Reflections on a Year Gone By

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since I stepped into the pink lehenga and out of my parents' home. We set up home here, in a foreign land, and are about to take it apart and set up a new one. Such is life.

The year has taught both of us a lot. About each other and about marriage and relationships. About learning not to sweat the small stuff. And to tell the small stuff apart from the big. About being patient with each other. Doing little things for each other.

I know this is a bit of a cliche, but you don't really understand it until the time you experience it for yourself. Marriage is not always smooth sailing. You have to make adjustments and compromises. But it's all worth it. When you see the smile on your partner's face when you do something special for him, that makes it worth it. When you feel the warmth in your heart when he does the same for you, that makes it worth it. When you know there's at least one person in the world you can always count on, no matter what. When you know there's one person with whom you can discuss all your fears and worries and share all your joys.

That's what marriage is about. Knowing that you have a companion on the journey called life.

Bloodsuckers

We’ve had a major bed bug infestation in our apartment. I'd never really heard too much about this kind of thing, because it's not very common in India. They can't survive above 45 C and they don't like dusty places. Ha. You would think you were less likely to have bugs if your apartment was clean.

Apparently these little vampires spread over from neighboring apartments - that's one of the many ways in which they spread - and they reproduce so fast you really can't imagine it. A female can lays about 5 eggs a day. Plus, they can live for 18 months without food.

The building management has had the exterminators come in and treat the apartment twice and we did it once ourselves. But it doesn't really help too much. Strong pesticides like DDT are illegal here. The others don't really kill them, because they can go and hide in the neighbors’ apartment and then come back once the pesticide wears off. Now you have an infested apartment and infested neighboring apartments. There’s also some rubbing alcohol that can be sprayed on them, but you have to spray it on the bug to kill it. It’s just not humanly possible to spray every single bug, given the rate at which they multiply.

They can nest in anything wooden, paper, or fabric. Now we're going to move and discard everything that might be infected and cannot be treated. Clothes can be treated by running them in the dryer on high heat. But that's about all. Clothes, kitchen utensils. That’s it. We can't take anything else with us. We have to part with almost brand new furniture that we spent thousands of dollars on. Plus we have to part with bed linen, some of which was a gift, and stuffed toys, greeting cards, picture frames - just about everything of sentimental value. We’re not even sure how safe it is going to be if we take our passports, academic certificates and other papers with us, but that is a risk we have to take.

Anyway, we have been apartment hunting and we have found a couple of places we like. We’re just trying to get out of here as soon as we can.

Anyway, I know I'm rambling on too much about this, but that’s how life is these days. But hey, what has happened has happened. Can’t do anything about it, can we? Just trying to accept it and move on with life.