The Nerdy Single & wait for it, Happy Me :)

It's been some time that i seriously sat down to write something, anything! Work is one excuse i can use. The other is the fear of ranting on a paper. That the moment i would start typing, all the frustration for the world around me and inside of me would start bleeding onto the paper and i didnt want it. I wanted to write in a state of mind that was more stable, less complaining!

After a day of yelling at a lot of people for different reasons, i feel stable enough at this hour when i am completely alone in my bed, ready to plop down on a pillow. I should have been this stable and calm when i was in fact yelling at those poor folks but sometimes it just happens. You dont want to be rude, you dont want to roll your eyes, you don't want to ignore people right on their pretty faces but you do. Something inside makes you do all that even when your upbringing and manners tell you its impolite. Doctors call them Hormones - Things that make you go bat crap crazy when gone haywire. The reason they go haywire is because of work induced stress. (some of my much married friends tell me its because i am not getting any 'action'. may be!). Today turned out to be one of those days where the Bus driver was definitely dilly-dallying the bus so that i would reach office late. I knew it the moment i hated those innocent faced kids being dragged by their mothers for school cause my bus was late and then it hit the school zone with its mandatory 20 miles per hour speed limit with double fines for the offenders! How could i hate kids! I love them! Something was definitely up then.

The frustration continued throughout the day. The things i would otherwise pay no attention to magically magnified themselves! So a snide comment about me vacationing alone, a passing remark about my single status all bothered me much more that what they should! Hell, am i not listening to this garbage for the better part of last 3 years!! So i am in United States of America - Supposedly a country that welcomes you with open arms and allows you to do whatever you want without anyone meddling their snooty noses in between but its not so. Why should it hurt so much now of all the times!

I counted one to ten. Then in reverse but my quota for patience was so over for everyone around, its scary! I am not an unreasonably irate person. Yes, i am not fond of every single living thing around me. Most manage to irritate me but i can still keep my face straight or even smile if i am feeling extra generous that day but i hardly ever show that irritation on face cause i know deep down, its not them, its me! Its my lack of sleep, lack of any routine, lack of me time, lack of reading and introspection time thats causing all that. All these wonderful people are being what they have always been. Its me that should take time out, in a corner, with back turned towards the world so that i can think calmly and then react. But sometimes it just doesnt happen!

So when i strode back home, earlier than useful, I saw the ultimate remedy to stabilize myself. Two sinks full of dishes, waiting for me to be done, welcoming me invitingly and no, i am not being sarcastic here. Its weird but doing dishes (the indian way, with all the bubbles of soaps flying around and water tap running incessantly to deafen any noise around) blankets me in calm that i hardly ever experience in a company of humans! Its therapeutic!

A warm and steaming cup of Indian Chai, complete with gingerroot and cardamom later, I was on with my studies for an important exam and lost myself in 'Triple Constraints'. Scope, Time, Cost, Quality and Customer Satisfaction. They are called Triple right, then why are they 5 in total! well, whatever. Time flew past and i was alright! Feeling so much better while the narrator on the slides droned on about BOK. As i finished the module with its 40 something pages and then ticked through Test that was a surprise and fared well enough, i realised how satisfied i felt. As if yelling at those clueless folks was utter waste of time. All i needed to calm down was to read, study and then test myself against a syllabus!


and to top it all of, i am reading a book by an Indian author, very poignantly written tale of an Indian girl, well raised in a southern village that is married off to an NRI doctor. Her trials and tribulations are keeping me wide awake when i should be sleeping. I am liking this Leila more than any human made of real flesh and bones. Her anger, her disappointments seem real even when i know i would never be in her position!
I am so stopping myself from hitting the last page button on my Kindle just to read what happens of her in the end. I feel more engrossed in reading this book than i ever feel while a real person is narrating their story.


And then it stuck me and stuck pretty hard. Have i turned into one of those introverted, nerdy, unsociable kinds that need no living being to make them happy, calm and satisfied?! Should i panic that i no longer need humans to make me feel useful, protected and accomplished?! I gave myself some time to see if the panic was slowly rising the way it normally does but it didnt. My brain was whirling just as much, taking in the complex words and terminologies. I felt just as composed and in control as before. So the fact is sealed now. Bring in the trumpets please - I am Nerdy, I am happy, alone and have never felt this better before!

Its All About Loving My Parents!!!

 When i was little and money was the answer to all my questions and its absence the root cause of all my problems, i wished i had a different set of people as my parents. People who had loads and loads of money, people who would nod their heads in affirmative for the growing list of demands such as books, games, CDs and Picnics, people who would offer me my favorite street food every single day, people who would praise me for every single grade i earned than questioning me for every single one i lost. People who would buy me new clothes for every festival, People who would drop me to and pick up from school in a car. I would often fantasize about waking up in a different house - a house that had everything my home could not afford. Alas, it never happened. Every day i woke up with my same old parents. I wallowed in self pity for a few years as i met my friend's parents - Upper middle class to rich, well educated, soft spoken and well groomed. Then out of no choice I accepted my parents as they are! I bragged about it, put myself on the pedestal to think how effectively i was coping with them and what a favor it meant to them!
             15 years later, 22000 miles apart, i miss them irrespective of the money they never had or their disciplinarian nature that never changed. Past 2 years in US have been stagnant as far as my career goes but i witnessed so many shades of human nature that today, after all the freedom i have to do whatever thing i want or after all the money i have ready to buy me every little thing i ever wanted, i value nothing of it. I have (finally!) come to value my Aai Baba like nothing else!

              I however feel ashamed for the way i thought about them during my formative years. I feel sad for all my outbursts at them. Outbursts - out of the growing frustration of being stuck in a middle class set up for life, out of the irritation of wanting to grow wings and fly away but not getting around to actually do it. I feel repentant for every single time i have hurt them with my words and/or actions. I feel grateful for all the punishments, angry words and the pain that comes with it that they inflicted on me, for its them that i could face challenges in my life without as much as batting an eyelid. I feel thankful for all the values and principles they imbibed in me, for its them that i can still connect to my roots in a foreign land. Temptations to overstep my boundaries do not affect me despite of the freedom US offers me, thanks to them. Their faces flash in front of my eyes every time i so much as think about doing something i know they wont approve of. I particularly am so thankful to my Baba for stressing it early on to me that there is no shortcut to success other than honesty and hard work. Smart work is sometimes over rated for some things in life do need lot of sweat and sleepless nights.

I am so thankful to my Aai for showing me the joy of sharing, for letting me understand the happiness you can offer to people in small acts done with love, care and best intentions. I could have easily been pampered as the only child for the first 10 years of my life before Kiran was born but she never allowed it to happen. Even if it meant just a bowl full of curry, she shared it with all our neighbors. Everyone was welcomed at our small place. Sometimes, that would mean no place for me to study or play but i grew up around people, all kinds of people, that made me ready to face life, accept people with their not-so-pleasing habits. It also made me aware that not everyone has your best intentions at their hearts and you have to keep away from such people, embracing only those who were genuine, who loved you with no hidden motive.

           Both, my mom and dad, worked very hard to fend for our family. I have seen them going out of their ways to help people, to make them happy with small but thoughtful gestures - and all this without making a whole scene about it. I have also seen those very people back stabbing my parents. What however has always amazed me is my parent's ability to forget and forgive. That is one thing i could never learn from them. To let go off people, To let go off your expectations from people. I still get hurt and swear off people who back stab me but again my parents showed me how to move on and i did and felt much better.

                My dad never repented the fact that i was a girl. My gender never stopped him from choosing an ambitious career path for me while, all along, he had an option of marrying me off but he still waited for me at 11 PM, every night at deserted Dadar TT Circle to pick me up from where my company bus dropped me so that i did not have to commute alone in the dead of night. My good grades brought tears in his eyes and a huge grin as i stepped on stage to receive numerous scholarship awards or trophies and medals for elocution, singing, memory quizzes or essay competitions but he never tolerated me bragging about those to anyone else.    He is the man who showed me the difference between possessing a bad attitude and being grounded and down to earth!

                 Me being a girl has never forced my mom to drag me to kitchen to stop studying and learn cooking but she always taught me how being a girl, a woman to be, i had the power to make or break a family. When i would eventually grow up to be someone's wife and someone's daughter-in-law, how my little adjustments would mean peace of mind for my family. How the good old spanking at correct time would mean my children would learn to toe the line. How respecting elders in the family and agreeing to their reasonable demands never means a hit to your well educated self and ego fueled on professional success.

 Today when i see people around pass me an incredulous look for the things i say or do, when i sometimes find myself underestimated or unaccredited for certain things, when very often i feel others finding my company utter boring, uninteresting and lackluster, when i am being judged based on the most trivial things, i feel heavy thinking about how my parents tolerated me all these years. How their patience never ran out. How their love saw no dearth for me. How only they could see as a diamond and not as apiece of coal like so many others do. It seems so funny now that ever, in my delusional mind, i had patted my back for 'accepting' them. The reality has now dawned on me that they are the ones who had to accept me for the way i have sometimes been - argumentative, indifferent, standoffish and very insensitive to their needs. They are perfect, have always been.

We never shared a relationship so formal for me to be able to say sorry but i hope God would allow me to be with them, to do something for them that would make them tremendously proud of me and enormously happy.
I think a huge Thank You is in order to God as well. He surely gave me poor parents but He compensated by making them just so perfect!!