Married and being a memsaab in a colony

Changing my Facebook status to “Married” wasn’t the only change I had after I got married. I was moving bag and baggage and re-locating myself from Chennai to Jamshedpur. It’s a uranium mining organization that mines uranium, its the organization where my husband works. The mining company has a huge residential colony for their employees.

While I am totally pro-small-town-has-big-advantage-growing-up kinda person, but to have moved out of Jamshedpur around 10 years back for college and later working in a metropolis, moving back into a small town was a major change.

Taking what life had thrown at me, I took up the challenge to move in to a quieter and a simpler life in Narwapahar.

I don’t know what I was expecting but the hidebound way of living in a Public sector organization and the colony has been quite a revelation. Where before, I was recognized as by name, in the new colony I was my husband’s wife – a memsaab! I was again and again reminded of those hindi black and white movies where the memsaab was anyone who was rich and could afford a naukar!

I am quite content with the middling life of being a memsaab in a govt. colony, as of now. Then again these joys of a “forced upon memsaab-giri” are short lived when I overhear a bunch of ladies gossiping and a passive reference to the Mister and his memsaab not being part of a colony event. When I told this to the Mister, he just sighs and tries to make me understand the cons of a colony life-the quidnuncs.

*memsaab – (Hindi) is a title for a woman in a position of authority and/or the wife of a Sahib (boss).

*memsaab-giri – a reference in hindi to being bossy

*naukar – (Hindi) a servant

Day 5 of the Write Tribe Festival of Words #4