Eleven years
of nomadic life with a man whose middle name is Inertia and two very boisterous
lads who seem to be generously endowed with bottomless pots of energy, notoriety
and mischief, home making can end up seeming more like a roller coaster ride
than the routine drab called housework. Particularly in that aspect, I can
vouch that marriage has certainly made my wife’s life more exciting! At the
least, more exciting than what she experienced during her nubile days, that is
her final days of freedom just prior to tying the fatal knot with your humble friend
here.
In these
eleven years, she has moved lots. She has experimented with cooking, failed at
it, burnt her fingers (and I mean it literally) and finally I must confess
mastered it. She has moved on from being a carefree girl to a sensible, accommodative
wife to a responsible mother of three (yes, three if you include me too in it).
She has mastered patience (managing two boys with diametrically opposite characters,
wants and needs requires patience, and do not forget the third one orbiting
around, that is me!). She is now an expert on kindergarten phonetics and all
subjects up to grade V (and the grade jumps a step higher each year). She is
becoming a gardener of sorts, a handyman around the house, an arts and crafts
expert and a party gaming specialist.
So the
question, what have these eleven years done to me? Like her, have they
domesticated me too?
Well, if it
is domestication, then I haven’t moved much. All I can say is that I have actually
stopped moving altogether!
Before starting
this family, I used to live in Navi Mumbai and work in Central Mumbai. I used
to spend a lot of time commuting to work and at work itself, yet I used to find
enough time to wash my cloths, iron them, polish my shoes, cook my food, clean
my house and even do the dishes on weekdays. The weekend nights although were
spent usually at a pub or clubbing with other bachelor friends or at their or
my place boozing all night.
Nowadays, I
work on a five days week shift and live at barely fifteen minutes driving
distance from work, yet I do not do any of the above. Life has surely changed!
Now, see I do not have to do them anymore. These chores just happen around me,
automatically, without much asking. Let me also mention here that, it is not that
I am burdened with my kid’s academics or grocery purchases, I don’t even drive
the kids to their swimming or football classes; all those fall under her management.
So, what has marriage really given me? Yes, it has given me a beautiful family
and a strong and safe haven to park myself, but what apart from that?
I believe the
most important thing that my family has given to me is freedom; freedom to either
sloth or to go ahead and discover new findings and in the process find a new
me. Whilst I agree, that I have mostly snoozed, the fact is, that whenever I have
awoken up and walked, I have indeed discovered a new me. Starting with finding
out that I could write, and write well enough so as to run my own blog page, and
in the course, find out that laughing at myself didn’t hurt that much, but
rather make a few of my friends suggest to me that I should write my own book
(really? Yes!); finding out that however busy my day maybe, I could always find
an hour to accommodate playing my favourite game of lawn tennis in it; finding
out that it is never too late to start, so what if you are in your early 40’s
and you have to learn guitar in a class full of primary schoolers? Go ahead and
do it! Finding out that being fit doesn’t mean joining a posh gym, drinking
protein shakes, carrying weights and running kilometres on a treadmill, it can
also be achieved by sincerely doing four little four minute tabata workouts
each day right here in your bedroom!
29th
November this year, we are celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary.
If we had both worked hard, by now we could have made our own cricket team, but
alas, blame it on my laziness and on her busyness with the chores. Anyways, I
have now bought myself a new bicycle, and on this wedding anniversary day, my
lads and I have planned on our first bike ride. Hope in this new journey, each
one of us will discover something new!
