Back in my old home in Delhi, birds would chirp all day and insects would crawl out at night. We would try all sorts of tricks to keep the birds out of our small balcony, lest they build nests and lay eggs. And spraying insecticides and repellents in the kitchen to keep the ants and cockroaches at bay was a pretty regular thing. Surprisingly, while I hated all of it back then, I miss it now. Setting traps and spraying? No, no. I mean I miss the birds, ants and cockroaches.

There’s another thing I don’t like about America: the dearth of fresh food and the lack of access to freshly cooked meals. Processed and cold storage food along with junk stuff are the face of an extremely capitalist food market here. And private guns? Let’s not even go there. The mere thought of being brown and being shot down by a random white guy at a random supermarket makes my heart shrink. I don’t even have a nominee to my bank account!

Yet when my uncle proposed the idea of me moving abroad to build a dream life, neither he nor I had any idea what fate held in store for me. The allure of money was enough for me to grab that chance to escape to this faraway dreamland. My only exposure to the US at that point in time had been through the marketing campaigns that boasted of the economy here. And of course, there was the limited access that I had to American pop culture which painted a vivid picture of the beautiful American Dream in our minds.

But now this is my life, one that I have built for myself. The money I possess now can buy me almost all the comforts that were a distant aspiration in my home country. So, I really don’t have much to complain about. Except that ambition has fuelled my life for such a long time that having more money is something I would never grumble about.

The biggest lesson that life has taught me is that everything passes. The good thing about bad times is that they pass. And the bad thing about good times is that they pass as well. The truth about life is that whether here or there, or anywhere and everywhere, it passes! Neither does it pause for a moment when you arrive on this planet, nor will it stop after you’re long gone. It flows endlessly like the river that meets the sea. And the most challenging task we’ve been given is to find meaning, to find that boat that will rescue us from drowning and keep us afloat until we finally drown when we die. Until we say our final goodbye to this world.

How Are You Today?

AILENA

Friday, 16 December 2022
Somewhere in the Cloud

‘You are what you believe in. You become that which you believe you can become.’
—Bhagavad Gita