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October 2011

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As I have mentioned in recent posts, in addition to relationships, I have a keen interest in South Asians taking the path less travelled, and – as part of a community that gives so much importance to “what people think” and, for the most part, putting on an “I only have good times” front in spite of really hard times that one might be facing – I want to thank Sona Mehta for taking the path less travelled and sharing her very personal story with all of us.

NBC’s Outsourced, a comedy centered around the lives of call center employees in India and their non-Indian managers, seemed to be a polarizing comedy amongst South Asians.  I personally loved it not only because it was set in India and made me non-stop LOL at everything that is amazing, absurd and amusing about the motherland, but because it was the first and only comedy that I could watch with my parents where they understood the majority of the jokes.

My absolute favorite character on the show was Manmeet, played by Sacha Dhawan; Manmeet was the perfect blend of hopeful, mischievous, endearing, charming, good-hearted & funny all while being sweetly naive to the workings of women (although I do not think anyone on the show or in real life has that quite figured out), and one thing that my gut told me about the person playing him was that he was kind.

2018 Relaunch 7-years-after-this-post editAt this juncture in my life (& I have no crystal ball to tell you about the future), I have no desire to be dating/in a relationship/with a life partner/married or have kids. For the first time (& after 20+ years of caring so much about this as the “end-all-be-all” life goal), I don’t care at all and am fully engaged in a relationship with myself. I love my own company, feel no lack, and – accordingly – feel complete and whole on my own; it is an absolutely revolutionary feeling and I wish I could have known it in my 20’s. More on that later…


Fasting – to find a husband/for your husband…

Before anyone gets upset at me over this post, when it comes to religion, spirituality, politics, and everything in between, we all believe in different things and practice those beliefs differently.  This post is about my beliefs with no disrespect intended towards anyone or any assertion that my beliefs are right and that anyone else’s is wrong, especially considering that every woman in my family believes in fasting and my mom is probably the most die-hard of them all.   Having said that, I know this post will still run plenty of people the wrong way.

As I’d mentioned in my last post, I used to be a big dancer and loved the high of performing basically more than any other feeling in life.  So after attending 2 Subcontinental Drift Open Mic events and in light of all my “birthday – aka new year of me – resolutions,” I thought I should do something at the next event.  Although people expected me to dance, dancing was something I felt comfortable doing in front of people and that I had no shame (even though I sometimes should) or consciousness about, so instead, I decided to do something that ever since a traumatizing moment in a random Miss India DC pageant back in 2003 (I will tell you about it later) I had dreaded doing… last night, in front of an audience of about 50 people – mostly South Asians & 80% of whom I did not know – I spoke about my 2 year blogging journey…

2018 relaunch afterthought: This post was written before “the events of 2012” (me becoming a domestic violence survivor) – almost exactly 6 months before that night that changed my life forever – and, looking back, I am so in awe (both in good and bad ways) of the person who wrote the below…


When I was in my 20’s, when single women in their 30’s would say things like “just wait, your 30’s are the best time of your life,” I am not going to lie but I always felt a pang of “awe” for them because it felt like a need-to-say-so-that-you-feel-better-about-your-life cliched type of thing because – let’s keep it real – that couldn’t possibly be true.

& now that I am past the always exciting “Hoorah!” of turning the big 3-0 and am in my “early 30’s,” I know that the expected thing to say in this post would be YES, your 30’s are the best time of your life, but I will not say that because I haven’t lived long enough to give an accurate assessment but more than that, I ideally believe that the best time of your life is not any particular decade or some time that you wax nostalgic about but the moment that we are in now, because shoot, we are just lucky to be here (something I remind myself of often because I know at least 20 under-30 somethings – either directly or indirectly – who aren’t here today).