They started out as family friends. But it wasn’t long before restaurateur-chef Jerry Wong was courting Maria Shih. It was, however, their respective mothers, who being good friends, played Cupid in this relationship. So while the chef was working in Jalandhar in Punjab, he would travel down to Delhi and would stay at the Shih family’s house in Jangpura. Finally after a two-year-long courtship, the couple got married in 1990.

Jerry

I am a very shy guy. And Maria is the complete opposite. She’s quite talkative and is very outgoing. She herself is very comfortable in the company of people and makes others feel the same way. That is a special quality she has. To put it in a nutshell, my wife balances out my introverted nature. Even now I am not very comfortable talking or interacting with women.

We had a year of courtship during which she drew me out. Things have turned out so well since then. And now she has taken care of everything in my life perfectly. Initially she couldn’t handle it that I was hardly home with her. I used to get only a day off from work.

Nowadays it has become worse. I get probably half a day off once a week because I like to attend to my guests at the restaurant and buy the ingredients on my own. But Maria understands. She even helps me with my experiments. She is the first one to try out any new dish cooked by me and then give me her feedback. In a sense, she is the one to review me before anybody else. In fact, she helps me make authentic Chinese sauces — special sweet corn sauces, soya sauces — and red rice wine ones.

The best part of being at home is Maria’s food. It’s an irony I guess that I like to eat what she cooks while others like what I rustle up. She can make amazing North Indian dishes such as rajma and aloo-gobhi and a delicious chicken green curry that I absolutely love.

When I get my half-day holidays, I go out shopping with her and round off the day with dinner at new restaurants or buffets at five-star hotels. We have two teenage children — Jacqueline, who is 16 years old, and Joshua, who is 13. Maria spends most of her time with the children, what with me being tied up at the restaurant most of the time. She even makes sure I am not disturbed because I go to sleep late — at 4am — and get up at 10am.

At the end of the day I have to confess that Maria is the driving force in the Wong family.

Maria

Marriage is not a bed of roses. You have to work on it to make it one. I met Jerry when we were young but we never got to know each other because we were from orthodox families. It was only when our engagement was announced that we started to spend time together. He was painfully shy, so much so that he would have problems talking to my family.

In fact, he is so bad with remembering names and faces that even now when I meet some of his clients, they complain that he often greets them with blank looks. I have to then tell them that he is the same at home with me. So I might become fat, thin or lose hair, he will probably not comment.

But he is very finicky about some things — for instance, about me dressing up properly. I am not very particular about it. When we were out on our honeymoon, he took note of girls wearing small dresses and he insisted that I should wear them too. I was always the Fab India kind of dresser, so I had to get used to his sense of fashion.

When we got out shopping for clothes, he is a very hands-on husband and father. He does not stand in a corner of the store and not have a say in our choice of clothes. And if he likes something, money doesn’t matter.

We have a pact of our own too. Before the children were born, we had decided that we would respect each other’s decisions and not contradict each other’s points of view when the kids came up with any demands. We pamper them but when it is illogical we both firmly say no and we keep to our agreement.

My husband might be busy most of the time, but his half days on Tuesdays are exclusively family time. I put my foot down on anything else that comes up. We go shopping and then depending upon our budget, we dine at Mc Donald’s, Holiday Inn or a five-star restaurant.

Sometimes we manage to go out for long vacations. Our longest vacation was the 12-day break we had recently. But I ensure that we go for a summer holiday every year — I itch for one, once we hit June.

All in all, we understand that Jerry works so hard. I tell my children that it is to give us a good life that he has to slog. And I have also realised that you have to be prepared for marriage to make a success of it and make compromises along the way.

Photograph by Rupinder Sharma