Choose your battles

As published in Adyar Times July 5 - 11, 2020 Edition

Most of us are working from homes and in many families, both spouses are working from home. With the whole family at home, the onus to prepare breakfast, lunch, tiffin and dinner has fallen on the shoulders of the house chefs - women in most houses.

Time flies anyways.. while you are cooking, you suddenly realise that it’s time for a meeting, and while you are in a meeting, you are prodded by your child with a grumbling stomach. You thus end up requesting your spouse to take care of the scenario while you desperately hope that your meeting ends in 5 mins... but it unfortunately drags on for the next 50 mins.

Credit must be given to the men who pitch in even though they have never been in the kitchen. However it is still a woman’s task to know where to hit the hammer - know what job you can give your better half.

And I learnt this lesson the really hard way! Once the poor chellam- my other half, out of excitement, wanted to make vadais. A spoonful of asafoetida in the dough and a puppy-face staring at the hot oil, forced ME to rectify the dough and finally make it. Another day, he forgot to oil the tava before pouring the first dosa batter.

Result: I was called in to scrap it out. The bond between the dosa and the tava was, however, inseparable, despite my hard scraping. I had to drown the tava in water to separate them.

Lesson: Rather than spending time in correcting, do it the correct way yourself in the first place.

Ask any woman and she would agree that cooking is the easier part; it is the preparation and cleaning which is difficult. It is OK to be selfish sometimes. So keep the best part to yourself - Cook. Delegate what is difficult, to make your life easier, like washing dishes, grinding, sweeping etc. else, you will end up doing all.

Your company is already issuing instructions on your work. Added to that you don’t want to be spending time giving instructions from your desk on what to do in the kitchen. As it is said: Choose your battles. Correct?