Being a new wife in Pardes…

Are you newly married? Is this the first time you have moved out of your country? Better still, are you a newly married woman who moved into an alien country to accompany your husband, leaving behind the comfort of your home, job, friends and your country? If yes, you might relate to this post. If not, you might know someone who might relate to this post.

Let me tell you the qualities that make me eligible for the title of “Being a new wife in Pardes”.

I am a new wife in Pardes because:

• I moved to a different country after 3 months of marriage. Obvious first reason, isn’t it? And you thought this was going to be a laugh riot kind of a post? O_o  I thought you should have, by now, learnt to keep your “expectations from me” a little low. Oh, you mortal creatures, when will you learn from your mistakes, when? :p
• I crib every other day about not being able to work due to Visa restrictions.
• I come up with a hundred entrepreneurial ideas every day to fill my pockets here. Nothing workable though.
• I spend half my time on FB and the other half on phone.
• I google and try new recipes every other day and post the pictures on FB. I pity people on my friends list. Little secret, I wanted to post pictures of Dosa on FB and my husband mocked me. Let me tell you that it is difficult to make nice Dosas here. Due to the cold weather, the batter hardly ferments. Husband doesn’t understand my predicament.
• I use the oven more than the stove.
• I try my hand at creative art work and if successful, post it on FB. Mine are not worth posting, because, all I do is make tables out of the many cardboard boxes we have lying in the patio. See, I used the term patio instead of balcony. This proves I am turning into a NRI.
• I look at the calories and ingredients before I cook anything. Yes, yes, I was checking for calories on the cumin packet the other day. Cumin yaar, apna jeera.
• I try to lose the non-existent weight that I feel I have put on after coming here. I have lost two pounds. Yes, I used pounds instead of kilograms.
• I buy more sweaters than I buy tops.
• I exercise way more than I used to in India. I do Zumba and go for a 2.5 mile walk every day. Don’t ask me what is Zumba. I am yet to understand it myself. Did you notice? I used miles instead of kilometers.
• I convert pounds to kilograms and miles to kilometers using Google.
• I vacuum our house instead of sweeping and mopping it.
• I listen to music at a very low volume so that I don’t disturb the unknown neighbours.
• I cook every day starting with a prayer that the smoke alarm shouldn’t turn on when I give Vaggarne/Chaunk/Tadka to my Daal.
• I go to the Indian stores and talk to the store guys with an accent.
• I say sorry everytime some phoren guy/girl talks to me because I cannot understand what they are saying.
• I have shower curtains and no window curtains at home.
• I crib about not having door locks in our bedroom.
• Every weekend, we go to a new place, spending a few dollars, to twist all the bones and muscles and nerves we have in our body. In short, we go for an adventure trip.
• I post pictures of our trip, to some place we have been, on FB and wait to see how many likes and comments I get. Darn..I wasn’t really bothered when I was in India. Here, I have a lot of time to bother about a lot of silly things.
• I listen to sounds coming from our neighbour’s bathroom.
• I kill time posting something nonsensical on FB and Twitter.
• I refresh my FB page a million times a day.
• I buy those fruits with fancy names and then google as to how to eat them.
• I convert dollars to rupees and crib about how expensive things are here.
• I listen to patriotic songs when I miss home. Such a nautanki I am.
• I watch every episode of every season of every soap opera ever made. Again, I didn’t use “serials”.
• I watch Hindi/Kannada movies wherever I can find them.
• I ask my husband for a new laptop, because, I am not happy with the three we have at home.
• I smile at every person I find on road.
• I look at our countrymen here with the same surprise that an earthling might have when he sees an alien.
• I accompany my husband to all Sci-Fi movies, which I would have certainly not watched if I was in India. Yes, I also post a check-in on my FB page.
• I write such nonsensical posts when I have nothing to do and that accounts to half of my day here when the patidev is at office.

Disclaimer : These are my thoughts. I have not copied or plagiarized, but, if you feel you have read it before, don’t blame me, because, all of us Desis in Videsh feel the same about certain things.