Love Surrender for Caste...

I am a Brahmin by birth. Brahmins in Hindu religion are considered to be the highest caste among the four castes or varnas.

In my 33 years and 6 months of existence the only paap (sin) I have committed is falling in love with a guy from an SC(scheduled caste) category.

Yes, I am a dhabba for my family and the society I live in.

And the only reason I am living with dignity till now is that no one knows about my paap.

Yes I am in a relationship from this guy from the past 7 years and no one knows about it except few of my friends. The younger generation of my family (brother, sister-in-law, cousins) do have an idea about it but even they are not sure and that’s because it’s a little dark secret of mine. Not even our close friends know about it. That’s because we belong to same profession and we can’t take the risk of letting our friends from same profession know about us. Same professions are always dangerous. News like these spread fast and if the news of this paap leaks out, we both will be dead (not literally)

My family like most Indian middle class families is very conservative. No one ever had a love marriage in my family. Leave my family, no one in the entire khandan, village ever had a love marriage, but my own brother got married as per his choice. (I still find it unbelievable). They are happy in their lives, I am not. And that’s because I am in love with A. How we fell in love that is not something I am going to discuss here.

Coming to A’s family, they are a little better than mine. Though it doesn’t mean they’ll be all happy about it but in the end they are going to accept it. Adding to that he’s a boy (ghar ka Deepak), no one’s going to lose their son because he married a girl of his choice. Eventually they’ll accept it.

As for me, a girl, I’ve to make a choice- either my love or my family.

And I can’t choose my love as I can’t let my parents die. I am a coward, if that’s what you call me. I’ve tried to change them indirectly many times, I’ve tried to get their opinion and now I know, it’s impossible to expect that they’ll any day accept it. Leave their acceptance; they’ll die of shame if their daughter does something like that. I can go against the society but not against my parents, not against the ones who gave me life. And I am sorry for that, sorry to everyone who thought I’ll make a different decision.

Sorry, I can’t bring a change in the society by killing my parents, their hopes, their aspirations.

I was born a Brahmin and it wasn’t my fault. I am not religious, but I am not an atheist too. I do believe in god. But I don’t believe in unnecessary customs or practices going on in the society in the name of culture. It’s their belief not mine. I want to be independent. I believe in equality in terms of religion, race, caste or sex. The ones showing off in the name of religion is just not me. I don’t know why no one has a right to decide whom they want in their lives and whom they don’t.

My mother says that love marriages never work. May be they don’t, but who says arranged marriages are always happier. May be someday I’ll have differences with A and we’ll break up (most of the times the reason is we don’t have any future!), but that would be my choice.  Yes, we fight a lot and may be this time is the last time we are together but he was never wrong alone. I was wrong too. And it was just our decision. Who guarantees I’ll be happy with the guy I’ll never meet and just marry for my parent’s sake.

And the truth is I never had a choice in my life. They decided my school, my college, the way I’ll dress, the places I can go, the things I can do and the things I can’t. And I was a good girl till I fell in love but that wasn’t something I planned. It just happened. I avoided it to the best of my efforts but eventually I had to admit that I had feelings for him. I left him many times. I’ve hurt him and in this process of denying this love I’ve hurt myself countless times. But I never promised him that we’ll be together. That was my condition. I never assured him of any future, because I know my family. They can accept my decision of spending my entire life alone but not with a guy from the other caste. It’s not like they’ll kill me or anything but if I ever choose him, I know they’ll die and I can’t let something like that happen.

It hurts to call the most beautiful part of your life a paap but I’ve no other choice. I’ve tears in my eyes when I am writing this, yet again I’ve no choice.

So this is for you A (if you ever read this in your lifetime):

I don’t know for how long we’ll be together but I’ll love you till the end of time. No caste, no religion can ever erase the love and the memories we’ve had and we’ll make. I won’t ask you ever to spend your life alone and wait for me all your life. I want to see you happy. I want to see your kids with those small eyes (yes, I won’t stop teasing you for your eyes in this serious post too), same as you have and I promise I won’t feel bad because this would be the second choice I’ll ever make in my life- this choice of not being with you.The first was when I made a choice to love you.

Goodbyes...

The best goodbyes are the ones that don’t ever actually happen. The stuff that doesn't necessarily come to an ending so much as is slowly disintegrates into less and less over the months and years. Consider a person you used to be close friends with, but no longer speak to regularly. Someone you never had a falling out with, but you simply grew apart from. These situations can be a downer, especially when you realize the former friendship is covered in so many web of spiders it’s no longer recognizable. As big of a bummer as that striking may be, it doesn't have the sudden shock effect of an actual goodbye. No hugs, no kisses, no handshakes, no airports, no packed bags or tears – just time.

Goodbyes are never going to be something we can adapt to. They’re all different and each one is followed by a different person, place or thing being absent in our lives. There are the necessary goodbyes that we feel a sense of relief after, but even then, to know that something we once felt strongly about or comfortable with is going to cease to exist can be scary. Maybe we should eliminate “goodbye” from our vocabulary. Cia, farewell, later, ta-ta, take your pick — any of those feel a lot less concrete and final, even if goodbye is the sad reality.

Money has no memory...Experience has...

Money has no memory. Experience has. You will never know what the total cost of your education was, but for a lifetime you will recall and relive the memories of schools and colleges. Few years from now, you will forget the amount you paid to settle the hospitalization bill, but will ever cherish having saved your mother's life or the life you get to live with the just born. You won't remember the cost of your honeymoon, but to the last breath remember the experiences of the bliss of togetherness. Money has no memory. Experience has.

Good times and bad times, times of prosperity and times of poverty, times when the future looked so secure and times when you didn't know from where the tomorrow will come. Life has been in one way or the other a roller-coaster ride for everyone. Beyond all that abundance and beyond all that deprivation, what remains is the memory of experiences. Sometimes the wallet was full. Sometimes even the pocket was empty. There was enough and you still had reasons to frown. There wasn't enough and you still had reasons to smile. Today, you can look back with tears of gratitude for all the times you had laughed together, and also look back with a smile at all the times you cried alone. All in all, life filled you with experiences to create a history of your own self, and you alone can remember them all.

The first time you balanced yourself on your cycle without support. The first time she said 'yes' and it was two years since you proposed… The first cry… the first steps… the first word… the first kiss… all of your child… The first gift you bought for your parents and the first gift your daughter gave you… The first award… the first public appreciation… the first stage performance… And the list is endless… Experiences, with timeless memory… No denying that anything that's material cost money, but the fact remains the cost of the experience will be forgotten, but the experience never.

So, what if it's economic recession? Let it be, but let there not be a recession to the quality of your life. You can still take your parents, if not on a pilgrimage, at least to the local temple. You can still play with your children, if not on an international holiday, at least in the local park. It doesn't cost money to lie down or to take a loved one onto your lap. Nice time to train the employees, create leadership availability and be ready for the wonderful times when they arrive. Hey! Aspects like your health, knowledge development and spiritual growth are not economy dependent.

Time will pass… economy will revive… currency will soon be in current… and in all this… I don't want you to look back and realize you did nothing but stayed in gloom. Recession can make you lose out on money. Let it not make you lose out on experiences… If you are not happy with what you have, no matter how much more you have, you will still not be happy.

To Lose Best Friend...

When it happens, you won’t want to believe it. You’ll take their word for it when they say they’re busy, swamped at work, “just doing me.” You’ll make excuses for them; put your ringer on extra loud in case they call. But you’ll still feel the change, and because you can’t rationalize it, you’ll try to ignore it.

It’s a specific kind of loneliness that hits you like a wave of nausea. When the two of you are having a coffee and you realize that you have both been staring out the same window for twenty minutes, nothing to say, the opposite of a comfortable silence. When they cancel plans consistently and stall when giving you reasons. When you scroll through your contacts and stop at their name and almost call but don’t, feeling suddenly, inexplicably, abandoned and confused.

Sometimes there’s no huge fight that marks the end of a friendship. No falling out, no major disagreement. Sometimes it just falls apart for no good reason. Distance, New relationships, Priorities. Somehow these things can become more important than your connection; they shouldn’t but they do. And as we get older we tend to downsize, prioritize. Trim the corners of our lives, keeping what’s important and discarding what isn’t. Sometimes we stop needing people in our lives and it isn’t even conscious. No one wakes up in the morning actively thinking “Hmm, I think I’ll stop being friends with so-and-so today.” It just goes out with an empty fizz, like a cigarette hitting the bottom of a Coke can.

In so many ways, losing a close friend is worse than losing a lover. Lovers are transient for the most part but friends are supposed to be there for you always, or so we like to believe. Friendship is a special kind of love that’s not supposed to fade. You never expect the one person you thought you could always depend on to disappear without saying goodbye. And when they do you feel sickeningly stupid and cheated, wondering what you meant to them all along, whether you were just convenient or in the right place at the right time. You never really know for sure.

You look through pictures from back when you were happy — holding each other up, working on same place on a rainy afternoon — and can’t understand what happened. Reach for the phone. Attach a photo to an email, start the subject line with some fusion of “Remember this?” and “I miss you…” Get suddenly overwhelmed by a horrible emptiness and discard the draft, leaving the phone untouched. So much history flushed down a dirty sink.

And the worst part is, you don’t even know how to explain yourself. You know if you bring this up with them they’ll give you a blank expression and a blank excuse. You don’t want to explain how you feel. You can’t. You just want them to get it, to read you like they used to be able to. You want to take them by the shoulders and shake them, screaming Where are you? What happened?! Until you’re blue in the face. But you can’t do that either, because you’re no longer on the same level and it’s going to make you feel crazy.

In life, it’s a given that you will lose people. People will flow in and out like curtains through an open window, sometimes for no reason at all. But losing someone important to you will feel like a sucker punch every single time, and you’ll never see it coming. Which makes the friendships that do hold out, the ones that make it through countless breakdowns and breakthroughs and changes and years, so damn important.



Thank you Mila Jaroniec...

A Moment When Stop Chasing Dream...

After 5 Years I am writing this one…

In July, 2010 I was finishing up my final semester of my college career, I emailed all the relatives and friends who lived outside India for everything that they did for me throughout my academic career & during my illness. I received responses from all of them, but one email stood out, particularly the ending of it. The email read, “mamam, I hope that graduating is just one of the many things that you aim for that you will, in fact, get to do. What else do you dream of doing? I wish it all for you, and more.”

At the time, I didn’t realize fully realize the weight of the question that my uncle (papa’s friend) was asking. What else do you dream of doing? It’s a hard question to answer, and I’m still not sure that I even know half of what I dream of doing, but I do know that in the six months that have passed since I’ve graduated college, I haven’t been doing anything that I’ve dreamed of doing.

Shortly after I graduated, I was able to get a job in the R&D department at Electrotherm India Ltd.  in Ahmedabad. I was excited to even get a job, let alone one that paid close to the average salary for a college graduate. I quickly realized, however, that the position that I’m in is one that people can easily get “stuck” in, and that it has nothing to do with what I want to accomplish with my life. In theory, I’m working an entry-level job to get experience for future jobs that will pay better than this job that will in turn allow me to actually pay for my entire instalment of bike each month. It’s something that I, like many others before me, have fallen victim to - allowing ourselves to become subjects of a society that values money above all else.

Now, I’m not some Marxist that believes that capitalism is the root of all evil, but when I sit in train to go Baroda, surrounded by people who can’t wait to get back to their homes in nine hours, I wonder whether or not they are actually chasing their dreams, or if they were forced to give up on them because they had no other choice but to give up on them. Do these people really want to be owned by their cell phones and their handkerchief and their water bottles? Is that what they dreamed of doing?

India, “the land where anyone can do anything,” breeds the same exact people, year after year after year. We wake up, make our kids’ lunches, feed and walking, get on crowded public transportation (where everyone has their headphones in an attempt to block out humanity) or sit in dead stop traffic to get to our jobs (whether they be white collar or blue collar), make money, get back on the same, oftentimes even more crowded public transportation or crowded free-way  finally get home, spend less time with our families than we do at work, eat, watch Ekta Kapoor’s family Drama, go to bed, and repeat. It’s easy to fall into this cycle because that’s how our society has been constructed. Want to spend some more time with your kids or your wife this morning? Well that could risk your position at work, so that is not an option.

Many people will say that what I’m telling is exaggerated, and perhaps it is, but if you’re reading this and are thinking, “This isn’t my life,” please attempt to realize how fortunate you truly are. Be glad that you escaped the cycle.

This easily could be some anger generated by the fact that I’m sick of pushing papers, and scanning documents, and filing and hole punching meaningless paperwork, or maybe I’m writing this because I’m stuck in some state, or maybe it’s because I forgot about what I dreamed of doing- whatever the reason may be, I believe that there is some truth to what I’m writing. The system that we live in doesn't support real creativity, unless of course you’re one of the lucky few who have been liberated from the system.

Maybe, I struggle to find meaning in the day-in and day-out, and most Indians who are subjected to the cycle have found the meaning of boring indefinite routine. Maybe, the dad who works his 9-8 does so because coming home every night to his son’s hug makes it all worth it. Maybe the 24-year-old who works as a cashier does so because she’s happy that she has new-found independence from her parents. Maybe, I’m lacking meaning in my day-to-day life, and I’m simply just waiting to find it. Maybe, once that meaning is found, I will look back on this piece and be happy that I’m no longer the cynic that I once was.

Still after 6 years, no change in life...

If you want to be comfortable, don’t try to live your dreams.”



Thank you Keith Pence...

Message For Best Friend...

Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say.

There is a definitive moment in a person’s life where they become acutely aware of the fact that they found their soul mate. I'm not talking about the person they’ll spend the rest of their days waking up to each morning. I'm talking about the awkward person that changed your life forever. So, to that awkward person, my best friend:

Thank you for being you and for letting me be me. Thank you for letting me feels so much like myself when I'm with you. Thank you for not making me wears any masks or put on any fronts. Thank you for sharing in my happiest moments, and for genuinely feeling the same; for listening to my saddest stories and radiating compassion and empathy from wherever you are. Thank you for being the only person I ever want to confide in.

Thank you for being the most beautiful person, inside and out. Thank you for making the world a better place, just by being in it. Thank you for making colors a little brighter, sunshine a little warmer, and hugs a little better. Thank you for loving more fiercely than anyone I know. Thank you for defining selflessness, always putting others before yourself; you are going to change the world just as much as you have changed mine. 

Thank you for the laughs, for the cries, and for everything in between. Thank you for being my rock, my anchor; for keeping me grounded when I feel like I might otherwise blow away. Thank you for all of the things you do, big and small. Thank you for knowing me better than me. Thank you for always knowing what to say and for being one of life’s best teachers. Thank you for making fun of me when I deserve it, and for loving me when I don’t. Thank you for staying constant in a world full of change, and for keeping some normalcy in a world full of chaos. 

Thank you for setting the bar so high and making it impossible to find another friend as good as you. Thank you for making the twenty short years we have been friends feel like forever and for giving me enough memories to last a lifetime, but not ending there. Thank you for making me hurt when I miss you, but for taking the hurt away when I see you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for the absolute privilege and honor of being able to call you my best friend; thank you for being my person. Thank you for giving me these reasons and a million more, to be thankful for. 

Forever and Always,

Your Best Friend…

Love Make A Good Person...

Let love make you believe. Despite the suffering and brokenness, know that there are people who still hold on to hope. The goodness may not always be seen on the surface, but it will always find a way to emerge and overcome pain. It’s hard to find the good when you’re stuck between different battles, but when you are beaming with love for yourself, for your significant other, for your family and friends, it helps you to look at the world in a different light.

Let love be the most influential force in your life to make you and those around you, better. The kind that makes you share what you possess because you don’t want to see the people around you be deprived of what they deserve. Have a heart big enough that it influences other people to touch lives as well. It’s too often that the little things in life are ignored when it should be the most appreciated.

Let love make you soft like how you should be, but hard when you need to be. The one that pushes you to forgive the people who have hurt you, but does not fool you to give chances to those who are not worthy. Mistakes are inevitable but do it too many times and it becomes a choice. It’s important to know who to keep and who to set free because, at the end of the day, it’s you who will feel the joy or the pang of sadness.

Let love fill you with excitement that makes your heart beat faster than normal. It’s good for the soul to have something to look forward to. Making plans, enjoying the moment, and reminiscing what happened during the day or night —these are three of the best things done with people you love dearly. Time is not meant to be wasted and places to be unexplored.

Let love leave no room for lies and doubts. It should be the kind of relationship that makes you look at the person highly and respect him for respecting you. The worst thing you can do to a person is to break their trust and leave them with an aching heart and a mind spinning out of control. It’s important to have a strong sense of self-worth, but any relationship — whether platonic, romantic, or familial — has the power to destroy it through lies and doubts.

Let love heighten your emotions. Whether you like it not, some things become a big deal even if it shouldn’t be. But just as much as you are aggravated with petty misunderstandings, the small gestures have the ability to make you ridiculously smile and turn your day better. Both negative feelings and positive feelings deeply affect you when the person matters to you.

And lastly, let love remain fierce. Never forget to keep maintaining and strengthening what you have; because when you’re holding a great thing, it’s your responsibility to treasure it unless you want to regret it for years. A love, whether platonic, romantic, or familial, should be real, passionate, and long-lasting.