As you know, it is not my habit to interfere in a husband-wife quarrel, but yesterday, had to break my vow and speak to Kalyani, my friend Kuppu’s wife:
‘Kalyani, hope everything is fine at home now that Kuppu is working for home’, I started my conversation in a mild tone.
‘Working for home or from home?’, there was anger in her voice, but I kept my cool.
‘Both. Anyway, you should not have asked him to get up early morning and clean the home front with cow dung water and also clean the kitchen platform the same way before going to bed. No Brahmin woman, no Indian woman, no any woman anywhere in the world, will ask her husband to perform such a dirty job’
There was silence for a moment on the other end.
‘Mama, Kuppuswamy is your friend, just friend. Tomorrow you may unfriend him. Or he may unfriend for your unwanted interference in his family life or for talking to his wife without his permission. But, for me he is my husband. He my God! He is the head of this family. My interest is to take care of his health. I want him to receive the pre dawn Sun’s rays ( the words she used was ‘soorya velicham’ ) on his chest and body’
‘That’s fine. But why cow dung cleaning?’
‘In which age are you ? Don’t you know cow dung and cow’s urine have the potential to kill Corona virus?’
‘Why don’t you get that protection for yourself. Your life is equally important for the family’
‘You called it a dirty job. You don’t mind my doing it? And what is cow dung? Is he not handling it with reverence while doing homam? Is he not applying vibhoothi all over his body, now a days thrice a day?
That apart, for me, for my family, none is more important than Kuppuswamy. Come what may, I will go to any extend to protect him. He is my life (jeevanAdi is the word’, she used)’
‘But, Kalyani, asking your husband to do cow dung cleaning——‘
‘If you were my husband I would ask you to do. My husband is my —-)
‘Jeeva nAdi’, I completed and kept down the phone .
The plight of men working from home !!!😀😀😀