Mind your own damn... Never mind. Just shut up.

The society loves to wreak it's wrath on others. Honestly, it loves it when everyone conforms but hates it if there is a deviation. 

There are many deviations according to the society - unmarried women, children who don't do well at school, men who don't have steady employment, married women who don't have kids, same sex couples, divorced folks etc; I would say this exists only in India but that's far from the truth. World over, the society frowns at these anomalies with some level of intensity. Ofcourse the extent of societal discomfort varies but it exists none the less. 

I have been married two years now, and don't understand what the fuss is about. It hasn't changed my life, I live like I did, I behave like I always did, albeit I have some psychological security which is quite a myth anyway, to ameliorate the insecure demons in my head. But that's about it. 

In my head I'm the same but in the mind of others I am now a "married women" and that brings with it a plethora of behavioral and physical changes. Well, obviously I don't endorse this line of thought as you may have inferred. 

I have been in a long distance relationship for six years now, and we have made it work somehow. No one cared honestly when I did not live with my boyfriend in the same city or within close reach before we got married but suddenly, as I found myself married one day I realized everyone is gunning for us to live together. Go team Mudra! 

I have things to do, so does my husband and while it's not ideal this arrangement of living across continents , we know what is best for us. Ofcourse I don't expect the collective conscience of the society to change for me, but what I can do is tell it to mind it's own affairs. But some days, my peace and calm is ruptured when I hear this conversation for the 100th time.

Concerned Member of society (CMS): Where is your husband?

Me: In London

CMS: oh, are you going there? / you have left him alone! /oh, poor you. Shouldn't you be together. 

Me: fake smile/ clever repartee/ or a kill me now expression. 

Neither here nor there. Ergo, nowhere.

Having lived in 6 countries and moving to the seventh now, I often feel that perhaps I will always remain an outsider. Sure, I love the experience in these foreign lands and the cultural soy sauce that accompanies the concoction, but I do sometimes crave for the familiarity of home. Home being India. Home being where you are not looked at curiously for your skin color, your accent or your culinary taste. Home, where you are accepted for who you are. 

This is however an illusion and nothing more.   Anytime I need a reality check I think about applying for a visa for any country while in India. I have had strange requests from agents and VFS- no objection certificate from my husband- which prompted me to change my status to single on the visa application, to a letter stating why I am not returning to India on departing from a certain Schengen country. Answer being: since I am going to UK to take up employment. But clearly that's not good enough. Either because of my nationality or some profiling formula- I am not eligible to travel at whim. And should I want to, every agent involved in the process will frown their eyebrows and look at me with eyes riddles with curiosity and a degree of frustration. "But you have to come back to India!"

I understand basic checks for issuing a visa but I don't understand the increasingly skeptical eye that every visa applicant must be scrutinized with by the embassy employees. I don't think I have been asked for a no objection certificate or such a detailed letter when applying for visas outside india. Why is it that we are faced with such cynical and skeptical scrutiny? Ok, I might know the answer to this one. I might not fit the description of a typical traveller going to Europe or Hong Kong all by herself at that, which could raise eyebrows. But still. One would think that once someone has developed a certain travel profile or some credentials by virtue of education and a clean record, this would not happen.