Tara and Roshan were happily married. Roshan worked at a huge MNC while Tara managed home. Being in the US, she wanted her babies, Anvi and Angul, to cherish their Indian culture rather than transforming to New-Yorkers. To make this happen, she chose to sacrifice her carreer and dreams and found a new dream in her children. Roshan earned enough and so there was never a financial problem among the couple. They were a happy family and had created a beautiful world of their own.
Like any couple they too had their moments of disagreements and small arguments but nothing ever escalated to huge problems and they always decided to ignore it after moment of disagreement. They were parents who wanted the best of their kids as they realized that fights beyond a limit would reflect on the children even if they never showed any symptoms.
As Tara was the one who chose to sacrifice for the sake of her kids, she felt low most of the time she saw her working friends or spoke to her parents. Her parents were not happy about her not working. After all they took allot of effort to make her a computer engineer. Tara would distract herself in gardening and teaching her kids new things to explore and such. But somewhere deep down her dissapointments were accumulating.
Roshan would come home after a long day of stress and tension and relax on the couch. Angul, the 2 year old would be waiting for his daddy all day long to play with him. When daddy comes home, he is the most excited of all and would tell daddy about his cars and toys and how his fantacy charecter jumped and saved the day . The tired daddy Roshan would smile and respond to Angul , glancing at Tara simultaneously and directing her to take Angul away. Tara would silently take Angul away while helping Anvi with her colouring or homework or play. After putting the 5 years and 2 year old to sleep, its finally some couple time before bed.
Tara would be on the phone watching her stuffs while Roshan surfs through the channel. Watching Tara having her time, Roshan would get annoyed. He would complaint about why the house was a mess and why is she doing nothing while the kids are at sleep. Though Tara tried explaining that she was tired, Roshan never understood. So she would simply get up and gather the scattered toys and get with the rest of the house chores. When ever Tara asked Roshan to help he would roll down a list of office tensions he had to face while she ” comfortably” spent time at home.
These words sank deep in her as she knew there was no point arguing with him. She slowly started noticing how Roshan would always inspect the plate served to him before food was served, how he would glance at the glass when given water to drink. All these made her feel worthless but never said a word about it. One day, during a week end, Roshan was working at home, he was stuck at a point in a computer language program he was working with. Tara who noticed this, came and saw that this programming language was one among her expertise and came forward to help. Roshan felt intimidated, he looked at her and said “How can you an outdated computer engineer and a stay at home parent help me?” Tara was taken aback. She always helped her neighbour kids in learning computer programming but never thought her own husband looked down upon her so much.
Tara was all tears but never showed it to Roshan. To what Tara had noticed, Roshan had not found a sollution to it but was egoistic not to ask for Taras help. She let it sink in too.
How many such Taras live among us? Have you ever wondered? Being a stay at home parent is the most mentally and physically stressing job in the world. This job gets no remuneration or appreciation for the efforts taken, the efforts taken will never be visually realized, there is no time limit or break, the work stacks up irrespective of the efforts made, close to no one helps as they realize the work never gets over with; but above every feature, the underlining feature to this job is that it uderestimates and brings down your value to others despite being the most effortful and rewardless job.
Husbands do have allot of tensions upon them as the responsibility of the entire family falls on them. They do earn the bread and so while they compaint about their annoying bosses, tranform themselves into a much more annoying boss to their wives. Like how their bosses dont see their irritations and pain, neither they see their wives’ irritations and pain. May be its a pscycological circle. The office bosses the husbands , the husbands bosses the wives, the wives bosses the kids and the broken kids continue the circle while the grow up.
I truely hope one day, the world see humans as individuals and not what we are assigned or not what we do. I hope there comes a day when efforts are appreciated as easily as criticisms are voiced. May be someday, rewards will not be the basis of being judged and efforts will be what is counted. That would be a day when many wrongs, happening today will initiate to correct itself because negetivity also starts at home.
Chanjals World 