SUNDAY

SUNDAY

Yes! It’s finally a Sunday. After a whole week, I finally have a day to myself. Lucky are those who work 5 days a week… I am not amongst those. I work 6 days a week. But on Saturday evening, when I get ready to come out of office, I feel like going to the top of the mountains and to shout, “I finally have a day to myself… it’s a holiday”. “Holidays”, a word that seemed like a punishment when I was in school, now sound like a blessing from the Gods.  Sometimes it feels like I wait for the whole week so that I can have a Sunday.  Waiting for it, gives me the necessary hope that I can spend the week.

What I do on a Sunday? Well you must be kidding! I will do what everybody does! Eat, sleep and relax. Duh!  I am a bit lucky since I stay at home. I mean I don’t stay at a far off city. So Sunday means, mom will cook delicious things. I can sleep lazily all day and I will wake up to the aroma of tasty, mouth watering food.

I never use an alarm clock to wake up on weekdays. Mama does that work for me. She knows I am not an early bird. So she wakes me up precisely 45minutes before my time to leave for work. I wake up, then sleep, she becomes my “snooze” (yes! i don’t have to worry about that too) and wakes me up after 10 minutes. I rush to the bathroom, take a quick shower and then the breakfast awaits me. By then, mama has already packed my lunch (I don’t like outside food. And home food keeps me from adding more fat to the fat reservoir of my body). We have breakfast together, and then we leave. I drop her off at her workplace and then move to my workplace.

She comes home an hour earlier than me. by the time I reach home, I am tired as hell. I watch tv, listen to some music, surf the net, have my dinner and then go of to sleep.

This is most probably the routine of every person my age. But starting this week, I have a problem.  My mom has been transferred to another city. That meant. It’s me and papa now. No worries! We can handle things.  

On the first day she is away, I wake up 30 minutes late. There is no breakfast waiting for me. I reach office an hour late, with no breakfast and no lunch box. When I reach home in the evening, I find myself alone. I have to cook dinner, but I am so tired. Anyway one has to do what one has to do. I like cooking. I cook, papa returns, we have dinner. But after that? I have to do the dishes, clean the kitchen and then I go off to bed. I sleep like the dead. But not before I set the alarm. 

The next morning I wake up groggy. I do my work, make breakfast (yesterday papa also went on an empty stomach) and then the cycle continues. Everyday I sleep like the dead, I don’t have energy to do anything anymore. Neither I watch tv, nor I read anything, nor I talk to friends… in short I do nothing for myself. Even on a Sunday I have to do all these work. And to add on top of that, we have guests. The very guests who seemed like a basket full of fun, now seems like a burden.

I call up my mom, “Houston! We have a problem”

My mom laughs. Listens to me while I whine on the phone for 20 minutes that I can’t handle all of these.  She talks to papa and asks him to help me as much as he can. After I talk to her, I sit and realize, how did mom do all of this?

Never did she complain. And she did all that so smoothly. Not a speck of dust anywhere, and I find it difficult even to change my sheets.  We both had 24 hours. I don’t find time to do anything, but she did. Even on a Sunday, she was expected to make “delicious” things for us. She did that happily.

She is 56 and I am 23. Technically I should be bouncing with energy and she should be the one taking rest. Is anything wrong with me?  Is she some kind of a superwoman?  Yes! a Superwoman she is.  She is the Superwoman of my family.

She has been working day and night, night and day, since the day she married, without a holiday. In fact on holidays, her workload increases. Thousands of words are written praising mothers, “liking” statuses, “sharing “ quotes on how we appreciate our moms. Not once we stop and think, “how about I give her a holiday instead of praising her on facebook?”

Not everyone in this world enjoys a holiday.

This piece of writing is NOT DEDICATED TO MY MOM. Rather, it’s a request to all the people who are reading it, for once, go to your mom and say, ”Mom, why don’t you take a day off, I will do all your work today. From morning to evening, have a day to yourself “ and I tell you, at the end of that day, you will go to bed satisfied that this was one of the best days of your life.

And amongst my readers, if at all there are any mothers, know in your heart that you are a real Superwoman.