The late Mr. P.D.Kunte of  PD Kunte & Co, an auditing firm based at Mahalaxmi once said that when he had the teeth he had no money to buy anything better than chana and when he had the money, he had no teeth to eat the chana, thereby implying that eating chana later became a luxury as he had to do with soft, chewable food!

I seem to be facing a similar situation with a slew of job opportunities coming my way these days. Before I became a wife and a mother, I had worked very briefly in the big,bad world but was happy to give it all up to concentrate on keeping house. Well being a home maker did not describe me adequately, for I did dabble in a host of activities : free lance writing, giving customised guided tours of Mumbai, translating pharmaceutical literature from French into English, giving piano lessons, helping out with elocution, English and French, pioneering the concept of Mix&Match garments for women and finally settling down to helping my husband run his own pharmaceutical sourcing business. Yet despite these numerous activities, my typical answer to what I was doing was always “NOTHING”.

How I longed to work in a regular job – one that required me to get dressed early in the morning, have business meetings and come back home and say “I’ve had a hard day”. Eventually, the girls flew the coop, the business merged with another and I was left with lots of time and nothing to do. I kept waiting for the phone to ring with requests to do”NOTHING” but they never came . Then, typically  and perversely in the ways of the Universe when my  “empty nest”  is full again with me baby sitting the next generation, the phone has started ringing  and  every now and then I get requests to write an article or do a product research – tasks that require just sitting at the computer and generating content and income. So I am back to juggling between nappy changes and net surfing, trying to conduct meetings via Skype and keeping shushing baby while I try and sound professional and consultant enough.

Which brings me to the main question:

• when is it the right time to take a job?
• when is it the right time to have a child?
• when is the right time to do this or do that?