Having maintained through my 36-year-career that a working woman who says she has struck the perfect balance between her family and workplace responsibilities is either delusional or bluffing, Pepsico CEO Indira Nooyi’s latest salvo is an endorsement of this position. In a recent interview she said, “I don’t think women can have it all. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all.” With this candid statement she has set the cat among the pigeons.

Scores of women across countries and professions are fuming that she feels this way. They are angry with her for setting up a detailed mechanism with the help of her office staff to let her daughter know whether she could play Nintendo or not. For snooping to find out who were the other mothers who had missed the coffee meeting at her daughter’s school. And, for heaven’s sake — of all the things — for going out and getting that carton of milk as ordered by her mother and that too on the day she had been promoted as CEO of a global corporation. She should have put her foot down and said, “No, I am tired too; I won’t buy the milk”, is the consensus among these women. Some other women have flayed her for doubting if she was a good mom.

Going through just a fraction of the responses to Nooyi’s interview to the Atlantic Media owner David Bradley, I experience a mixture of amusement, anger, disbelief and wonder at how so many hundreds of smart, intelligent, economically emancipated women can think that Nooyi should have responded only in a particular way and not the way she did. As though there is only ONE way of parenting, or dealing with personal relationships.

Mixed bag In this wide universe of millions of working women — daughters, wives, mothers and professionals — surely different women respond in diverse ways to the constant pulls and pressures on them from home and the office.

If you need to disagree with Nooyi, do it on the examples she chose to give… such as dramatically banging the carton of milk on the kitchen counter before asking her mom what kind of a mother she was to send her daughter out for milk shopping just when this huge success had come her way. But then, when quizzed on an important platform, anybody — man, woman, dog — will tend to pack a little spice and lots of drama in the responses.

Larger issue But the larger issue raised by Nooyi which has rattled lots of feminists is the feeling of guilt that a working woman has to live with because she thinks she has not given enough time, attention, care to her family. “You have to cope,” said the 58-year-old Nooyi, “because you die with guilt. You just die with guilt.”

There is incessant debate about parenting being a joint responsibility and how fathers have to put in enough time and effort too to raise children, attend to their homework, tend to them when they are sick, and the like. It isn’t as though this is not already happening in thousands of homes.

Well, it happened in mine, not in the 21st century but in the 1980s and 1990s as our two sons went through school and college. The coffee meetings Nooyi talked about were known by a fancy name — Parent-Teacher Meeting — in the school our children attended in Chennai. It was mandatory for both parents to attend; I must have gone to a maximum of five through our two sons’ 14-year term, but my husband enthusiastically attended most.

I skipped, not because I was terribly busy at work, but frankly because they bored me. The themes were universal, not directly related to the child’s schooling or performance, and a couple of fathers, great devotees of J Krishnamurthy’s philosophy, took off and just didn’t stop. Did I feel any guilt at missing those meetings? Certainly not; I chuckled after getting out of each of them. And mercifully, the school didn’t believe in giving much homework!

Guilt factor But there is no getting away from the guilt which creeps into your heart and burrows deep down in your consciousness when you are not there to share so many special moments with your children, over the years, as they grow from babies to toddlers, and through adolescence. Call them little things or big things … like the first word, sentence, steps, the first time they walk, run … all of which were invariably recorded by a grandparent who was naturally delirious, bless her soul, or the maid. I’ve deeply, and most illogically, resented a couple of such maids for first recording my child’s milestone.

And then there is the tussle when the child is sick. This time the guilt results not because you couldn’t stay at home to look after him, but because at work you got so absorbed that you completely forgot to call home to check whether the child had taken his medicines or soup. But these are extremely individual feelings. There are women who’d feel so much guilt that they’d throw it all and be at home, as thousands of women have done and continue to do. Or others who don’t feel an iota of guilt. Different women are wired differently and there are no rights or wrongs here.

I count my blessings in having the total support of the husband… right from car pools to zoo outings — another no-no for me — sports meets and doctor’s visits. And also for telling me, when the occasion demanded, not to bring my office “attitude” or “bossiness” home!

It all comes with the package called marriage and parenting, and each relationship — husband-wife, mother-child — has it own vibrations, equations and moments. I feel it’s important to understand and respect other women who think and feel totally differently. A woman — mother, wife, daughter — doesn’t have to be apologetic or defensive. She does the best she can.

At the end of the day, while in some corner of the child’s mind may remain that moment that you weren’t at home to lovingly make him a snack when he came hungry from school — luckily at KFI they fed the kids a snack before sending them home! — this would far outweigh the pride he’d take in his mother being an exceptional professional. And I believe it has been established that children of working women turn out far more independent and self-assured, and do well in life.

So let’s stop these silly attacks on Twitter against Nooyi’s mom and the packets of milk she supposedly hoards.

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