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Working women in India make multitasking look easy, but lets not forget that they need family members to pitch in equally at home too.
Deepti Mahule (Nalavade) is a software engineer by profession, and enjoys traveling, reading and writing. She maintains a blog called Dancing Fingers Singing Keypad. One of her short stories was highly commended in the Commonwealth Short Story Competition 1999, run by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and another short story was published in the bi-monthly e-literary journal Muse India in the issue for March-April 2012.
Working in the software industry is at times similar to working like a beast of burden plowing the earth on a farm from sunrise to sunset, with the whip of stringent deadlines and living up to quality standards cracking above one’s back. This software field just like the field that the animal is plowing, shows no mercy to any kind of human irrespective of class, creed, race, gender, nationality and neither does it care much for time zones.
An incident comes to mind, that highlights how women and specially, Indian women in this industry work as jugglers in the circus called life by trying to balance career and family. I am an Indian female software developer in the United States but this narrative is about the female QA (Quality Assurance) resource living in India, who validates my work.
When the sun rises for her there, it is setting for us here in the United States. In spite of the time difference, we have worked together on many projects and everyone in the team appreciates her good work. During one such project, I was chatting with her online one morning about the work to be done. I informed her that the task on hand was required to be finished by 3.00 U.S. time. What I forgot to say was that it was to be done before 3.00 p.m. tomorrow. She misunderstood that it had to be done on that current night itself and her response naturally contained heavy concern. But it was something she said jokingly towards the end, switching abruptly to Hindi – something that came straight from her heart, a sudden wave of relief – that made me chuckle instantly and then reflect on it later on. The conversation on chat went something like this:
QA: What??? You mean I have to test all that before 3.00 tonight, my time?
Me: No, no. Not tonight. Sorry, I meant it has to be done before 3.00 p.m. tomorrow, U.S. time. That means you have a whole day in between.
QA: Thank god! Accha hua, nahi toh sasu maa ghar se nikaal deti.
(That’s good; otherwise maa-in-law would throw me out of the house)
In the past few decades, the Information Technology industry in India has taken root and spread its tentacles widely. Women constitute a large number of the workforce in this field. They are capable, hardworking and ambitious. But one must not forget that they apply this effort in not only the workplace but at the home front as well. Working women in India is not something new and there have been women pursuing careers even in the past, before the existence of the software industry. However, the number of such women has grown and the number of working hours as well as the effort (due to cases where clients and colleagues are spread all around the world, in different time zones) has increased as well.
Just as all employees irrespective of gender are treated equal in office in terms of work shared in teams, both men and women need to be treated the same in the household as well since a family is a team, too. Every woman will always want to do her best in career as well as look after family needs – it’s a constant tug-of-war – but it definitely helps to make matters smooth if everyone in the family pitches in with chores, encouragement and support.
Remembering our chat conversation, I marveled at all the multitasking that is done and tried to think of an Indian goddess with only two arms but none came to mind and I suddenly realized why they were almost always depicted with multiple ones!
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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