Quality time has been the call of a couple of generations, especially when it comes to child rearing. In this way, a career woman who gives her best in the short hours she has to spare can impart as much tender loving care as a full-time mum. Somehow, this wasn't a concept I understood very well, never being very sure that there was anything of quality in what I had to offer — full-time or otherwise.
Perhaps a genetic tendency towards colour blindness makes it difficult for me to recognise true-blue quality when I see it — in whatever field it may be. And so, the easy way out has been to heap on the quantity and hope that somewhere in all that excess of whatever it is I'm doing, there will be some gems of value.
When our son arrived in all his squalling splendour, all plans of juggling career and child as my contemporaries did flew out of my mind. I went into overdrive, overtime, 48 hours a day, single-minded motherhood — nothing was going to distract me from my kids.
Overkill
Of course, I probably did most things wrong — why else did I continually catch other mums and dads smirking — but I was hopeful that somewhere in that overdose of talking and sharing and caring, a few pearls of wisdom would sink in before mental fatigue did and everyone stopped listening.
Some of us just don't know how to turn off the tap and stop the flow — be it love and affection, work, whatever. Take food in our home: We'd attend carefully catered parties, where there would be an elegantly laid out table — just one main dish with appropriate accompaniments that we could relish without a confusing assault on our taste buds. I'd be appreciative and resolve to plan as carefully when my turn came — but would it happen? Somewhere between the planning and the execution of the meal, panic would set in and many ‘what ifs' would find their way into my doubting soul. What if the guests found a continental meal too bland? What if they found a Mughlai meal too heavy? By the time the guests arrived, I'd have cooked up a storm, the kitchen would look like a hurricane had hit it, the table would be laden with a smorgasbord of different cultures and the huge question for the household was: How long would they take to eat their way through the leftovers?
The same went for books and toys. While friends took their well-turned-out, well-behaved offspring to the bookstores in town, I'd drag my just-rolled-out-of-bed kids to the Sunday pavement sellers. Those others would return from their air-conditioned foray with one longed-for, pristine (and expensive) volume of stories; we'd bounce in some eight hours later, sweaty, bedraggled, our arms overflowing with comics and paperbacks and even second-hand encyclopedias, having acquired the entire lot for less than the cost of that one book. Years later, they'd have added to their library as we to ours, but there would be volumes of difference between the condition of their collections and ours.
Inexpensive toys of every shape and size also found their way into our home. Every foray into the marketplace meant a token had to accompany us back — and today, the collection of fancy erasers and sharpeners and pen holders would put a stationery shop to shame.
Many more instances of excess spring to mind — but perhaps it's wise to leave them for another time, when good sense has been garnered from the chaff.
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
