JOIN USHoliday ‘home’ work
Umesh and Viji knew that to save Papa from any further teasing by his office buddies, they had to change things around, quickly.
Last week, with his laptop’s screen facing the doorway of their parent’s bedroom-turned-home office, Papa had walked into his company’s annual strategy meeting in his yellow-and-green striped shorts, with a large packet of banana chips in one hand and tea in the other!
His colleagues on Zoom, all in formal shirts and already seated at their screens, burst out laughing. One of them was quick enough to grab a screenshot of Papa in his crazy shorts and shared it with those who weren’t on that call. Within minutes the memes began!
Umesh turned Papa’s table around so that all the webcam could capture was a wall, against which Viji dragged a rack of books. So whichever colourful lungis or shorts Papa wore while he worked from home, they would not be visible to a Zoom audience.
Keeping Mama’s Zoom screen ‘office-looking’ was harder because she worked out of the kitchen. She’d found that if she tilted her laptop at a particular angle, the webcam caught the upper half of a window and no other kitchen detail. When online classes were going on for Viji and Umesh, one of them sat in their room and the other at the dining table. Now, with holidays on, the same arrangement continued because both siblings were competitive gamers.
Usually, during summer holidays, Umesh stirred up cold juices and milkshakes (mango was his favourite) for everyone. But with the kitchen now Mama’s office, any clattering of dishes and running of mixies was banned once she sat down at her laptop!
Walking back from badminton one hot evening Viji said. “I’ve been thinking it’s not fair that Mama’s still working out of the kitchen now that school is over and we have no class.”
Umesh looked horrified. “Are you saying she moves into our room? She’ll have a heart attack seeing how messy it is!”
Viji continued, “But if she moves to the dining table, then none of our friends can come over, nor can we watch TV…”
She knew the only way to get Umesh’s support was to choose her words carefully. She needed his help — there was no way she could clean up their room on her own! Nor would Umesh ever wake up early during the holidays to make his yummy milkshakes and save them in the fridge.
She said, “So on one side we have this enormous task of cleaning up our room so that Mama can move there and be more comfortable. In exchange for that, I’ll stop feeling guilty every time I walk into the kitchen and see her in that uncomfortable chair, in a corner where there’s no breeze… And you can run up all the juices and shakes you like.”
“Is this actually because you’re missing my yummy, globally-famous shakes but are pretending it’s about Mama?” Umesh retorted with a wicked smile.
“A bit of both,” Viji replied, laughing.
So over two exhausting days, Viji and Umesh cleaned up their room. Clothes that hadn’t been worn were packed up for the domestic worker’s kids. Along with toys, they’d stopped playing with. The raddiwallah got another huge pile of stuff. Umesh marvelled at how many space-occupying ‘things’ he and Viji had accumulated over the months.
After her bath, when Mama headed to the kitchen in officewear to get down to work, she wailed, “Who moved my laptop? Viji… Umesh… if one of you is gaming on it, I’ll… ” She didn’t complete her sentence because Viji sneaked up behind her and put her hand over her mother’s mouth. Turning Mama around, she guided her into their room — now completely unrecognisable. Mama’s laptop was positioned where Viji had been attending online classes.
Mama sank into the comfortable chair, with the fan right above her and the window opened to her left. She hugged her kids and whispered, “So who’s given up on gaming for this?”
Umesh said, “Neither Mama! We’ll time-share on the dining table laptop. And we’ll all have milkshakes at mid-day.”
(Kavitha is a children’s author)
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