A Mid-Life start – Down Under – Part 1

I didn’t know there was a template for a blog post in MS word.

In the last 2 years, an idea which was dormant in my idea for about 2 decades or so started germinating. It was mostly watered by the birth of my daughter (that sounded weird) It was about migrating to Australia. There was something about this place which allured me. It was away, self-sufficient, least bothered, aloof, didn’t give a damn and it was both ugly and pretty. It was me in a lot of ways.

I started the immigration process by visiting those visa consultants (a special mention of a friend, TJ, a discussion with whom helped me narrow it down) and then over the period of the next 4-5 months struggled through the documentation process. Husband complied wherever possible, but was mostly a sleeping partner in the whole process (that’s very unlikely of him, though. As I discover much later that he played along as he wasn’t much keen on migration, but did so on my behest). 

Nevertheless, half of 2014 and all of 2015 went by with not much happening except of applications and waiting to hear from the dept. of immigration. . Finally, in Feb 2016, we received our visa grant!

I remember how restless Hubby and I were before the grant came along…and when it did, we just couldn’t wait to move. After a detailed discussion, we decided to move by end July as we had professional and personal commitments to meet. The next 4 months were testing, full of anxiety, nervous, etc as we were sailing in two boats. But they were also some of the best too as so many colleagues reached out to us, and still do, to tell us how much we are missed or how much our work is valued. That wasn’t feel good…but that actually felt good :)
Ok, me digresses. We visited all the relatives and families, had some good time and before we knew it was about a week till departure. This when the shit started hitting the fan. Inspite of planning everything in so much advance, things just started falling apart. Though, all the furniture was sold, all the accounts were closed and withdrawn...there was some stuff that was to be transferred to the in-laws place. This didn’t happen on the day it was planned. The packers didn’t show up. It happened 3 days later and it was enough to throw everything in front of the bus. We were to travel on 23rd morn. The stuff should’ve left our place by 17th…it left by 21st. Which meant that it shaved off that many precious days from the last min packing. Add to it, on 22nd we had some stall-ups happening…some massive ones…which meant hubby and I were basically up all night packing and showering and then leaving for the airport.

The chaos of those preceding 24 hours. The stuff that we had to leave behind and the way we had to leave it behind...the 10 years of having built it from scratch…it all just didn’t deserve the ending it got. It will suffice to say to say Hubby and I used to still get nightmares of those 24 hours’ weeks after we landed in Oz.

We didn’t leave India on a happy note.


© Z.

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