A couple who exchanged vows at the Fort William Club in Calcutta — before the city became Kolkata — have just marked their 40th wedding anniversary, and their story doubles as a rollicking tour of an expat life well lived.
The pair began as a long-distance romance in India: she was at university in the country's north, he was studying at a management institute in the west. In the era before smartphones, they survived two years on handwritten letters in careful cursive, phone calls and short reunions, where every goodbye felt like a scene from a film. They married young — so young that bars with 21-and-over rules occasionally turned them away, prompting her husband to grow a moustache purely as proof of age. It didn't last; a banking career demanded a clean-shaven face.
Marriage revealed its surprises early. She discovered her new husband was painfully shy at social events, so she coached him into conversations for years. Somewhere along the line the roles flipped completely: today he charms dinner tables while she leans back and chimes in only when he fluffs a punchline.
The real engine of their story was work. His job with a multinational took them to ten countries across several continents, a life of constant packing, adaptor-hunting and starting over. Along the way they rubbed shoulders with heads of state, kings, queens, crown princes, presidents and even the Dalai Lama — sometimes knowing exactly which fork to use, sometimes bluffing with a confident smile. Their self-taught survival skill, they say, was learning to find the funny side of everything.
Not that it's been a highlight reel. They argue passionately, fight spiritedly and have made each other cry more than once. But lately, they note, the smiles are winning — perhaps because four decades in, they understand how precious the remaining time together is.
Their exchange on the anniversary itself captures the tone. She grumbles that being married to the same person for so long is like wearing the same dress to every party. His reply: he thinks she looks sensational in it. From "I do" to "I still do", as he puts it.
For travellers, this is a warm reminder of what expat life actually looks like over the long haul — the kids, the grandchildren, the hosts and friends you become across borders — and of how a place like Kolkata, with its colonial-era clubs and old-world letter-writing romance, can set the stage for a life that spans the globe. It's less a destination piece than an inspiration: some of the best travel stories never make it into a guidebook.
