER- all is good. Rice and dal in pressure cooker, tomatoes and onions chopped finely for salad with dahi, today we will have pithla, and methi subzee. So methi is washed, chopped and cooked. Finally as dinner is getting ready so is the kitchen sink that is filling up with kadhais, bartans, covering plates, spoons and pans. So The LOH (Lady of the House) sorts that out, cleans the kitchen platform. Hey you have forgotten to make phulkas….and then she also make phulkas to that the family eats a tasty, wholesome, hearty meal.
As a sign-off, she cleans the dinner plates, puts the left-overs in smaller containers or pots and into the fridge, wipes the table clean and switches off the light that has given her warmth and vision while cooking.
At last she is ready to go to bed, when the younger one has forgotten to do his homework, the elder one can’t find her history textbook both need fresh pencils. Our LOH gets on with it and finally as she dreams of a leisurely bath and wallowing luxuriously in the body lotion, gives it up for a quickie (a bath I mean) and collapses into that bed while already planning the lunch for the following day.
I am too exhausted to even introspect here . So I will hammer that out tomorrow. But before I sign off, let me include all the illnesses, repairs, bills that need tending, supervising and paying respectively that the sacred LOH needs squeeze in the time for.
See you folks and have a great Tuesday!
