Living at work

By Rati Nehra

New Delhi, July 12 Work from home…It has a nice ring to it. To start with, the commute is a three second walk to your study. No more hellish hours stuck in traffic and fumes. That’s a win! Work outfits…What work outfits? Throw on a pair of yoga pants and maybe a nice top if you have a video call; another win.

And then of course all the quality time with the kids. Win, win, win! Those angelic children, their little arms full of big hugs, their sweet voices babbling interesting snippets. Mom guilt waived goodbye, as quality time with the kids was here to stay. I remember thinking I seem to have stumbled upon the perfect work-home-life balance.

The first two whole weeks of March were blissful. My husband, my children and I, seemed to have immersed ourselves in each other, our bodies and minds and souls – revitalised and rejuvenated. But things started to slip from my seemingly Utopian haze, one slippery step at a time.

Quality time with kids quickly morphed into wheeling and dealing for more (or less) TV and screen time. Then came the negotiating. Fights and rights of ‘first born’ versus ‘baby’. And the worst of them all, over energetic kids who missed their friends and the world outside our four walls.

Before we know it, May struck us with reality; the pandemic at our door steps, millions suffering, schools re opened in their new online avatar, somehow work had to resume, bills had to be paid. With trembling hands, we put one foot in front of the other and got on with this thing called ‘New Normal’.

Now, our newly normal days go by in busy blurs…Waking up too tired to homeschool, followed by home work, add to it working from home, with home grown babies and home dogs… it is a lot.

That with the constant housekeeping, meal planning, fire fighting (added for good measure), conference calls discussing the current financial quarter (clearly some people didn’t get the lockdown memo) and what the next quarter holds, all the while as the kindergarten teacher earnestly broadcasts the daily alphabet, “A is for apple, B is for Banana, C is for…” Can’t take this anymore! Oh and D-for Done with it.

It’s been 3 months of Carona craziness but I’ve worked out a routine now… a delicate dance with time, the most important being ‘ME’ time. An hour before the kids are up I pray, meditate, do some yoga. It’s my favourite time of day. I make my own coffee, something I haven’t done in over a decade because that was always my husband’s department.

I remember reading about ‘Me time’ and rolling my eyes thinking, ‘what was wrong with these ‘woman’ who needed to rise with the sun so they could escape the sounds of the day?’. Well, I’ve just joined their cult and I love it.

And then the sun is up and the sounds begin their daily drum– home school, homework, work from home, dogs of home, meal planning, maybe cooking, house keeping and let’s not forget firefighting; I’m actually beginning to enjoy it…win it is!

(The writer Rati Nehra is mother to two happy girls, two even happier Golden Retrievers and CO- Founder of Baby Jalebi)