'So what do you do Anita'

I just got married, to a British man, moved cities to be with my husband and have entirely of my own choosing quit my job of ten years and decided to take a break. So as strict definitions go and much as I hate to admit it I am now a housewife.

Its funny really - I have truly looked forward to this time of total freedom and lack of responsibility. Most people envy my life of leisure. And yet the honest truth is I don't really know what to do with myself. Not just that actually I am not quite sure who I am anymore.

This becomes most apparent in social situations conversing with people I haven't met before and I end up groping around for things to talk about. I find my safe haven tends to be to talk a bit about what my husband does and then get quickly onto the subject of 'Oh we just got married'. That gives me about 10 minutes of describing my fairy tale wedding in India. Inevitably there will be the people who have visited India or are planning a visit and that gets me through another 10 odd minutes and then you can move on to the next person and have the same conversation again.

The longer sit down lunches or dinners are tougher. You have only two people that you can flit between (or at best 4 but then you have to include numbers 1 or 2 so repetition isn't an option). Recently at a fairly posh lunch my husband and I were invited to (corporate hospitality at a famous rugby venue) a retired Army Colonel on my right, tried to engage me in conversation on sport. Trying to be sensitive to my fairly diffident but upfront admission to being a rugby virgin - the Colonel deftly moved to cricket - I mean which Indian doesn't fancy cricket. Well as it happens I don't - so we struggled through a few more painful half sentences - one of which unbelievably involved me saying something as ridiculous as 'Oh I have never been sporty I much prefer to dance....'.

Embarassingly gawky statements like that give me bad dreams typically for at least a month after the fact. But they do have the advantage of being very effective conversation stiflers if ever you needed one.

Well on this particular occasion it was then up to the person on my left to try to engage me and he decided to enquire about what my interests were - 'perhaps I enjoyed gardening or cooking?' he ventured!

Where I grew up gardening was something your 'maali' gardener did and cooking was something the cook did. Having lived three years in England I was able to pass off my two afternoons of vigorous cutting back of the hedge and wild creepers under close observation of my husband as a budding interest in gardening and my reading out recipes from a British cookbook to my cook/maid (yes i am lucky enough to have one in England that too an Indian one) as my housewifely instincts finally blooming. But even that got me through only about 6 or so minutes.

So inevitably on that and other occasions conversations begin to meander hopelessly or worse still go embarrassingly pear shaped and I find myself blurting out 'I worked for Unilever you know for 10 years before I got married'. There is an immediate and gratifying shift in tone and mood as people around me mentally switch gears . I then proceed to have a civilised but incredibly tedious conversation about what I used to do, the excitement of having worked in markets as different as India and the UK, Unilever's culture or performance as a company, blah, blah, blah....

How did I let this happen to me how did I let myself become my job? Actually no hang on that's not true when I did have a job that was the assured and stable part of my identity. I did not feel so much the need to dwell on it - it provided the happy take off ground to be able to talk about other things - not spectacularly intellectual things but an interesting mix nonetheless.

Now though I just sit there in trepidation waiting for dreaded question no 3 'So what do you do Anita?'

I have to clarify though this is less likely to happen if the people in question are Indian Indian - and by that I mean born and brought up in India (like me). I do still use the crutch of dropping in the fact that I worked with Unilever, or with the inevitable 'Oh did you say you knew so and so', comparing notes on the educational institution one went to. But that's just the Indian way of establishing your place in the pecking order early in the conversation. A few facts about pedigree and a basic framework of evaluation has been established. Then if you choose to discuss how property markets in Bombay are responding to the global recession or trash the latest Bollywood film it doesn't really matter.

With younger Indians there's even something kind of cool about having had the guts to take a break from the rat race. Not having worked for a bank helps even more since it rules out the possibility that you were sacked. With the older generation though having quit a good job with a well known company prompts paternalistic concern - our parents generation of middle class Indians are the true upholders of women's emancipation and education in India (we merely reap the fruits of their investments in us). It distresses them to think that a talented and intelligent girl may be at risk of losing her independence or self respect.

But the difficult truth is by way of marriage I have committed myself to a life in England now. That too in a city different from the one I spent the past three years growing roots in. All my Indian friends and hence the Indian acquaintances I may have met through them are at least a substantial train ride away and in a scary sort of way already part of a different life. This is a country where while in my case the cook may still do the cooking my husband is the 'maali' and would be quite thrilled if I chose to take an interest in the garden beyond wild hacking under supervision.

I suspect I will be fumbling through many more dinners and lunches of fearing the dreaded question before I finally find an answer I am truly comfortable with.

Until then lets just hope enough British people are planning holidays to India or have just been!