Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving post from an Indian (hehe). I started blogging and around one year after I embraced my internet self, I joined Twitter as well. I spent a good chunk of 2010-12 reading several blogs, a lot of which were written by Indians working/studying in the US, or those who did a short stint in the US and came back home. I fantasized about the life of an Indian in the US by vicariously living through these blog posts and yearned for the days when I would get to let nostalgia flow in my own blog posts as well. I was naive. I realize that sometimes wishes can come true too, and that it might not always be a good thing :D

After procrastinating through the week, and pushing every homework and project to the weekend and filing it under "hashtag can be taken care of during the weekendz", I wanted to do something during the week to make myself feel good. So I picked the easiest of them all, decided to write a post.

It has been a good week, in fact it has been a good day that sort of shadowed everything that happened from Monday through Thursday. My small family of four is happy (yes four :) ). I am happy.

Oscar acceptance speech level stuff to follow..

I wanted to take part in the thanksgivingthingummy and thank the people who stood by me. I don't want to go on a long post because my attention (and most others') has been severely limited due to Twitter becoming my primary language of communication, followed by complete silence, and occasional eyeball rolling at the stranger standing next to me in the bus when the driver decides to stop the bus to take a sip of water and absolutely relishing it.. I digress.

I will talk about three short anecdotes One each for my parents, kid sister, and my champion, who all stood by me when the tides got rough, even as they had tonnes of their own problems to deal with.

It has been three months since I left home to chase the American dream. Three months and there has not been a single day when I didn't want to catch the first flight out back home. I like the place, in fact I love what I get to do here. Yet, "home, is where the heart is" has an altogether different meaning according to me. There have been days when I have been at my absolute worst, caught in a faraway land wondering what I am doing with my life distancing myself from everyone I love. I would feel like curling up and crying and that would make me want to call home and speak to my parents, but that's exactly when I shouldn't call them lest they feel sad. They already miss me a lot and this isn't how they'd want to see me. So I'll call a bit later, talk to them, listen to them say "we'll take care of everything, you study." It is hard to say that when you've supported someone for so long, through so many things, even after being disappointed several times. Every time I spend all the money I win at a quiz paying for dinner, I feel like I am throwing all my life's savings even though it is filling my stomach. Imagine literally throwing all your life's savings, and more, so that your son could realize his dreams. Being a parent is the most thankless job, and looking back I've never said thank you.  And I want to clear my record this very instant, thank you amma & appa.

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

I had a rough week, I was rejected from several jobs. Right from a high end software developer position to a copy room assistant position - funny how both rejection emails started with "After careful scrutiny of your application..". I have been venting it out to my kid sister, though in retrospect getting rejected from a copy room assistant position does sound funny. She's been constantly saying all these rejections come in because there is something else bigger that's waiting. Didn't realize she placed enormous trust and love on someone whom she mainly used as an exercise object for her milk teeth. Thank you, kuttima.

I will probably be yelled at for embarrassing you/writing about you like this, but I think I should thank you too. Grad school is hard. Dealing with grad school problems is hard. Dealing with new roommates is hard. Now double that and you get two people's problems. You've been dealing with my problems as well, which seem like trivialities when looked at from where I stand right now. You dealt with it. It takes a great deal of everything to be one's best friend, and a great deal more, to be something more than a best friend. Thank you, champ.

Today, I sit here wondering if I have done anything in return to these wonderful people who make up my small bubble. And I think to myself, if anything, I have done something they've wanted me to do, they've been pushing me to do, they've been praying I would do, they've been begging me to do, I found myself an internship. Hey, anybody can do that, I am someone too and I am probably bragging, so what :)

I also have to say thanks to my not so small family, my wonderful bunch of friends, without talking to whom I would have probably gone mad by now. You know who you are. People should wait to read stories about you, someday.

This is my thanksgiving, thanking the most wonderful four people, the like of which I'll probably never find again if I lose, and I never intend to. How is yours coming along? :)