Spice of Life : May you always be busy, dad’s blessing in disguise

I’m not alone. There is an entire segment of intelligent, smart women, who have expertise that with the right guidance would be an asset to the working world.

For 18 years, I’ve divided my day between being a homemaker, a full-time mom to two wonderful boys and managing an agri-tourism project with my husband. As years went by and circumstances changed, I found myself being less involved in day-to-day running of the business, which now had a trained team and didn’t seem to need as much time from my side, unlike the nascent years when the working day would merge into night and I was in a constant state of exhaustion and sleep deprivation.

The initial years of the kids settling into a new school and city were a blissful and hectic mix of sports, tuition runs, activities, exams, and some part-time work I had picked up with an educational institution. (Getty Images/Fuse)

A shift in residence and move to a new city to provide a better education for our boys, resulted in my exiting the actual workings of the business operations and before I knew it, I was rapidly gliding towards becoming a full-time homemaker (for a home that was already running efficiently, courtesy my mother-in-law).

The initial years of the kids settling into a new school and city were a blissful and hectic mix of sports, tuition runs, activities, exams, and some part-time work I had picked up with an educational institution. Once too often, when my father would call to just chat about the day, I’d abruptly cut him short with, “Dadda, I’m busy, let’s talk later.” He’d often respond with the same sentence, “May you always be busy, that’s a happy state of affairs.” Those days when the children were younger, more demanding, and life a lot more chaotic, a statement like that would irritate me no end, “No Dadda, I want to have a lot more free time on my hands, I wish my day was not so packed.”

Words that I got to regret at leisure.

As I approach the late 40s, I find myself at a loose end with nothing much to challenge me during the day. The first child has flown the nest and is busy exploring a new world at university, the second one doesn’t seem to need me as much, and time which was earlier a precious commodity is suddenly in abundance. Like a lot of homemakers my age, this is the start of my second innings, we have to reprogramme ourselves to find a productive purpose to the day and our existence. It’s become a lot tougher to re-enter the working arena at this age, the skills I possess seem to have become redundant in a digital world, yet there is a hesitation on my part to learn a new skill set, lest I make a fool of myself in the process.

The desire to become financially independent, to prove my worth to myself, is foremost in my mind, which has led me to try my luck at a couple of business ventures, a few with a humorous outcome and some with a little heartbreak. My interactions with other women who are at my stage and age of life and the realisation dawned that I’m not alone in this turmoil; there is an entire segment of intelligent, smart women, who have expertise that with the right guidance would be an asset to the working world.

Sensing my restlessness, my younger son offered a profound advice, “Mama, so what if you are finding it difficult to find a job, you have a skill in writing, put it to use. Even if no one reads your articles, at least you would have tried, isn’t that what you have always told us?” Taking those simple words to heart, I flipped open my computer after a gap of almost 11 months, the initial one hour was a series of typed out sentences and deletes, till finally I was able to compose a complete paragraph. From there the words flowed effortlessly and now hopefully my father’s blessings are going to hold true for many years to come: May I always be busy.

The writer is a freelance contributor and can be reached at a.jasveen@gmail.com