Rest in Piece

The wonder of a choice between working and staying at home.

One of the weirdest headlines in the papers recently was Robot commits suicide after getting fed up with doing housework. Allegedly,a mechanical gadget in an Austrian home somehow switched itself on and ended up on fire after sitting on a kitchen hotplate. It was more like some dumb human had programmed it wrong but people were quick to call it a suicide blaming chores,which pretty much sums up how we all feel about housework.

In Indian homes,the robot is generally female,toiling over the house where the work is endless and thankless,and its not even considered an occupation. Its maddeningly repetitive,youre never going to get a raise and your peers secretly sneer at you for whiling away your day. And to top it all,your official description is that dreaded word,homemaker. In fact,Im surprised we dont hear of more suicides because of it. So far,here,we have it easy since labour is cheap but were the last generation to be able to afford or rely on other people to do our chores for us,the toughest of which is raising children. I remember a friend of mine telling me this all-too-familiar story of trying to slip out of her law office unnoticed,because the daycare her child was in,in Zurich,would fine her 20 francs if she was more than 10 minutes late. In the West,women often stop working after a child because the cost of a full-time nanny could almost negate their salary. In the next 20 years,like the rest of the world,an outing for most of the upwardly mobile in India will be the weekly trip to the grocery store to stock up before preparing dinner. Its a relief to know that robots are actually an option even though the idea of a machine whirring around my kitchen doing dishes,is hard to imagine.

In 2010,the Supreme Court had asked the Parliament to rethink the Census of Indias categorisation of people where homemakers (or chore-doers) were referred to as economically non-productive workers alongside beggars,prostitutes and prisoners. Realms of space have been devoted to research that suggests that if homemakers had devoted their time to careers instead of their homes,they would be happy and healthier with better-adjusted kids. The stigma against non-working women is evident in small ways. At my gym,all the group dance classes are slotted for the middle of the day for its presumed thats what homemakers like to do,dance at noon. So what economic value do you put on someone whos raising kids without a salary?

Motherhood,for all its well-documented joys,is a constant struggle between what youre doing,and what you should really be doing. Everybody secretly wonders about the choice not made. Working moms worry theyre not there enough for their children and stay-at-home moms resent the mind numbing chores theyre burdened with. I fall somewhere in between since my work happens in exhausting spurts but with plenty of time to relax. Sure,there is occasional guilt,especially if Im watching Homeland after dancing at noon. But an easier way to look at it is who really has it all? Its a privilege if you dont have to hold down a job and youd be crazy to knock it. Working is very ordinary and though it can be fun,most people work out of economic necessity,not because they love it. And while being a working woman in the 80s and 90s had some glamour attached to it,in 2013,women in the corporate world are no longer held up as examples of feminism but people who have no option but to pull their weight to survive. Its anybodys guess how youre better off.

Leher Kala

hutkayfilms@gmail.com

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