Working and Sulking from Home - Shivani Mohan (LIFE) / Khaleej Times 1 June 2011

I work from home. I have a virtual office and 35 colleagues located all over the world forming a highly competitive and aggressive sales team of an International enterprise, constantly in touch through the internet, providing real time communication solutions to our clients’ queries on any regular 8-10 hour work day. I have had different jobs in the past including some very demanding, high pressure ones with gruelling, long hours. But ever since my daughter was born I wanted to be around to see her grow while also being fruitfully employed and, therefore, went for the work-from-home option. But the experience is not devoid of downsides. It all started around six years back when I started writing content for websites. A friend advised early on, “The only way you can do this is to get ready first thing in the morning as if you’re actually going off to work and completely detach yourself from the rest of the house for your working hours.” Ha! If only it was that easy. I designed my office space with care, getting officious grey curtains, bullying my husband into gifting me one of those power chairs. I trained the cook to prepare the family favourites almost unsupervised. I would type out a weekly food-chart, print out and stick it on the refrigerator for him to refer to. Yes, after years I could finally say ‘Life’s Good!’ But sitting for hours in front of a computer alone? Any regular Indian family resists this type of reclusive behaviour tooth and nail. I remember once mom came visiting and like moms all over the world, my mom has a truckload full of free, unsolicited advice. She saw my routine and soon everything that was not perfect in our house right from my weight gain to my daughter who at two had still not started speaking, to any untidy spots were blamed on my sitting for long on the computer. One day she even asked, “Is everything alright? It worries me that you keep sitting alone in that room with that computer.” I said emphatically, “But that is what writers are supposed to do, mom, sit alone in rooms and brainstorm and confabulate and conceptualise!” “But your daughter is almost two and a half and still on diapers. I had you both toilet-trained at one!” “Mom, just leave me alone, will you? Please keep yourself busy and concentrate on something other than me, puhlease. Go read ‘A Room of Her Own’ by Virginia Woolf. Good read for you, yeah!” Now that I am doing substantially more than writing little articles in my free time I still face the music of being a work-from-home wonder. At social dos when groups of friends are being introduced I often go through the grind. “Oh! Meet Kalpana, she is a doctor. This is Rita, she is a lecturer; Sheila, a hip shaker at large and this is Shivani, she…err works from home,” they invariably mumble the last bit. I can see them conjuring images of me as an ailing housewife from the B&W era of Hindi movies toiling away at a Singer sewing machine, stitching sad little frocks to make both ends meet with some intermittent coughing thrown in. There are phases when nothing can keep you away from the domestic tedium. Days when the cook’s absconding, we’re expecting people over for dinner, the power is down, the net is intermittent and the kid’s running fever. I feel like a split personality, forever walking the tight rope between professional demands and domestic chores. I begin to understand why some mythical Indian Goddesses had eight set of arms flailing behind them. Wish I could borrow a few desperately. I huff to the kitchen grumbling something about my deadlines and targets. But there are win-win days too. There are days when I take my laptop into bed propping it on one of those cute, bed tables wearing a comfy, old T-shirt and track pants. There’s soft music playing in the background, the aroma of a heavenly curry wafting in from the kitchen as I caress my little angel sleeping peacefully next to me-no traffic snarls, no grease paint required, no office politics, no fuss. Yes, I may miss the water cooler gossip at times but heck, what are facebook and twitter for anyway! Shivani Mohan is an India- based writer.  For comments, write to  opinion@khaleejtimes.com