#16: How I Met My Wife
Kids, I'm going to tell you an incredible story -- how I met Ania
I rode into a small organic farm in Gradisica, Slovenia on May 13th 2019. I had signed up to volunteer there for two weeks on a whim. I rode through a forest (screw you, all you maps apps) where I had to carry my cycle up rocky trails. By carry, I mean, take off the luggage, carry the cycle, walk back, then carry the luggage. Rinse and repeat.
When I got to the farm, Metka, the host asked me if I wanted to rest. I didn’t want to admit I was tired, so I said I could start helping right away. I got a quick tour of the farm from a very nice girl, Ania, and then off I went to stack wood in the chicken house.
Ania was with me in that chicken house. As we stacked wood surrounded by chicken shit, we spoke and I forgot I was tired. We talked about meditation, Buddhism, how much we both missed our dead mothers, and so on. She was volunteering for three months on the farm with her boyfriend. He was cutting the wood that we were stacking.
As the days went on, we talked more and more. I gave her company as she cooked goulash (meat stew) for hours into the night. We talked about our dreams, our hopes, the world, everything.
When I had told an Indian cyclist in Turkey about my racist experience with the police there, he made fun of me in his YouTube video (“Police ne isko laath mara haha”). When I told Ania, she was outraged. It turned out she had spent nine months volunteering in a refugee camp, so she understood these situations much better than me.
Once, she had had a fight with her boyfriend, and she was telling me about it. I told her, “Well you know, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll be in India”. Two weeks later, on May 26th, she broke up with him, and we started…well…I’m not sure what we called it at that point.
I guess you can say Slovenia was where it all started. We went on our first camping trip together from that farm. In a slightly intoxicated and elevated state, we watched the lovely movie Samsara multiple times. We spent all night drinking and chatting with total strangers in Ljubljana, including a guy who passed by at 5 AM with his fists covered in blood. “Spreading the joy”, we called it (and still do).
A few weeks later, someone called the police on us because they thought I was a refugee. We were all kneeling in front of a soldier with a big gun, I had to literally pull Ania back because she wanted to shout at them.
We travelled to Hungary from Slovenia, to volunteer with a nice lady who had a permaculture farm/garden on her property. We worked hard, played hard, drank a lot of beer, and watched one of the best shows I’ve seen: My Brilliant Friend.
After Hungary, our next stop was a hippie community in Romania. We had an absolute ball there. There were bonfires, deep conversations, politics, and extremely open people. Also, I learned of — as I’ve started to call it — the Hypocrisy of Hippies. There is a lot to write about this experience, but I will save it for a later post.
From Hungary, we went to Serbia to attend the Guca Trumpet Festival, and to explore Belgrade together. Our day of parting was getting closer. We had a week or so full of fun, frolic, laughter, and more. Then I left for India. A full-time job in an NGO beckoned. “Four years for myself, two years for the world”, was what I told myself.
In November, I went to Poland for a month. In February (2020, if you’re not keeping track) she came to India. Before she came, she gave away all her stuff. This was it. She was moving out. Her plan was to spend a month or two with me, and then travel alone all over India. But one Thursday, we heard people banging plates to make Corona go away. On Sunday, the lockdown began.
Bombay was on super-strict lockdown. In my one `1-room-kitchen apartment, we learned that we actually enjoyed being together all the time. Sitting at the dining table, she would draw and I would write, and we would be alone in our thoughts, but together.
During the lockdown, we made friends with our neighbours, Hina and Hamid. They invited us to join them for their Eid dinner. After amazing biryani and falooda, we all spent the night together drinking and talking. At one point, Ania and I climbed down those Bombay quadrapods to the beach. We were standing with our feet in the water looking at a full moon, and she said to me, “This is a good time to propose”.
It was an interesting night. We had a running race on the beach with an actress, and talked through the night. I went to bed in the morning hallucinating that I was controlling a lady’s actions while she was cooking in South America.
We moved to Bangalore in August last year (2020) into a nice apartment. We travelled a bit in Karnataka, but mostly drank a lot of coffee and alcohol.
Fast forward to this August, we decided to get married! Corona wasn’t letting up, so we couldn’t do a nice wedding with the people we loved. We had a registered marriage under the “Special Marriage Act”. My brother flew in from the US to be a witness. It’s crazy that this is still a thing in India, but our photos were up on the notice board of the local Sub-registrar’s office for a month, in case anyone had any objections.
So it was. On August 10, 2021, two people in love got married. Sorry if this is already boring you, but I’m going to share a few more photos here!
So that’s our story :)
"we would be alone in our thoughts, but together." This says it all and that is what it is.
I always enjoy reading your stories, greetings from Chile, you're a really nice person