“COVID has been particularly unkind to me. I stay with my in-laws and we stopped the entry of maids, ordering food, going out etc early on in March. It’s been two months now, and I have been working relentlessly to keep things moving smoothly—cleaning, cooking, teaching my 8-year-old son and more. But the inflow of expectations and demands is constant too. While my in-laws prefer simple food, my husband and son want non-vegetarian to be cooked, so single-handedly I am sometimes cooking two different dishes for the same meal; This is just an example, but I have started to feel the pressure now...I don’t want to enter the kitchen anymore, I don’t want to talk to anyone anymore, I don’t want to take a bath for days; I just want to lie on my bed and shut the world out like it’s a bad dream from which I will wake up soon. I break down and cry at the slightest of provocation. My mind is never relaxed. Even during eating, I am thinking what next and many a times, I end up biting my tongue unconsciously due to the stress and have blisters on it. I can’t deal with it anymore,” says Shikha Agarwal, home maker, Gurgaon.

A woman is one of the most undervalued but overworked, self-torturing, important yet unseen worker during this lockdown. She is doing the chores of a domestic help, a mother, a manager, a teacher, a wife, a daughter, a daughter-in-law all together and focussing more on her as a woman than a human being! 

Cleaning the house, washing the dishes, making the meals, looking after the kids, and the elders, managing the household groceries and supplies during the strict lockdown, getting the essentials by stepping out of the house into the vulnerable environment, making sure she's sanitised when she comes back home… the list of duties here is ceaseless and yet she keeps on doing it with zero pay and zero holidays.

But what breaks this strong creature is when her own worries are treated as over reaction or she  is asked to ignore and move on.

Like with Shikha, the breaking point came when, “I was feeling as if a sound machine is constantly on in my head, telling me this and that, going at an unimaginable speed and not letting me focus or rest on one thought. Also the instances of careless injuries was increasing. Every other day I was hurting myself in simple things; closing the door on my hand while dusting, scorching my hands on the hot tawa while making rotis—jobs in which I am a pro and there should be no scope  of injuries. I finally spoke to Lalit, my husband about  it. He said that I was over-reacting, that it was  nothing, that I should look at him for inspiration that he  is working from morning 9:00-6:00 at the laptop, that I should firm up and do my duties, that my mother-in-law is achieving much more than me even in her old age, and that all this  mental stress talk is hogwash and the more I talk about it, the more I will psyche myself, and that I should put it aside and go make him a nice glass of ice-tea.

Something snapped in my mind at that point.

I realised the worthless of it all, the worthless of me, and the fact that putting everyone over my mental health is the stupidest thing I was doing and I would be a fool to continue doing that. When people think that my mental stress is a creation of my fantasy, then I need to stand up and take care of myself, since no one else will.”

 Like with Shikha, women are not giving enough time to themselves. All her self-care and indulges have been put aside in favour of attending to others needs, whims and fancies. After preparing the good meal, she rarely eats along with the rest because she wants to serve everyone hot and fresh rotis or parathas. She hurriedly eats meals rarely even relishing each morsel because she is constantly thinking of 'what next' in her task list. And that list is never ending.

Shikha decided to take care of herself; her husband’s disparaging remarks brought her back with a jolt into reality where she was serving everyone’s need but no one was looking after hers. No one attempted to cook her favourite dish anyday; no one served her a hot roti; no one asked her to retire early to bed and leave the utensils to them; she did not wake up anyday to a kitchen or house cleaned by someone else; no one said to her

“You take a break. I will do the chores today.”