INDEFINITE SABBATICAL

Children are self-centered. They don't remember the hardships you have to go through each day, what they do remember is how well you played with them, how they loved when you cooked meals for them and how warm and safe they feel sleeping tucked in your arms.

The most eye sparkling memory of my childhood is the day I ate my first hot phulka for lunch in my entire life. I was in tenth grade when my mom quit her job and that day she cooked lunch while we were returning from school. Till that day, if I told you how we (me and my sister) ate lunch, you would definitely judge our family values. 

After school we used to go home hungry. Mom cooked lunch before leaving for work and kept in on the kitchen counter, sabzi in the kadhai and chapati in the casserole. As soon as we reached home, we used to take off the shoes, let them be where we removed them, washed hands (not always 🙊) and carried the kadhai and casserole to the living room, switched on the TV and ate it just as is, without plates and bowls. Then slid the vessels under the couch and slept over it in our uniforms till mom came home. 

Mom was always disheartened watching us this way. But she couldn't help it. She was working. She was not working to compete with our dad or to prove her intelligence. She was working to help dad bear the financial burden. She told me how her heart ached when she had to leave us with our grandmother from the young age of 3 months, how she felt incapable and helpless when she got home to see us learn things that she would have never introduced us to. She felt sorry for us when she couldn't sign us up for swimming and dancing lessons because she didn't have enough time to drop or pick us up. That's her story. There are many more. 

When Narayan and Sudha Murthy came up with Infosys, they mutually decided that one of them had to step back and take care of the children. Sudha Murthy left Infosys for their children. There are many working mothers I know who exceeded their time of furlough for raising their kids. When in an interview Sadhguru was asked about how he felt about women with young children, stepping out and working, he said "the very presence of the mother in the crucial years of life, changes their whole being", "she must work if it's an absolute necessity but should never let survival come in the way of the real aesthetics of life". I don't really need to quote mystics and powerful women to prove what a mother's presence means in the early years of a child's life. It's not just the breastmilk that nourishes the baby, it's the warmth of mother's body, her caress, her smile which the pump and the bottle cannot give. The strength she gives after every fall, the satisfaction she gets after every morsel we eat, which will be just a chore or a job for someone else. And what children mean to their mothers is unquestionable. Then why some women instead of being devoid of any obligations choose desk jobs over their children!? 

I don't blame those mothers. It is their surroundings to be blamed, where staying at home after baby is marked as an end of their life, their identity. So they, in obligation to prove their worth, jump into the rat race crushing their heart's desire of being with their offspring. And then try to prove themselves that they made the right decision by trying to squeeze in "quality time" with the kids. It's not possible to give your 100% to the children when 50% of your juices are drained into the office and trying to hit homeruns on both fronts might leave you drained and dull which will affect the child again.These mothers, deep down, they know that no pay cheque compares to being around the child. And the guilt trip that the stay at home mothers take is just the other side of the same coin. 

Why did we do this to the mothers, to the women? Women are biologically and mentally equipped to raise the children, then why do we wire them to think it's the most worthless thing to do? Why? Strong mothers raise strong humans, intelligent mothers raise intelligent humans. Intelligent mothers delegating this job to people around, don't. A professional turned into homemaker is not a waste of talent, it is a boon to the children and the community as a whole because they can inculcate values that their highly paid nannies cannot. 

If you see Motherhood as the most superior way of serving the community then not having a paid job for a few years to raise your children, no more remains a responsibility or punishment, it becomes a privilege. And the more the mothers understand this, the closer we can get to achieving a better next generation.