Friends,
For professional reasons, I used to stay away from home for almost twenty days a month. These twenty days I spend traveling by air or by train or by bus or by car and stayed in hotels.
The daily requirements of these days like foods, washing of clothes, setting of beds, cleaning of rooms are being done by the hotel staffs.
The rest number of the days I was at headquarter and doing the normal office, though my office timings are not fixed.
I am a very lazy person and the only thing I knew was my profession and professional work, though I am not very good at it also.
Now, this schedule had changed absolutely from last year when I got sick and subsequently COVID pandemic has started.
Due to lockdown and other restrictions, the traveling became less to lesser, and staying in the headquarter has increased.
But the daily requirements remain the same. And slowly and gradually the household working started increasing.
From childhood, like other “normal” Bengali family I used to see the household jobs are being done by Mother, Sister or to say the ladies of the house.
I used the word “normal” as there were some houses where these things were also done by the male members of the family, but these are exceptions, and exceptions are not counted.
We as male members used to thought these household jobs are nominal and less or nil efforts were required to do so.
In Resume also we used to write my mother is a Housewife.
But the job of these “House Wives” is a full-time job I came to understand literally in the last one and half years. It is not the full time it is an overtime job.
It is usually more than the job, done outside the house, which we used to call “Proper Job”.
Like in the morning to prepare the bed for the whole day, making morning tea and breakfast, preparing the children for school, cleaning the entire house, washing the clothes and hanging them to dry, making lunch, cleaning the utensils, picking up the dried clothes and ironing them, making evening tea and snacks, making dinner, preparing the bed for goodnight sleep and while sleeping to dream what to prepare tomorrow in breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Oh, my goodness be! These are a heck of jobs. These are more than what is being done outside the house. Though I have not added the marketing part of daily needs.
So, I have learned that homemaking is not a full-time but an overtime job.
My Hat’s off to all the Home Makers.