Restart

They say change is good. I agree and disagree.

Moving to Singapore and restarting a life here is tough for some one like me who has never aspired to leave my country. All my school mates, college mates etc have found their way either through jobs or marriage in Switzerland, US (of course), Sweden and even Finland. But me never wanted to leave India, and in fact that was my primary criteria while I was groom hunting 4 years back. With my elder sister already in the US, I always wanted to be living close by to my parents and be at their side whenever needed. I tried 100% till about now.

Well, I can't control or dictate how situations evolve in my life -- some lead to happy endings & content beginnings, others ensure an ugly time while they last. I'm still debating what category the current situation fits in. But anyways now that I'm in a foreign country which has been fairly kind to me until now, I better make the best of it.

Singapore is a great place to restart. I read somewhere that the expat community here is one of the largest per capita in the world, with 27% of the entire population being non-residents.

And I believe that one of the best ways to avoid feeling homesick & mull over the distance between me and my parents is to integrate myself completely in this new life. A fresh chance to do things differently, perhaps. There's no denying that I go through a wide spectrum of emotional stages each day —overwhelmed, scared, lonely, frustrated, content, irritated, determined, confused, excited, grateful, disappointed, and angry but that's only normal for a person like me who HAD to move because that's what most married women do.

But as I write this blog, it's dawning upon me that it is only natural to resent the change and take some time to get used to everything new in life. This also includes moving around with our luggage, finding an apartment, settling in, and lots of backaches!

On a fresher note, as a woman what I miss the most from back home is the comfort of having a maid who would clean up my home, neatly cut up my vegetables so that I could come from work and pretend to be Nigella as I tossed them in a wok. I miss that comfort. Silly things like the ability to call your neighborhood grocery store for just bread and eggs is also high up on the 'What I Miss the Most from Back Home' list.

The shopaholic in me misses the impulse weekend shopping sprees since converting Singapore dollar price tags to Indian rupees puts a definite brake on most impulses. But I am getting a hang of places that allow me to shop without feeling guilty about the money spent. 

So, get ready to get a budget-view of Singapore and I promise that there wont be too many sop-sob posts :)

UPDATE: Found a fab video on Singapore. See and laugh 

Change is inevitable

Men change and so do women, and I am talking about the event of marriage here. If you married a man through an arranged match (just like millions of Indian girls just like me) you would have begun to notice the slight (or not so slight) changes in your husband, loosely speaking. Speaking for myself, I entered the marriage as a coupling ceremony, which effectively is like saying goodbye to individuality and hello to being one half of my man.

But after 18 months of being married, all my theories about marriage have gone out of the window and practicality has begun to kick in -- hard. Just like this following data that I got from a random email forward:

Academics have found cohabiting couples are far more likely than those who are married to split housework evenly - but after the wedding they revert to stereotype, with the woman taking on the great majority of tasks.

The study argues that the effect holds true even in couples with a strongly egalitarian outlook before they are married, at which point women become less likely to fight for their rights.

As I read this mail, I realised that it was true in my case too. The first thought that zipped through my head was -- Yikes, the academics were right about me. So, is my marriage a text-book case? Eww...really!

When two people get married and perhaps live together for the first time (like I did with my husband), they wake up to the fact that there are many mundane chores to do around the house rather the home they cohabit. A woman will silently assign duties to herself and at the same time assigns duties to her husband. What she may not do however is communicate these expectations to her husband. She has realised her function in her new home and she expects her better half to have realised the same too. Well, atleast I did so.

So, the biggest change after an arranged marriage is usually adjusting to the fact that instead of each of us doing our own thing, we have another person in the house who had to be taken into account too. Instead of just caring for themselves, there is another being that had to be involved too. This can be a very stressful time for women like me, who like to involve themselves in everything, if the proper planning is not done.

Today, I have come to terms with the fact that my husband will not do as I direct every time. But I have had my small victories too. Hubby dear believes that he can continue to go out with the boys after work for a pint so that he can avoid the dreaded grocery shopping and more importantly paying for the huge grocery bills. But what he does not realise that the monthly grocery shoppings are still always done with him and it is only the smaller ones that get accomplished by his wife, when he is enjoying his peaceful Sunday afternoon watching sports or sleeping. Nonetheless, the wife (that's me) has taken over the headache of keeping a track of rations in the house after marriage, a big hassle that I had not bargained for before my marriage.

Recently, I met a male acquaintance who is about to be married. I asked him, if anything will change for him after marriage and he casually replied "No, why should it?," he came back. Why indeed. Now I can't wait to see him married, so that I can ask him the same question again.