I have been working in the IT industry for over a dozen years now. In Bengaluru, the biggest problem is the commute. It would take me two hours, each way, between home and office. When I became pregnant, the doctor asked me to avoid travelling. My company gave me the option to work from home, three days a week. My clients then were based in the East, and this meant I could start early and finish by around 4 pm.

Both my mother and mother-in-law have held jobs all their lives. They understood that you don’t quit a job just because you’ve had a baby. And my parents were so keen that I have a baby, that my mother promised she would help. The original plan was to hire a full-time nanny, and my mother would stay for a few months until the baby and nanny settled down.

I went to my parents’ house in Maharashtra ahead of the delivery, and continued working until a week before my daughter arrived. When my six months’ maternity leave ended, I returned to Bengaluru. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a good nanny. Initially, I moved into my brother’s house because that was closer to office. I was given a lot of flexibility. I would be in office for a couple of hours, then go home — where I was trying to wean the baby off breastfeed — and work the rest of the day from there. Despite this arrangement, I struggled to manage my child and my job.

After a month or so of this, my company gave me two options. One was a pre-sales role, which would mostly involve work from home. And the second was a client management role, which required constant interaction with my team as well as meetings with clients. There was a client whose office was close to my house. But we were still without a nanny. My mother was in favour of the pre-sales role.

A job is not just about doing something for the sake of it. My pre-sales experience wasn’t half as exciting and I didn’t want to take it up again for the sake of convenience. So I chose to work from the client’s office. First, it is exciting to work from the client site because the pressure is always on. You have to manage people. My other profile wouldn’t have added much value to my knowledge and experience, and it wouldn’t give me the face-time that I get with people — colleagues and clients. I would have stagnated in my career.

We decided that we’d use the services of a crèche for a few hours. My husband stays home in the morning — he feeds and bathes the baby and drops her at the crèche around 1 pm before going to work. I leave office by 5 pm, collect the baby and spend the rest of the day with her, while my husband works late. Having a supportive husband and an accommodative workplace is the most crucial aspect for working mothers. I’ve been lucky.

In many ways, it was an easy choice for me to give up the ‘freedom’ of working from home. Once, I remember, the baby was crying, the cook didn’t turn up, my father who was here to help me was ravenous, my boss was on the phone with me and I was trying to resolve a client issue. I thought I’d go mad. When you are working from home, you can neither switch off from work nor from home. You have to take client calls, you have a team reporting to you. They are unhappy that you are physically absent to shield them from the clients. The client is unhappy because they need face-time to resolve issues and get the discussions moving. At home, the baby is unhappy that you are on the phone round the clock. Your husband is unhappy because, once he gets home, you just want to hand the baby over and get some time to yourself. But he too has spent the day working and doesn’t have the bandwidth to take charge. All that, cumulatively, made working from home torturous.

A friend once said why don’t I take a break. She meant ‘why don’t you quit your job and stay at home with the baby?’. The only reply I could think of was that my work is my break. Going to office is my break. I do not want to be a mother whose life is so empty that you are obsessed with the baby — has she eaten, has she slept, has she pooped, and so on.

My daughter turns one at the end of this month. Today, the best part of my day is when I pick her up from the crèche, when she has missed me and I’ve missed her. I am far more focused on her when I am with her now, rather than juggling four other things. I appreciate her better. And in this way, I feel that I have become a better mother this way.

Aarti Nyayadhish is a Bengaluru-based IT professional

(As told to Veena Venugopal)

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