CHENNAI: She sits quietly drinking her noon tea, watching the neighbours and commuters whizz past on their two-wheelers. Sukanya’s day is not over. Managing four households from dawn to dusk, she juggles cooking and domestic work between her own household chores and spending time with her kids.
“This has been my routine for seven years now,” says the 32-year-old who came to Chennai as a young bride over a decade ago. Unfamiliar with the urban terrain, she recounts cycling around, counting buildings as she tried remembering the routes. The mother of two from a small village near Tiruchy, she says she is still unused to the traffic on the way to work.
“Everyone is always busy, even in the flats I work in. The parents hardly spend time with their children,” she says. For Sukanya, her daily routine is one of running around — shopping for groceries, taking out clothes for laundry, taking the bus to the next house... But what makes it worth the running, she says is the time she makes for her kids.
“My husband is bed ridden, so he can’t care for the kids. But I don’t want to raise them without even one of us being there to take them to school, watching over their homework and ensuring that their needs are met,” says Sukanya, attributing her principles to what she learnt as a child.
As a child growing up in a farmer’s family, her parents, she said had no time for kids. “How can we leave our kids like that? We are working for their welfare, aren’t we?” she avers. With three more houses to mop, shop and clean she says her battery is recharged a little with tiny breaks like this — small mercies of a low paying job. “Wait let me call my son too,” she says finishing up her tea, as she motions for her eight-year-old to come over.