How to Have It All

I want to stop because I have never stopped and I am exhausted. I am fulfilled. I want to let other Natashas out - the one who writes, naps during the day, cycles to the gym, cooks a meal.

This is somewhat embarrassing to admit—but I have the feeling that I have it all.

I typed this really quickly because although I have been sensing it for a while now, it seems like a rude or inappropriate thing to say. I don’t mean to be a show-off.

The more I read and hear about women and their conflicts at workplaces, with motherhood and childcare choices, the more I long to hear a version that will make me raise my hand and say, ‘Yes, that’s my story, too.’

But nothing fits.

I toy with the idea that either I don’t understand what everyone else is saying or I don’t understand myself yet. But no—that isn’t true.

So, let me put it out there—why I feel I have it all.

First, the glorious relationship I have had with my full- time job. Not my work, my job.

As a woman who joined the television industry in the mid-1990s, I started as a video journalist—the first woman to be a news cameraperson in India. It was really a love affair between a young urban woman and her workplace. My job at New Delhi Television offered a buffer from my family; it was a runaway joint that let me escape the rollercoaster ride of the twenties and thirties; most importantly, it was the shell that held me together as I constructed an independent sense of my own self.

When I first joined the office, I gave myself a year there.

I did some elementary calculations. It seemed like working for one year would enable me to save enough money to support myself and spend the next year doing whatever I wanted to without needing a salary. At the end of the first year, I realized my calculations had not been very accurate. Plus, I was loving being a working professional. There was so much to learn, do and experience. I gave myself another year. Then another. And another. It was love all right. The travel, the journalism and honing the craft of videography was an immense privilege. Returning to office after work trips was like coming home. We were growing together. When fatigue began to set in, I took a six-month sabbatical. When I needed more time to complete a teaching project I had started, I sent a heartfelt note to my employers Radhika and Prannoy Roy.

‘My office is my playground,’ I wrote. In any other industry, this might have been a horrifyingly unprofessional confession, but in our office, at that time, it was a compliment. I got extra leave to complete the year-long media access course I had started teaching in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh.

I changed roles within the same workplace. I re-trained and switched departments. Like many others, I quickly and steadily rose within the ranks.

Then, as soon as I began to peak as a professional, I quit. I was Vice President, Training and Development. I had a shiny visiting card, an office car and a glass cubicle at work.

‘Ah, you quit work because of the children,’ people would nod with a look of obvious understanding.

‘No, because of me,’ I would reply. ‘I didn’t quit work, I quit my full-time job. I’m still working . . .’

But no one was listening.

I was the mother of little children. We had excellent childcare facilities at my workplace. My role allowed me to work from home when I needed to. My appraisals, promotions and benefits had been soaring higher than ever before. I loved my smartphone. My wardrobe was full of sharp business suits and a range of footwear I referred to as ‘airport shoes’.

‘I want to stop because I have never stopped and I am exhausted. And I am fulfilled as well,’ I wrote in an email to a friend. I was standing by a street corner in Manhattan tapping these words with a stylus into my phone. A pocket of sunlight, the distance from home and the solitude of a free morning during a work trip suddenly brought some things into perspective for me. ‘Other Natashas, the ones who write, nap during the day, cycle to the gym, cook a meal, I want to let those Natashas out.’

I missed my children. I wanted to know the guy I had married. I wanted to be with myself. It was time to remove the scaffolding of my job and inaugurate a new life. So, I quit for love.

Love’s a decent hobby—but can you make a vocation out of it? Maybe you can. What about a calling? Motherhood could be my calling.

Who knows what is around the corner till we turn it? Who is to tell what is inside us till we stand still and let it emerge?

For a long time, I mourned the loss of my job. I wrote a poetic letter in my journal to my bosses as I watched the sun set into the Mediterranean Sea over a holiday in Sardinia. My husband was embarrassed for me. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked, as he saw me typing it into an email to them standing at a restaurant counter on a laptop borrowed from the owner.

I was sure I wanted to do it. I was letting go of a love and I longed to express that. I was enunciating my deep admiration for the people I had grown up with. People who had believed in me, enabling me to believe in myself. These had been the best years of my life.

One way to have it all is to agree to not want everything together at all times. Besides, having-it-all is a feeling, not a comparative analysis. I was ready to do something new. I didn’t know what that was. But I knew what I didn’t want to keep on doing. I gave myself permission to enter unchartered territory. The way would reveal itself.

This essay was first published here in Mint Lounge