An open Letter to My teenage sister

I am not someone much into celebrities but this is in memory of Sushant Singh Rajput, a man I came to know only too late. A man whose last news didn’t affect me more than an eyebrow raise. A man who I didn’t have a crush on or I had googled ever. A man I knew just as a great actor. A man I didn’t know was interested in the universe and space. A man I who had thoughts so smart that he is worth every bit of the attention we didn’t give. A man I didn’t value like many of us while he was around. A man who, we wouldn’t have valued if he was still around. A man who feels like a series of flashback of someone I knew. A man I had a few chances to meet and I lost those chances. A man I got to know only when I tried to know more. Like Shakespeare said - ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.”

Today, Sushant is not a mere person to me. He is an idea. An embodiment of very strong emotions. A depiction of a regret that teaches every moment. He reminds me of so many people I may have not known and not been nice to or may not even have given a thought to. He reminds me of how, despite all promises to myself, have lost my existence in the mundane. He reminds me of how I rarely take the time to know people anymore. He reminds me of chances not taken. He reminds me that incomplete things are not necessarily not beautiful – rather, incompleteness is a notion of the bored mind. He reminds me that my curious self has stopped asking the kind of questions that make me happy. He reminds me that answers are not the destination, finding more questions is. He reminds me that there may be losses that just feel like a void, irrespective of the relationship and the time that passes by. He reminds me that while we keep aiming to be different for the prime of life, we end up searching for peace by being the same as all. He reminds me that there is so much of us in him and there is so much more of him in us. He reminds me in his own signature style that – “Babu Moshay, zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahi” and he damn well made it big!

He also reminds me of so many times that I may have said something, given an expression on or just moved aside from, destroying someone’s day or worse, someone. There are so many of us, it’s difficult to be nice, especially when it’s nice to be difficult! Not because we are bad people, but because all of us, ourselves are going through so much. It’s just easier to not put effort and let things be. At the expense of sounding like his musings - There may be so much more to people we do not know and there are so many we know we don’t know and so many more we don’t know, we don’t know.

I wanted to start with the former. I have a lovely sister, who I feel I haven’t disappointed yet! She very innocently looks up to me and I feel for whatever reason, this time, things shouldn’t remain unsaid. It’s a miracle that while there are so many of us, the space time continuum has brought the people we know together - that all can’t be just by accident. So, here is my attempt for us to know each other - that’s two less people in the world who didn’t get to know each other.

To her and to the man who lived up to every moment!

An open Letter to My teenage sister

Dear Riti,

I know your birthday is long in the past and it’s high time I produce the gift. While I do not believe in the notion of wisdom coming with age, I feel there is a little bit of learning that comes with age. I would love for you to explore the world and see it with your own eyes and learn, I wished to pass on few things that stayed with me and helped me sail through the years till now. I would have mailed this to you personally, but trust me, there are many out there, exactly like us in so many other corners of the world, who need to hear our conversation. Much of it may not make sense right now but I hope in the due course it does :)

1.   Be Kind!

Riti, your perfection as a kid has always amazed me! Not that I believe in perfection of a person; everyone is complete in their own way. But even if I go by the societal way of “judgement”, I would still vouch for you being one of the best-behaved kids I have known. But you know what strikes me the most? That you are kind. And darling, that’s one of the rarest things to be today.

Being a bully is easy, making people feel bad about themselves is easy and you would see so many even at your age being mean. That’s the easy stuff. Trying to hold on your fort is the courageous thing to do. Not letting such words get to your heart is difficult but a task worth it. And once you conquer that stage, try standing up to the bullies for someone who needs your support. I promise you, it will be very uplifting. Be grateful and thank often. Being kind will matter even more when you grow up. Life’s experiences make people bitter and by not being kind, they spread the kind of negativity that hits us all back. Don’t lose the dash of magic you possess - In a world of darkness, be the candle that enlightens lives.

2.   Work  Hard

They say there is no substitute to hard work and I couldn’t agree more. It hurts sometimes, may be not so much when you are still in school or college, but more so when you get into the professional world. It may not pay off as proportionately as it does in schools where you know if you read more chapters, you answer more questions as the question paper is generally fair. It wouldn’t ask you something you ought not to know. It will have fair representation of all chapters.

Life may not turn out to be so fair in later years. There will be problems that you didn’t create or deserve, there will be messy situations, pretty much out of syllabus and there will be days that will be so difficult that you will feel like crumbling under the pressure of it. I will not give you any false hopes - Any amount of hard work wouldn’t help avoid the chaos, but it will give you wherewithal to deal with it.

 3.   Don’t be afraid to rest or ask for help

I would probably not tell this to kids your age with the fear that hearing this may make them complacent, but I am sure you are mature enough to understand when to exercise this one. You have heard me saying things like “Life is tough darling but so are you” – True but don’t burden yourself with the thought that you always have to be. Being strong for too long can also make you weak. It’s okay to say that you give up, it’s okay to call your Mom or a friend at 3 in the night and say you can’t take it anymore. And it’s okay to sit through a whole week because things don’t feel like improving. Whenever it feels too hard, find someone you will be able to talk to and I will be the happiest if that person is me but don’t ever let yourself feel alone. Talk it out.

Baby, it will feel like one, but life is not a race. All that matters that we keep going on and not ‘really’ give up. Ensure that your pace is to your comfort, not your friends or family or society. Trust me it’s never gonna be too late. There will always be time for things that you find worth it.

4.   Do something for the society

Well this is something I am yet working on and I am sure I have a long way to go. Since I do not have much that I know about it, let me take a different take on this one. Let me introduce you to Prof. Banikanta Mishra, Prof. D V Ramana & Prof. Indranil Chakraborty from my college and Prof. Subhash Prasad from my school days. They form a big part of the person I am today. I would love to share some of the things I have heard from them and may be some recordings of their class.

You know why I remember them so fondly, Riti? It’s not because of their expertise in their subjects. In fact, three of them teach finance/Maths and you very well know that I haven’t come even close to be enchanted by the magic of numbers. It’s because of the kind of people they are. They have been embodiment of a person I wish to someday become. It’s their thoughts about mankind, learning that they stressed on, prioritizing it over any subject knowledge. I may not remember about some factor theorem but I do remember that Subhash Sir would stress on honesty and hard work beyond any exams. I may not remember how to make a perfect balance sheet but I do remember that there were small business owners who were benefitting from the knowledge Ramana Sir had imparted to them. I may not remember how to determine the valuation of a company but I certainly do remember that Bani Sir would stand up for things he believed in and encourage us to do the same. I may not remember the equations between countries and their development quotient, but I remember that Prof. Indranil, in his last lecture would sing with us “Aa chal ke tujhe, main le k chaloon ek aise gagan ke tale…” and fill us with positivity for life.

 These professors were teaching since decades, seeing people do the same mistakes, teaching things they know most of us won’t remember for more than a year, but taking time out in their classes to impart few things that we will remember for life. These are the small things that end up being big in life. I am not talking about charity or some big project on climate change or changing the whole course of life to help the society. It’s the small acts of doing something for someone other than ourselves while doing what we are doing for ourselves. There is an old song that goes by the name “Jeena isi ka naam hai”. Hear it when you find time, quite meaningful! Also, there is an ambitious project I wish to take up since long – Making one person smile genuinely every day. Let’s do it together?

5.   Don’t be afraid of anything – AT ALL!

There is just one rule to go by - Do what your heart approves of. The voice within our heads, our intuition, is a dependable source for decision making in difficult times. Remember that “The fears we don’t face become our limits”. As long as you keep running from something, it has power over you. So, delve into these challenges, engage in them and go ahead and make mistakes.

A good girl knows her limits but a great girl knows she has none. You have read ‘The Christmas Carol’ and you know there will be ghosts of past and future but dig your heels in and do what you feels right in the present. There may be things you do, that feel like a mistake and unless it’s something that hurt someone, do not regret it. And even if it was horrible, if it hurt someone, apologize sincerely, but do not beat yourself about it because we are all mere human - bound to make mistakes and learn. If we were supposed to be flawless, won’t we all come with manuals? We all do what seems like the best thing to do in a given situation, we innately don’t mean harm. So, never regret something that made you smile once. It was right thence.

There is something called butterfly effect – Read about it when you find time. I find it very captivating. It simply means that any action, anyone takes anywhere has a hand in impacting the future of the universe. Very popularly quoted, “A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas”. Meaning that even a small change like a wing flap can lead to some changes in pressure of some system which may tend to shift something in some other system and result into a tornado whose the exact time of formation, the exact path taken was influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier.

Now if that’s true, there is so much that goes on in this world varying from spilling of tea over a sofa to major wars and pandemics. Being in control is an illusion – There is so much that’s not in our control, so much that we can’t do much about and can be mere spectators to. And then there is a possibility of parallel worlds in a fourth dimension of time. We will watch a movie called ‘Interstellar’ someday together. It opened my eyes to so many possibilities. 

If this is not the world where we will take our chances, where will we? We have got one life and its utilization lies with us. Being afraid to try something out may be the last thing we want to do. So, go all out and if it means being weird, be one. After all, it’s the weird ones that change the world.

 6.   If there is a scope to learn something, just go for it!

This is something I learnt from Sonu Bhaiya. In the chaos of life, not everything will make sense but in the long run, everything falls in place. It fits like a giant jigsaw puzzle. There is an Oscar winning movie called ‘The Slumdog Millionaire’ which had a profound impact on me. It’s a story of a boy in Mumbai slums who becomes millionaire on a TV show. The central theme is a beautiful one – Everything you learn helps you some place. Everything! I have experienced it in my life like many others. Did you know that Steve Jobs dropped out of his regular degree to do a course in calligraphy? It may not have made much sense to a man who wanted to build a technical career. But read what he had to say about it when he became ‘the’ technical person - “When we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them."

After all, I learnt how to play Jenga from you and I might have won a game on a day I really needed a win! 😊

7.   Read

Now this is one I can’t stress enough! You know about the history of writing? Perhaps it evolved during record keeping for trade in Mesopotamia around 3400 BC. There is so much that has happened in the world of literature since. From explaining the big bang to expressing feelings, from reading weather to dedications of poetry, from making satellites to the tragedies of Rome, from overcoming diseases to historic battles, mankind has recorded everything. This is the treasure trove and include all you can in your lifetime. My favorite writer is Mitch Albom and my favorite book is “Tuesdays with Morrie”. It is a wonderful depiction of a teacher student relationship. You will find books that transport you to a different world, books that change your life and books so beautiful that you cry when you finish them. Words are very powerful - Many times, things we say outlive us. There is so much to read and there are no wrong answers whether you want to read Ruskin Bond or Stephen Hawkins. Just keep reading!

Introducing you to a dialogue from a movie I loved, called Dead Poets Society:

 8.   Don’t be scared to love, but exercise caution – we are all fragile!

      I know this might not be relevant now, but one day and very soon it will be. There will be too much pressure for choosing the perfect partner and you will have no clue how to know who is that perfect someone. Don’t let that pressure scare you away from love. When it comes to love, we all falter. And like all things in life, here too, we make mistakes. While correcting mistakes may be easier in other walks of life where heart is not involved much, this one hurts a tad bit more. And that’s why all the tension around it and the need for caution. I am not telling you to exercise caution by not taking a chance. One of my favorite author says - " You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you have some say in who hurts you and you should like your choices". All I have learnt from my experiences, is sometimes, the best of people may be not “right” for you and you only get to know that after being with these people. So sure, take your chances but only with people who cross certain threshold in your parameters. Say for example, you are a kind person and you try being with a person who is not very kind while kindness is something you value highly. It may end up hurting a lot. Be careful of who really deserves a chance and I know even after all that caution, it may not work out at times and it may end up being the worst heart break of all times, but that’s how you know it was a relationship worth having! You may feel bad about a relationship not working out but you must not feel bad about the person you invested so much time and efforts on. The person definitely shouldn’t be someone who crushes your feelings or intentionally hurts you, I think I may be quite proud of my choices of chances because they all turn out to be people I respect to date despite the history. On the days of heart break, the world will feel like crumbling, you will clutch in pain and it will feel like you can’t love or trust for the rest of life. You will sleep crying or may be not even sleep for a few nights but it’s important to keep waking up the next days. The pain will feel like constant but I promise you, it goes away so slowly that you don’t notice. And trust me, both me and Lipi Di can assure you that there will be one day when you wake up and it doesn’t hurt unbearably. You would have passed through the stages of shock, disbelief, denial, anger for the other person, anger for yourself and regret of wasting your time.

      You must be thinking why take so much risk if the path is only hurtful – Well it’s because in the process you rediscover yourself. You learn what you really want in a partner rather than what you thought you wanted and more importantly, you figure out what you do not want in him/her. More than the partner, the process helps you discover yourself and that’s what love is supposed to do – Make you a better person. And in this process of rediscovery, someday you end up in front of that imperfect person who makes everything perfect. All the confusions will slide away and you will stop doubting anything. And this doesn’t come like the movies, obviously not with those violins but also not like the happy picture of first love they show. Do not confuse it with the ‘butterfly in stomach’ feeling, that feeling of blush and excitement will come every time you decide to take a chance. This one will be more permanent in nature and it comes gradually as you get to understand the person in front and the jigsaw of your life starts to fill up. For when it comes to that phase, I hope to be around and be of help. I am just a call away, always 😊

9.   Do not judge
Riti, you are living in times that are way more open and less suffocating than our times. There will be people you meet on your way who have different preferences, dressing styles, different hair, different languages, color, shape, sizes and culture. Judging comes naturally to us because appearances and visual input are the first to reach our brain out of the five sensory inputs. Refrain from that and try to stop your mind from forming an opinion based on how people seem. I have found my judgement wrong most of the times and am friends with people I had judged to be ‘not my type’. Give a fair chance to all humans and let them give you data points on how to treat them best.

10.  Have a tribe you trust!

Stay close to people who feel like sunshine on a winter morning! Be with people who make you happy. Relatives you are stuck with, but friends you can choose! Make most of it.

You know what? It feels good to be someone’s inspiration and I will be honest with you that you make me feel very special and proud for the way you idolize me and share with me. I remember the poems you have written for me, I remember the calls when you have felt lonely and I certainly remember how you value time with me. In many ways, I idolize you back because you make me value myself. As you grow older, you get to know that there turn out really few people who make you feel good about yourself. I have kept a close circle of friends, people I know will literally cross seas if I need them by my side, people who will pick up my calls at any doggedly hour, people who will listen to me cry and not ask for explanations, people who would be there for me, no matter what. And you need that kind of positivity in your life. Let the toxic people filter themselves out of your life. Let them go even if it hurts. Be the kind of person who uplifts others and be with people who uplift you. As they say, ‘Real queens fix each other’s crowns’. Keep and nurture your tribe when you form one.

While I have given quite a lot of ‘gyaan’ here, your experiences may be quite different from mine. You may find happiness in other forms of art, you may like other kind of people, you may find fun in parties, you may have your own ways of finding peace. But if there is one advise that I would give you above all - it’s to never stop believing in miracles. They do happen so frequently, in front of us. Give yourself a chance to be enchanted by the magic that life is!

With lots of love,

Your Di 😊

#ShaShaSisters