The Drama Queen

Quite a hot discussion these days. This was triggered by Ms India 2017, Manushi Chhillar, declaring on an international platform that motherhood should be the highest paid profession. And it did win her the coveted Ms World crown. It did earn her some raised eyebrows, too. How dare she calls something as pious as being a mother a profession? Well, my opinion has been very clear on this. It is a very touchy subject for me. It triggers a lot of underlying emotions for me. I call myself a full-time Mom. And I take my job very very seriously.  Technically, no, motherhood can’t be a profession. The simple reason being that to be a professional, you need to have an appropriate qualification and/or training for that particular vocation. And I say this, hands down - no university can prepare you for the job profile of a mother.  The job requirements that a mother faces are practically unheard by the rest of the world. Only one mother can understand the woes of another....

I know. I shouldn’t be using the F word! Bad influence. This is what we tell our children. I know I am entering a dangerous territory. But I desperately think that it is the need of the hour. It is high time we acknowledge this widely used phrase. If you are done raising your eyebrows and judging me, let me clarify that I am talking about... hold your breath.... The Facebook. Ohhh! What were you thinking??!! Remember the old village junction at the even older Peepal Tree altar, where people would gather and exchange pleasantries? They would hold ‘panchayats’ there. They would pass judgments there. They would raise issues there. Or just celebrate life. Getting the drift, eh? Facebook is the modern day Peepal Tree junction, so to speak. It is the modern way to stay connected with people, may it be with family or friends or acquaintances or sometimes even strangers, all over the globe, while staying in the comforts of your home, real time. Right from watching a movie at an upscale t...

Home is where the heart is.  Whom are we kidding?! Home is where the wifi connects automatically! New age. New adage. But bottom line remains the same. Home is the best place in the world. We are moving into our new home, soon. Our tenth residence move, since our marriage, to be precise. We are like the pros now! Right from changing the addresses on the mailing list to hiring the new support system to children’s entrance exams to discovering the grocery stores and salon – we have it all covered. The to-do list keeps upgrading, that’s all. Just like going up from two to three to four members, the number of cartons also just kept going up. We have, like, cracked the code, so to speak. Earlier it was just the two of us. We were free to explore the new neighbourhood at our own pace. Buying household stuff as and when needed. Literally. I clearly remember our first house: we went to buy stuff required to make tea, and only tea. That included a trip to the grocer and the utensils...

They say that the hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world. Forget the cliched version. I say: the hand that changes the channels on the TV remote control rules the house. Difficult job considering that the tiny people from the cradle outgrow us in height, decibels, outlook, dramatic dialogues and what not! It is impossible to argue with them about which program to watch considering that we have decided to stick to having only one TV in the house. I know the entire schedule of all the animated programs on any given day of the week. While my munchkins were still growing up, I would find myself humming nursery rhymes even when they were not around. It was an overwhelming phase. Especially in a nuclear family, where your support system is your lifeline, I would hope that they grow up soon. I was like, ‘God, when would the diaper phase go away?!’ The irony is that whenever we would cross a milestone and move on to the next phase, the earlier phase would look like a piece of cak...