Pens and Pages

When I stepped out of my cocoon last year, I wanted to create a beautiful life... for myself and for other people like me - smart, intelligent, but unhappy, unfulfilled, unsatisfied, their potentials never tapped into, their hearts smashed every time they typed on their laptops and looked at the clock. Time passes by for them and nothing happens. Or everything happens but just by the clock. Money buys them expensive shoes but where was the time to step out? Every conversation was a game of poker where you bet or you call but you can never fold. It's been a year now. I fear I may have failed. I didn't create the world I promised myself and my invisible readers. What am I doing? My life only got worse. There were places to go to but where were the expensive shoes? Fear, trapped me in an invisible cage I carried with me everywhere I went. My neck strangled by a stranger's hands of expectations. How could I stand up to his expectations when I can't even stand up to my own? ...

" The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving." - Elizabeth Gilbert (Liz) I always have a tough time letting go. It's either that or just this that I see things differently. I don't let go of things because I often look inward and wonder if I can change something in me to make things "okay". Everybody else seems to be pretty fine with how things are. How could I be a special case to ask for something different, something beautiful?  You see, I would rather blame myself and change myself than to simply state that I deserve something better. When Liz wrote this quote in the Eat, Pray, Love she wrote it for a marriage that was difficult to stay in and so much harder to let go of. It's always tough to let people go, especially people who care for you yet in their own ways which are more harmful than beneficial. I have had my share of toxic relationships like this when I would recall this q...

“I am so unambitious,” my senior from MDI Gurgaon, whom I have known from the past 5 years said this to me last night over a phone-call. She is one of the smartest women I know, someone who has navigated through multiple job roles to land a senior brand manager role- something she really enjoyed doing. In short, I know people from the same college who would kill to take a role like that. But she is not happy doing what she is doing, and I understand the same being the reason behind her usage of the word unambitious for herself. This is not the first time I have heard women use this word. My senior colleague at the workplace would often say the same thing for her. And then the same words did come from another senior I know, and then from a friend, and finally from my own mouth. These are women from colleges like IMT Ghaziabad, IIM B, IIM C. The names of the colleges are important because it is no mean feat to traverse the journey to reach such colleges – study for CAT, appear for CA...