likely increase in divorce rates if the trend of couples chasing professional success in different cities were to accelerate it might not be the ideal way to live but its a trend that one cant wish away rohit pant a senior general manager with zydus cadila spends a chunk of the month zipping across asiapacific sometimes you need to go away to come closer if identity cards are being refashioned so are marital roles and identities my parents his parents not to mention the domestic help she says after all there is just one life to live i am lucky not to have to think about it practising is it somewhat harder they met as phd students in ohio and for a short while after their marriage both worked for mercedesbenz in the same city a generation ago mrs nilekani would have been expected by everyone to pull up stumps in bangalore and move to delhi as the trailing spouse in ahmedabad wife manjari who works as a communications coordinator takes care of daughter manu and gets by with the help of three maids lots of friends and great neighbours the new tagline could well be hum do hamare do it helped too that when she chose to spend two years in the us after they got married her husband was supportive of her decision it allows one to work late in the office meet friends for a drink after hours long chats over the mobile sms exchanges through the day with little private jokes skype to bridge the seven seas of separation emoticons to say i love you they made sure they were together on birthdays anniversaries and festivals i want to put family first but honestly i didnt know it would be this tough he says husbands who are as sensitive to their wives career ambitions as they are to the sixfigure salary supplementing the family income are often quite happy to go along with a twocity arrangement they meet once a month in bangalore or somewhere in between globalization has made the strolley the new briefcase what most marriage counsellors will agree on is that its not living under two separate roofs but the reasons for doing it that will really affect relationships learning to get out of the way also is important what has changed is the way the middle classes have taken to this separatebutunited arrangement stretching both the definition of marriage and the mangalsutra that unites them but she adds im doing well on my own and so is hethey intend to stay this way for a while and while the nilekanis are an older muchmarried couple with grownup children living apart together lat is a choice that many newlyweds are making determined that the personal should not compromise the professional its a life prescription that both of them dole out to their colleagues santrupt b misra heads hr in the aditya birla group and alka misra is chief personnel officer with the