The next independence...

Today I saw a saying as I was scrolling through Facebook in the morning. I usually ignore ultra-motivational lines... yes they are nice to hear but sarcasm/cynicism works better on me. This one was not - strictly speaking - a saying, it was more of an observation. It said.. "A man's money will never excite an independent woman". I can imagine this line being highly controversial in the Indian society where a lot of people still believe... a man is there to earn and a woman is there to look after the house.

Money is always a sensitive topic, especially in a country like India. Marriages are sometimes solely based on financial situation of the groom and how well he would be able to support his wife and her many longings. I have heard girls, even apparently well-educated ones, declare that they would choose husbands on the basis of his salary. After men choosing brides based on their looks, this is the next menace. Imagine a marriage which is based on a woman's looks and a man's money... what happens when looks fade or you realize that money does not equal happiness? I suppose a lot of people out there would tell me, that is how it has been working for ages so we don't need your opinions, thank you very much! Well, by now you might have guessed that a change in how things have been working (or not working) is exactly what I'm hoping for. Does that mean I believe that people who look for financial security while choosing a partner are shallow? Absolutely not! What I do hope is that more girls would be so financially secure themselves that they would not need to compromise on their other needs while deciding on a partner.

Since the time I contemplated marriage, I never imagined looking for a husband who earns the most, declining prospective candidates based on their salary or feeling excited that I might be married to a really rich guy. What I imagined was love, companionship, both of us contributing to finances and household work, struggling together and sharing successes and failures in life... I suppose I always took it for granted that I would also be having a career that I have worked for and a home that I would be happy to run. Was I asking for too much? Even after fighting and sacrificing a lot so that I can continue to work (in US), people still judge me because I chose career over staying in the same city with my husband. Yes, that is a sacrifice we both have made and yes, there are a lot of struggles. But I would choose that struggle over a life where I don't have my independence (and I know a lot of people equate independence with arrogance and selfishness but well... those people are morons).

I guess what I am trying to say is that there needs to be change in our mindset. There needs to be a scenario where a prospective in-law does not say to a girl... "You don't need to work, our son is earning enough, you can just relax at home" or "sorry, we don't allow girls in our family to work". There needs to be a change in mindset where a girl working and being independent is not an exception, but a rule. Just to reiterate, being independent does not mean partying and leading a wild life, it means that you have the capacity to take care of yourself and your family and being financially stable is a big part of that. So please, first educate your daughters and make them self-reliant... then you wouldn't need to look for a rich groom (or any groom) for her. 

Traveling through India...

This is another one in my speeches for Toastmasters... Through this speech, I aimed to inspire people who may not be aware of all the diverse things that our country has to offer...

How many of you have been to India? Tonight is special because it is a result of me feeling nostalgic about my country and not because I’m trying to promote tourism… we have enough people as it is. Just kidding, I do hope I’m able to inspire some of you to visit India!

Good evening toastmasters and welcome guests, tonight I will traveling through my country, India and taking you all along on the ride with me. Fasten your seat-belts or don’t, actually nobody cares in India.

Now because I am speaking to a quite a lot of non-Indians, I thought this one would be fun to look at. This is supposed to be a map of how India is seen by others around the world. Where do most westerners flock to? You see that tiny little area – that’s the designated vacation spot Goa. And those are the mountain regions… the places people think we go to do Yoga. I like how Gujarat is pointed out as a dry state, it’s so much more though. It’s only funny when we make fun of our country, not others!

Now let’s just forget about how India is perceived and take a look at some of the things you might see if you visit. Beautiful architecture dating back centuries, rich culture and colorful festivals, imposing mountains to gorgeous oceans and of course, delicious food. And I’m grateful that I’ve had the chance to experience most of these things.

My journey started in the eastern part of India, in the city of Calcutta in West Bengal. Calcutta is a city caught in a time-warp. You are standing in a flashy mall, you walk a few steps and suddenly you are in these old, narrow lanes and palatial houses still standing proudly. There are three things people of Calcutta love – fresh Fish every day, an hour of political debate while eating that fish followed by an afternoon nap after eating. Hmmm… rich food and sleep everyday… That explains a lot!

After completing school, I moved to Sikkim, a small mountain state north of Bengal. My campus was surrounded by mountains on one side and a river on the other (you can see it up there) and some of the best years of my life were spent there. We used to take an overnight train from Sikkim to Calcutta and we would often make unplanned trips without buying tickets and hide in the toilets when someone came to check our tickets (yes we can do that, we are quite corrupt).

Then in 2009, at the age of 22, I moved all the way to the south of India to the city of Hyderabad. At first, I hated it. I didn’t understand the language they spoke, I didn’t enjoy the kind of food they ate and every year I would declare… “This is the year I go back to Calcutta”. Well that never happened and five years went by. I discovered the delicious Hyderabadi biriyani and I learned a few words to at least converse with the cleaning lady (she was the most important person in my life). Last week I came to know that most of those words were wrong so I wonder what I had been telling her.

The south of India is also where most of the IT software companies have their offices – especially the city of Bangalore is known as the IT city. It is said that if you throw a stone in Bangalore, 9 out of 10 times it will hit an IT engineer (don’t do it, there are too many of us). 

While working in Hyderabad, I had a chance to visit some places in the West of India. Among them, Mumbai is very memorable for me. It’s said that Indians are crazy about two things – Cricket and Movies. I once tried to run away from home because I wanted to meet an actor who was visiting my city. As it turns out I was not very good at planning and was caught before I reached the bus stop. That is why Mumbai is special because it is where the Hindi film industry (or Bollywood) is located. I actually spent a few hours standing outside an actor’s house hoping he would come out, until the security guard made me leave. Well, I’ll be back!

For now, we move north towards the capital. If Calcutta is where I was born, Delhi is what I am married into because my husband, Ashish is born and brought up here. The specialty of people from Delhi is that they almost completely speak in obscenities. The closer you are, the more you’ll hear. When I first became friends with people from Delhi, I was scared to talk to them, it was all *beep* *beep* *beep*. Later I realized it was because they thought we were friends.  

North of India also has some of the most gorgeous mountains you would ever see, the Himalayan range. Even if we’re not doing yoga there, these are places that bring you close to nature. There is also the desert state of Rajasthan which is the next place in India I want to visit.

If you’re still debating whether to visit India or not, here are some fun facts for you. In spite of its problems, what I love about my country is the diversity in cultures, the rich heritage that we have and the fact that India has the power to stay in your heart forever.

I hope that some of you have been inspired to plan a trip to India because we believe ‘Atithi devo bhava’ … ‘a guest is equal to God’. 

Blank Space...

Have you ever been stuck in the chasm between waking up and sleeping? That space in time when your body is still asleep but your mind is half awake and trying to focus. Only it can't focus completely. So it imagines that it is awake and feels delusional because somewhere it knows that it is still in the realm of dreams but can't drag itself back. It also tries to force itself to awake completely but the body refuses to cooperate. I used to suffer from this phenomena quite frequently and I would either wake up in a sweat or slip back into a disturbed slumber. Either way, the feeling was not pleasant.

Now imagine this feeling in your daily life. Stuck in a space between your dreams and your reality, unable to focus completely, unable to let it go and continue dreaming. Sometimes in our life, we feel trapped in this kind of a situation and it is not a very pleasant one. We have this vague idea of what the reality should look like and feel like but we are unable to reach there. Instead we experience an alternate reality which we have no control over. Sometimes, stuck in that space between sleep and wakefulness, I would sense a negative energy in the room. I would try to escape that negative energy by waking up but because my body would not respond, I would be overcome by a sense of impending doom. That is exactly how we feel in life when we are unable to achieve our dreams and turn them into reality. It is then that the negative energies overcome us and trap us in a web of depression and sense of failure. In that state we feel our dreams slipping away and though we try to break away from our demons, we are frozen in a blank space.

The solution? It is one of the most discussed reaction of any living thing to a threat... flight or fight! In the beginning when I used to be stuck in a state of partial wakefulness, I would give up to the feeling of doom and let sleep take over. It just seemed like the easier thing to do. I would imagine the demons taking over me and tell myself that it would all be over soon. We do that in life too... accept depression, sink deeper into it and tell ourselves that it would be somehow be better. It would be easier than a seemingly useless fight. One day I was reading about the phenomena of this half-awake half-asleep state and I learnt that by trying to jerk our legs, we can break out of that state and wake up. The fascinating thing about our minds is that it just needs that small stimulus of hope. That is sometimes enough to push us out of situations that seem hopeless. The piece of information that I learnt helped me break out of the blank space.Was it a fight? Yes. But here is what I have learnt... always choose the fight.

I have heard a lot of stories of depression, about losing the will to continue... I also have phases when the impending sense of failure threatens to overcome everything. And I know it is easy to talk about it but much more difficult to deal with it. But I have also seen remarkable stories of strength and willpower against great odds. And they all have the same thing in common... they chose to fight. Find that strength, that hope, that small bit of information which will push you out of the space you are trapped in. It won't happen in a moment or maybe even in a long time but it will happen eventually. Don't let your demons win.