"I come from a very small town in Bihar. I studied in a Hindi medium school. But I wanted to make it big and I did" - Shweta Mukherjee
I come from a very small town in Bihar. I studied in a Hindi medium school. But I wanted to make it big and I did. By 2011 I was based in Germany, working for a muli-national IT company. It was a well paying job and I had a fancy corporate life, flying across cities. I remember feeling so proud of myself.
Soumak, my husband was working for the same company, but he was based in Switzerland. So I had to regularly shuttle between those two places. Life was good but after a point, every day started looking the same. And that kind of bothered both of us. It was around the same time that I got pregnant. Once I took a break from my career to have my child, I never felt like joining back. Yes, I was at the peak of my career and the financial stake was high, but I just couldn’t go back.
We lived in Switzerland till our daughter grew up to be around three years of age. Soumak still had the job but I remember him telling me everyday how he wanted to quit too, to do his own work. With a young daughter, it needed a lot of courage for me to say yes to that. Soumak waited. In the mean time, I also set-up a photography business, for which it made sense to return to India. This came as a wild news for most of our friends. ‘Why are you guys even thinking of moving back to India when life is just so perfect there in Europe’? they would ask us. Life may have been perfect, but both of us knew we sought adventure over perfectness.
Within a year, we were in Bangalore. We didn’t have any clear plans though. Soumak kept his job for a while but eventually I warmed up to the idea of him leaving the job too and he did. It was about equality and he deserved this. For strategic reasons, we decided to focus on weddings, made Delhi our base, gradually built a team and to our delight, the business started to flourish. But then something happened.
Eventually we did move to Goa. Thankfully, it has worked out for us, and our daughter. The business took a bit of a beating but things are getting back to normal. We are loving it here in Goa. At least once in my life I truly wish to homeschool my daughter. It’s okay if that’s going to be even for a year or so. I just want to travel in a camper sort of thing, with her, my husband, our dogs, and the wild in me.
- Shweta Mukherjee, Goa
