Category Archives: mommyrage

January 23, 2019 · 7:12 am

You Can Restart Work Any Time. Is It Hard? Hell Yes. Impossible? No

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I recently read Reboot’s post on Twitter about the #10YearChallenge on women’s careers – it had asked women to write where they were 10 years ago and where they are now. It made me think about the time when I was at home with the kids (ten years ago I had a set old 4 month old twins and a three and a half year old – yeah that was fun). Some of my memories from that time are, quite understandably, a bit of a blur but I do remember this one, constant, nagging feeling (apart from that of extreme fatigue, irritation and sleeplessness) that my career, my professional life was over. Who, I thought, would give me a job after a nine year break. Paradoxically, what was supposed to be the happiest time of my life (which all and sundry relatives never stopped telling me) was full of consternation and depression. Motherhood, I was told, was enough to make me happy, and the fact that I had no financial need to work was seen as my biggest blessing.

Before I go on, let me clarify one point. I was happy and my children did give me a lot of joy, but there was no sense of personal accomplishment and, as time slipped by, I kept falling deeper and deeper into the domestic-rabbit-hole – and I felt I’d never be able to get out. The hormones, of course, did not help – so there I was fat, old-er, broke (on the personal front) and emotionally fragile, and no one understood what I was really going through (including myself – I didn’t realize how low I was, until I started to come out of it). Everyone around me seemed to be absorbed in their own lives and, because I was well off (as in, because my husband is doing well and, at the surface of it, I seem to be happy – it’s all provided for) no one understood why not working was the source of my angst.

But, guess what? It passed, just as everything does. My kids grew up, a little. I started to sleep better (never underestimate the havoc lack of sleep plays with your brain). As I felt better, I started to think about returning to work, or doing something from home. At first I was lost. Then I began to write, and it became a refuge for me. I also started freelance web work. It didn’t pay anything and that annoyed me, but I decided to do it anyway. Money matters, but at that moment, for me, a sense of purpose meant more. And here’s the thing about finding your way back – you never know which path leads you out of the woods. You just keep going till you come to a clearing. And I did just that. I kept going irrespective of what anyone thought about my writing. I started a blog and oh, I started running. It was the best thing I did – those endorphins I can tell you are quite useful in lifting you out of your state of limbo and frustrations. I even ran the 21K. It was the first time, in a long, long, time I felt I had achieved something. My husband and kids came to cheer me up, and as I approached the finish line I saw their proud faces. I can tell you, few things can beat that feeling. So yes, it passed and made me stronger. And fitter.

What I am trying to say, I guess, is that when you’re at home and the world around you is doing their thing, you need to work on your transition back to work. You need to work for many, many reasons – for the money, yes, it’s important. When you earn, the dynamics of a relationship change, as does your standing (let’s face it, it does) . Then there is the feeling of purpose – again, it’s important. And also, you need your tribe of people – colleagues, friends – who are yours and not your husband’s colleague’s wives, or your children’s friend’s mothers. You need people who know you for you, who are not related to your family in any way – people with whom you exchange collegial, if idiotic, What’s  Apps, who you can go for coffee with (and indulge in banter about your boss!) – because your kids will grow up and go away (they’ll disconnect long before they go away) and your husband will have his work and his tribe – and you’ll be staring at a vacuum.

I got out after a decade’s break. I just mailed people, left, right and center and sold my story. Finally, someone gave me a chance. So, it may take a while, but you’ll get there. As Nemo says “just keep swimming”..

If I could do it – anyone can.

 

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May 15, 2018 · 3:20 pm

A Room Of One’s Own

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I work from home – have an office on the terrace, which really, I should give the husband the credit for. He’s been advocating turning the dump room into, what he first envisioned, a “treaty room” for years now – the backstory is that he’d read about how President Obama withdrew into his treaty room every night, a room where Michelle only “popped in” sometimes. Every since he’d been dreaming of creating such a utopian space for himself – a room of his own, one to which his wife had limited access.

Except, that’s not quite it turned out. Quite ironically, the person who had opposed it the most (aka, yours truly) is the one who is now using it as an office. Why did I oppose it? I’ll tell you why. It was a dump-what-you-don’t-want-to-deal-with room, where I put all that that I didn’t want to deal with out of sight – stuff that requires time to sift through and some nerve to dispose (nostalgia can be extremely clutter-inducing). Having said that, the room was not all dump. It was, as I often said, a space of organized chaos, since I knew where things were, largely. It also served a functional purpose. I had four steel almirahs (ok, Godrejes) stuffed with woollens, which I took out once a year in the hope that I’d wear them. I wore some, while others I ferried up and down in a pointless exercise of clearing cupboards, only to clear them again, two months later. Global warming is really at our doorstep (Trump should come to India to believe that climate change is real).  Still, it was something that needed to be done, because winter did make it’s late, if feeble, entry. So, each year I assiduously retrieve the family’s woollens with great alacrity in the hope that the winter would have a spine and give us a few months of relief from the inclement summer (we like winter in this part of the world. If you are wondering why, spend one summer here.  If Shelly lived in India, then the famed ‘Ode to the West Wing’ lines would’ve been written in quite the reverse – “If summer comes can winter be far behind?”).

Anyway, I digress. Point is we cleaned out the room, which was the husband’s idea, and sure it was a great one. However, there’s a good reason I resisted doing so all these years – because the execution was carried out by yours truly. Great ideas must be backed by equally great efforts! Also, the room, for all its chaos, had its benefits – it was out of my sight, and I could dump what I didn’t want to deal with – which was a lot. In redoing it, I had to think about making room for all the stuff I did not wish to clear – aka the winter clothes (which now lie in another room, which too had to be redone to accommodate the almirahs. I now have to perform twists and turns to open them in that room (much smaller) to get out the woollens, especially when the husband is going on a trek and casually askes for his jacket and thermal socks). And now for the best part – the room was stuffed with not only our just-in-case-you-need-it- clutter, but also the mother-in-law’s equally worthless possessions from the years gone by. So, while the husband, in a moment of extreme, if foolish, insouciance, gave me carte blanche to “throw or give it all away”, I wasn’t sure he had quite thought it through. He hadn’t, as it turned out. There was much gnashing of teeth at the discovery of memories having been “cleared away heartlessly” .

Anyhow, the room is now an office-cum-library, which I use as an office. I have often thought of installing booby traps at the door, because the assortment of people I want to get away from can still reach me there, though it’s better than being smack in the middle of the action.

Working from home can be challenging and requires discipline – not only your own, but that of people around you, which is harder than you think (the mamajis drop in at the exact time when you are on a call with a client, as your mother-in-law comes running to you for lunch arrangements). When you are physically available, as opposed to a phone-call away, things are very different. If you are working from home – no matter how separate your workplace is – you are forever vulnerable to the vagaries of all sorts of people – including to that of your children (they won’t call dad in the office but come scampering into your home office to resolve urgent matters, like the ownership of a pen or who hit whom first).

So, while the best place for me to work is my office, it ain’t quite the treaty room I had secretly hoped it would become, in a strange twist of fate. The moment my work gets some traction (meaning funds) I plan on moving into an office. Maybe then the room can go back to the person it was originally meant for!

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June 8, 2017 · 9:00 am

It Took More Than Two Years For Uber To Fire The Top Executive Who Secured Rape Victim’s Medical Records

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It’s all over the news – Uber has fired Eric Alexander for illegally securing medical records of a woman who had alleged rape by an Uber driver n December 2014. She was raped by, Shiv Kumar Yadav, an Uber driver in Delhi when she was on her way home after a party at night. Yadav, it was later found out, was a serial offender (women in his village knew this well and kept away from him – clearly Uber had not done its homework). After the incident, Alexander, then head of Uber’s Asia Pacific business, along with some other senior executives, had refused to believe the woman’s story and had obtained her medical records to prove that she was part of a conspiracy against Uber.

The story is all too familiar – woman cries rape, man says conspiracy. End of matter. It’s what we see everywhere – either there’s complete apathy to issues of women’s safety, or there’s extreme doubt (somewhere in between there are token actions amid cries of anger and candle light vigils).

Turns out that Alexander had shared the medical records with CEO, Travis Kalanick as well as with Emil Michael, another senior leader. They had come to the unanimous conclusion that Ola, Uber’s nemesis in India, had conspired to bring them down. End of story.

Not quite. It’s come back to bite them, and man am I glad. A law firm in now looking into the matter – as part of a larger, and unrelated to this incident – investigation. In fact, there are lots of other skeletons tumbling out – there’ve been multiple (more than multiple actually) incidents of misbehaviour within Uber and investigations are on. According to online magazine Racode, there have been 215 total incident reports, including sexual harassment, bullying, bias and retaliation.

215 incident reports? And now they wake up? Being made to wake up is more like it – the lawyers are now on them, so there’s little choice in the matter.

Coming back to the Delhi rape, the investigation report says that “Alexander carried around the document for about a year before other executives — presumably the legal department — obtained the report and destroyed his copy, according to the sources.” Wow.

From Donald Trump and Uber to Mahesh Murthy and Mulayam Singh – the thread seems to be similar (I know, quite a motley collection this group would make – and I can think of so many more) – malign the woman, because she is obviously the villain here.

Uber must pay for this big time – and why only the executives who were part of it? Sure, they’ve fired the employees (more than two years later)– but does that absolve the top management of their misconduct? What about Travis Kalanick and Emil Michael? Why must they duck the charges? If they are found to be complicit in this, they too must pay for it. This is a serious offense – to get medical records of a woman who has been raped and then destroy them. This must be a lesson for those who believe that rape is a figment of a woman’s imagination.

 

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March 10, 2017 · 2:55 pm

Feminism Lite Is A Dangerous Thing

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If you don’t know who Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is, that’s ok. But, you really should.

To give the Wikipedia definition – she’s a Nigerian novelist, nonfiction writer and short story writer. But that’s not why I am writing about her. And that does not even begin to tell you who she is. I’ll let you Google her and find out more (there’s a lot).

Why am I bringing her up? Because she is a feminist, and I love her for it. I’ve always thought she’s the real thing – as in, a real feminist (which does not mean she wants to biff any man she sees on the head – it simply means she wants equality).

I read something she said recently and it made a lot of sense – and also tied in with what I’ve been saying for a long time. Here’s what she said – “Beware the danger of what I call Feminism Lite. It is the idea of conditional female equality. Please reject this entirely. It is a hollow, appeasing and bankrupt idea. Being a feminist is like being pregnant. You either are or you are not. You either believe in the full equality of men and women, or you do not.”

I couldn’t agree more. But there’s more – which I completely, wholeheartedly agree with. She adds that – “Feminism Lite uses analogies like “He is the head and you are the neck.” Or, “He is driving but you are in the front seat.” More troubling is the idea, in Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but should be expected to “treat women well.”

I have heard this from so many of my female friends – even the so-called liberated ones. Male superiority is so deeply ingrained in our systems that we do not even realize it. I’ll give you an example – it’s a line I’ve heard so many of my friends use when they speak of their husbands. Things like, “he’s a really good father, he spends so much time with the kids, he’s really hands-on”. They say this beaming with pride and, in some cases, feeling blessed for having a man who spends time with his own kids. My question is – he’s the father, so what’s to be impressed by here? Do we, for instance, ever say this of the mother? – that she spends so much time with the kids, hence she’s awesome. So, why the accolade for the man?

Here’s why. Because “most-men” don’t do this, so the ones who do, deserve mention.  And that’s really the unfortunate part. It should really be the reverse. It goes to show who very far we are from an equal world.

Chimamanda goes on to say that – ‘feminism Lite uses the language of “allowing.”’. She e hits the nail on the head when she say that. It’s a word one hears a lot – “he allows her to work”. Inherent in that sentence is that the fact that the male has the power and he uses it the way he wants. So, remarks like – “he’s a good father”, or “he’s let her work”, or “he takes care of the house, so she’s really lucky”..the list goes on.

Men and women are equal partners – they shoulder responsibilities equally. That’s the truth – or rather, that’s the real truth, but it’s been stifled and gagged in a world run by men. Read how a British newspaper described Theresa May, the British Prime Minister’s husband: “Phillip May is known in politics as a man who has taken a back seat and allowed his wife, Theresa, to shine.”

I rest my case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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November 2, 2016 · 2:07 pm

The Appalling Attitude Towards Male and Female Birth Control

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So let me see if I understand this right. A male contraceptive trial was conducted on some 350 men as part of a study that would’ve paved the way (could’ve, would’ve who knows?) for men to share the responsibility for birth control. And even though the results looked promising – the combination of hormones was found to be nearly 96% effective – the study was brought to a screeching halt. Hmm. What on earth am I missing?

Turns out, not much. Except, of course, that this is men we’re talking about.

There were side effects – particularly depression and other mood disorders – in some men. That can be hard, sure, but was that rare or reported in too many men? Not to both.

So now let’s see what the side effects of the pill, or other forms of birth control which women have been taking for years, are. Let’s see..headaches, nausea, weight gain, menstrual cramps, yeast infections, acne, mood swings, vaginal-tissue irritation, vomiting, migraines and decreased libido, to name a few. And oh – ovarian cysts, depression and heavy menstrual bleeding.

And women have been going through this for years. A bit of history. In the 1950s a trial was carried out for the female hormonal contraceptive (the predecessor of the one used today) in Puerto Rico The doctor in charge of the trial recommended against its use. But, guess what? a U.S. pharmaceutical company released the same formulation anyway.

Wait there’s more.

As this article tells us – the same group of doctors that studied the female pill also considered one for men, but decided against it. Why? Because of the supposed side effects (testicle shrinkage being one) . Also, they believed women would be able to take the side effects better than men!

Not much seems to have changed in the past sixty odd years. The male contraceptive study has, once again, been abandoned as women, the uhm, weaker-sex, are stronger to tolerate the side effects.

And now, after years of women complaining, a recent Danish study found a correlation between the use of hormonal birth control and being diagnosed with clinical depression. Not that this is news to women.

So, to state the obvious here, it’s unfortunate, yet again to know what an unequal world it still is –  men must have an equal responsibility towards birth control, but they don’t. Far, far from it.

And the one chance we had of getting there just got snuffed out.

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July 14, 2016 · 10:19 am

Why I Will Never Call Myself Fat Again

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Ok, this is an unusual admission from me – I am not fat. Not saying I am not thin, but am not fat either, whatever the definition of thin or fat is.

Which brings me to this question: what is the definition of fat, or thin? And who defines it? And why do we accept it?

The truth, unsurprisingly, is based on our perception about the issue. What I may think of as thin, may not be so for someone else (my children’s friend’s bordering-on-anorexic mothers probably think I am fat. I differ. Conversely, my mom thinks I am thin. Again, I differ). It’s all relative.

Today, somehow, being thin means being skinny, or somewhere near it. The whole definition of beauty has changed completely. And women, more than men, are trying to live by some warped standards of beauty, and are putting themselves through torture to conform to it. Innumerable studies and life experiences of people have repeatedly shown that physical qualities in people do only so much to make them happy and contended – one because they are fleeting and two, because they don’t add meaning to people’s lives. That may be a philosophical outlook that you may or may not agree with, but it does not take away from one simple fact – that our obsession with looking good and the methods of achieving it are unhealthy. And this must stop – because what we’re doing, and by we I mean women like myself who have unknowingly fallen into the trap and perpetuated the idea, is passing it on to the next generation. Most of us (like yours truly) may not mean to, but we are. Every time I look in the mirror and exclaim that I have gained weight, I am (albeit inadvertently), passing on my idea of beauty to my children. I may tell them otherwise, but children look at actions and take away from that. They are watching us at all times and learning from our behaviour. What we do or say seeps into their sub-conscience and feeds their ideas about life and society – in this case about defines being thin; it tells them what they must be like to be accepted as attractive.

Children are sponges – so if you, even in jest, say that you are fat, they will process this very differently than you may have intended.

Let me now confess that I have been guilty of this. I have often made a correlation between my weight with feeling good and not, as I should have, being fit and feeling good – because that’s what it should be about. I want to be healthy, and not being fat, in the medical sense, is part of it. But that’s not what I conveyed in my actions and words. I am a runner and I do believe that it makes me fitter. Yet, I have somehow done a bad marketing job of making those feelings known and amplified the ones that I don’t really believe in – which is about wanting to be thinner than I am.

For instance, when my sister and I joke about “going on a crash diet”, we lead our children to believe that depriving yourself of food is justified and even required if one needs to be acceptably thin (and thus physically attractive). The fact that neither of us never act on our words may not be enough to quell the ideas we had engraved in our children’s impressionable minds.

Why this sudden awakening you may ask? Because my older daughter (now ten) said to me the other day that she feared being fat when she grew up. It was one of those passing things that kids say, which they forget about the next moment and move on. But, her words stopped me in my tracks. I realized what I had done. I knew she didn’t fear it, like she fears the dark, or earthquakes. Yet, just the fact that she, at ten-years-old, had thought about gaining weight when she grew older, was enough to set me on a path of correcting the wrong I had done.

Parenting, I have learned, is not about the ability to always do the right thing, or about berating yourself for doing the wrong. It’s about realizing and admitting when you’ve made mistakes, and setting them right. That’s exactly what I plan to do now. And it can’t be done by siting my daughter down and giving her philosophical monologues on the idea of beauty. That’s taking the easy way out and frankly, it never works. She’s growing up in a world surrounded by image-obsessed people, who, along with some ill-timed remarks by her mother about her own weight, have influenced her little mind. What she needs is to see the right ideas in action. She needs to see her mother run and then talk about being fit, she needs to see her mother dress for a party and not ask if she’s looking fat, she needs to see her mother feel good about herself about the way she looks and not rue about her lost youth when she was thin.

My new-found resolve, however, does not mean that I shall now proceed to wander around with unkempt hair and live in sweatpants, because that would really prove I don’t care about how I look and thus send the right message to my kids. It won’t, they’ll just think I am sloppy. No, it means that I stop saying things I don’t mean and, through my actions, I prove that being healthy is what matters.

And the effects of this will be two fold – one, of course, I will teach my daughters the right thing about their body-image and two, I will feel good about myself, which I have not been doing lately. I run to be healthy and because I enjoy it, not to be thin – whatever that means today.

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May 25, 2016 · 10:23 am

What Changed When I Started Working

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For one thing, going for gatherings became easier. I had a ready answer to, “so what do you do?”. Yes, I know I being at home with the kids is “commendable” and one of the “toughest jobs in the world”, and that I should never have felt bashful about being, well, just a mom. Except, that I was – bashful, as well as just a mom. I hated the question, no matter how innocuously it was asked. And I never felt fulfilled (whatever that means) doing a seemingly noble job that was supposed to satisfy my motherly instincts. I was happy, yes, spending time with my kids, but always felt a sense of restlessness that took away from the contentment that motherhood is said to bring.

But, that was then. Now things have changed. And not. I still hold the portfolio of the home and cabinet minister combined. I won that uncontested, of course, and my having returned to work did not mean that the posts had fallen vacant. All it meant was that I had, willingly, taken on more responsibility. The previous ones still stood (and shall continue to do so as long as I live). That was the truth.

Why? Because I am the mom, and that’s the way it is. Mommies fix things, as everyone else pretends that they can’t. That, and also because I earn so little that it has no bearing on the husband’s life. He still has to bring home the bacon – so his life has not changed, while mine has turned on its head. And that’s why yours truly still does the stay-at-home-mommy things – ferrying the kids to classes, remembering the vaccinations, getting berated by the doctors when she forgets, rushing home to tend to a sick child, getting the house cleaned, things fixed, dry-cleaned, darned, repaired, cooked – you name it. And of course, added to this is the unenviable task of making a dash to the stationary shop on a Sunday evening, when mommy is most kindly informed about a project due on Monday morning. Yes, that is fun and brings me to the conclusion that real estate prices should not be driven  by hospitals or schools in the vicinity, but by the number of stationary shops near the house – try getting into one on a Sunday evening. I can tell you, from experience, that entry into sold-out Broadway shows are easier, as opposed to getting into a shop to buy Blu Tack. Try elbowing out harassed moms being trailed by sulking kids. I do it with more regularity than I comb my hair.

My bag, much like the rest of my life, is also bearing the brunt of the additional responsibility. Because it’s still a mommy bag (I am just not the sort to change bags, and when I have tried to be the sort, I have ended up returning home to pick up my wallet I forgot in the old one). So I carry one bag that lets me switch from the calm, working-mom at the office to the, never-know-what-you’ll-need mommy once I am back home. Which means that in office, when I reach for a pen, my hand returns smeared with ink from a leaking felt pen or a half-eaten melted chocolate (which I had refused to mop up and shoved into my bag a month ago). Or both. I also find broken crayons, smiley stickers, biscuit crumbs, spoons, flattened candies, paracetamol syrup, headache medicines, tampons, tissues and often, an expired credit note I had declared lost. Underneath all this is where I usually find the notepad on which I scribble notes while my boss rambles on about strategies we ought to be impressing our clients with.

So I would say that working has not changed so much as it has added things in my life. And on that note, of adding, guess what else has been added on me? Yup, the weight. I haven’t been able to run that much in the past year and bulges have started to appear, much to my consternation.

But, having said all of that, I will take the working mom, any day, over the stay at home one. No question about it. Sure, I am tired and my plate is spilling over, but I will not trade places with my old self at all. I love the fact that I leave the house and get into my own space, even if that space belongs to my boss and even though it’s not exactly the corner office (to put it mildly). But, just being out of the house and leaving the chaos behind me is liberating. Of course, the chaos tends to follow me – with the maid, the kids and the mother in law calling to ask inane questions. But still, I am physically away and don’t have to deal with it all the time.

“I was in a meeting” is a wonderful phrase I have re-discovered and use it quite liberally.

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