Sunday, August 21, 2016

Lounge Diaries - Part 1

During one of my recent visits to Goa , I happen to bump into one of my old ( lost ) colleagues way back from my engineering days at the airport lounge . Life is full of surprises and when you least expect someone , they are there . 




We had a close 1.5 hrs - 2 hrs stop over before our next flights and we thought to do a quick catch up. Life indeed is not the same  for us as human beings. Everyone is at a different chapter of their individual books which the other person has no clue about. 

The friend told me how she got married , the entire arrangement was a very hush-hush affair , she left her job in Bangalore and moved to Gurgaon to be with her husband and within a year they were separated .

While I may not have been prepared for a conversation like this , but then there isn't anything you can say or do in such scenarios besides keeping your ears open and listening actively . She told a lot about how tough life was and how till date she is not ready to settle down and she had no options but to give in to her parent's wishes ( or requests , if I may say so ) .

Again , coming back from Delhi she had a long conversation with her parents about deciding to resettle in life and this time she had no options but to fly out . I was being asked for my thoughts when all I could think of , was when does one know that one is truly ready to settle in life.  

Here she was -  A top class graduate with a masters working a leading firm and earning pretty well and yet she was unclear on what and when she wants . Now , more so , with a failed marriage she was completely shut to the idea of settling down. She was , as she shared , seeing / involved with two people but had no plans to settle down. 

Her parents , away from all of this were in the process of searching for someone for their only daughter.  Her father had recently suffered a stroke and was not in the best of health. Yet , she did not have the courage or the thinking to share or talk them through .

Its tough being at her place and I could feel the pain in her voice. But ,there was just nothing I could possibly do / share  . I hate times like these when you can't do anything even if you want to do. 

So , the only think that I shared with her was to take a break away from all this for a week  and then come back straight to her parents and talk them through this .  Often we don't understand what the other person feels and more importantly we don't put in the effort to make them understand our side of the story and this is where everything falls apart.  

Communication is and will always be a key here . And if you wrap it up with all the honesty , believe me it will do wonders  .  

As Aldous Huxley once said -  There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. 

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