It is romance that got us here...

I have a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy as I am blogging this. If someone were to ask me what romance is, I would be at a loss for words. Why? Because the usual flowers, cards and gifts, or wine and dine isn't really my idea of romance, but then again I didn't know what ‘my idea’ really was. I had convinced myself that I wasn't a romantic, neither is my husband very big on such things, but I was quite sure that I had romance in my life...just couldn't have put my fingers on it.

Our courtship was literally long bike rides to nowhere! We did not once go to a fancy or even not-so-fancy restaurant in our four month pre-wedding outings. We would eat when we got hungry, just stop wherever we were and eat whatever we got….be it a dhaba, a meal bar…or a smoothie! And because one can hardly talk while riding, we would talk till late in the night. No points for guessing that his first gift to me was a mobile phone! We had eyes and ears for none except each other; we annoyed everyone, and hated it, but couldn't help. We went to the same movie three times without realizing, that is how lost we were! I could forever hum....‘you put me on top of the world’, and his cousins and friends told me his smile saw no end. It was magic, but then courtships are always magic!

But that is not the romance I am talking about. I am talking about a lifestyle. My husband when we first started going out asked me, where I see my life to be 'location wise', and I said, "next to him". When I asked him, he said "Everywhere, I want to show you the world!" And that became our mantra, our plan. It is one thing to have a romantic notion of 'seeing the world' and a completely different thing to have the love and commitment to follow the plan through. This is the kind of plan, where you need to constantly let go of a sense of stability for a life of adventure. We were offered a permanent residency in US thrice and each time, we let go cause we knew, if we stayed, we’d be nesting and throwing our plan out of window. There may be people who are rich enough to settle down and still vacation all over the world, we are not. Our only way was to constantly find jobs in new countries and that entails constantly starting over, accepting positions which pay less. It is freely accepting, that in the end, while your friends might end up in big positions, there is a good chance you might not be sharing those chairs.

We got to build our home, the way we wanted. We actually planned every inch of it, the floor plan, the style, the tiles, the color, the fixtures; everything was built keeping in mind a rustic-cottage vacation we took to Jim Thorpe. We wanted our home to forever remind us of that vacation. Our home isn’t big, people who knew that we were living in US for eight years had expected us to buy one of those big posh dreamy homes! We underwhelmed many, but that home is testament to our marriage as a team. For us, it is perfect!

We traded high salaries, big dreamy homes, and most importantly a sense of stability -- for the romance of adventure! We really don’t know of any other person even in our extended circle of family and friends who saved and then readily spent it all taking a huge risk, willingly go for a job that pays lower than what we initially worked for, or for a job that we could not see as necessarily furthering our career, or an investment in college with no expectations what so ever of job that it may lead to, but each only for its own sake! We have stopped consulting others or even telling them why we are doing what we are doing because it makes no sense to anyone except the two of us, who are living this dream…and yes, it was romance that got us here!

We thank God for that!

Can our winning really be without anyone losing?

There are very few books that I can say has changed my life, the way I approach it. One such book for me was Paulo Cohelo's Alchemist, well it is after all an international bestseller, so I must not be the only one inspired by it. But it was not so much an inspiration, as the fact that I started believing in destiny. The fact that all of us have one. I started strongly believing that every child is 'born to win' (another really good book), and that this winning does not need anyone else losing. This belief naturally leads into the idea that we all have a purpose in life, each one of us. And that we are born with the talent to fulfill it. We then owe it to the world to realize it.

Time and again, saints and great men have told us that inner peace is what matters, and it matters because when we are on the path to realizing our purpose, we are 'at peace' knowing that it is meant to be. I still grapple with these questions time and again. I am no longer looking for an answer, because sometimes I know that there are no answers, just logical conclusions. That is my way of resolving issues I feel conflicted about in life.

My unresolved issues in life relate to my in-laws. They are old school, who expect their son and his family to stay with them in the traditional Indian family way. I dread the prospect. It is not as if we hate each other, on the contrary, I have a lot of respect for them for all the sacrifices they made for everyone, and they love me in their own way. And all they wanted in the end was to have a retired life with their only son and the grandchildren (yeah, the daughter-in-law has a background role in their dream). For their part they did want stay-at-home daughter-in-law, a wish which I wasn't told about till later. And more importantly a wish that did not agree with their son's idea of a life-mate. In any case, I am not that person. So needless to mention, I've had my fair share of angry outbursts on their 'unreasonable expectations'. But if I were to look from their point of view, is it really that unreasonable? My issue: that they have pinned all their happiness on our satisfying their dream, which does not even fall in line with my philosophy of life. But then, am I not being selfish? Are we allowed to be selfish, when it comes to realizing our goals? Are we allowed to have a philosophy of life, so contradictory to the family?

I don't feel guilty about keeping my husband, their son away from them. Never have. Always believed that it was his duty to set his priorities in life. One may ask if he really has a choice, I feel he does. And more importantly, he knows he does. It is more him than me, who wanted 'see the world'.

His conscience is clear. He justifies that my purpose needed for me to do my PhD, come to Cambridge, probably leading to being a Prof somewhere helping students, or a research consultant designing programmes for the homeless. I, however am not doing this for any job that it may lead to, I am doing it for its own sake. It makes me happy and I have always wanted to do it. That is the way it has been for most of my adult life: I do things that make me happy and try to stay away from things that makes me restless, sad or angry.

Ideally, I'd want to make parents-in-laws happy and proud, being who I am, doing what I do. I don't want to run away from them, I want to be able to accommodate them in my vision of my family. But for that to happen, they will need to accept me for everything that I am. And sadly, I don't see that happening.

Some issues in life have no resolutions, just logical conclusions. So given that they won't change, what is my compromise? Two fortnightly vacations a year? The problem with a compromise is that you are acutely aware of the fact that it is a compromise. But if not for that, how do we deal with the dichotomy of fulfilling our goals, while crushing somebody else's wishes?

Can we justify it by the theory of 'inner peace'? That not being 'at peace' leads to other vices like restlessness, anger, self-pity, jealousy and passive rage? For my husband (who is a man amazingly sure of himself) the answer is clear, for me not so much! Can our winning really be without anyone losing?