Taxi Driver

A large portion of my pocket money goes into travelling. Since there is no train station close to where I live, most of my commuting is done by cab. Uber/Ola, yes but mostly the classic Kaali Peeli.
I am a very talkative person, so if I am alone in the taxi, I sit in front and make conversation with the driver uncle. I find no shame in doing so. I say this because I have noticed that privileged people look down upon those who they think don't have a white collar job. People are so rude to drivers and maids just because they live a different lifestyle.
What really shocks me is that the people who are so impolite with drivers and maids are young students who aren't   really making any money of their own but are discriminating on those basis. In a country like India, the only difference between a beggar child and us is the house we were born into. Besides that, we are born equal and should be treated and treat others with the same level of dignity and respect.
Today the Taxi Driver who dropped me home  was an interesting man. He was wearing these cool sunglasses and playing the latest songs. I asked him if he was playing the music from the radio or mobile. He said mobile. Then I asked if he could turn up the volume, and he said that I can hold his phone close to my ear and enjoy the music. I thought that was very considerate of him, because most taxi drivers just want to take you from point A to point B, but this guy wanted me to enjoy my ride. And I did. All through marine drive I sang along and let the breeze massage my face. In the middle he got a call from the man who had rented out his taxi from. He said 'I am driving right now, I will call you in 10 mins... or wait, you call me 10 mins because I don't have balance'. Then he turned around and handed me the phone again and said 'These guys want to argue on the phone every time they call, so why waste balance'. I laughed and agreed. Its true, We spend too much time and energy on people who don't add value to our life. I for one, keep thinking about incidents that have hurt my feelings over and over again. Why should I waste my 'balance' on things that don't help me or make me feel good?

I have a problem with right and left. It takes me a while to figure out whats right and whats left. So I always wear a rubber band on my right wrist so I knownthats the right side.l. But since I was in the taxi with an open window, I used the rubber band to tie my hair. When we entered the lane for my house, I told him to take a left turn instead of right. And then when he did take a left turn, I immediately said 'Sorry Uncle, right'. I do this a lot. I make these mistakes all the time. Usually the drivers make an irritated 'pcccch' sound or crib. But this one, just smiled at my stupidity and took the right turn. While getting out he asked me if college admissions had started (since college is where I took the cab from).I told him they have and asked him who was he asking for. He proudly told me that his daughter scored a 95% and wanted to take admission in Jai Hind College. I congratulated him, paid him ₹104 for the ride and said thanks. He smiled with his cool sunglasses. I was waiting for the lift but I could hear him talk (rather argue) on the phone to the guy who had called earlier.


I like meeting people who are polite and kind. I hate to add this negative connotation to the blog but I come across so many people who thoughtlessly pass rude comments or hurt other's feelings just to feel superior about themselves. Its frustrating to see people who so self absorbed that they fail to pay attention to the way they make others feel around them. I am sure I have done that and others have to. But if you're reading this, consciously try and not make someone feel bad about themselves. Its not the big things that matter, but the small acts of kindness that mean something big to someone. Be this Taxi Driver in someone's life and be the reason they enjoy their journey of life.

This Experience Was Priceless

I went to Japan over the summers.  If I were to ever make a list of my top 10 best memories, 8 of them would be the ones that I made during this trip, which is why it wouldn’t be fair to not write a blog post about it.

Japan is an interesting place. It has amazing transportation service, good food, and fun places to visit like Dog and Cat cafes. Most people in Japan don’t know English so it’s funny to communicate with them. However, for some reason that too adds to the experience of living in a foreign country. But the best thing about Japan was Dhanisha.

It doesn’t matter where you go, it matters who you go with and I was lucky enough to have the company of my two best friends.   The first thing that pops in my head when I hear about 3 friends going somewhere is the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Even though our trip didn’t involve scuba diving or sky diving, it was equally fun.

You know when you’re in the company of good people; you thrive to be a better person yourself. You want to be a better person so you can offer that goodness to others. At so many points in the trip I just admired how my friends are and wanted to be a better person myself so I can give back the happiness, the respect, the laughter that they kept giving.

When you have 20 days with the your close friends, you end up talking about things that you otherwise wouldn’t. For example, our fears, everyone has but most of us are in denial of them. We do not want to share or talk about our fears because they are vulnerable subjects. But when you finally talk about it, it frees you. I fear being a negative person. To make this more precise, I feel like I always put people down. Many things that I say I feel like I make others feel inferior and make myself look superior. I don’t intentionally want to make anyone feel like that, but yet everything I say speaks otherwise. Sharing this problem did two things:

)         1)Made me accept I have a problem

       2)Work towards changing it

 Most of the people in Japan travel in trains. Trains are very convenient there, it goes to every place. And the stations are so quiet. People don’t make a lot of noise. In fact, there is hardly any chatter in the trains too.

The days we would come back late home, we would stop at a Family Mart and I would buy these amazing noodles. I am sure they are the reason why I have gained three and a half kgs of weight. In the night when it gets chilly, I would be eating noodles with chopsticks that I don’t know how to use and catching up on speed with Dhanisha and Khushboo. Those noodles were made by God himself.

The longer I stayed in this place, the fonder I grew of it. I would love to wake up next to my friends. Everyday was a new day to do something crazy.

Ill be forever grateful for this, to my parents for giving me the best birthday gift, to Dhanisha’s parents and to Khushboo and Dhanisha. This experience was priceless.

Excuse Me, While I Play The Cranky Feminist

Women have always belonged to someone else in the sense that they don’t have an identity of their own. They are someone’s wife, someone’s mother or someone’s daughter, as if their very existence depends upon the relationship they share with a man. While men rarely define themselves relationally.

Even now, there are traditions that favor men over women. The one that bothers me is the surname change. Why is it that the woman has to give up her surname and take up her husband’s? Why is it that a woman is not equally responsible to continue the family legacy as a man is? It is the sexist culture that demands the surname change to happen after a woman is married.

I get it that when two people fall in love and decide to get married, thinking about changing your last name is not a concern. But your name is your identity and giving a part of it up is like diluting it in a way.

The reason many women don’t object to this is because they still think that men hold a higher position than them. Which is why I see so many girls aged eighteen giving up education and getting married. The very idea of a female giving up her education shows that our society has a long way to go to achieve equality. Because for a fact, I know there many humans out there who still pray they don’t have a female child and who think that the best they can do for their daughters is to get them married off so early that they spend the rest of their life in servitude.

I agree that many girls want to get married right from the age of fifteen, but wanting to be financially dependent on someone for the rest of your life just shows that our society is doing something wrong to give rise to such patriarchal thinking.

 It is hard to expect a man to have an objection to this because they enjoy their privileged position but women need to take a stand instead of just getting carried away into this male-dominated world.

As long as the inequality of the sexes continues, so will rape, so will dowry and so will other forms of violence against women.

TAKE A STAND.

Am I lucky?

Today a close friend of mine pointed out that I am a lucky person. I was confused at this unusual compliment because I always felt that his life was perfect and he was the lucky one not me.

But today when I got home after college, this thought revolved around my mind. I really am lucky. I have a great family, great friends, an amazing dog and financial support that lets me fulfill every want of mine. What more could I ask for?

Sure, I have problems but those too trivial to even think about in comparison to the whole lot of happiness that I’ve been handed over.

No problem in the world is big enough to snatch away your happiness. As long as you have a hand to hold, you can get through anything. And if an ungrateful human like me can realize that, anyone can.

So just have a look at your life from a third person’s perspective and notice how beautiful it is. You might not have everything that you want, but you will have everything that you need, and you will have something that puts a smile on your face.

The World Will Change

If you’re an over thinker like me, you would know how overthinking can get in the way of your happiness.

I, for one, am a really stubborn girl. If my heart gets stuck on something, it is very difficult to get it off it. Similarly, if a negative thought gets inside my head, it occupies an enormous portion me. It constantly prinks me throughout my day and naturally makes me feel low.

I don’t want to sound stuck up, but ever since I came back from The States, things have been different for me. I find myself…. Like an introvert and that’s not something that I was.

These days in particular, I feel exceptionally gloomy because I have exams coming up soon and I don’t get to go out that much. I won’t lie, but I have this phone addiction, which makes me check my Instagram and Snapchat every 1-2 minutes. With the lack of concentration I am neither able to study nor feel productive. This negative feeling builds inside me and any small thing can make me extremely upset.

Today, I feel like I have had enough. It is not healthy for anyone to feel upset like this for long periods for no apparent reason. So, I am actively going to take measures to make my life good again. One cannot simply complain and not do anything.

And lets face it; no one wants to be around someone who is always ‘unhappy’. It’s contagious.

-Be more forgiving: I know it hard to keep the ego aside and forgive someone who has hurt you, but you don’t have to verbally hear them say “I am sorry” to forgive them. You can forgive them by just not holding grudges against them. It is easier said than done, but sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone and do things that we otherwise wouldn’t.

-Be pro active: A lot of negative thoughts are a result of boredom. But if you are always actively doing something, you will not have a chance to get bored. Don’t just wait for things to happen to you. Be responsible and MAKE things happen. There are tons of things in the world to do. Boredom is psychological. So every time you feel that the dullness is about to hit you, don’t go on Instagram, but go out.

-Be positive: I have noticed, that as human beings we find the need to put others down in order to make ourselves feel better. I do it. Everyone does it. That’s why we  are all guilty of backbiting. It’s human nature. But I say, lets challenge that. Lets talk good about others, lets be helpful, and lets avoid finding faults in people. Because in the end, when we point out flaws, its our own insecurity reflecting. Gradually, when we see only good in others, we will see good in our self. Be positive.

-Be open-minded: A lot of hate exists because of narrow thinking. We all have been victims of being judged wrongly, but at the same time we have judged others wrongly too. Learn to accept. Acceptance makes a better society. So be nice to people around, get out of your comfort zone and make new friends, do new things. And you will realize that there is so much out there in the world that you were unable to see because of your clouded prejudices.

One reason why I wrote all of this down is because writing/typing it out kind of pushes it into my system. I want to be a new person.

Everyone out there who feels similar to what I do, know that you have the power to change how you feel. Once you change the way you see, the world will change in your eyes.

So, today you might feel lonely, unhappy and hopeless and what not, but know, that this feeling will last inside you as long as you want it to.

Change it.

The Right Switch

  It has been exactly five days since I am back to my home country.  Nothing has changed really, except that now I live in another house. But besides that the people are the same; the places look the same, and literally everything is just as it was the day I had left off.

  Naturally, I miss US because I had such great time there. That one-year made me feel like it had been my home all along. I never felt like an outsider. I fit better in that society.

   Being back feels different. Even though everything is the same, I feel changed and that changes everything for me.  I try to not think about how my life was over there because it makes me feel so sad, it makes me miss everything.

But there are certain things that JUST remind me of it. 

   Especially, the bathroom switch.  Fun fact about me: I go to the bathroom at least 80 times a day, no joke. Sometimes, for actually using it and the rest of the times for a casual trip to comb my hair, or just enter and forget what I came for or to take a selfie or just to find peace. My light switch of the bathroom was on my right side, so whenever I entered I would slam the switch with my right hand and the room would light up (obviously). Since I go to the bathroom at least 80 per day, I was now so used to entering and switching on the light that I could do in my sleep. It was so engrained in me to tap the right side of the bathroom wall when I entered.  But now, in house I live, the switch is on the left side. I never really thought about it, I mean who thinks about where switchboard is located?

  Honestly, I try to not think much about what I left behind in US, it will only make me nostalgic and that’s not a very good feeling.  I talk to my friends there very often but we talk about stuff that we are doing or stuff that we planning to do not what we did together in past. It makes it a lot easier to move on. 

  But that switchboard… Every time I enter the bathroom I slam the right side of the wall, feel no switch and then a there is a small reminder in my head that I have come back. I wait for a second till it hits me again and then turn to the left and switch on the light. I have been going through this everyday since 5 days and knowing I go 80 times a day, do the math of how many times I have these reminders. And sometimes it only takes a small reminder to bring back ALL memories.

  Even while writing this, my brain is flooding with them. I remember my last day; I was spending it with my closest friends. It was around 11 in the night and we were looking at each other faces, knowing it would be the last time in years. I wouldn’t be lying when I say that going to US was the best experience I had in my life up till now and I wouldn’t be lying when I say that I met the best people over there, the kind that leave a mark on your heart that no time can fade.

  While most of the time it is HEARTBREAKING to realize that there is no switch on the right side of the wall it is a bittersweet reminder of the time I spent in the US. I hope that I never get used to hitting the switch of the left side without hitting wall on the right first.