Skip to main content

Uncommon Ends

I was introduced to N by a common friend who thought we would hit it off. On the face of it, we had a fair bit in common. N is single-mom and her only kid is in grad school now. She's from India but has been living in North America for a few decades mostly on her own. Support from friends and family has been sporadic so the child had to go through a few upheavals until the dust settled. She is a few years older than me and living her best life only in the five years or so, her big responsibilities over. It was good to meet her when we finally did but I could tell that we had little in common despite the checklist of things that would be immediately obvious to others as it had been to our common friend. That bonding lasted all of ten minutes upon first meeting N. Then it became all about what we did not have in common and in fact were not even aligned on remotely - there was no getting around that. 

N is still discovering who she is - so there is new diet, a new fad and new style every so often. I am pretty much decided in every way - there is little that changes about how I live my life day to day expect for adjustments to what I already do and want to continue doing. N invited me to her place and insisted I spend the night there specially that I was flying out the next afternoon. She asked about dinner plans and I said, I would gladly eat in if that worked for her because just about any home-cooked food would be great after eating out for a week. N was a bit concerned at this because she was in the phase where she was tossing everything out of the kitchen and not cooking anything anymore. This is new in her life as of the last month because she wants to try this new way to be. I am excited for her because she has the enthusiasm of someone way younger to run experiments in her life to see what actually works. She does not treat age as a reason to stop doing that. 

For N there will likely never be a time when issues are settled and the answers are what they are forever. She is one of those people who when they don't like the answer, will do something different and not stop until the end of life or the right answer whichever comes first. This is probably the most unique and interesting thing about N - she lives one day at a time and everything is always subject to change. I must have appeared to her awfully unadventurous and hidebound (which I am sure I am to large extent) and she had no idea what to do with me after the initial pleasantries were done. 

I am simply not the kind of person who inspires her and gives her energy to live the life she wants to live and the same is true for me - N does not represent anything aspirational to me. We are just oddities to each other and it is no surprise that it has become impossible to keep a mundane conversation going with her after we met in-person for the first time. Maybe it would have been for the best that we had never actually met.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...