“The stomach is the way to a man’s heart.” We often hear a lot of stories about the torment that many girls have to go through on a daily basis under the unwritten rule laid by the patriarchs in our society.

My story is a little different from the usual ones where women often succumb under these ancient rules.

I found a man in my life who not only cooks for me but also pampers me like crazy on days when I feel low and miserable. He’s my best friend first, and my husband later. We’ve always been friends; from school to college, and coincidentally even the same law school for masters, we know everything about the other. Even though I’ve had my bit of fun with boys throughout those days, none of these relationships turned out to be strong enough to handle my emotions in the long run.

My mom always used to tell me that it’s important to marry a man who could take care of me and could stand strong by my side, especially emotionally.

The looks, money, love – everything that’s materialistic and doesn’t matter much in the long run. And because of this, we ended up marrying each other as our parents were quite reluctant to find another boy or girl for us; because they were convinced that we were in love with each other.

I wouldn’t call it love, but we were comfortable with each other.

For a middle-class Indian family, it’s a common sight to find a wife coming back from work only to make tea for herself and her husband, then rushing into the kitchen to make dinner and prep for the next morning’s dabba.

For me, life has been the other way around. I’m a 29-year-old working woman, a lawyer who works for an IT company as an in-house advisory. I wake up in the morning to find my tea along with breakfast ready. Yes, my husband is the one who wakes up, makes breakfast and also manages our house-staff. And before you wonder what he does, yes, he does work too. He reached office on time and then comes back home with innovative ideas for our next meals. He’s a huge foodie and thoroughly enjoys eating as much as cooking.

Many of our supposed friends and loving family members think that I’m an extremely dominating wife and am tormenting my husband to cook, but we can’t be bothered to correct them. The ones who think I’m lucky, well they’re right. I am.

Of course, coming to this moment of zen, was frustrating. It took me a while to stop retorting or snapping back every single time someone taunted me.

Isn’t this how society should be? This is called distribution of work? Just like how we’re used to distributing work in the office. But gradually, I realized that it’s a waste of time and energy.

I’m not a great cook, I’m absolutely nothing like my husband when it comes to handling the house or the kitchen. But that doesn’t mean I come home and stretch my legs out on the table, waiting for dinner to be served to me. I take care of other things, like doing the laundry, cleaning up after him or even seating up the table.

I won’t say that I’m lucky to have a man like him in my life, but I’m definitely blessed to marry my best friend who knows me and understands me, and of course, there’s the fact that he pampers my taste buds!

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