*For representational purpose only.
He worked in a Japanese company and lived in Singapore. You know what that meant? It meant that we could save more money than we earned together in India. Not that we were planning to save it at all.
We were only 16 when we fell in love and 24 years old when we took the next step. One thing that stayed constant in all these years was that we were madly in love.
For the first time in our lives, reality had surpassed imagination. We lived in style. I can close my eyes and think of how lavish everything was, and sigh. All those weekend trips we took out of Singapore, all those new countries we saw together! Sometimes I used to think of how casually we planned in the last minute- as if we were only going from Delhi to Gurgaon.
We were too young to see that this wouldn’t last forever, and I still don’t know how our families agreed to get us married at that age.
Moving to Singapore was definitely the best decision for both of us. Living together and growing up with each other was a deeply satisfying process. I’m still proud of how we ran the household like a team- whether it was finding the best deal on furniture or ensuring that we never ran out of instant masala noodles, we had it together.
Our honeymoon days passed, I was still struggling a little bit with finding a suitable job, and he was struggling to balance his new life along with his hectic workload. Days turned to nights, twilights blurred. He would often come home well past midnight. Some days, he would look at me with child-like guilt in his eyes and say, “I will come early today,” and those were the days he came home at 9 pm.
That’s what adult life is about, isn’t it? We still took vacations every month and tried to enjoy it with aggressive righteousness, and all the while he would still be thinking about work. He would hesitate to post pictures on Instagram and would pretend as if he wasn’t doing anything special, as if he was a thief. I don’t think we hid from our own parents so much when we were youngsters in love.
People were scared of our managers who wouldn’t hesitate to shout at anybody if the smallest thing went wrong, those “senior leaders” didn’t think twice before nagging anybody for any silly reason.
When he got promoted, I was really proud of him. After all he became the youngest Vice President of the company! Later, when he went back to work, I worried about how he would manage the stress.
Would I get enough time with him, or any time with him at all? My husband may have been young, but he would never back down from a fresh challenge. I was mostly proud of his ability and his intellectual acumen, but doesn’t everyone just deserve a calm workplace?
I also had my emotional limitations. I would feel so left out from his life, so angry, that sometimes when he used to come home late, I would pretend to be asleep just so he could realize how late it really was. There was nothing he could do, and I knew that.
He had too much on his plate, but none of the things had space for me. It didn’t feel like a partnership on most days.
There were times he would just cry, not because he was weak or didn’t want to work, but because I was the only one he could show his emotions to. We made the best of the time we got together every weekend. It was fun, but there was always a dreadful fear of the coming week, and the thought of the whole drama repeating all over again. Sometimes, Monday blues was an understatement.
Yes, we had our happy moments. But there were times when he used to say, “Let’s move back to India,” and I would fight with him.
I may have been inconsiderate at the time, but part of my fairy tale was still alive- we lived comfortably. I had never before spent money on whatever I wanted without worrying about how much was left in the bank, I could sip my morning coffee with a spectacular view from the balcony. None of the white-tubelight-lit-paint-peeled middle class walls of my childhood came back during a nostalgia trip. Naturally, I was reluctant to leave. The fun time we had still counted for something.
But there came a point in our marriage when we had to take a call about what to do. We had no more space in our lives to hide our disagreements and carry on. So, one fine day, I found all the carton boxes that I needed and packed our lives back to India.
We managed to shock everyone. Why would we leave our glossy magazine lives and move back to India? Weren’t we having the best time of our lives? But you can’t live your life for the sake of appearances. “Log kya kahenge” is scary because when they actually ask you questions, you can’t answer them with your head held high. What would I say? To claim that my husband was stressed would sound like a joke.
Thankfully, our parents understood. Our families helped us through every decision we took. Now, not every Japanese company stresses out a person like that, and in the end, even they were empathetic to our situation. But the point is, we let our lifestyle rule our lives.
We had a great start to our married life and could not accept that it could go wrong. We have stayed in India for a year now, and we have made the next decision of our lives. We will be moving to the US to do our masters together. In the end, wherever in the world we go, we stick together like the same 24 year old lovers, and reality keeps surpassing our imagination.
Like this story, some love stories are meant to be action-packed. Watch Aisi Deewangi from 22nd May on Zee TV at 7.30 pm to experience a love story where there will never be a dull moment.
