Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Me and wife were discussing the next topic for my blog after she taunted me for my prolonged absence of thoughts, and I taunted her to mind her own business and get the dinner ready. Yes, we speak like this at home!

The discussion lead to one thing and then another and I told her that authors (blush! :-) ) are creative people and that words don't appear just like that, and that the subject has to be something which makes an instant connection between the heart and the brain, upon which there is a communication of untold nature between the two organs resulting in art through the utilization of remaining organs. To which, I was informed that there were people who would write pages together at a stretch every day, some of them without a few organs.

The discussion of topics brought the topic of working women to light. Well, what about it? Lots of women work, and then they come home and work. She was adamant that it was a subject that all authors need to take a note of and all of them need to spend at least 20% of their time writing an article on it. There was a rhetoric of laughter and the usual banter on the fairer sex.

To move on, this was a discussion when we had just moved to our own place and I was just beginning to appreciate the lighter things of handling affairs at home. Over the course of next 10 months, I realized what an arduous task it was to manage our modest 1 BHK apartment with 2 people! Well, first there was the cleaning, then there was the cooking, then there was the washing of clothes, then there was the eating of dinner and then there was some more of the cleaning and then there was the realization that more than 2 Hrs have passed after you have reached home from work.

This is the same state of affairs every day, and you would have thought that the weekends would be your savior.

But alas! On weekends, there was the groceries, there was the additional cleaning that you had postponed during the weekdays, there was the additional laundry, there was the tallying of bills, there was the repairing of things and there was ....

You had to appreciate the spirit shown by the female folk when you yourself go through all the wonderful feelings of managing a house. Especially, if the female in your house is working and completes 9 Hr shifts and commutes 3 Hrs every day through crowded buses, absent rickshaws, overflowing local trains and faces other perils while commuting in Mumbai.

The physical and mental resources required to carry on day on day everyday would drain a man, if not immediately, definitely in nine months (This is intended)!

This enlightening realization made me wear two hats and take them off for my wife and all the working women in Mumbai and around the world.

Now, I pondered over this thought as I wished my Mom as well a Happy Women's Day, and a feeling of different kind overwhelmed me.

For, nearly 30 years, 29 years with two kids, both of them being masculine, my Mom had managed it all.

Happy Mother's Day Aai!