Rants and Ramayan

When I got married, I was given blessings by my elders. Even while I was getting married, the pandit wished us to be like Ram and Sita. Probably the worst thing that somebody can wish for us. I forgave him almost immediately because his intent seemed honorable. As the days progressed, more and more people started wishing my husband and I to have a happy married life like Shiva and Parvati. I hated it and I will tell you why it was the worst thing ever!

In our very own grand Hindu epic tale of Ramayana, Sita was 6 years old when she got married to Ram, who was twelve years old. After that they grew up together and stayed for 12 years with each other in Ayodhya. Later, when Sita was 18 years old, both Rama and Sita were sent to exile.

They were together for less than half year, when Sita was kidnapped by Ravan. She lived in Lanka for the next 14 years and met Rama again when she was 32 years old. They then lived together for 1 year and then was abandoned by Ram. He did not even tell her that he was dumping her. He just asked his brother to leave her in the forest. Sita was pregnant with twins at that time. She met Ram again after her kids were at war with their dad because they had caught his damn horse. They were 8 year old kids who gave nightmares to the “Oh-good-old-Lord-Ram”. Sita ultimately went inside the earth or in other words took her life and committed suicide.

Before going to exile, Ram did ask Sita stay at Ayodhya, but Sita didn’t because she thought that her place is with her husband. A girl of 18 who had never left her palace, suddenly decided to leave every comfort because her husband was asked to move out of his dad’s place. She was in love. Her formative years was at her husband’s place. Everywhere she went it was drilled in her, that Ram was the best thing that could have happened to her. She was “lucky”. She had no other choice. If she stayed at Ayodhya, Sita was going to be told by everybody how she abandoned her husband. She went and stayed with a man who was not strong enough to stand up for her.

People say that Ram was a great ruler. He was a great statesman. If he was that and everybody was in awe of him, shouldn’t he have managed his subjects right? I even get the fact that he wanted to separate from his wife, but why couldn’t he just get Sita settled in a far away place with atleast a house? After all Sita became his subject as soon as he became a king. She was a princess. Her father gave her away. She accepted Ram’s family and did not look back.

In the entire Ramayan, it seemed that Ram just conquered Lanka to make a name for himself. He left her for his career. Sita had stars in her eyes for him , which ultimately led her to commit suicide.

Thinking of other epic love stories, Parvati and Shiva has their own marital issues because of some serious anger management issues of Shiva. Brahma fell in love with his own daughter, Saraswati. She did not want his attention but he desired her too much. Indra was a womanizer. Lord Krishna was a playboy.

Now, people respect Gods. We are supposed to imitate them. I don’t believe in this, but I am not an atheist. I do not believe that by not drinking water and not eating food, my husband will live longer. I don’t believe in Karwa Chauth but I believe that I love my husband. I don’t want to be somebody because it will make other people happy. All in all, I have not seen anybody ending up very happy with that arrangement. We must tell others how we feel so that the other person understands what we have to say.

At the same time, we must hear what other people say. We should trust them but not do things just to shut them up. We should do things because it makes us happy. It is so difficult for me to accept what people have to say. This is because I try to give logic to it in my head.

For instance, people keep telling me that life is a compromise. It is a compromise if you are unable to improve the condition of your life. Sita listened to everybody and she did commit suicide in the end. Now maybe Sita wanted that life. I am okay with that, but I don’t want that life for myself. I want to like people and them to like me. If that doesn’t happen, we will have no option but to leave each other in our own troubles.

Dictums of Damaged Dreams

I have never used demotivation as a word in my everyday life. Its sounds too permanent, a little too irreversible. I use phrases like “not motivated enough”, “energy down”, “death of my spirit”, “looking for my inner Beyonce” and “so hungry and will wait for death first” and “don’t care about it”.

Its so typical that I have divided this into stages.

Emotional atyachar in stages

Stage 1: When the heart breaks, there is no sound:

I am so upset with the way things are turning out. My every action is leading to failure. Whats wrong with others? Is it me? Lets listen to tragic songs. I will work hard and try to change my life. My husband and should reduce weight so I am just making khichdi/ yellow dal stew.

Stage 2: Death of my spirit:

This is weird. Everyone affects me. Am I comparing myself even to a damn spider and thinking if they could have been any bigger they would have kicked those dinosaur’s asses.

Stage 3: Looking for my inner Beyonce

I am calm and spirited. How much worse can it get. The only direction now is to go up, right? I am going to make some changes. I am going to exercise daily. Practice Yoga. Get some help and ask about meditation to Chaggi. I am going to make food at home everyday. I should start by cooking Butter Chicken. I am going to work hard and change the world. I am at a party talking about great technology things which I read about in Tech crunch in the morning. I am a warrior. I am not going to lose(because I have nothing to lose). I am Zen

Stage 4: Hunger till death

I want to be dead. Starvation is a good reason. I can tell people I am loosing weight. At least I will die looking like a million dollars. How have everybody around me figured out life? I should have studied more. My husband is talking about retiring at 35. I am 26 and I don’t have a job. If he goes to the Himalayas, I have to live alone, with no job and two fat kids who ate a lot of potato chips because I was too distracted waiting for my death because of starvation.

Stage 5: Shit happens! Lets party!

I have totally give up now. I am going to party with everyone. I am going to become a diva and have fun. Everyday my happening life will be published in Instagram, Facebook. I am going to ask everybody if they did anything for fun and make sure that they understand that their concept of fun is boring and so not interesting.

Now this is just me. It can be you too, but its safe to admit for now that this is just me!

Conundrum and Cannabis.

This was supposed to be a Medium post but I have been told Medium is more for professional stuff so I moved my stuff here. I wanted to give the most quirky title to my first medium post but I guess this is what it is going to be.

My husband claims that he takes around 5–6 hours for coming with a title. I use to write something down and then think of a title. I should have stuck to that technique. It works for me. On the second thought, I probably might change the title. Incase I do, its “Who am I?” for now.

This is a loaded question. I don’t know how to answer this. I can say that I am a girl who studied engineering and did her MBA in Marketing and Finance. She got married to a guy who is more like a best friend. I think I just friend-zoned my husband. I live in Mountain View, the heart of Silicon Valley and I worked for Google’s Self Driving car Project. I left my job because I wanted to pursue my career in UX Design. I can further talk who my parents are and what kind of foods I like. I like to go to new places. I am not a music fan but people tell me that I have a nice voice.

I just summed up my life in a paragraph.

I once read a book in which the author talked about a friend who documented everything in a journal. He was intrigued if given a chance, how his friend could talk about himself because he had recorded everything. I used to try to be like that friend recording everything and then I just stopped. I became melodramatic and burnt all the diaries I ever possessed because I was upset about who I was. It seemed that burning all my personal stories would give me a second lease at life. Then I stopped. I did not write anything and even if I did, I wrote it and deleted it. It was a huge conundrum considering I wanted to be heard and still not talk about myself.

Anyway, the author of that book thought that his friend could tell anybody about his life because he could relive those moments again and again and never forget what happened. My 26 year old just summarized myself in a paragraph. Its not that I don’t have any significant moments to talk about. My Facebook feed says that I had fun last year but I don’t remember how I felt back then. Does that mean everything that I feel will be gone and all that will be left is the smoke coming out of a joint? (I don’t smoke by the way but the way I feel about this, I could not think of any other metaphor.)

So I have tried two things. I have tried to record my life and not record it. The first approach made me feel that I was not writing about a very exciting life. The second one certainly does not require me to fill in empty pages but makes me feel incompetent to answer who I was.

I don’t know what I am going to do about this situation but I did figure out a title for this post.