March 14, 2013

Many women, I know, in today’s world are more of the working types, who would rather go to office every morning, work and came back home tired in the evening. I have always envied these women and respect them for the fact that they stand shoulder to shoulder with their spouse to earn for the family. Every time I think of these women who go out and work, I always think how cool it is not to be dependent on anyone, knowing that I am a housewife and I am always dependent on my spouse for small expenditures. But then one day I thought to myself, am I the one who is the dependent one?

I have a lot of mom friends who live their life getting up every morning just to prepare a cup of tea for their husband or pour cereal in their kid’s milk bowl so that they don’t go hungry the entire day. These women make the bed, mop the floor, go to the market, cook a delicious food, clean the house again… not necessarily in that order. I live in an apartment here in the US and I am very lucky to have a lot of Indian women who are just like me. We crib about every single thing we do. About the work at home, or how the bathroom is clogged, how we need to get the laundry basket to the common laundry room, or how we need to fix the bedroom door that our kid’s accidently locked themselves into. These women have all the tricks up their sleeves. Oh! Is your toilet clogged, don’t worry just put some dish washing detergent into the pot leave it for 10 min and then pour a bucket of hot water in it (do you doubt it, try it!) Valla, there goes the toilet working in good condition. Not only do they come to rescue you from a toilet crises but also share their home remedies to cure a sick child or a sick husband who is even worse than a child when he is sick. They know how to cook a meal in a jiffy if they need to get somewhere urgently. These women work round the clock. They get up at night if they have to and also manage to get up the next morning to make that cup of tea. What surprises me more is that no matter what comes their way, they are always on schedule, on time. Breakfast is ready by 7:30am and kids are at bed at 9:30pm.

One day I had the privilege of taking an off from my busy homemaker schedule not because I wanted to but because I had to. Yes, I had fallen terribly ill and my husband had to take an off from work to tend to my two year old who was in a phase where taken care of a prison inmate was an easier task then taking care of her. I decided to take rest the entire day so that I would recover fast and get on my feet the next day. Well, I guess that was too much to ask for. Every time I would go into this deep slumber my husband would wake me up only to ask me where I had kept the diapers, what should I feed my daughter, how to feed her, which cartoon does she like or when does she go to sleep. He had only one job and that was to take care of my daughter. He had outsourced the cooking to a nearby restaurant where he would order and pick up the food. He was not expected to vacuum the house or fix anything. At the end of the day he was so exhausted that he went to bed before my daughter did.

I speak with my office-going-mom friends when they get the time to socialize. Most of the time the topic of discussion will be the amount of work they do at office and or how their kids are a handful once they get back home from daycare or school. They will either crib about their maid or their nanny. They also talk about how they need to call the plumber or take their kids to the doctor. Yes, they do talk about pleasant things once in a while like shopping and where they go for dinner, which is the best restaurant in town or where you can get the best haircut. Where money is never the issue but finding people to do their regular chores are the bigger issues. Women who go out to work are no doubt independent when it comes to the financial part but when it comes to regular house work most of their jobs are outsourced. I am not saying that all women resort to this lifestyle. I know women who do the house work all by themselves and also go out a work for their family. But yet every household have maids or cooks to help them ease out their work load.

Nowadays when I hear the word dependent, I always ponder and think, are we really the dependent one? Yes, when it comes to the financial part we are but when it comes to the rest, no we are not! The dependent people do a lot of work independently, whereas the independent people depend upon a lot of other people to do most of their work. So why are we called the dependent ones. We should be called – Dependent, yet Independent!