How A hobby Can Help
Relocating is always a challenge. Who are you in your new country? How do you fit in? For this Indian expat, the answer lay in a pot of glue.
“Everybody needs to find that one thing which is just yours; not about the house, the kids, the husband,” says HARSWEEN BEDI. “Everybody needs some sense of individuality and satisfaction.”
For Harsween, that one thing is decoupage, a hobby she picked up after moving to Singapore. And, in some ways, her new-found hobby saved her sanity.
When she first arrived here, Harswen found life very different to back home in India where she and her husband had just bought their first home together. She’d just landed a new job in the digital marketing space, having worked in the business for 14 years. Their son was still very young and the family was close to help raise him. They were in “default mode”, as she calls it. Then her husband got a big career move that would offer him international exposure. The catch? The job was in Singapore.
Adjusting to a new life
“When we came here initially, I felt very odd. It was my first move out of India,” says Harsween. “Indians are used to a lot of help around the house, but a helper here seemed so expensive – in India, you could have four helpers for the same price! My husband was always travelling. Our stuff hadn’t yet arrived from home. So, for ten months, I was cooking and cleaning and marketing and cooking and cleaning and marketing, and I was alone, without my family, doing nothing but drudgery.”
That’s not the only big change. In India, the family had two cars, but with the pricing system here in Singapore, the idea of doing the same seemed far-fetched. Instead, she took public transport, towing her three-and-a-halfyear-old son Eshan. What’s more, Eshan really missed his grandfather; Harsween’s father is one of those largerthan-life people who children simply adore, and it was hard for her little one to be far from him.
All to say, moving to Singapore was tough initially.
Turning to art
“I realised I needed to go back to something that made me happy such as music, books or art,” says Harsween. “I tried decoupage because a close friend of mine in India was doing it. And I also found it intriguing and beautiful. It revived my love of colours. It’s something anybody can learn, but you do need some imagination and technique to be good at it. And so I fell in love.”
Things started improving. They hired a helper. She started selling some of her pieces through a business she dubbed Sassy Sunshine. She and her dad connected several times a day. And she realised that life in Singapore is actually pretty good.
“In your mind, you often have these milestones that you must achieve. Get a good job. Get married. Start a family. Buy a house. But when you get past the hiccups and get rid of the luggage thinking that life should be a certain way, this place is really liberating. It’s safe. Nobody is judging you. Our weekends aren’t always packed with family commitments so we can focus on our marriage and our son. I’ve come to really love my life here.”
Advice to others
Through it all, she keeps crafting. Harsween decoupages just about anything you can think of from bottles to plates to elaborate bangle boxes.
“The first year was about discovering myself through this art form, and figuring out something that was my own. I get immense satisfaction from creating a piece for somebody. I needed this to discover myself. If I didn’t do this, I’d be really bored.”
And when she’s not crafting, Harsween is often walking on the beach or doing yoga, all things she didn’t do back home.
Her advice to those who are new to Singapore? Try something you’ve always wanted to do, or reconnect with something you loved in your past. You can’t have the life you had in your home country, but you can find a life here that’s just as fulfilling in other ways.