While we’ve travelled quite a bit since our child was born, this time felt different because he could crawl. His capacity to see and to register the environment around him has also significantly enhanced. He turned nine months old on October 24 and everyday he seems to grow exponentially. But apart from this development, what felt remarkable to me during this trip was that for the first time in my life I wasn’t counting every cent. Central Europe is by no means cheap. Each time I have travelled here in the past, I would maximise on sightseeing, using my press pass to gain free access, rarely ever pausing to sit in a restaurant because doing so involved spending more money. I always stayed in guest houses away from the city because they were significantly cheaper. I was also mostly a ‘to-go’ traveller, oftentimes buying my lunch at supermarkets and picnicking in a park. This year I managed to be less frugal because I am finally earning something resembling a stable income.

Commanding for my work the fee I rightfully deserve has helped me accrue a small amount of money that one could consider disposable. I don’t like that word, though, because I still have too much financial trauma from living independently for almost a decade as a freelancer in New Delhi. I am not rich enough to have money to throw around. But I am suddenly not poor either, which has been a game changer in terms of how I am navigating my way around Europe. For the first year that I lived here, I had been earning, primarily, in rupees, which really is like getting the short end of the stick when you must manage the cost of living in a wealthy province of Italy. Going to the supermarket always put me in a state of anxiety because I would look at the price of a shampoo and begin to calculate its cost in rupees and then before I knew it, mid-aisle, I would feel panicked and afraid of this future I had chosen for myself in which, in the absence of language skills, my next best opportunity involved institutional care work or cleaning rooms, neither of which I felt adept at.

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As this financial year ends for me as an Italian tax paying resident, I am allowing myself to feel a bit chuffed about how far I have managed to come in such a short length of time. I have done my most exciting, challenging, and game-changing work after I became a mother, which is something, I imagine. Two weeks ago, the student at the University of Bozen-Bolzano who chose me as their thesis advisor wrote in to tell me how well they had fared, and I felt so proud of them and of me. It’s taken me more than 10 years to arrive at this stage of financial security while navigating a career as a self-employed professional within the arts and culture sector. I still remember all too well the stress of being down to the last Rs 200 in my bank account and chasing clients for payments and never knowing when they may come in, all the time second-guessing if I should, instead, have taken a full-time job with a company. Ten years of struggle has, somehow, paid off…

On our last evening, we wandered through the city’s centre in search of a cocktail bar I had read about, Archivio. It is tiny and as crowded as a ladies’ compartment train during rush hour in Mumbai. I stupidly stood in line when the norm is to shout your drink of choice to the bartender. I ordered our current favourite: Negroni Sbagliato. It was the best we’d had thus far.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.