April 1, 2004

Arifa Jamil writes about how busy lives can play havoc with personal growth and how the ability to take time out and engage in feel good activities is extremely essential to maintain a healthy balance

Sadia, 35, is a mother of three boys aged eight, six and three. Her normal day’s routine consists of waking up for fajr prayers and then getting her children ready for school, and sending her husband off to work. She drives the youngest to his nursery school as he’s still having problems adjusting, while her husband drops the two older children.

Once she’s back home, she dives into household chores and supervises her domestic staff who she says show varying degrees of incompetence. By noon, she’s dying for a bit of shut-eye, but her youngest returns home, and then she prepares for the second shift, which is supervising her sons’ lunch and then an array of activities for them. She naps for an hour in the late afternoon, after which she spends time with her sons helping them with their homework and doing other odd jobs around the house.

Her husband returns by seven and if they don’t have a social engagement, they spend the evening at home in which case Sadia has to ensure that her children are in bed by nine at the latest. By 10 pm she is exhausted and ready to call it a day, but three times a week, she and her husband go to visit his parents who live close by. Sadia never sleeps before midnight, and if she has to socialize she doesn’t make it to bed before 2 am. Sometimes she thinks she will collapse from the fatigue.

Does this sound familiar to the many busy stay-at-home mothers whose lives seem chaotic? When TR first approached people for a story on chaotic lives, we found that by and large more women are suffering from exhaustion and have let themselves go as a result — not finding the time to exercise, get a haircut, or indulge in any ‘feel good’ activities.

However, we also ran into men, busy husbands and fathers, who due to intense work pressures are finding it difficult to get any kind of quality time for themselves. It seems that busy schedules — be it at home or at work — are responsible for people being unable to take care of themselves as they’d like to do. These are some of the stories.

When Farhana, 34, and her husband, Omar, 40, decided to move back to Pakistan from the US with their three children, aged 10, eight and five, Farhana was delighted. “I felt like a glorified servant living in Houston, driving my children around from one activity to another, doing all the chores on my own and so forth. I had notions of a glamorous life in Karachi with lots of domestic staff at my beck and call, but boy was I wrong.”

Farhana finds that the very things she was looking most forward to doing — spending time with friends and family, getting back into shape, and looking decent rather than frumpy — have been impossible to do. “In the first six months of moving back, I went through a string of cooks, maids, drivers, dhobis etc. It’s been about 14 months now and it’s the same story. The one thing that was supposed to relieve me from tension (domestic staff) has become the one thing that is driving me crazy.”

Farhana says that she now spends her entire day scheduling events around her staff. She can’t leave the house when her cleaning lady is there because in the past she had things stolen and has become “paranoid”. If the cleaning lady doesn’t show (“a common occurrence” she says), she has to stay at home and do it herself. In fact, despite a large domestic staff, Farhana finds that she has to supervise because if she doesn’t, none of the work gets done. “I’m tense all the time because of their laziness and inability to follow simple instructions.”

Despite having a driver, Farhana carts her children around from school to extra-curricular activities and their friends. “I laugh when I say this, but my life really does revolve around my driver and his schedule. Between their pick and drop schedule, and my husband’s, the only luxury I have is to go shopping and get my hair coloured once a month. My socializing too is limited to family-oriented events and I really miss my life in Houston. It was crazy there, but I was able to find time to go swimming and get facials or just hang out at the mall. I really don’t know where my time goes here.”

Omar says that he too feels that his life is more chaotic here than it was in Houston. When he was living in the US, he still managed to participate in his son’s sports activities as he helped out in coaching his son’s softball team. “I’m lucky if I get to attend the parent-teacher activities because I rarely get out of the office before 8 pm,” he says.

In the 14 months since he has been back, Omar says that Farhana and he have only gone out twice for a meal by themselves, whereas in the US, they managed to dine alone twice a month, despite their busy lives and no live-in help.

“We would just arrange for a babysitter,” he says. “And here despite live-in help, Farhana is reluctant to leave the kids alone, and she is always so tired that we only socialize at other people’s homes.” Omar also says that he’s gained about 10 lbs since they moved back, because he doesn’t have time to go to the gym. Surprisingly, neither are upset about their decision to return, but they do miss their independent lives in the US.

It’s not just married men and women who find it difficult to take control of their lives. Amna, 28, works a 10-hour shift on average in the electronic media, six days a week, and is sometimes expected to go to work on her day off. “Forget going to the gym, I haven’t been able to book an appointment for a desperately needed hair cut,” she says. Before she took on this “crazy job that I love”, Amna was freelancing and was able to go to her aerobics class regularly, she could shop for clothes for hours on end, took care of her face and hair, and spent ample time with her friends. But freelancing didn’t pay as well so she started working full time and that’s all she does now.

Amna, by her own confession, gave a lot of importance to personal grooming, always making sure she was well dressed and accessorized. “I used to spend about half an hour getting dressed before going out,” she says. “Now my mother makes my shalwar kameezes and it takes me 10 minutes to get ready. It’s not that I don’t care anymore. Sometimes it bugs me that I look so frumpy and tired, but I work in a very competitive field, and personal grooming has had to take a backseat. It helps that I’m behind the scenes.”

So it’s clear that “time management” related issues, whether at home or at work, play a major role in how people feel about themselves. But in Amna’s case for example, is it as simple as her improving her time management, as a result of which she will feel better about herself?

Amna loves her job and acknowledges that it is competitive. When suggesting that she organize her time better, which would enable her to shop for her own clothes or go to the gym, she says that in order to do so, she’d have to wake up earlier and sleep is more valuable than exercise.

She accepts that while she could go swim at a gym close to her house at seven in the evening, she is uncomfortable swimming with men and the ‘women’s only’ hours clash with her work schedule. “Most women’s hours at gyms centre around housewives and not working women,” she says. As for shopping for clothes, an activity she loved doing, Amna delegates it to her mother unless she has the time to go to Sunday bazaar herself. “But if you work 10 hours a day, six days a week, would you want to go out on your only day off, and that too, to shop?”

Mahwash, 30, a banker, says that she was able to take care of herself better when she had a two-day weekend, but in the last two years, she has started coming in to work on Saturdays, which gives her little time to spend on herself. Mahwash doesn’t regret her social life taking a hit, or not having time to visit art galleries that she previously used to do, but the one thing that Mahwash misses is her exercise routine.

She says that she’s always had problems being overweight, but two years ago she went on a strict diet and began going to the gym, she did yoga and succeeded in losing 25 lbs in six months. However, since she was transferred to another department in the bank, her work load (“and stress load”) has doubled, and she considers herself lucky if she makes it to the gym twice a week, as opposed to her earlier routine of five times a week.

In her own words, she is at a crossroad: her physical well-being is as important as her career. The moment she gets overly stressed, she finds comfort in food. When she gains weight, she gets depressed and her self esteem drops, and she resents her work. “It’s an unending cycle,” she says.

Marium, 26, is in a different dilemma, but one that is causing her much stress. She is getting married in August this year, but it’s not the impending wedding that is causing her sleepless nights. It’s balancing her job and the wedding preparations that are giving her panic attacks.

After getting her law degree last September, Marium joined a law firm six months ago after a gruelling series of interviews, and is determined to succeed in the largely male-dominated traditionalist firm. “My fiance is very supportive of my career goals, and understands that I have to let bridal appointments take a backseat when preparing legal briefs,” she says.

“However, my mother and mother-in-law to be are not so supportive. If either of them had it their way, I’d be sitting at home, choosing jewellery, leafing through bridal magazines, and getting massaged with uptan 24-7 so that I look fantastic on the big day. Of course I care about my wedding day, but I really just don’t have the time for inane activities. My marriage is more important than my wedding.”

Although there is still some time before her wedding, Marium is worried that her bosses will treat her differently if she takes time off for wedding-related things, or when she gets married — so she’s working twice as hard. “It’s a male chauvinistic firm and I know they think women are not responsible like men. I’m not going to let their attitudes get me down.”

She finds herself feeling low sometimes because she’s dealing with subtle hostilities at work and overt tension at home from her mother, but she says her fiance helps her retain her sanity. “I caught myself telling my sister that I just want this wretched wedding over with and felt really guilty for saying it. I really do wish I could involve myself in the planning, but I really can’t get into it because of work.”

TR spoke to a therapist to gauge her views on some of the busy lives quoted in this story, and while she consented to do so, she asked to remain anonymous. “Many of the people whose examples you quote seem to be experiencing varying levels of exhaustion and stress,” she says.

“That’s a no-brainer. Identifying stress is the easy part because everything and anything can be attributed to stress these days, but the tricky part is finding a solution to the problem. A problem running parallel to this stress and exhaustion dilemma is how it affects a person’s self-esteem. The two go hand in hand. One woman turns to food, whereas a man may turn to substance abuse, out of guilt, or anger, or simple frustration. There aren’t any quick fixes but there are simple things to help you cope.”

The therapist speaks highly of effective time management and making out lists to cope with the day better. “We live in fast paced times,” she continues. “Eating healthy meals takes a back seat when you can drive by a fast food joint and pick up burgers for the kids and yourself. Fast food eating is also used as a reward to keep kids quiet in the car.

“I’ve had clients come in and say who has the time to use conditioner in their hair when you can buy shampoo and conditioner in one bottle? We all want to look our very best, but don’t realize that the woman who looks that amazing works at looking that good. You just have to take time out for yourself to feel and look good.”

For example, she encourages busy clients to take 15-minute brisk walks in the garden or around the apartment block. She also encourages women to rope their children into walking with them for those 15 minutes. “Time yourself for 15 minutes and you’ll see how short a period it is. You can then move towards increasing it by five minutes every week until you reach 30 minutes which is good for light exercise. It’s better than nothing.”

She also advises people to do their groceries once or twice a month, planning and buying in bulk to avoid constant runs to the grocery store. Instead of treating children to high sugar food items or junk food, she recommends that mothers switch children over to fruit and other healthy snacks like nuts, which can be bought and stored in bulk in advance.

“People misconstrue spending quality time on themselves as indulging in expensive ‘feel good’ treatments,” says a skin specialist at a beauty salon. “While it’s important to get facials and great hair cuts, you can get the same feeling by taking care of your skin at home if you just don’t have the time. Use that moisturizer at night, use shower gel in the bath. If you don’t have time to wear make-up when you’re stepping out, use kajal to brighten up your eyes, or wear a nude based lipstick to look clean, or wear blusher to give yourself a glow. It literally takes five minutes to look groomed.”

A hair stylist says that she thinks, “The trick is to spend money on a great hair cut that should be easy to maintain and then go back every six weeks for a trim.” She believes that, “Everyone underestimates the therapeutic effects of going to a beauty salon; it is indulgence and it should be seen that way. Even though we all wish it wasn’t, it is a superficial world and first impressions count. I’ve seen women come in looking awful and feeling fabulous just by getting their nails done. If you feel good, you’ll look good.”

A fashion designer talks about keeping your wardrobe simple. “Stick to monochromatic colours if you feel you’re overweight,” says one designer. “If you can’t handle the loud three-piece suit, get the shirt and dupatta and wear it with a white shalwar. When you go shopping, buy in bulk for the season and keep it simple. Don’t go crazy accessorizing with lace and buttons and matching shalwars. I can’t stress enough the need for simplicity. If you’re a working woman, you want to look clean and smart, and not like a Christmas tree.”

The therapist also adds the need for taking time out in other simple forms which includes eating dinner with the family, and switching the phone off, or not watching TV while you eat. “Dinner with the kids every night is important as it gives everyone time to hear about everyone else’s day. Parents get so caught up with taking their children from one activity to another, or pouring over their homework, that they rarely realize that they’re not listening to how their children’s day was. Another thing that is equally important is to read and enjoy this time for yourself. And I urge all married couples to spend half an hour every night talking to each other and unloading.”

While it’s easier said than done, taking time out to feel good about yourself, by indulging in activities that centre around you, will have desirable effects. As some wise sage once said, “don’t knock it before you try it.” n

* Names have been changed for privacy

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