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Being a new wife in an arranged marriage could make life difficult in a patriarchal society like ours - but here's help. A road map to follow.
Being a new wife in an arranged marriage could make life difficult in a patriarchal society like ours – but here’s help. A road map to follow.
Take a look around and you would find the internet flooded with advice, suggestions and blogs for the bride to be. What to do, what not to do, how to look your best. Right from choosing the hue of the bridal trousseau to choosing the right makeup to go with your wedding theme – there is a deluge of blogs and dedicated websites. So much for the one day of wedding but what about the lifelong agreement called marriage.
After the fame and glory of the D-day, when the honeymoon period (and literally the honeymoon itself) is over; is when the new bride, now a new wife finds herself lost in managing a household of her own. After all we girls are not trained to be domestic goddesses. Nor have we gone through a course on home science. Our dads pampered us while our moms encouraged us to study or work and not spend time in domestic chores.
While it is no rocket science, making a house a home is indeed a task. And just like Rome was not built in a day, the new wife has days, weeks and sometimes months before she can settle into juggling both home and work. Here are a few tips for a new wife to be top of the game:
Just like the wedding preparation where you and your fiancé both sweated it out, managing the house is also a two shoulder responsibility. Sound it off to your partner and the partnership can go onto make a glorious century.
Engage house help. Engage as many for as many chores that can be outsourced – cleaning, cooking, laundry, name it and there is house help for it. This gives you breather to do the more non routine things which require an eye for detail and a personal touch. Better still set a routine for your help – laundry, car washer, dog walker, etc so that they know your preferences and timings.
Eat local, eat fresh. Don’t stack for a flood – after all the two of you would hardly cook by yourself. Eating out, friends’ treats and relatives’ invites would be more of a norm initially. In fact I the Indian context, it is not until a kid ties a couple at home, that permanency or routine sets in.
So it will be ambitious to stack three varieties of pasta and a truck-load of sauces and herbs. More practical will be to keep a few ready-to-cook foods handy.
Build a running list, probably under the refrigerator magnet or better still on your mobile. Keep adding and striking out as need be. This way you will be able to organize by logic and convenience and not go blank in front of the grocery store!
You heard me right, do not spend hours shopping for groceries – order them online (heard of Bigbasket, Grofers & the like?) and get rid of the visit to crowded grocery malls. Spend that time shopping for home décor or better still you or your husband’s wardrobe!
The app store is full of apps that can make your life easier – Notekeeping apps for your tasks or inventories, auto-refills by Amazon, Calendar/Reminder apps for all those small but adhoc tasks which skip our mind all the time. Be an app-freak; trust me it helps save a lot of hassle, and since we are 24×7 on our mobiles, the risk of missing out anything is nonexistent.
What did we do when we had one weekend to shop for the wedding and the list was too long- engage the mother, the MIL, the SIL, the sister and the friend. You know they are your best aides when it comes to putting together a formal dinner or doing your home for a New Year eve bash. Go on and rely on your support system – nothing seems impossible when you are working on it with your besties!
Lastly take a deep breath when things do not go your way; after all you are no domestic goddess and after a long week at work mending your way through meetings and presentations- you and your hubby deserve to relax. After all it is this togetherness that will make the house a home!
Image source: Flickr, for representative purposes only
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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