[ESSAY] “The Switzerland She Waited For” by Shiwani Dhiman

Author’s Note: This story is personal, based on conversations I had with my mother-in-law, Dahlia Chaudhuri, as she spoke about her memories of marriage, her younger self, and her long-awaited trip to Switzerland. I, Shiwani Dhiman, her daughter-in-law, have written it in my own words, trying to remain close to what she felt, remembered, and carried with her over the years.

She was quite determined that she would never get married. At least, that is how she remembers herself before 1991.

She was a working woman in the male-dominated world of finance, where men seemed to take the front seat when it came to career advancement. She had no intention of getting married, and even less interest in becoming the kind of woman who would spend her life occupied solely with household chores. Her career mattered most to her. Her independence mattered to her. But her parents wanted otherwise.

Soon, marriage proposals started flowing in. She kept refusing them. If she had to consider a proposal at all, she had one condition: she wanted to see the prospective groom’s résumé.

Before the Christmas holidays in 1990, she even told her colleagues how strongly she felt about not getting married. But life, as it often does, had already begun preparing a turn of its own. On 3 January 1991, her father came to her with a marriage proposal. This time, something was different. She had heard about the man before. He had gone to the United States two years earlier, completed his MBA, and recently returned to the country. Somehow, instead of refusing immediately, she told her father, “Why don’t you go and check out this boy?”

A few days later, on 8 January, both families met. During the meeting, one of her aunts suggested that the two of them sit apart from the group and talk. So they did. She had only one question on her mind.

“Do you have any intention of going back to the USA?” she asked.

He said no.

She felt relieved. Perhaps, in her mind, that answer meant that no girlfriend was waiting for him there, that there was no unfinished story left behind.

The meeting was short and sweet, lasting an hour and a half. From her first-floor balcony, she waved the family goodbye as they drove away in a copper-sulphate-blue Fiat. Then she had to rush to the office. After changing into her Alstom uniform, she managed to reach the office at precisely 10.00 a.m.

She immersed herself in her work as usual until, at 3.00 p.m., a phone call came. It was her father. The young man’s father had called to say that his son had found her debonair. If she was agreeable, the marriage would have to take place quickly, as he had to join his office in another part of the country a month later.

She agreed.

And on 31 January 1991, she got married.

After the wedding, he asked her where they should go for their honeymoon. She chose a religious place by the Ganges. She loved soaking her feet in the freezing water at the foothills of the Himalayas. A male colleague from her office was astonished and said, “First, you did not want to get married, and now you want to go to a religious place for your honeymoon? Are you human?”

She replied curtly, “I don’t know. Something happened to me, and I said yes.”

And she said something else, too.

“I will go to Switzerland only when we superannuate.”

She wanted to be different from the typical newly-wed couples of the 1990s, who could think of nothing more than Switzerland for their honeymoon, treating it as a status symbol.

Years passed. Life moved on. She worked, raised a family, fulfilled her responsibilities, and quietly carried that sentence within her.

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Fast forward to 2026.

She is now retired. Her son is married and living in the Netherlands. During one of their phone calls, she expressed her wish to visit Switzerland. The next morning, she received a call from her son. Four tickets had been booked, and the tour was planned.

For her, it felt unbelievable. She had once spoken of Switzerland as something for retirement, something distant, something almost impossible. Now, after so many years, she was finally going there, not only with her husband but also with her son and daughter-in-law. It felt like a bonus bestowed upon her by the Almighty.

She arrived in Switzerland in May 2026 with her husband, son, and daughter-in-law. Having flown in from another country, they drove to Brienz and stayed in a cottage amid meadows that looked like something she had seen only in fairy tales when she was barely five or six years old. On one side was Lake Brienz. On the other were the lower Alps. It was awe-inspiring.

She took a cruise and travelled with her family towards Grindelwald to see the waterfall. She walked with boundless enthusiasm and even hiked uphill, almost forgetting that she was now over sixty. She sang childhood songs and allowed herself to unwind completely.

The next day, they set off for Mount Titlis. She was ecstatic about the cable-car experience. At the summit, surrounded by snow, she fell twice, only to rise again. Thankfully, her son and daughter-in-law helped her up both times. Her husband, only a year older than she was, kept telling her not to enter the glacier cave. But she wanted to go. Her son had little choice but to join her because she knew it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Inside the glacier cave, she felt as though she had entered another world. It was cold, luminous, and beyond anything she had imagined. To her, it felt like paradise.

By 5.00 p.m., the Titlis staff had to guide visitors out because it was closing time. She descended from Mount Titlis feeling low, as though she were returning from paradise to the plains. But then the mountains slowly drew her back into the moment. The peaks were veiled in clouds, the green meadows were dotted with cows, and cowbells rang in the distance. The copper-sulphate-blue lake below took her back to the Fiat in which her Prince Charming had come to meet her for the first time, accompanied by his parents. Switzerland had a way of making her sad to leave, yet happy simply to look again.

The next day, they visited Interlaken via Lake Brienz. She sat by the lake and soaked her feet in the freezing water, with her son and daughter-in-law sitting on either side of her and holding her carefully. After all, she was only five feet tall, and everyone was worried that she might slip, just as she had in the glacier cave the day before.

In that moment, she went back to 1991.

She remembered sitting by the Ganges during her honeymoon, soaking her feet in the water and watching small wishing boats, filled with flowers and a candle, float past after sunset. She had loved that moment then. Now, thirty-five years later, she was sitting beside another body of water, in another country, with the family that had grown from that marriage.

She loved it then. She loved it now.

Some dreams do not disappear. They wait. They change shape. They gather people, years, prayers, and patience around them.

She had once asked herself why she should get married at all. But sitting by Lake Brienz, with her son on one side and her daughter-in-law on the other, she found an answer that life had taken years to give her.

Where would she have found them, had she not said yes?

The Almighty is great, she thought. And Switzerland, which had once been postponed until retirement, finally became more than a honeymoon dream.

^{How to cite: Dhiman, Shiwani. “The Switzerland She Waited For.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 31 Aug. 2026. chajournal.com/2026/08/31/switzerland.}

Shiwani Dhiman is an Indian writer currently based in the Netherlands. She holds a master’s degree in English from Kurukshetra University. Her writing explores migration, belonging, marriage, and the emotional landscapes of living between cultures. Her reflective and literary essays have appeared in Brevity Blog, I Am Expat, and High North News. She is currently working on her first book, a reflective narrative on marriage, migration, and building a new life in another country. She shares her writing journey on Substack at shiwanidhiman.substack.com.