The Perils of Being A Househusband

I was a househusband for two years. Technically, I am still a househusband as I do not go to an office. I do not work for anyone: occasionally, however, I write articles for some newspapers and review books. In my free time, I indulge in mindless debates on social media where people speculate about what I have been up to. I was a journalist once and worked on some meaningful reports. But now I do ‘nothing’. Or so do they think.  

Did I opt to be a househusband? Well, let me take you a little back in time. When my pregnant wife came to the United States on a scholarship, I had followed her. People laughed at me behind my back as I had just got a promotion and was destined for ‘greater things’. Between a “good opportunity” and love, I chose love; my wife would have done the same for me. There was another reason, though: my wife was six-months pregnant and someone needed to look after her in the US. I had worked for 15 years and the idea of taking a break seemed tempting. 

The scholarship money was meagre, but we had time for each other and our newborn. I could take a stock of what I had done with my life and what I could do. The euphoric feeling of coming to a new country and having a baby, however, didn’t last long. Once we settled down, being a non-earning member of the family hit me hard. But the fact was that I couldn’t work anywhere as my visa didn’t allow it. The stigma of sitting at home, taking care of the baby, cooking food and cleaning the house started haunting me. I had helped in the household chores in India, but here I was not doing anything other than housework. 

In public, especially on social media, I put a brave face. I wrote about what I enjoyed the most. I had time to read books: there was a good library nearby. There was joy in raising a baby on my own. I kept the frustration to myself and presented a different image to the world: a kind, loving husband and father. Alone, I constantly thought about my career, life, money and all the things that could have been. When I talked to friends in India, they supported my decision of being a househusband, but their line of inquiry — “when are you coming back? What is the next plan?” — would make me feel ashamed.

I had no plan other than taking care of the family. Since my wife, an art teacher, had to go to school, she would only make breakfast. And, then, I would take over. I would make lunch, pack it and drop it at her school. I would also clean the house, massage the baby and feed him. Later in the afternoon, she would come, make tea, and feed the baby. I would bring milk and groceries, if needed, and cook dinner. I would put the baby to sleep — it was a responsibility I took upon myself as I couldn’t wake up in the night to feed him. 
After putting the newborn and the mother to sleep, I would do the dishes, listening to some music, hoping to soothe myself. Sometimes, I called my friends in India. Because of the different time zones, some had time to talk to me, others didn’t — I would call them invariably at nighttime and they would be busy at work. To beat the creeping ennui, I would spend time on social media and on endless streaming channels, but there was no peace. In the night, I would notice the first snowflakes falling outside. Through the window, I would see teenagers skating in the wee hours, the sound of their rollers breaking the silence. If someone would fall, they would burst into a boisterous laugh.

One day, my wife’s classes were cancelled and she was making lunch. The baby was playing on his own. I sat at the window — my usual spot. My gaze was fixed at a couple outside. “Can you see the boy and the girl walking outside?” I asked my wife. “They will go to the Starbucks across the road.” She laughed and watched. They entered the Starbucks. After a pause, I said, “The boy will buy a medium Latte and the girl will buy a juice in the plastic transparent glass and a cookie wrapped in a napkin.” My wife laughed, but kept watching. The couple came out of the Starbucks — the boy with a Latte and the girl with the juice and a cookie. My wife kept laughing. I was still staring out of the window: “They will walk towards us and stop where the parking ends. The boy will kiss the girl.” The boy did as I predicted. “Are you okay?” my wife came near me and put her hands on my shoulder. She sounded worried.

I continued, “Once they cross the road, they will stop and will look at each other. The boy will put his hands on her back, and they will stand there for a while before they say goodbye to each other. The boy will be reluctant. He will try not to leave the girls’ hands for a few minutes.” My wife now sat behind me, waiting to see what happened next. After a while, she said, “I think you need to see a doctor. If not, then please go out, walk, exercise. Leave this sofa alone.”

“Do you know, Freud had a sofa on which all his patients sat and discussed their problems?” 

“Yes, I know. Dali made a red sofa. Dali and Freud were friends,” she said. She had studied Dali in her art class. 

I kept sitting on the black sofa for a while. After that incident, I never told my wife that I could predict many things. The man who came every day to the lawn in front of our apartment spent exactly 20 minutes there with his two dogs. He always picked up the dog poop with his left hand and threw the poop into the brown trash bin on the other side of the road, ignoring three other brown trash bins near him. The dogs were so obedient that at times I thought they were robots following codes.

Maybe I was observing too much. Maybe I was getting mad. Though I had so much to do, it felt useless and unproductive. Raising a child gave me no meaning. It seemed to be a sheer wastage of time. There was no growth except the growth of the child. This was how we had been conditioned: housework was looked at as ‘unproductive’. Despite knowing that my thinking was leading me in the wrong direction, I could not stop myself. It was a period of intense mind games. I struggled with my inner demons, fighting them off in the bathroom — sitting endlessly in the bathtub until late at night, contemplating on lethal ideas. 

What was the point of living when there was no meaning in life? What kind of a life was I leading while raising a child?  I could not discern any meaning in it. This phase lasted for a while. Gradually, I started learning to cope with these disturbing ideas by increasing my reading time in the library. I learnt that a meaningless life, too, can be meaningful in some ways. Taking care of family could be meaningful. Life was not just about having a career or making money; they were only a part of life. 

During those days, I met a Ph.D. student, Divya. She was working on the psyche of the Indian women who came to the US with their husbands and ended up spending many years without a job, giving birth to their children and waiting for the green card. When she explained the trajectory of their lives — from pursuing a flourishing career in India to living a muted life in the US — I thought she was talking about me. Having been in their shoes, as the cliché goes, I could understand the dilemma of immigrant women in a new light. How did they find meaning in a life condemned to cooking, cleaning and raising children — technically, living for the family, and not the society? 

My experience has taught me that society doesn’t care about you at all if you are not successful. For a man like me, who enjoys being with friends and loves to gossip, it has been a lonely life in a distant country. But nobody here taunted me for being a househusband. It was not the same with my friends in India. Days rolled by. I stopped thinking too much or answering any questions or suggestions. I started making notes about what I was reading as well as about my wanderings into the darkness. The diaries got filled with the accounts of living in a country known for its cutthroat work cultures. The entries that splatter my notebook are abstract thoughts about the meaning of life and the happiness of spending time with a growing child.
 
Four years have passed by. When a friend came home recently, he asked my son, “What does your Mommy do?” “She makes art,” he replied.  “And papa?” The friend continued his query. “He washes dishes and cleans the house.” My son blurted out. 

Everyone laughed. Me too. I did not feel ashamed; not the least bit. There was no demon in my head who told me, “What is this?” I raised my child, but I also grew up with him. Now, I understand the meaning of life: It is all about the moments. One must cherish those moments — whether they have to do with the decisions we make or things that happen in our lives by chance. 

(Jey Sushil has published his first novel for the Bynge app in 2021, titled “House Husband ki Diary.” Views expressed in this article are personal and may not necessarily reflect the views of Outlook Magazine.)