Re-assured!

Well, some days back I thought I was going to die. Yes, I have a tendency for hyperbole. For instance, when K says he has reached the coach station, which is a 10 minutes away from our home and he does not reach within 8 minutes which is the time he should take by virtue of his long legs, I imagine the worse. I imagine he has been hit by a vehicle on the way and taken to the hospital and the good people who took him there are unable to find my number, hence they are unable to call me. I know sounds morbid and you would not want to be in my head. What actually happens is - he takes a detour to the fried chicken corner and has a date with some fried wings! Yesterday for instance, K went to escort the man who was about to deliver our grocery. It would take 10 minutes tops again to fetch him 2 floors below. K took way long yesterday. And my khurafaati (sorry cant translate that word into its quintessence in English... say creative :D ) mind started thinking all sorts. I imagined there was a heavy load which the guy asked K to carry since he had to rush to his next delivery and K being the goody two shoes agreed. But the bags burst open and all the pulses and grains and pastas were strewn all over the floor. Even the milk bottle ended up having a hole with the liquid oozing on. The reality was, the delivery man and K were standing on opposite ends of the building and took a while to find each other :|

Coming back to the point - I thought I was going to die. We went to a kid's play area last Saturday. Technically its a kid's play area, but parents have to follow them. So I had to follow her, get on rides, slides and what not. Not that I did not enjoy it ;) After we came back from the park, my back was hurting a bit. I thought it might have been the general running around. So a good round of menthol balm and a hot pack seemed to make me feel better. Next day the pain seemed a bit worse. The next day, I felt really stiff. The following night, I was stuck in one position. I could not move, bend, turn sides. I had to wake up K to give me a hand so that I could turn around and get up. It was excruciatingly painful. My creative juices started flowing. I was sure I had a slipped disc or a fracture (I was ruling out fracture because if you have one, it is agonising and any sort of movement is impossible) So I had a bad back condition which would need an operation of sorts. That would keep me away from my husband and kid. And worse still I would not recuperate and my condition would worsen and I would eventually.....meet my end.)Ridiculous - I know. But what to do reading all those books has given me a very active imagination. We gave a call to the emergency health services who directed me to an out of hours surgery. Since the kid was sleeping K stayed home while I took a cab. The cab driver noticed me get in very awkwardly into the car, so he asked if there was something wrong with my back. I said 'yes, it seems to have some problem and I am in acute pain'. He said with utter confidence ' ah! You know what! Sometimes these muscles get on top of each other. I had it once and was feeling as if I was about to die! But don't worry they will give you codamol which is a very good pain killer and you will feel better!' I was very glad to meet someone with my own imagination! Even he thought he was going to die! It was some relief to get some reassurance from someone even if he was not a doctor. 

I met the doctor who seemed groggy and eager to dismiss me. He did a urine test and ascertained there was no problem with the kidneys. Prescribed codamol and sent me home! If it was not for the cab driver I would have thought I was just royally ignored by the doctor. But thank God for that man whom I can never man meet to thank :(

Bluntly speaking - all the generalisation about working/Staying at home

Last month there were 2 popular forwards doing their rounds on Facebook. I take all the forwards on any social networking site with a pinch of salt. They are much to my amusement only. But these 2 - apart from amusing me, also angered me.

One of them was about Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO stating 'Choosing a partner is the most important career-decision a woman can make'. The second was about a post by a dad stating that he could not afford his Stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) wife, because her contributions were monetarily superseding his earnings. Predictably the former forward was most happily posted by working women and the latter by SAHM moms! 

The pattern, the generalisation, the whole tone of the both the articles angered me (I am not sure how much truth the articles hold) . And I have got to get it out.

First let me tackle my own kind - the working women. I think they are being supremely narrow minded when they are setting the be-all and end-all of their career as their husband. Yes husband's are important. There is nothing more gracious than a husband who shares house work, since the woman is sharing the accounts. But then is the husband the responsible party for the woman's career?! That is what is technically called a Single Point of Failure. So if we ascertain the single point of failure as the husband, flipping the reasoning, he would be the single point of success as well. How many women would be ok to give the credit of all their success - career wise - to their husband? Guess very few! We would love to take some accolade for our drive, motivation, hard work. If that works for a successful one, that works for every one. Women themselves are solely responsible for their careers. Children, family, husband - all play a role. Then it depends how we handle , or want to handle each of them. When my child was unhappy at daycare, I was on the verge of quitting. Something stopped me, and today both she and I are doing good. Had I quit, things would have panned out differently, but that would have been because of how I handled things. I can assure, my husband would have supported me either way. It was my call.

Another angle of it is most women are considering scenarios of the present generation only. I am a third generation working woman. My grandmothers used to work too! I have many grand-aunts who used to work. All my aunts work. I have seen many situations where they faced opposition from husbands, in laws - what is the need to work? Those were not the days of insatiable wants. But they worked - to improve their overall state, to engage in something fulfilling. They ended up etching a career for themselves and getting the approvals of dissidents. Where there is a will there is a way. It is very easy to pin everything on a single person. And everyone loves a scape-goat! 

Now for the cost of not being able to afford a SAHM. I have not heard anything more ludicrous than this! Attaching a monetary value for a mom feeding, giving bath, ensuring naps, changing diapers, et al. First of all, if the dad should get a fact correct - you attach a value to an economic service.  Parenting is not an economic service. If it was taken at that, you would need to attach a value to the first trimester of nausea, the second of bloated-ness and the third trimester of sleepless-ness and general discomfort. And pray do not ask me the price of enduring labour, or going through the recovery of a Cesarean section. Mind you - woman do lose their lives in child birth. I am sure if this dad accounted all that costs - that would have been an effective contraception against any progeny. 

What a SAHM does, is on her own volition. Adding it up - it is a voluntary activity. There is no price attached to a voluntary activity. If it is involuntary, which means, she was not fit for a job market, then again, she had no scope in engaging in any lucrative economic activity anyway. (I  know that sounds harsh!) It is fool hardy to attach a monetary value for child care activities - be it by a working woman or SAHM. It is ok to attach it to a child care worker, since he/she is enabling someone else to earn(i.e. the mother) - by producing goods or services. Hence they are a secondary service in their own regard.

Leaving the solid economic concept line,  I feel you cannot attach a price tag on everything. Can we attach a price to what our parents did for us? Can we attach a price on the worry our grandparents feel if they hear we are travelling and have not called back in the past 2 hours? Can we attach a price on the satisfaction on helping a stranger find the way, offering a seat to an elderly, letting a lady with a screaming child ahead in the queue? If we can, then am afraid all hope is lost for humanity!  

Well.... these are entirely my opinion, and I would love a healthy argument on either stems. But nothing emotional about it - I would love purely analytic arguments please :)