International Women’s Day 2021: A year in pandemic, the women of Meesho look back on challenges and the brighter side of work from home
It’s been a year of fitness challenges, recipe hacks, virtual meetings, and Zoom birthday celebrations. As we get ready to celebrate our second consecutive International Women’s Day online, we cannot help but reflect on the mental and physical tenacity it has taken all of us to get where we are today. Women, who have been historically expected to engage in unpaid domestic labour, have had to manage both their roles as caretakers and professionals while figuring out new modes of self-preservation.
The women of Meesho have truly lived up to the theme of International Women’s Day 2021 of #ChooseToChallenge. They challenged the gender norms, monotony presented by lockdown, and even expectations of family to stay strong a year into working from home.
We spoke to Tanaya Chanda [Senior Graphics Designer — O/R], Sharanya Bala [Senior Executive Assistant to the CTO], Shradhha A.S [Catalog lead — Selection Growth], Loveena G Reddy [Quality Analyst — Fulfillment and Experience], and Susmita Chakraborty [Content Writer — Fulfillment and Experience], to understand the challenges, the struggles, the victories and the growths of the year in lockdown even as we celebrate Women’s Day.
Life before lockdown
“Before lockdown, life was pretty simple. It revolved around the office and food. Wake up, get ready for work, reach office, have breakfast there with friends — god, I miss office — , work, go out for lunch, come back home — if I wasn’t testing out a new restaurant in the city — , and sleep,” says Tanaya, whose fun outings also involved exploring the haunted spots of Bangalore, ranking the best steaks available in the city and plant shopping. She insists that the Meesho office just had good vibes and she misses that the most.
Meanwhile, Shradhha, who has a bit more on her plate as a mother to her four-year-old daughter, has missed the structure of pre-lockdown days, and of course the fact that her daughter spent a big chunk of her time at a daycare. Susmita, who is also a mother, remembers the days before lockdown was full of hustle and bustle. She elaborates how she had to travel almost 50 km to office, drop her child to school, attend early morning yoga classes and prepare her family’s meals.
She was among the people who thrived during the lockdown, participating in multiple challenges, learning new skills and particularly excelling at work. She in fact, compares the initial days of lockdown to returning to childhood or living a simple village life. “People were relaxed, and Meesho itself went through a ringer, and went through various priorities like e-learning, essentials, business advance loan, mask campaign, and so on. Every time a new campaign launched, I dived deep to understand it. I was ever ready to answer the different queries and concerns of our users,” she says.
When you love your job…
Most of these dynamite women unanimously agree that their work was unaffected by the lockdown, if not for an increased amount of dedication and tendency to sort out all work-related challenges real-time. “When the lockdown started,” says Sharanya, “I was pretty bored and did not know what else to focus on, other than work. And so, work became my pastime. Now, even though places are slowly opening up, the addiction to work that developed in the beginning of the lockdown stays with me. My current struggle is to carve out separate me-time and work time. I am making conscious efforts to get better at it.”
Loveena admits to struggling a bit in the beginning to work as optimally as she used to, but over time, she has been able to keep her personal and professional life apart throughout the lockdown. “Sundays feel like Mondays,” she says. For her spending time with her family has been a blessing during lockdown.
She elaborates, “Work from home may look like a sweet phase during normal circumstances. But we take for granted that in office we can get up from the seat and take a break. Remote working doesn’t provide that luxury. Earlier my whole day was planned but during the lockdown responding to messages and mails minute-by-minute left me with a lot more work.”
For Tanaya, the biggest challenge was to map out a healthy lifestyle. Having lived alone for a large part of the lockdown, she found herself ordering in food almost daily and had to make a conscious change in how she eats, and finding a way to appreciate each day despite the monotony. Now that she is back home with her parents, monotony isn’t the problem, living up to her desi parents’ expectations of her is.
“Desi moms always insist we are just sitting with our laptops and not working. Only domestic chores are considered work. We also have a couple of cats and dogs here. It is just next to impossible to have a meeting or do serious work when you have two dogs beside you, and a cat purring on your lap, just waiting for your attention,” she says.
The breakthrough
Shradhha adds how much trickier the situation gets when you add a child to the equation, especially when you’re already dealing with coordination challenges. “The initial days were certainly tough and challenging. Work was going slow, and everyone was still getting used to working from home. Balancing work and personal life was a rollercoaster. But once I addressed my challenges head on, the best part of working from home has been being able to spend quality time with my daughter guilt-free. And this helped give 100 percent at work too. ”
Loveena is thankful for Meesho’s HR team for playing a huge role in helping her get through the lockdown period. “We always had one activity or another all throughout the year. Keeping in mind that we are working from home they had included our family to participate in virtual events,” she relates.
Meanwhile, for Susmita expectations out of her evolved when she started expecting more out of her husband as well. “Initially, I was expected to take care of the kitchen and other domestic work while also managing my official responsibilities. I ended up setting those same expectations for my husband, who is also a Meesho employee, as he was also working from home.”
For Sharanya, things got better when she started doing what she loves most — travelling, after taking all necessary precautions of course. She was not only able to look at the silver lining of work from home when she got to plan her engagement without actually having to take leave, but also travelled to different locations and worked from there. She even organised a workation with the product team and they ended up working together for a few days from Goa.
In the end, everyone found the drive to power through these uncertain times, and as Sharanya claims, this experience is a huge eye-opener for many of us. While she learned that she needs to find a better way to manage her personal and professional life, Loveena learned the joys of living with her family again. Shradhha says it best, “It was not easy, on both professional or personal level. But I managed it quite well. It’s all about your thoughts. Be positive, spread positivity among others.”
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