LIFE AFTER WORK
While I was working as Personal Assistant Medical at CMNHS of FNU at Hoodless House in Suva and living in my own home at 11 Kaba Street Tamavua with the family of my son Dhanajaiya Naidu, I was enjoying a comfortable life but after my sixty-fifth birthday the thought of old age began to bother me. My husband had passed away some nine years ago and I needed someone special other than my children who had their own increasing family and work obligations and affairs to control. I wanted to do this so that I could share my life with that particular person for various apparent needs of useful communication, security, personal pleasure, loving care and continued happy life during our old age.
Consequently Ram and I, began to convert our Facebook friendship into deeper relationship and gradually reached a point in our life when we decided to settle down and live in Brisbane as married couple. When we met the first time on December 10 2016 we felt that we had seen each other before, maybe in our previous life. Naturally there were a few raised eye brows within my family circle but the way Ram and I managed and conducted our life and living we got the love and support of all who had a slight misgiving.
I got married to Dr Ram Lakhan Prasad on 10th June 2017 and began living in Brisbane. Dr Prasad, my husband, had lost his wife of fifty years in 2013, some five years ago and it all suited both of us fine to join in matrimony and enjoy the rest of our life caring for each other and living a new life with a little different song, a new style of dance and an enthusiastic living.
The decision to settle down was not easy because there were a few hurdles to overcome. The first was to get the agreement of and from our existing close family members. This was easy to overcome because our children were all well- educated, intelligent and had their own respective family needs and wants to think of and control. They expressed their happiness for us to move on with our new life and living.
Then there was the hurdle of applying for the necessary immigration visa to get married, settle and live in Australia. The Prospective Marriage Visa cost us over $12,000 and then other applications such as Bridging Visa and additional application to complete application after marriage added more dollars to the application and got expensive and time consuming as well as anfractuous, patchy and full of winding and turning because to deal with the Australian Border Protection team was not that easy for us.
The demand for unnecessary documentation, repeated procedures and the element of suspicion for the genuineness of our relationship at every point of progress led us to a lot of frustration and unnecessary expenses as well as long time to materialize. At every step we were told that the meticulous civil servants were following the procedures at our cost, frustration and time.
It took us over a year of repeated submissions of a variety of obvious and unnecessary documents that I was given my temporary partner visa class 820 which allowed me to work and stay in Australia until my permanent visa was approved. That we were told would take another twenty four months and was subject to submission of further proof of our continued living together and additional visits by the immigration staff to assess our condition either by prescribed tests or interviews.
Now we are reaching our old age of eighty and seventy years respectively so in the end we began to get so frustrated that we could have gone back to live in Fiji a lot more comfortably than to accept the consequences here but our patience made us press on regardless in the hope that one day before our life ended we will get the approval to live permanently in Australia. We now own our home jointly, travel together, pray together, play together and conduct all out financial affairs together, In the meantime, we are enjoying our simple but happy life in Bellbowrie, Brisbane, Australia in our own home sweet home and travelling to places we love and to visit our relatives, friends and family members. We care for each other and have a lot to give to and take from each other during the days that are left of our life. Our home is our temple where we live, pray and thrive as a happy couple. We know that our life is short so we are determined to make the best of it.
We have heard of the saying that a house is made of walls and beams; but our home is built with love and dreams. There are bricks and stones but our home rings and shines with love alone.
76 GG Street Bellbowrie. We Thrive Here.
Upon my arrival in Brisbane I found that I was among many of the students of FNU who graduated as doctors during my time. These included Dr Suvenesh Prasad, Dr Vinita Prasad, Dr Dip Chand, Dr Narendra Singh and his wife Vindya Singh and even my other colleagues David and Shila as well as Sunita Prasad and Chandra Narayan. Whenever there is any special function at their residences we go and attend those and invite them to our social and religious functions. There is nothing better than having such faithful friends around in a new country. They all are my great people who give me valuable support and needed care.
The greatest gift of life for me now is friendship, and I have received it. I share my joy, my smile and my social occasions with this new world because we all know that one of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood. I find that interacting and walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. I am proud of my friends who are our greatest support.
Our support in Brisbane
They, all together with others from my Dudley days became my great help to relocate myself in Brisbane. Once a while we get together for luncheon and exchange a lot of our ideas and old memories. This get together gives us a true sense of friendship, brings and renews a lot of old memories of our school days and keep us in contact. I thank my friends for their continued support. They have made a lot of difference to my living in Brisbane because they made me feel at home and I appreciate all their support, care and assistance.
A team that brought back a lot of memories of our school days at Dudley was discovered and regular luncheon meetings were organized. The above photo was taken at one of the luncheon meetings in central Brisbane and is displayed as a collage.
We are enjoying our married life by visiting friends and family members regularly and these errands keep us in touch with the people and places. We attend various social, religious and other functions to keep us busy and happy. We love the life we live and we live the life we love.
I am with my sister in law Lila Pratap at a Book Launch
It would be appropriate now if I narrated the details of our marriage and the aftermath of that vital conjugal aspect of our life now in a separate chapter.