ANOTHER CHAPTER - with DAD!
I am angry, grateful, inspired, heartbroken, strong, and driven, all at once, because of one person — my father. Today I start a new chapter in my life, with all these feelings and more, because I am super glad that HE is the person I got to have as a father. (Sorry mom, this one is for him and I know you understand!)
I am angry and heartbroken because every time I realize, how different life would have been had my dad not been murdered and if I had his incredible intelligence, creativity, calm, wit, and friendship with me all these years.
I am inspired because everything I remember about him helps me see why the thought of being a little more like him each day, still excites me and powers me up to celebrate life yet another day, for what it brings my way. He joked about death all the time, but there was an intentional strategy behind it. He knew his Human Rights advocacy will one day demand a price that will be heartbreaking for his family. He prepared us everyday to live on, carry on and keep building a better world, one story at a time, even when he is gone, and he knew that ‘the departure’ will not be a natural one. He knew it will break us a little every day, no matter how much time passes. So, he knew it was important to prepare us to find inspiration from the memories, lessons, laughter, creativity, and determination he instilled in us.
I am strong because whenever he failed, he shared it without filters and discussed the mistakes he made, without hiding anything at all. He shared the lessons life taught him. He took us on the journey with him, so we understood, why we fail and why it is okay to fail. Most importantly, he taught us, why failure is just a stepping-stone towards success and how we can make every failure a lesson towards a stronger us. I am strong because he told me, ‘It is okay to cry, it is okay to hurt, but it is not okay to give up because this life we have been given is a jackpot that will keep on giving as long as we keep fighting for it!’ To date, those words provide me all the strength, the backbone, the spine I need to keep going on.
I am driven because he taught me how infuckingcredible it is to dream and Dream BIG, then do everything it takes to Make It Happen! I saw his eyes light up, every time he had a new plan for his business, his philanthropy, his family, and his DIY as well as passion projects.
As a child, I used to wonder,
‘Why does Papa get so excited whenever he gets a new idea?’
‘How does he know it’s going to work?’
‘How does he manage to find solutions for problems that seem so confusing, daunting and scary to me?’
‘Where does he get all this energy from?’
‘Why are other Papas I know (fathers of my friends) not so exciting, friendly and fun to hang with?’
Looking back at it all, now I see every single day, he made sure to share all his dreams, plans, ambitions with us so we can learn to be excited about the possibilities we can create and things we can achieve in life. It is this unfiltered, eternally youthful, child-like energy of his that made him so exciting. I wanted to be like him, I wanted to dream like him, I wanted to keep achieving like him. Turns out, I still want to be all that and more, just like him because his energy, his enthusiasm, his encouragement, and his transparency still drives me. I once asked him all of the above questions (and probably 20 more being the super curious and annoying ‘why, how’ child I was) and he replied with a smiling but intense gaze directly into my eyes and said, “If all we do in this life is come, live, eat, earn, spend and go, we have wasted our life. The real excitement of life is in creating something that lifts others up, lifts us up, and creates an impact that goes beyond our own lifetime, however small!” He gave me a vision and purpose that still drives me, Professionally, Personally, Philanthropically and Creatively!
I am grateful because despite our obvious generational gaps, father-child tiffs, occasional outbursts, hating being grounded when I got in trouble, we were the closest of friends. He created a family where we were not parent and offspring, but partners of the journey called life. I am grateful because even though I believe I could not even be 10% like him even if I tried all my life, the very desire to be like him makes me realize how fortunate I have been to have a father like him. I am grateful because he walked his talk, from being an incredible husband who defied and destroyed all stereotypes of what a traditional marriage looked like, to being a father who gave freedoms, partnership, encouragement and friendship that I still see even the fathers from so-called ‘Advanced Countries’ still don’t truly always provide in action, to being a businessman, professional, philanthrope, artist, teacher who just kept giving more to this world than he ever received back and yet never complained. He remained humble, grounded, kind, and selfless to the very end. I am grateful because he taught me it is okay to be vulnerable, long before anyone uttered or understood or spoke of the terms ‘toxic masculinity’ or ‘misogyny’ while he already trained me to be none of that. I am grateful that he gave me a blueprint to what I want my life to be.
And I share all this today, as I begin a new chapter of my life both Personally and Professionally, that is so far the closest I have come to living my life true to my dreams and purpose. I am starting a journey that I have waited for a long time to be on and am now ready to make a shift. I am walking towards a path I had been working on silently, despite the mistakes I made, setbacks I faced and failures I encountered. Every mistake, setback and failure has been worth it and today I know this more than I have ever known and understood before.
At any other time, I would have said, ‘I wish my dad were here to witness it!’ but today I will gladly say, Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother, Puppies, Friends who matter are right here to witness and to celebrate with me what my next chapter is going to be. Thank you to those who came and left, thank you to those who stayed all along, and thank you to those who will join me in future. I am ready. I am excited.
Fucking nervous but glad to begin, to Dream Big and Make It Happen!
(And if you want to know what this next chapter is, you are just going to have to tag along to watch it unfold)
Photo: This is one of the only 5 photos I have with my father, mother, and I together, a very memorable moment among million others that were never captured by the camera. Mom in red Saree, and me in Striped Tee.
