Believe it or not, most of my teenage life until I got married, I dreamt of being an ideal house wife. I was dating my now husband for 11 years and getting married to him was my only goal. While that must have been my goal I was still working and adapting new skills thinking what if someday I want to do something from the comfort of my home. So, I enrolled myself into graphic designing classes during court lunch breaks attended food photography and styling workshop during weekends.

Once my then life’s goal was achieved, I stayed at home like a diligent house wife for 6-8 months. I noticed that fortunately nor my husband neither were my in laws were expecting me to just stay at home and serve them. One fine day I reached to the brim of nothingness and thought “what the hell am I doing”; I noticed that I was blessed with the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do and sitting idle was an absolute waste of my abilities. I tried a few things like doing a full-fledged course on social media marketing, tried my stint as a professional food photographer and food stylists but eventually went back to practicing as a lawyer like I was before getting married. I was working till the day I delivered my baby, I remember finishing a legal notice on my way to the hospital.

While I realize it is a privilege for us as women to be capable of playing so many powerful roles in one life time, I hate the fact that we need to put our lives on hold around every milestone in our lives and change our tracks. Think of it this way, you are passionate about something and decide to execute it with all your heart and soul. You’ve done all your research put all the hard work and its execution day but you are interrupted every 2 hours and post every two hours you have to look for a new track to work on. Would it break your rhythm? Would you get irritated and want to give up? But every time you want to give up you also have to stand right up without even complaining about it because if you do complain you fear of being considered weak. 

My dream of becoming a house wife came to reality once I delivered my baby and had to stay confined within four walls of the house day and night for a really long stretch of time. I got into some real responsibilities for the first time in my life and there was no escaping now. I could not get in and out of the house on my whims and wishes. Staying at home and getting submerged in this life I couldn’t help but notice the kind of lives home makers in our country have been living since ages. Its no joke when you read those posts on Instagram stating that being a home maker or a mother is a thankless 24 x 7 unpaid job that has no start time and end time. The only time you are off duty is when you are asleep in the night for those six to eight hours.

Lets take an insight into an everyday life of an Indian housewife:

Its bed time, everyone is asleep and she is struggling between taking some time for herself and soaking in the peace when no one needs her and all the chores for the day are done. She has prepped everything that needs to be prepped for the next day and is so exhausted that even if she wants to stay awake she cannot because her body just cannot take it anymore. She eventually falls asleep fearing that if she stays up until late she wont be able to wake up before everyone else in the house due to which she won’t be able to take her bath peacefully or have her morning coffee in peace or have those 10 minutes for herself when she wants to consciously close her eyes and start her morning on a calmer note rather than being late to everything since the moment she is awake. It’s a luxury I tell you. So she finally sleeps after all that articulation.

She has woken up on time the next day, could get ready on time and was fortunate enough to get those peaceful ten minutes to herself before starting her day full of chores. She is now on duty to welcome the house help, conquering her instilled fear of the help not turning up, direct them for what is to be done, get the baby or babies ready for school. Prep for breakfast or give directions (which let me tell you needs a lot of thinking and prepping too) leave the baby at school. Now she has a few hours to herself where she has to either do something for her self or again tend to regular household chores, family members plan lunch or prep lunch. House has to be cleaned, clothes have to be washed and mind you there is a system to wash clothes you don’t just throw them in a washing machine. She has to check if something needs to be fixed at home, if she needs to call someone, if somethings need to be ordered, etc. House helps are her best friends who have actually seen her go through thick and thin all alone, most of the times with their help and some without them. They have remotely seen her break down and stand up every single day. Sometimes she has cried with them and sometimes she has cried because of them. They play a major role in her life because most of her days and daily activities depend on the fact that will her house help be turning to work or not.  Within no time those few hours are over and she has to get back the baby from school, everything has to be planned within that time frame. Do you get the anxiety yet? No? watch Masterchef and notice how you feel when the final countdown is happening and the contestant is no where near finishing the dish.

She has the fed the baby, etc put him to his nap and now has some 1-2 hours to herself again and she can either decide to take rest and gather some strength for the rest of the day or finish her pending tasks. Its always one at the cost of the other, never both. Then there is lunch, post lunch cleanup, getting the kitchen ready for dinner, play time with baby or school homework lined up, then dinner and again dinner cleanup, prep for next day’s school breakfast etc. It’s a vicious circle and its monotony can give one a brain freeze eventually leading to depression.

I have not even touched upon the mental load of living in joint families yet where the daughter in law, suddenly the day after getting married is considered the sole caregiver of all the family members whether young or old, the one who has a magic wand and is considered to fix everything (including scarred relationships) in the house that has been broken forever. She is their ray of hope who is going to fix everything magically. Her life is confined within those four walls of her house which has been her sanctuary, that said most women in a joint family setup are reminded time and again that this sanctuary to which she has given her all is not hers to begin with. She came here from her Mother’s house and now lives in her Mother in law’s house.

So many husbands are still coming home and telling their wives they had a really long tiring day simply to give their families the comfort of sitting at home peacefully and want them to be thankful for it. So many of them are really used to the fact that women are meant to be at the mercy of men, even today. I really want to ask some of them who can keep their ego aside and answer me honestly. The fact that no man’s freedom or ability to do something for themselves depends of any other circumstances or availability of someone to look after their house wherein a made-up bed with clean bedsheet is waiting for them to come back and sleep peacefully to is a privilege they have been blessed with simply by taking birth as Indian men. Working for yourself or doing something for yourself has been given to you as a right that in no circumstances you can give up or would be willing to at the time of someone’s birth or death. No matter what three days later you are officially allowed to resume work because why not! I am going to ask 10 working women even in 2025 can they simply get up the next day and go to work without the guilt of being a women who is doing something out of the box simply by going to work? I don’t think so. Can you as a man schedule your gym session the next day without thinking of a possibility that you reaching the gym or not depends on if the help is going to turn up or if there will be someone to look after the baby? If you do reach the gym do you keep checking your phone time and again if someone from the baby’s school has called and the baby is having some trouble or will you have to tend to something at home and reschedule your session to some other day? No right? Its just so simple? You told your trainer that you’ll be at the gym tomorrow at 9am and you will be. You might not turn up mostly because you just slept for an extra hour because the baby threw extra tantrums today morning which disrupted your sleep.  Even if you can justify yourself with a hundred things you will never be able to beat us on the fact that we have always been told that our Mother’s house is not our permanent house and we have to get married and leave one day and fulfill all our dreams with our husband in his house, which again is not our house. And it is our fate that will allow us to do anything for us if in case we are fortunate enough to get open minded or forward thinking in-laws. Remember Farhan Akhtar in Dil dhadakne do “tumne allow kiya? Tumhe allow karne ki zarurat kyu padhi?” I felt it then and I feel it now. Many woman who want to do something for themselves are forced to not do it and then become entirely dependent on their husbands for every little thing. It is the husband’s who decide the weekly outing and if they can go or not because they must have had a hard week and want to spend a Sunday at home with their wives doing exactly what she did the entire week or maybe even more to serve her husband with something special on that day. I am not saying that’s wrong but why does it take an article for you to think that the women have to be taken out of the monotony too from her job? And that shouldn’t depend on her husband’s mood? It should simply be her right and choice. Why is this a topic of discussion between every husband and wife where the husband says “har weekend ghumane le jaata hu?”

You may think of this as just another feminist blog but my whole point of writing about all this is for all of us including women to be more empathetic to each other and not just sympathize with each other saying that “hum ladkiyo ki zindagi toh aisi hi hai” but always and with every given chance encourage a home maker to do something for herself no matter how big or small it is. Something that makes her rise every single day from this monotony, something that makes her proud of herself everyday she looks in the mirror. We need to stop asking girls to quit their everything like they are supposed to and join family business. We all know what that means “ek do din karegi aur fir chod degi”. Being a homemaker is hard and it will always be. That’s the kind of job it is. It makes one feel lonely and lost. As humans we are not meant to sit and one place and use all our energy there. It is the society that has led a section of us to think of it that way. Don’t let that be you. I in no way mean that every woman should be working or earning money and if you don’t then you are anything by less than a working woman. In my personal opinion working as a professional is so much easier than being a homemaker. I salute all of them who are really happy being one. I simply mean that every Indian woman should do something for themselves and for the other family members to encourage them to do it not like they are doing her a favor and gives you a tag of being the best husband or the best inlaws with a “wah kitne forward hai na” waala tag. It can be pursuing a hobby, it can be exercising, it can be starting a small business from home. If you ever catch yourself asking a woman to shut up and sit home and “jitna tu yeh karke kamalegi utna main ghar baithe deta hu” know that you are committing a crime, you are killing someone’s hopes and dreams.

This is the real change we need to see today starting from every single house and we need us to act on it. Not just share some posts on Instagram. Start today and start from your home and may be just go home and ask your wife or mother did they every wanted to pursue something and couldn’t because there was guilt attached or because they couldn’t because the circumstances at home did not allow them to? May be stay at home with your baby and let her go gym in peace by pushing your wife/mother to go like its her right and not like you are doing her a favor and then find a way wherein you can make it happen for her every single day. Trust me by doing this you are giving them an additional day of their life and it will mean so much to them and you never know we might just see really, really happy and healthy house wives within our families.