The Invisible Operating System

Every home has one.

It isn't the person who earns the most. Or the one who speaks the loudest. Or makes the family decisions.

It's the invisible operating system. It runs quietly in the background, executing hundreds of tiny processes that no one notices because, well, they are not supposed to notice them. Like every good operating system, it is expected to boot up before everyone else, remember everything, crash never, and recover instantly after every update.

The curious thing about operating systems is that people only become aware of them when they stop working. The same is true of homes. 

For the longest time, I had convinced myself that I simply had to improve my time management skills. Every health article I read cheerfully advised me to "find thirty minutes for myself." Walk. Run. Exercise. Stretch. Meditate. I wanted to know where these mythical thirty minutes lived.

So one morning last week, I decided to audit my day. 

5.30 a.m. The operating system boots.

Indian breakfasts have to be fresh because idlis & dosas with their side accompaniments are rather unforgiving without advance planning. One son leaves for school, with a neatly packed box for his morning break. The other one has a hurried breakfast and picks up his lunchbox and rushes to catch his college bus.

By then, my mother's breakfast & diabetic protein drink need to be ready. Her caregiver needs her dose of strong tea to get her morning going. 

The househelp arrives. The breakfast table must be cleared before she can wash the dishes. The washing machine has already begun its cycle. Vegetables need chopping. Our presswala appears & waits for the weekly clothes bundle to be counted and given. My OH prepares his herbal tea. Househelp wants fresh cleaning supplies. Emails & messages are answered between pressure cooker whistles and a hurriedly gobbled breakfast.

By ten in the morning, I finally sit down.

For exactly long enough to realise that it's almost time to prepare my Amma's mid-day fresh juice before starting to cook her lunch for the day. She likes that I serve it personally. At my stage of life, I know that such requests are not interruptions. They are love, wearing the slightly demanding clothes of old age.

By evening, the house has changed shifts but not pace. The boys arrive in periodic breaks and are looking for a light snack before dinner time. 

A 100 things are waiting to be set right. The folded laundry waits to be stashed away. 

Payments to staff and other monthly essentials wait. 

Insurance renewals + Tax Returns + Banking tasks wait.

Clients & Partners presentations wait.

The Agentic AI course I signed up for (on a spur of the moment) waits.  

The blog post that has been forming in my head all day waits.

Somewhere in between all this, I am expected to remember that I have a body which apparently deserves a brisk walk. I laughed at the absurdity of my own audit.

It wasn't that I had failed to make time for exercise. I had mistaken a capacity problem for a time problem. Then came another realisation.

Every sentence I had written about my day began with someone else's name.

My son. My mother. The househelp. The cook. My husband.

Not once had I unconsciously written, "At nine o'clock, I..."

It dawned on me that I had quietly become the operating system of my home.

Not out of sacrifice. Not out of martyrdom.

Simply because families, over time, develop their own rhythm. One person remembers that the curd is running low. Another knows where the passport is. Someone instinctively checks if there is enough coffee powder. Someone notices that the detergent is almost over before anyone else does.

These are not chores. They are background processes. Homes run on them.

No one applauds background processes. Nor should they.  

If every successful breakfast required a standing ovation, we'd never leave the dining table. But every once in a while, it helps when someone notices.

The other day, my elder son said, quite casually, "Amma, you remind me of Donna from Suits." I laughed.

Donna Paulsen is the woman who quietly keeps everything running while everyone else takes the smooth functioning for granted. It was perhaps the nicest compliment I have received in years.

Not because he compared me to a popular fictional character. But because, hidden inside that remark, was something every invisible operating system secretly longs to hear.

"I see you."

Yet, this is not a story about the invisible work. At least, not entirely.

It is about seasons. It is about a phase of life. 

There will come a morning when no one needs a lunchbox. The dining table will need only two plates instead of four. The washing machine will no longer begin before sunrise. The kitchen will be quieter.

My mornings will finally have those elusive 15 minutes of hot filter kaapi.

Perhaps I'll even take that walk everyone has been recommending. I think I'll enjoy it.

I also think, somewhere along that walk, I'll miss the chaos I once wished would slow down.

I'll miss the hurried footsteps searching for the blue sweatshirt five minutes before leaving.

I'll miss the college bag flung casually on the chair. I'll even miss someone asking, "Amma, what's for breakfast?" 

Life has an odd sense of humour. It grants us leisure only after taking away the reasons we longed for it.

So if you, too, are in this strange season of life, where your days seem to belong to everyone except you, hang in there.

Not because it gets better. Not because one day you'll have more time. But because one day the operating system will have fewer processes to run.

The house will become wonderfully efficient. And unexpectedly quiet.

Until then, pack the lunchbox. Set the plates on the table. 

Listen patiently to the story you've heard before. Complain about your aching feet if you must.

Then look around. This chaos is not permanent. 

Neither is the privilege of being at the centre of it.