My Wife is not an elegant Lady - and I love her for it!

When driving back from Delhi after a visit to the hospital with Monika, Ramona was sitting next to me in car. After a while in which we drove in silence, she turned to me and said: ‘At the hospital today, I saw a woman walk in, fine pants and shirt, and she just looked extremely elegant, even though she was obviously coming to see a doctor. She looked great – and I realized that I am not elegant at all! I think I am just not really a lady!’

I looked at her and had to smile. How she sat there in her jeans, one leg on the top of the empty seat in front of her, the other one far to the right in between driver seat and co-driver seat, Apra lying half on her lap.

No, my wife is not usually elegant. She is many things but on a normal day, you cannot really call her elegant.

At any given point, if you give her the choice, she will probably choose jeans over a skirt. Practical, don't get dirty easily, you can ride on a scooter and don't need to take care not to show your underwear when sitting down. She insists that the oldest pair of jeans she has is the best one.

She has Saris – and wow, does she look good in one – but she doesn't choose to wear them except for once or twice a year on special occasions like Diwali. Her everyday look is practical, also if she wears Indian attire: a salwar suit but no dupatta, the scarf that Indian women drape around their shoulders and on their chest. It gives the dress a certain grace and Indians think it is ‘proper’ and decent. My wife says its unpractical and useless, disturbing her movements and always falling down. She has forgotten dupattas in shops, restaurants and other places on several occasions before she decided to just not wear them anymore.

She has gorgeous long hair which she usually just wears in a ponytail, the quickest and simplest way to get them out of her face. Even for our wedding, she didn't go to a hairdresser to get them up but just made a simple hairstyle herself.

But you know what, even if my wife sometimes sighs, saying that she would like to be more elegant and that it simply doesn't seem to be in her nature, I prefer her like this. No, I love her a lot, also because of this!

She doesn't spend hours in the bathroom working on her makeup or hair and she looks natural, lovely and beautiful without it! I have never seen her in make-up and she told that even before meeting me, she was never interested in that. In her jeans and shirt, she can climb around on our construction site with me and can run around and play in the garden with the kids. She may not, by nature, be elegant, but that means that she can roll up her pants, take packets of bread and snacks in her arms and climb in a boat to distribute it to flood victims. She can wade through the waters where the boats don't go so that people get something to eat. She can walk through the poorest streets of our town and sit in the homes of our kids’ families without being afraid of getting dirty.

No, my wife is not exactly an elegant lady – but she is my lady, she is gorgeous, beautiful and amazing and I love her more than anything!