Would you give up your job and transfer to a different nation for a boyfriend of 4 months? Or courageous the frigid Arctic Circle with somebody you met on-line? Three Singapore ladies who’ve taken such extraordinary leaps of religion share how they went the additional mile to make their romantic relationships thrive. Right here’s half three of our three-part Valentine’s Day collection.
They met on the set of a Bollywood film, not anticipating that their very own love story would rival that of a blockbuster. Meet Maggie Chan and Bidyut Dumra, each of their 40s, who refused to let this little factor referred to as distance maintain them aside.
Chatting with Bidyut and Maggie Dumra is like watching an unrehearsed stand-up comedy. Bidyut is the jokester, one who can’t assist making a wisecrack once in a while, whereas Maggie has a extra sensible air about her. But, their easy-going chemistry belies a relationship that has weathered difficult seasons of being aside.
The couple met in 2004 whereas he was auditioning for a Bollywood movie function in Melbourne, however it wasn’t till 2006 that the pair began relationship. Bidyut, who was born in India, had simply completed his college research and was beginning his first consulting enterprise.
He says, chuckling: “As a real Indian boy, I’d needed to be a Bollywood actor sooner or later, so after I noticed an advert for a Bollywood film, I went to audition for it.”
Maggie, who’s Singaporean, had relocated to Melbourne for work. The manufacturing firm that employed her had a distribution arm that produces Bollywood movies, and she or he was put in command of casting for the film that Bidyut auditioned for.
Because of a earlier expertise in tv manufacturing, Bidyut ended up not solely getting a job within the film, but additionally a place within the manufacturing crew along with Maggie. Bidyut was interested in Maggie’s vivacious and can-do character; she favored his sense of humour. Nevertheless it was not meant to be – but.
She shares: “I used to be in a relationship then, and he (Bidyut) was this dude who was all the time on a bike with ladies working after him. I used to be not .”
The three-month undertaking took such a psychological toll on Maggie that she determined to return to Singapore for a break. Bidyut missed her a lot that he flew to Singapore to search for her. Pondering it could be romantic
to stumble upon her “unintentionally”, he went to all of the locations she had talked about of their conversations, akin to Zouk and the hawker centres that she frequented.
“It might be future and I’d simply discover her,” he says. When that failed, he e-mailed her asking for a mailing tackle on the pretext of sending a parcel, then turned up at her house the place she was dwelling together with her mother and father.
Maggie says: “Think about how shocked I used to be after I opened the door, pimple cream on my face, rollers in my hair, and located him standing there. I requested, ‘What are you doing right here?!’”
“Yup, I crash landed at her door!” he guffaws.
He requested if they might go regular, however Maggie was nonetheless hesitant, despite the fact that her earlier relationship had ended.
“We have been dwelling in several international locations – I used to be in Singapore, and Bidyut in Melbourne. He had no intention of transferring right here, and I didn’t know what my plans have been. I had performed long-distance relationships earlier than they usually by no means labored out for numerous causes,” she says.
Bidyut returned to Melbourne, disenchanted. He describes the times that adopted like a soppy film scene, with Maggie chortling beside him at each phrase: “I used to be crying in grief and despair – cue the sluggish music – all over the place I went jogged my memory of her. I usually went via a montage of flashbacks of once we have been collectively.”
The couple stayed in contact via the occasional e-mail. Then, Bidyut acquired a possibility to broaden his consultancy follow to Hong Kong, and he moved there in 2006. As destiny would have it, six months after he relocated to the town, Maggie was supplied a place in Hong Kong with an promoting company.
“I used to be considering if I knew anybody who was dwelling there, and his identify instantly got here to thoughts. So I reached out to him,” she says.
Bidyut jumped on the probability to reconnect with Maggie. He urged that she keep in his condo for a month as she settled in, and that he would assist her discover her personal place.
“The second I entered his condo, he locked the doorways,” says Maggie, bursting into laughter.
“I supplied a month’s keep rent-free, however she’s by no means needed to pay lease ever since!” quips Bidyut.
Maggie provides: “That was additionally after I was considering, we’re dwelling in the identical nation now and we’re each single. I’ve all the time favored him, so let’s do this out.”
Preserving the religion
After 4 years of dwelling collectively in Hong Kong, they purchased and renovated an condo with plans to settle there after marriage – though there had not but been a proposal.
“Then the entire long-distance nightmare got here true,” says Bidyut. Maggie’s firm relocated her crew again to Singapore. Bidyut, in the meantime, needed to keep in Hong Kong due to his enterprise commitments. By then, the couple had a stable belief and confidence in one another. Regardless of having their very own social lives, they usually stored one another up to date on their whereabouts via video calls, and would meet up both in Singapore or on one in all their enterprise journeys overseas.
Maggie shares: “We knew the place our relationship was headed, though I did marvel when he would suggest, since we had been collectively for almost 5 years.”
Unknown to her, Bidyut was already planning one throughout an upcoming journey to the USA to fulfill his prolonged household. Sadly, he misplaced the ring and needed to let the cat out of the bag. “I instructed him, perhaps it was God’s manner of claiming that the ring wasn’t large enough,” she jokes.
Unfazed, Bidyut determined to shock her with an much more memorable proposal. From Hong Kong, he rustled up an elaborate ruse – studios and teleprompters included – that had Maggie responding to a fictional closed-door audition for a trend collection, with shut family and friends watching from one other room.
Cleverly slipped in between her strains have been a couple of sentences about weddings and proposals, and as she learn “immediately is my flip”, Bidyut entered the room, obtained down on one knee and proposed.
“At first, I used to be disenchanted that it was all faux as a result of I used to be so excited concerning the job,” she says, laughing on the reminiscence. “Nevertheless it was all very candy.”
The couple have been married in 2011. They settled first in Melbourne, after which in Hong Kong. A yr after their elder daughter Scarlett was born, Maggie’s mom was identified with Stage 4 most cancers. With out hesitation, they determined that Maggie would return to Singapore with Scarlett. Sadly, Bidyut had simply began a brand new job with an airline, so he needed to stay in Hong Kong.
However he ensured that Maggie had every thing she wanted to deal with caring for her mom. She recollects: “He obtained us a rental property that was in a central location and close to the hospital and our little one’s college. He made certain that we have been snug in Singapore so I may take care of my mum. I didn’t must work, and I may deal with getting my mum to her medical therapies.”
Bidyut moved to an condo close to Hong Kong’s airport so he may fly to Singapore each Friday night, spend the weekend along with his household, after which catch the final flight again to Hong Kong on Sunday evenings. “I do know that household means loads to Maggie, so the sacrifices have been value it,” he says.
When her mom handed on, the household have been reunited in Hong Kong. A yr later, nonetheless, Maggie’s father grew to become terminally ailing. This time, the couple determined to maneuver again to Singapore as a household so Maggie could possibly be by her father’s aspect.
It’s been six years since, and their second daughter, River, was born right here in 2018. Bidyut now works because the group head of innovation at DBS financial institution, whereas Maggie is a contract govt producer, in addition to the designer and proprietor of socially acutely aware trend label Baebeeboo.
It takes two
The couple has weathered six relocations throughout three international locations, together with transferring residences 13 occasions. Coping with life’s unpredictable curveballs collectively has solely strengthened their resolve to “not be swayed by the little issues in life”.
Maggie admits that she might be the feisty one within the relationship, whereas Bidyut acknowledges that he has learnt to be extra tactful and delicate. Their worst quarrel was throughout a anxious interval in Hong Kong after marriage. “We needed to focus on our funds, however didn’t agree on some issues. We had an argument and I ran out of the home in tears as I wanted time alone, and didn’t return house until late. However that’s as unhealthy because it will get,” Maggie reveals.
Bidyut says: “I’m extra of a dreamer and talker, whereas she’s a realist and a doer. I can consider 10,000 concepts and options to conditions that appear not possible to Maggie. However for an concept to occur, she’s the one who makes certain it does. And that has labored rather well for us as a pair and a household.”
Supply: Her World
