11 years of domestication.

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!

29^th November this year, we are celebrating our 11^th 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!