Category: Transitions

An airplane mode for iPhones and I

As someone who’s lived away from home since the age of 17, I’ve spent a significant amount of time traveling to and from home. When I was in college, it used to be 15-hour overnight bus journeys or 20-hour train rides. Then I moved to the US about 8 years ago, and since then it’s been 20-plus hours of air travel each time I want to go home.

I find that whenever I’ve taken these long international flights, I don’t just put my mobile devices into airplane mode – I put myself as well. This is particularly true when I’m flying from India back to the US.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Is this a common first-generation immigrant phenomenon? Picture this: you spend months, if not years on end, thousands of miles away from your family. You get to visit home once a year, if you’re lucky – given the state of the world right now, it’s easily two to three years without seeing home. So when you finally get to make a trip home and get a few precious weeks with your people – before you know it, it’s time to leave, and you are swamped with a ton of powerful emotions. The millions of goodbyes you have to say. The sheer number of love and blessings and good wishes you carry with you. The amount of love is just overwhelming, like a cocoon surrounding you. And you never want to leave. The last few minutes at the departure terminal curb – saying goodbye to your parents, not knowing when you’ll see them next. The double-barreled swords of visa and COVID restrictions you’ll have to navigate to see your family again. Meanwhile, the other parts of your heart are tugging you the other way. Your husband of just over six months, whom you can’t really bear to be separated from. Your friends, who you see even less of, now that you have moved to a different city. Your independence, the life you painstakingly built for yourself from scratch – it all beckons. And so your heart is torn, yearning for all your loved ones to be at the same place, longing to be whole again. But that can only be done if they all collect in one room together. And given everything going on at the moment, it has been impossible to bring everyone together, not even for your wedding. And so the heart has no choice but to remain forever yearning, forever incomplete, forever aching.

And because you cannot afford to fully experience all those feelings when you’ve just reached the airport and have a 30-hour journey ahead – you turn off the signal, you go numb. You go into your airplane mode. You purposely put some distance between yourself and your emotions – and instead focus on the next step. You worry about your luggage being overweight. You sigh at the serpentine security queues. You fumble to take off your shoes and your jacket and your work laptop and your personal laptop and your kindle and your phone, and put them all in a tray without bumping into others or dropping something. You keep all your documents ready for the immigration counter. You glare at the idiots who don’t wear their masks properly; the very sight of exposed nostrils irritates you these days. You worry about reclaiming your baggage at the claim – visions of just standing at the carousel with the merry-go-round turning endlessly, delivering everyone’s bags but yours flood your brain. You hope that a freak storm doesn’t delay your flight – if it did, you’d have to rebook your connecting flights, painfully redo your PCR test, and pray to the universe that you haven’t caught the virus at some point during travel. You focus on getting through your journey with minimum hassle – because that is all that you can deal with at this point. Just trying to keep track of night and day, what time zone you’re in, what country you’re flying above – because you can’t deal with the painful emotions. If you let yourself feel them, you wouldn’t get on the plane in the first place. You’d be bawling your eyes out in the serpentine security queue, making it even harder for the agents to match your face to your already unrecognizable passport photo. You would be so sad, so broken up to be on a long unending flight, each minute taking you a mile further away from home – you couldn’t face it.

And so you activate your airplane mode when you’re flying. It’s not just for devices, you see.

The Two Sides of Quarantine Life

Today marks exactly one month since I have been in self-isolation. Exactly 31 days since I last went out for brunch. 31 days since I sat inside a cute restaurant and ate avocado toast with poached eggs. 31 days since I went to a coffee shop and sat outside in a sun-warmed chair, sipping my cappuccino with the pretty foam art. 31 days since I last browsed in a bookstore and bought yet another cute journal to add to my burgeoning collection. It has also been 31 days since I last saw anyone I know.

The final cappuccino, March 14th 2020

We’re living in rather surreal times these days. The COVID-19 pandemic makes every day feel like a horrifying new episode in a dystopian TV show, where reality and rules shift rapidly. Most of us are cooped up indoors, terrified of this invisible virus that is wreaking havoc around the world. It feels like a zombie movie, except the zombies are too tiny to actually see. I know this situation has been around for a while, but a part of me still can’t believe that this is actually happening. It’s surreal that we’re living through a true global pandemic, with different countries and states implementing quarantines to varying degrees – from total lockdown in India to New York’s PAUSE. I almost feel like Anne Frank, scribbling away and recording all my mundane happenings in the midst of a petrifying period that will go down in history.

I don’t know about you all, but I am vacillating between two very different mindsets here. There have been a lot of changes in my life in the last three months – I graduated and left Weill Cornell, moved out of my beloved Manhattan, applied for jobs, got a job, started a job, got a new apartment in New Jersey, and promptly started working remotely, after a mere two weeks of working in my new office. With the onset of the pandemic, every choice I have made feels weightier, has more severe consequences.

First, my choice of job ensures the ability to work remotely, as opposed to my PhD, in which physical presence in lab was mandatory for any work to get done. The job also ensures that I have an external fixed schedule, with meetings and deadlines – all of which are very helpful in setting up a daily routine (my innate discipline is nowhere up to such a monumental task). Second, my choice of apartment was serendipitous – it happens to be outside New York City, outside the immediate epicenter in the US. My final choice has been to live alone for the very first time in my life. I have spent the last eleven and half years living with roommates, some of whom I’ve loved, and some not so much. I was eager to strike out and live on my own. And now due to the virus, I am all alone in my apartment every single day. These choices have led to a much different lifestyle than I’m used to, and a confusing duality.

One side of my quarantine life is shrouded in fear. I am constantly worried and panicked about what might happen. I am terrified to go to the grocery store. I am too afraid to go for walks, because viruses aside, this is also an unfamiliar neighborhood with no helpful Manhattan-like street grid for navigation. I don’t go anywhere and stay indoors at all times. I am constantly worried about my family and friends, none of whom are immune. I desperately want to keep all my people safe but there’s nothing I can really do, which makes me feel tiny and helpless. I wish I could put everyone in insulated bubbles, safe from the world. Though I guess that’s essentially what we are doing by staying in our homes.

I am also a little worried about the perils of living alone. Sure, it is an empowering sign of independence, but also means that at the end of the day, I need to handle everything on my own. If anything ever happens, nobody else is close enough to help me here. It’s not student housing, so I don’t have my friends living in the same building anymore. Here, I live in an unfamiliar building in an unfamiliar state. I also have new health insurance, new doctors whom I’ve never actually met, in medical centers I have never entered. So all I can do is make sure I stay safe to the best of my abilities. This has led me to wash my hands for so long and so frequently that they are constantly dry and cracking. No amount of hand cream seems to make up for it. I have to mostly fend for myself, food-wise, and that’s not something I enjoy or care to do. I don’t know when I’ll get to see my family. We had plans to meet next month for my PhD convocation, and that is out of the question now. I am worried about the flailing economy and what that could mean for me, now that I have an industry job. And the worst part of all this is the sheer uncertainty. Nobody knows when this will end. When it will go back to normal. If normal is even possible after this. As an obsessive planner, the uncertainty bothers me the most. If I knew that we’d stay in limbo for exactly 3, 6, or even 12 months, I could work with that. I could plan my life around it. But we now live in times where we can make no plans, and the future stretches out in front of us, a gray, bleak cloud with no end in sight.

And yet. Once I take a breath and look for the silver linings, there are plenty to be seen. When I take stock of the situation, I am grateful for everything I have – I know I am privileged in so many ways. Because on the other side of this strange new life, well, living alone for the first time has been pretty incredible. I love having a place that’s just mine. I can furnish it the way I like, organize my things the way I like, and my apartment is exactly as clean or as messy as I like -everything is according to my standards. Nobody else is leaving dirty dishes in my sink, nobody else needs to shower exactly when I want to take a long bath. I can play loud music in the living room while I’m cooking myself dinner. I can talk out loud to myself, put on the silliest karaoke performances, have impromptu dance parties, and once this pandemic is over, have guests over without worrying about inconveniencing any roommates. I have pulled out all my journals and art supplies to start flexing that creative muscle again and am happily binge-watching new movies and shows. I can do as many loads of laundry as I want (having an in-unit washer/dryer feels like the heights of luxury). The lack of commute allows me to sleep in longer (thank goodness, ‘coz mornings are my nemesis). I can use the entire fridge for my food, instead of cramming everything on allocated shelves. I can eat what I want, wear what I want, do what I want, when I want, and there’s nobody to stop me. Living alone is so liberating! I didn’t get enough waking hours in my apartment after I moved in, but now the pandemic has gifted me time to truly enjoy my place. I have an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and I get to see miles and miles of land around me. I get to watch the sunsets, which look a little different every evening. I get to watch all the lights turn on in NYC in the east. I see the clouds scuttling across the skies, rain and storm and sun passing me by. I get to see the ever-changing interplay of shadow and light, and I am wonder-struck at the beauty of the world.

The sunrise over NYC on one of those rare mornings I was awake to witness it

This pandemic is also making me marvel over the power of human connection. I am in awe of how much beauty there is, the strength and resilience of mankind in the face of crisis. You can see it in the little things, of people reaching out to their neighbors, of clapping together, singing together, finding creative ways to reach out and survive this new reality. From old-school phone calls, to video calls, to Zoom happy hours, to Netflix Parties and House Parties -we are finding newer and different ways to connect. There is such beauty in all the ways we cope and talk and laugh, in all the glorious arts we are consuming and creating, in the collective human spirit which is shining so brightly through the darkness and fear.

Having said all that, I am aware that I am one of the lucky ones. There are millions of people who are worse off and can’t stay isolated at home. I am in awe of everyone who is out there, on the front lines, fighting the battle for us all and ensuring that we remain safe. If you are essential personnel, I commend you and thank you – you are our heroes. The rest of us – please let’s all stay inside, stay safe, and stay connected with each other. We’re going to get through this. Take care!

Alone in a Foreign Land: Part Adventure, Part Challenge

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I have been living away from home for a long time now – it’s almost a decade since I moved out for the very first time, as a naive sheltered 17-year-old girl. Nearly five of those years have been spent in New York City. That’s half a world away from India, away from where I grew up, away from all the people I love the most. I have had to build my support system from the ground up, while also learning to navigate the streets, conduct research in a new lab, and understand the culture of a foreign city. It’s been quite the ride, and I have lived and experienced every moment to the fullest – the highs and the lows, the twists and turns, the victories and delights, and all the bumps and bruises. And while I have many, many thoughts on how my life has turned out based on all the choices I have made so far, it’s hard to sum up what this phase of my life has meant to me. What does living all alone in a foreign country entail? Is it the best of times, or the worst of times? Is it a glamorous adventure, or the toughest of challenges?

The best part of living abroad by yourself? Most definitely the independence. The freedom of living life on your own terms, and exploring the streets of a strange and exciting city. The sheer independence of not having anyone to care about what you wear, where you go, or what time you get back home. The ability to test your own limits and set your own curfews. The liberty to spend your money on whatever you deem necessary, be it Seamless deliveries at midnight, or a cute mermaid tail blanket just because you saw it and now cannot live without it.

Living abroad by yourself is when you can immerse yourself in a whole new culture. It’s fascinating to observe how fast people walk, the left-right escalator etiquette, the public transport system. And if you live in NYC, every now and then you’ll come across a new location which seems strangely familiar – before you realize, oh right, countless movies and TV shows have been shot here. Oh, these are the steps in Central Park where Blair and Chuck from Gossip Girl got hastily married. This is the Roosevelt Island tram which White Collar’s gorgeous Neal Caffrey climbed up to escape capture. You can scout out all the famous locations, but you can also hunt down tiny little bookstores, in alleyways you wouldn’t wander down in the dark, and find new hidden cafes with nondescript doors and wonderfully eclectic interiors. Everything is ready and waiting to be discovered – like being in a real-life choose-your-own-adventure book with multiple chapters and endings just waiting to be explored.

Living abroad on your own also leads to self-exploration. You end up surrounded by a completely new culture, and you get to decide if you want to hold on fast to your own culture, adopt the new one, or find your own unique blend of old and new – your own set of beliefs and rules, and use them to fine-tune your moral compass. Living abroad is the time when you can figure out who you truly are, far away from all the expectations and societal pressures – getting some distance is what allows you to recognize those, and realize how much you’ve unquestioningly internalized. You can now question what you’ve never questioned, behave in a way you’d never have imagined, figure out the person you truly are – underneath all the people-pleasing, expectations-fulfilling, rule-following persona you’ve developed over time naturally and unthinkingly because that’s just the way it was. Living abroad allows you to remove all those masks and uncover how unconscious your core beliefs and biases are. It helps you grow into an authentic, messy, real version of yourself – and forces self-discovery like nothing else. Living abroad is an exciting, thrilling, and fascinating experience – I highly recommend it!

 

What’s the worst part of living abroad by yourself? Once again, the independence. The anonymity of being all alone in the crowd, and not having anyone who cares about what you wear, where you go, and what time you get back. There’s nobody who would automatically check in on you. It’s surprisingly easy to become isolated. You’re all by yourself in a completely new place, and every step is a new challenge – from finding the nearest grocery store and navigating unfamiliar social situations, to filing for taxes, and getting your social security number. Coming home at the end of the day can feel dreary, because you’re welcomed only by your (most likely, unmade) bed, and perhaps a plant or two. There’s no warm food on the table, no warm companion to ask how your day was. There’s no automatic social interaction after coming home, unless you specifically make plans with friends. You’re completely by yourself, and while that sense of freedom is liberating, it can also get lonely.

Also, the whole process of figuring out who you really are and testing your limits and beliefs is not easy. It’s unnerving to question what you’ve always held true. The transition period while you’re coming to terms with loosening your grip on the old belief system, and building a new one? It’s uncomfortable. It’s disturbing, because all of a sudden, ideas are fluid instead of rigid – and if you can’t rely on what you’ve held onto for twenty-something years, what’s the guarantee that this new system will serve you? All the absolutes start dissolving into relatives, there is no perfect right or wrong anymore. While building your own system from the ground up is essential for personal growth and self-awareness, the process can be rather bewildering . Change is good, but change is also hard, and while adventures are really exciting, they are by nature quite terrifying as well.

 

Knowing what I know now, would I do it again? Would I head out on a whole new adventure, or would I prefer stability and familiarity? Will I spread out my wings and fly out to a whole new phase of my life, or will I hang up my boots, and say, enough flying, I’m done – I know who I am now, and am happy with it, so now, after having accumulated all that experience and knowledge – watch me put down my roots now?

I’ve thought about it long and hard, and my conclusion is: while the idea of safe familiarity is tempting, so very tempting at times – I am an adventurer at heart. I’m always looking for the next challenge, the next hurdle, the next battle. I am not the kind of person who would be happy to settle for just good enough – I always want to be better, do better, strive for more. That path isn’t always easy, but it’s the path I choose. It’s the path I want. The bumpy one, with the crazy ups and downs. Because while the lows can be devastating indeed, the highs are just so incredibly rewarding. The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. So bring on the next adventure. And watch me fly!