Six years ago, on this day, I married someone I had known for just about 12 months, with most of our courtship conducted long-distance, over email, WhatsApp, and video chat. My friends and family, though supportive, were undoubtedly surprised, and perhaps also a bit worried. Considering I had spent the better part of my early 30s avowedly advocating the single life, content with inhabiting my own solitude, my decision definitely raised eyebrows. It seemed somewhat out of character for me to be marrying someone, let alone a person from another country, whose life and upbringing had been so vastly different from my own, save for the fact that we shared a religious background, although that had nothing to do with our decision to be together. Marriage offered the only opportunity for us to continue to get to know each other, especially because we lived on different continents. The colour of my passport ensured that travelling to Europe to meet him would prove challenging. I had become that feared, suspicious visa applicant — the single woman who was in love with a European citizen. Suddenly, marriage, which I’d felt sure would confine and repress my ambition, seemed like the only thing that could open up possibilities instead.

Still, embracing the decision didn’t come easily. While I had zero doubts about the person I would be marrying, I feared I had more to gain from it than him. Was I taking the easy way out? I’d considered myself self-made, career-wise. Was this some kind of shortcut I was accessing — this proximity to whiteness and to Europe? Could I even imagine myself as someone’s ‘wife’? Walking down an aisle in a flowing white gown was for me an alien fantasy. Signing papers with someone who was eager to share his life with me — that was not part of the plan I had conceived for myself when I turned 30, or even by the time I turned 34, the age I was when we got hitched.

Six years down the line, I can say with confidence that I got very lucky with my spouse. Of course, I married him after I had done my due diligence — meeting his family, living with them, inhabiting his world. Our plan, really, was to remain in India. The pandemic and the unforeseen conditions of my Italian residence permit forced us to relocate. Fortunately, I’ve never been happier.