My Trysts With Life

Scenario 1: Mobile phone in one hand, a random movie playing in the background, the other hand busy breaking the chapatti into pieces.   Scenario 2: Virtual meeting going on, a different (and completely unrelated) Excel or PPT open, with you doing the occasional “hmmm”, or the more professional “yes I agree” every 10 minutes or so. These two and many more such scenarios are part of our daily lives. Through the years we have (tried to)  developed  this special power called as “Multi-Tasking”. The advent of mobile phones, easier internet, and the ever-increasing distance between people (it was there in pre-COVID times!) has made us all  become  expert multi-taskers. Or so we feel. Even with billions of neurons and an unfathomable neural network, the brain can not multi-task. Essentially, the brain “switches” tasks- our brain chooses which information to process. For example, while talking on the phone and working on the computer at the same...

Back to writing and thinking after a very long gap. Thoughts are welcome! I saw a very long post on LinkedIn, where one of my mutual connections had written (with minute details) of how “HE” was playing the second fiddle to his working wife while working from home. According to his post, the guy was doing the dishes and (will you believe it) preparing the meals as well! He felt proud and happy that he is shouldering the responsibility and through detailed pictures, Whatsapp status messages, and LinkedIn- was trying to “motivate” others to do the same. One basic question comes to my mind- your family, your home- why is it that you feel “proud” of doing your work? I feel the answer is simple- the so-called millennials are yet to overcome the “patriarchal” setup, where the “Man” remains alpha. He is, therefore, “helping” out the lady in “her” work- and thus feels a need to publish this to the world. The “Man” is still the breadwinner of the family (irrespective of how much the lady ...