‘I couldn’t sleep thinking if I had locked the main door’. ‘I was worried if the children had been fed properly’. These statements made occasionally in our homes are examples of the ‘mental load’ taken up by the people making them. In this brief write-up, we talk about the concept of mental load, its effects on our everyday lives, including on the current lockdown time, and how to deal with it.

Mental load or emotional labor is the time and effort put into remembering things that go behind a work but are invisible and unacknowledged. Emma, the comic known for introducing the concept, puts it as “permanent and exhausting work.”

Mental load is not gender specific: although women are known to bear the most of it, men also take these loads. Mental load is a concern for everyone; it exists in many kinds of work and in diverse spaces. For example, in an office or educational setting, an individual in a group who is working on a presentation might be bearing the mental load of following up with colleagues on the presentation, putting the power-points together, booking the meeting rooms, taking notes, emailing the power-points to colleagues, to name a few.

At home, a family member bearing the mental load might be involved in making a grocery list and shopping; planning family get-togethers, inviting people to these get-togethers, and planning the menu; or paying the bills (electricity, telephone, water, garbage). Although a lot of time and effort goes into remembering these tasks and making them happen, they are neither noticed nor valued.

One prominent issue with mental load is the undefined, un-agreed and unseen responsibility that is shouldered unto an individual within a workspace or family unit. Non-acknowledgement of the mental load might also be interpreted as under-appreciation of the work being done. And excessive mental load can lead to emotional exhaustion or mental fatigue.

The distinction between home and office has been blurred by the stay-home situation right now. The result is that although the volume of work might not have changed (thanks to the work-from-home arrangements), the way in which these works are done has changed significantly. Unlike in past when people could compartmentalize household chores and lock them away in their minds while at office, they now find themselves constantly shifting between work-related responsibilities and household chores throughout the day.

This change affects the way people experience mental load as the mental labor of planning, arranging, and organizing chores has to be done for tasks of varied nature at once and in the same space. Importantly, Nepali women bear most of the mental load of caring for the family, and the lockdown has added to their challenges.

The first step in handling it is acknowledging it, giving it a name. Mental load is invisible work. And its invisibility to people not sharing this load is the thing that makes the load heavy and exhausting. So when we acknowledge that not all work is visible and mental labors like thinking, planning, organizing, and even worrying count as real work, the first constructive step is taken. The next step is for you to take responsibility for some aspects of the mental load so that the other person does not have to bear all of it. When every member sharing the common space, whether at home or at office, acknowledges and assumes individual responsibility, the load will be shared and its burden on any one person greatly reduced.  

How can we share the mental load?

The first step to sharing the mental load is acknowledging the existence of mental load and making it visible. In the earlier example of mental load in a group presentation, sharing the mental load could be done by listing each of those tasks in the to do list and assigning responsibilities to the members for each of them. Mental load within family settings can also similarly be shared by acknowledging the work that is often overlooked and unaccounted for and sharing the responsibilities of these works among family members. Rotating responsibilities among members of the group (be it at work or family) can also help in building awareness about the invisible yet exhaustive mental work. And sharing the mental load can reduce the load of the individuals taking them as well as serve in the acknowledgment and appreciation the efforts put by these individuals earlier.

The stay-at-home situation for families due to the coronavirus pandemic has given us an opportunity to reflect whether the mental load within our families are equitably shared and to work towards sharing the mental load when it is lopsidedly shared.

However much India and China quarrel over their unsettled borders and their competing influences in South Asia, their burgeoning economic ties would ensure a level of normalcy in bilateral relations. Or so went the old assumption. Hence the two quietly defused the 2017 Doklam crisis, and India time and again underplayed Chinese border adventures. The Indian establishment was most reluctant to blame China for the recent skirmishes in Ladakh as well. It was nothing big and everything would soon be settled amicably, it kept saying. Then the Ladakh crisis reached a tipping point.

The Chinese kept escalating, and it became impossible for India to fudge it anymore. China was intent on making a point. There has been a shift in China’s attitude towards India following the latter’s amendment of its national map in November 2019. The new map placed all the disputed territories in Jammu & Kashmir, including those claimed by Pakistan and China, under Indian flag. Removing all doubts about India’s intent, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah later told parliament that India was also most definitely claiming the Pakistan- and China-occupied Kashmir. This meant India now claimed a vital component of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship BRI project.

Despite their growing trade ties, Indian and Chinese strategic visions are increasingly at odds. China is more and more estranged from the US; at the same time India and the US are steadily inching closer. Indian Army Chief M.M. Naravane could have been venting his frustration at Chinese actions in Ladakh when he implicated Chinese hand in Nepal’s renewed claim over the Kalapani region. For him, with border skirmishes with China escalating, the Indian troop presence in Kalapani is a non-negotiable. Forget tri-lateral economic cooperation. The new game is all about getting a strategic upper hand.

This will exacerbate the tendency in India to see Chinese hand everywhere in South Asia. China for its part had not been that bothered by India’s actions in the neighborhood, for India was always an inconsequential regional player on its own. But as the American and Indian interests converge, China can no longer feign nonchalance.

China finds itself isolated by a ‘concert of democracies,’ with worse to come over the Covid-19 fallout. Thus shunned, it’s getting close to Russia. The two countries have just agreed on a new missile defense system for China. They also plan a joint mission to the moon. Beijing and Moscow see no alternative to working together to minimize the US presence in the Indo-Pacific. As I have written before, it is no more farfetched to imagine China and Russia banding together to foil ‘American designs’ on Nepal. Not long ago, the Oli government was subtly advised from up north to invite Vladimir Putin, say to inaugurate an international Buddhist conference in Lumbini. 

The global Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting ‘China-bashing’ have only exacerbated the old US-China rivalry. China’s hope that India would keep a safe distance from the US and help it counter anti-China Covid-19 narrative has proven misplaced. As has India’s calculation that the ‘mercantilist’ China is ready to ignore its strategic interests in South Asia. Countries like Nepal will have to live with the upshots of their growing differences. The way the Kalapani dispute has resurfaced is only the start of this new, multi-pronged geopolitical drama. 

Karma is not fate. It’s not destiny. Fate is a quick fix, karma is not. Fate or destiny is not the teaching of truly enlightened masters. It is the creation of defeatist and escapist minds that refuse to take responsibility.

We may think that it must be fate when there is no other way to explain things. A close one dies. A friend turns foe. Or a crow poops on your suit just as you are entering a building for a crucial business meeting. You become resentful and it reflects in your meeting. The deal is ruined. 

The question haunts: Why should it happen to me? You get disturbed, but somehow you collect yourself by blaming your fate, or God. That’s better than going crazy over the crow, isn’t it?

So why don’t the truly enlightened masters teach us about fate? Why do they only teach about karma? It’s due to their motivation. For the Buddha, the motivation is to help people find a sustainable way out of their suffering. He would never teach you any quick fix. Fate can give you some relief, but only briefly. After accepting that the crow poop was an act of fate, your next resentment would be: Why this fate for me? Why now? Why should destiny play a joke on me?

If you had known karma, you would view it differently. You would try to clean the poop with whatever you have, and go to the meeting. If needed, you would quickly explain what happened and proceed. You would trust your business partners to understand. The meeting would go smoothly.

By knowing karma, you could actually be a better fatalist! If you had known karma as the Buddha taught, you would take responsibility for what you do, not what the crow does. You would let fate do what it does, and chose your response responsibly. You would take the RIGHT ACTION now—at each present moment available to you—and leave the rest to ‘fate’. You would trust that a right action would lead to a right result. 

The Buddha’s teaching about karma is about understanding that when causes and conditions come together, it will lead to certain results. His motivation is to encourage people to apply this knowledge to create healthy states of mind. So instead of blaming the crow, he would ask you to be mindful of your anger and resentment, take the right action of wiping your suit, and get into the meeting room with a calm and forgiving mind. Your choice of action would create a healthy state of mind. You would create good karma.

Without shifting the blame on anyone or anything, karma tells us that our present condition is the consequence of certain causes and conditions coming together in the past. Some of them are our doing, some aren't. There must be a multiple of causes for anything to happen. For the crow to fly over your head, maybe there was a dead rat across the street that it was trying to pick. Maybe the garbage picker didn't see it in the morning because his eyesight was weak. There could be a thousand causes. We can't go back in the past and fix all those things.

But that's only half of the story. Karma teaches us to look forward. We choose a healthy response NOW and make the right efforts so that the right causes and conditions are created for the future. At the same time, we know we cannot control everything that may influence the result. So we do our bit sincerely and let the result unfold. Karma will then make a good sense for us. 

A dangerous trend is taking hold in India. Since the promulgation of the new Nepali constitution in 2015 and the ensuing victory of the communist coalition under KP Oli, just about any important development in Nepal is now conveniently linked to China. The popular narrative in India seems to be that the current Nepali government is China’s puppet. This sort of gross generalization does great harm to India’s deep, multifarious relations with Nepal.

Even though the ruling NCP’s penchant for China is hard to deny, Nepal-China ties have their limits. Anyone acquainted with the political career of the current Nepali prime minister knows of his traditionally close relations with all the important political actors in New Delhi. But during the Indian blockade Oli found it convenient to distance himself from India and inch closer to China. The calculation paid off as the communist coalition he headed secured near two-thirds majority in the 2017 national elections. In this sense, he is an opportunist. But then which politician isn’t? To his credit, Oli has since tried to improve his frayed relations with India.

Oli realizes that open hostility towards India can extract a very high cost from a Nepali ruler. This is not just because Nepali rulers can’t afford to alienate their ‘big brother’. It is also a reflection of the complex and extensive Indo-Nepal ties. Yet we see India consistently trying to portray Oli as China’s handmaiden and even mull ways to remove him. Perhaps there could have been no bigger folly on India’s part than to first build a road in Lipulekh without consulting Nepal and then to suggest that the natural opposition against the road was orchestrated by China. Such callous treatment of Nepali sentiments has in fact only boosted Oli by rallying the entire country behind their prime minister.

We often hear that India has learned its lesson after the blockade. It hasn’t. Otherwise, why can’t it still respect Nepal as a sovereign country capable of making its own decisions? Why is Nepal still expected to get guidance from the south? Nepal is a functional democracy. If people don’t like this government, they will vote it out in the next election. But even as PM Oli was getting increasingly unpopular at home for his poor political judgment and lack of delivery, India, once again, threw him a lifeline by unilaterally building the road at Lipulekh. This has allowed the blockade-busting prime minister to again project himself as the only leader in Nepal capable of openly standing up to Indian bullying.

India, home to among the most astute geo-strategic thinkers over the ages starting with Kautilya, surely understands its indispensability to Nepal. The fate of the small Himalayan state is inextricably linked to India’s peace and prosperity. While talking of Chinese influence in Nepal, Indian thinkers like to define this or that ‘red line’ for Nepal, perhaps not realizing that the biggest red line for the land-locked country is its geography. Surely, even the most jingoistic Indian commentator does not seriously believe China can ‘replace’ India in Nepal. If you want to be a big power, try acting like one.