The "HER" Trap

She is a woman’s greatest ally as well as her greatest irritant…

An average woman must be spending about 1/10th  of her life worrying about ‘her’

Sometimes she waits for ‘her’ more than she waits for her own husband and child…

A woman has nightmares of ‘her’ disappearances…

She bears ‘her’ tantrums and substitutes ‘her’ with great effort

Welcome to the World of ‘HER’

That’s the term I prefer to use for I don’t want to risk the consequences of doing without ‘her’ if she ever lays her eyes on this post!

The earliest confluence I have ever had with ‘her’ is known to me through the story shared by my mother. ‘She’ was assigned the task of taking care of me (when I was six months old) while my mother was away in office. So Madam- ‘She’ used to take me out for a stroll in the evenings to a beautiful garden nearby…The slight jerk that shocked my mother and drove her to remove ‘her’ from services is that this beautiful garden was located right in the middle of a crematorium near our locality!!!

Now, as a married woman and a mother, I have many of ‘her’ s who form an inevitable part of my life. In fact it is ridiculous to note that we have 6 of ‘hers’ for a family size of 5.5 members! Before you start picturing us as lazy bums, let me clarify the jds of each of them. We have one who cooks in the evening, one for rotis in the morning, one who washes the utensils and dries the machine washed clothes, one for sweeping & mopping the rooms, one to take care of my son in my absence and last but not the least, one who is an all-rounder for sundry work but mainly a stand-by!

So my mother in law & I are pure managers of all these ‘hers’. A perfect day for us would be when all 6 of ‘them’ come to work on their designated time, complete all given work and leave without talking about leave , early leaving, half days, long leave, late coming, probable sickness, guests at home etc  for the next day!! However, life is not all that simple, so out of 30 days, there are not more than 5-6 perfect days for us….Then comes the long wait, frustration, anger, disappointment, helplessness and all such emotions! The frustration comes not out of laziness but the fact that they have the capacity to take us for a ride and that too so often!

During the perfect days also, we are constantly threatened with their incessant mobile chats, peering eyes, unwanted opinions and fear of house talk turning into town gossip! And God forbid if you are trying to instruct ‘her’ to do a particular thing in a specific way, ‘she’ will give so much gyaan that you end up feeling that it would be a saving grace if you had done that  task all by yourself!

I know you have started believing that both of us are lazy women having an over dependence on ‘hers’. But this is my sincere attempt to defend your contention… My mother in law is an excellent cook and I can manage to do all cleanliness jobs with rquired perfection. Our sweet husbands can help us with the rest! However, the point I am trying to make is that we all have our share of ‘work’ in a day and hence we have appointed these ‘hers’ to take care of other things so that we can take a breather! And why not, when we can afford it!

I cannot help but imagine if I were to behave like one of ‘her’ in my office; I am sure I would be issued a pink slip! But before that I would turn pink or for that matter even  red in the face due to the great personal blow to my ego when I would have to hear my boss’s taunts for my irregularity; but I can never stop wondering about how powerful these ‘hers’ are when it comes to job security and thick skinned-ness!

Before you think you are not in ‘her’ trap, think again…your mind is already calculating…how many times ‘she’ has taken you for a ride?