The romance of a runaway couple is huge but starting a life with a wife has its challenges and fun. A tongue-in-cheek account by Soumya, exclusively for Different Truths.

When we got married, my roommates moved out of our Barsati, and my wife moved in.

As the wedding happened without the knowledge and consent of our families, we didn’t receive any wedding gifts, because all my friends who were witnesses to the ceremony and came to the party afterward only brought liquor which was consumed right away.

As our Barsati wasn’t fit accommodation for a lady, we moved to a one-BHK flat with my belongings, which consisted of one folding bed and one backpack with a few clothes. She had also brought just one small bag of clothes, so we desperately needed a few things to start our life together.

We also had empty bank accounts and lived from salary day to salary day, so we bought a few essential kitchen items and a few clothes to start with and made a list of things that we needed to get overtime, marking priorities.

It went somewhat like this:

• 1.     Double bed
• 2.     Gas connection
• 3.     Refrigerator
• 4.     Desert cooler
• 5.     Vacation
• 6.     Chairs … and so on till perhaps

• 30. Car
• 31. Flat

These last were supposed to be years in the future.

But then, two things happened. Firstly, there was a wage revision, and we got some arrears.

We immediately bought a bed, a fridge, a gas connection, and a dresser with a mirror, as the bathroom mirror was okay for shaving but not for a lady to get ready for the office.

We also took a flight to Goa and had the vacation together that we had missed out on earlier.

The next thing that happened was that I was made a branch manager, the youngest ever in the city, and thus was given a car and a telephone.

So, the item at the bottom of the list came right at the beginning, in the form of a sparkling new white Premier Padmini.

Our landlord, who didn’t have a car, was upset, and immediately obtained a Maruti on the black market.

We didn’t have a place to keep the phone and kept it on a moda or a wicker stool.

Remember, those were the days when you waited years for a phone or gas connection or a car, unless you paid in black or had major connections, or were a government servant like us and in a privileged quota.

As salaries went up and arrears from revision came every fourth year, our vacations became frequent, and we bought more white goods from the list. The company also replaced my car with newer models every few years and we started traveling abroad after selling the old cars.

But the one thing on the list that kept eluding us was the flat of our own, as a major builder collected our lives savings and absconded, declaring bankruptcy leaving us to keep paying EMIs to the bank.

Now, we have everything we need and are staying in a house with a garden that my father left for us, and the list is long lost, but we fondly remember the adventure of two rookies with no ideas about managing a family, starting a life together and surviving to enjoy life to the fullest.

Picture design by Anumita Roy, Different Truths

Soumya Mukherjee

Soumya Mukherjee is an alumnus of St Stephens College and Delhi School of Economics. He earns his daily bread by working for a PSU Insurance company, and lectures for peanuts. His other passions, family, friends, films, travel, food, trekking, wildlife, music, theater, and occasionally, writing. He has been published in many national newspapers of repute. He has published his first novel, Memories, a novella, hopefully, the first of his many books. He blogs as well.

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