Perfect Life or as I see it....

Perfect is described as having all the required or desirable elements, qualities or characteristics, as good as it is possible to be.

Someone close to me has asked to imagine how I vision my life ten years down the line.

Perfect life would be according to me:

-to have a person who would love me the way I am and I love that person the way he is.Perfect life would be to have understanding and caring life partner.
-would be to have someone with you when you need a hug and shoulder to cry.
- would be in a house with a swimming pool which has ample space to have a corner where I can read and write the blog. It would be a house with three bedrooms along with spacious doors across the house. It would be bright colors and would have a photography wall where there would be pictures of my trips, people I love.
-would be where I have a job which I love, where I am helping others. Perfect life would be where I am looking beautiful.
-would be where I can be accepted in this society even if I am not married.

-would be where I make my parents proud of myself.
-would where I can tell someone how I feel exactly rather than hiding myself behind my smile.
-would be where I can say no to people and not feel guilty about it.
-would be where I have good health.
-would be to have friends who stand by you all the time.
-would be surrounded by people who love you, accept you and understand you.
-would be to have my parents always with me in every decision I take.
-would be to have understanding and caring life partner.
-would be full of road trips and travel to places I want to see and blog about.

In the end, perfect life is all about the things we want to do in reality which is somewhere in our mind but we don't do them due to many reasons. I just wish I would at least achieve couple of them and have a happy life if not perfect.

Confessions of Fat Woman

This is one of the hardest topic to write about what being fat means to me. I have been born in a family where food played an integral part. My mom being an amazing mom who loves her children cooked amazing food. Being the eldest born, I am blessed with everything except one thing that I can't make my parents happy.

        I have always been healthy due to the genes in me. However being in India, I have always been told I am not good looking or I am fat. I have always felt weird about my body. If you are born in India, and then if you are a women, then make sure you never get fat as you are always treated as it is a disease. Sometimes, we are not in control of what happens in our body. Do I want to be thin or beautiful? Of course yes, for as long as I can remember.

      I was just 70kgs in 2009 and put on 20 kgs more in one year, that is when everything changed. People around me kept telling my parents that I will never get married and be a disappointment for my family. Nobody understood that it was a hormonal imbalance which was never clearly explained to me by numerous doctors. All they said is go to gym lose weight. Nobody tells you how to deal with disappointment after working out and then still putting on weight due to hormonal imbalance.

       They were times when I wanted to give up and just die so that my family would be saved  by the embarrassment of having a fat daughter. In this society, doesn't matter how much you go ahead in career or how much you grown, you are always judged because of the looks. After three surgeries and being in ICU, I realised that God has made me the way I am.  I have had people be on the face rude to me when I go shopping or restaurant but I would really like to thank all my friends who have supported me in my journey and be with me during tough times even though some of them aren't around anymore.

     It's always tough to be around people who make you feel like you are not good enough person to hang out with them. On top of it dealing with the peer pressure to look good or that I haven't been married yet. Recently, to be brutally honest I have been depressed with the fact that I am not happy, I knew I have to take some tough decisions if I have to be happy in my life.  I also realised that the focus has to be changed as I was trying to make everyone else happy than rather being happy. I have made a promise to myself that I would make myself happy.

           Under the guidance of my trainer Sourabh, I have started following Keto Diet, which is improving my health and making me feel more positive. He has lots of patience in handling my mood swings and pushing me on this positive path of life. I know there are lots of people out there who have been in my situation, I would like to say that be yourself and do change yourself only if you want to. We should not do something just to make someone happy because if they like you for what you are, they would always like you. Don't give up even when that's the most easiest thing to do.  I would also request everyone to not to judge people as everyone is fighting their own battles. Believe me, nobody wants to be fat by their own choice.

Love Without Fear...

After the last post I wrote about single people struggling to get married, this one is about how we let our fears ruin what could be a good relationship.

Since I moved back home, I've been meeting people in search for love. There has been good and bad experiences. The bad ones are learnings, let's not be negative about it.

A lot of single people ask me why should they get into a committed relationship when they can have fun without it and it is too much of an effort to maintain a relationship. I have met people who have been hurt by others and don't want to get hurt. In both the cases, it's the fear of finding someone who you would depend on emotionally, mentally and physically. And there are others who let that fear affect them so much that they ignore when they meet an amazing person. Maybe because they think the person is fake and will hurt them, or scared that they'd fall for them.

I have had experiences where I have been completely honest about what are my expectations from a relationship or the person. However, then realized that it scares people when you are so honest.Most of the relationships or marriage breaks because we aren't honest to each other about our expectations. Things are really easy when we are dating and having fun because we are not responsible for anybody's happiness or sadness. People don't realize that we might have fun in dating however everybody wants to meet someone they can settle down.

In the last two months, I met different guys and told them I am a girl who has a good job, family and friends. I don't expect him to spend every waking minute with me. All I need is one day in a week, we meet either for a movie or coffee or dinner and spend time. The most important thing is to communicate whenever we are free. I would rather stay home and watch Netflix rather than go out and party. Also told them that I don't have any issues if they drink, go out with their guy friends or smoke as long as long it doesn't affect them personally. However the reactions of this was this can't be real. Maybe she is faking it, it can't be real. I am not sad that they choose to let the fear make the decision about knowing me rather than giving a chance. Nobody is perfect in life and it made me realize that people are so scared of falling in love.

I strongly feel that love is the most important thing and difficult to get as this generation is blinded by money, status and society. We all want to settle down with someone who can be our best friend/family/mentor in our life but too scared to take a chance on someone who can be genuinely likes you and wants to be with you.

So this blog is for all those people who are scared that someone will hurt them, I would suggest that take a chance and give the other person chance to know you. Don't let your fear ruin what could be an amazing experience. If it ends up as a bad experience then learn from it rather than letting that stop you from knowing another person.

In Search of Happiness..

Behind every smile is a sadness which cannot be expressed. For everyone who knows me I am all sorted in terms of job, family, friends etc. It is assumed that my life is full of parties every weekend with awesome people because of my love for photography.

To share this story has been my difficult task as it might hurt lot of my close people who love to see me smile all the time. But its time for me to be honest about myself in order to find the lost happiness which I am trying to search..

Have you ever been in a group of people and still feel lonely? When you feel you trying very hard to be happy and trying to smile every time so that people will not be asking you too many questions?

I was on assignment away from home for six months and felt so homesick that I had to come back to home. I thought I would be more happy and contend being at my home base. However I was wrong, since coming back home, it has been an roller coaster ride. I wasn't happy like I was expected myself to be.  Parents being disappointed since I am yet to be married.Will parents ever understand what we go through?  Can you ever make your parents happy for you?

I am not against marriage, however if I am unable to find a right person it’s better to be single then marry the wrong person.  Who doesn't like to come home to someone, share your day, go out on dates. Who doesn't like to have someone who is proud to be your partner?

Is the girl only complete once she is married. I know its the aim of every parent to see their children happy and settled. Maybe some children are not meant for this? 

Is it easy to talk about the pressure you feel when you see your parents disappointed that you arent settled? To be honest, I do feel suffocated when I am being told constantly to get married, lose weight etc. Does it ever end? I only wanted someone to love me the way I am. We are in a generation wherein its so difficult to trust people as people change constantly. Relationships these days, needs lots of patience, compromise and understanding.

We see everybody around us getting married, being happy that you wonder what is actually wrong with you. We don't realize that we would find our soulmate once its time. But what if this pressure gets to you and you just feel like giving up.... Give up everything so that every one around is happy without you.

Letting Go...

I have been recently thinking a lot about "letting go". This doesn’t mean I'm sad or depressed. "Letting go" can be about different things. Letting go of things or people is the hardest thing to do and requires a lot of courage. "Letting go" of a relationship would mean a lot especially when you are in love with that person and you need to give up to make that person happy. 

Is it a easy thing to do? Does it ever feel better? Does it ever stop hurting? A lot of people tell me that if I care and love that person, I should let them go. They will come back if it’s meant to me. I always felt we shouldn't give up on people especially people we care or love.  Maybe I am romantic at heart and believe in the old ways of romance of not giving up on people. 

But I also realised that not everybody thinks like me or is like me. Most of the people I meet these days are so practical and don't want to get emotionally involved in life. This scares me. Have people forgotten how not to give up on people or are they ruled by the life experiences they had with wrong set of people?

I just advise our generation not to give up on people we love or give up on something we love. It’s nice to be emotionally attached to someone and give people enough personal space at the same time. I promise myself that I will not let go of my love for writing and continue to find stuff to write for myself and for people who love reading my blogs.

Relationships- Myth Vs Reality

Relationships play a very important role in our life. Perhaps that's why its said that human beings are social animals. But lately as I see around, I feel we either take relationships for granted or are too scared to be in one. 

There was a time when guys used to behave like "Casanovas" and wouldn't mind being in a relationship with more than one women. However of late, I have seen men going any length to make a relationship work.  Broadly speaking, there are two categories of men who exist in this world, one who are kind and emotional and would do anything to make the relationship work. And the second kind would  be those who have been hurt in the past and want nothing to do with commitments. These guys want to live in the moment. Women who meet the second type of men unfortunately fail in their best attempts to make their relationship work.  

Since the time women have started working and being independent, things have alarmingly come to a point where questions are being raised on the need for a man in their lives. The point isn't that we cannot survive without them. At the end of the day, we all need someone to share our day with. Just imagine if our parents would have thought like the way we think these days.

Most of my male friends are these amazing people who are good at heart but had met all the wrong women. I have also known women who are kind hearted, sweet and simple people who give their best to make a relationship work but have met men who have cheated on them and broken their trust. The blog isn't about men vs women. It's just to make my point that people should give each other a chance and not generalize. 

So my advice to all the men and women out there is -- don't give up on love because of your past. Let the past be in the past. If you let it interfere with the present, then it would spoil your present and future.  If you come across people who take you for granted or hurt you, remember Karma is a bitch and I can vouch for that.

Dating in Today's Generation

Dating these days has become so common that a while back I was thinking of creating an mobile application geared toward dating. Being a single and independent woman who lives away from her family, I don't mind meeting someone for dinner, coffee or a drink. At the end of the day, all I am looking for in this world is companionship. In order to understand how dating apps works or whether there is market for them, I downloaded a couple of applications such as Tinder, OkCupid, and Hinge.

My experience with Tinder has been the best since I met couple of decent people with whom I could be friends in case the date doesn't work out. However, 90% of the guys were on it for just a hook up or one night stands. The sad part about this is that Tinder had started out with the intention of enabling people meet someone special but ended up being nothing more than a place for one night stands. One more thing I found was that the number of married people on the application was too high. I don't have any problem if a married person is looking to make friends however I feel Tinder isn't the place for that. Not all is bad with Tinder, it doesn't let any random stranger to message you. Unless there is a mutual liking you cannot message each other.  One more thing which I found was that there are many girls on Tinder however nobody bothers messaging or knowing someone. Many of my guy friends keep complaining about the same and I agree with them, if you are not interested in getting to know someone you should just delete the application.

OkCupid wasn't that great. The application's chat sucks big time and random strangers can message you and I wasn't comfortable with this.

If I were to build a application on dating, I would want the mobile app to be for someone who is looking for love or relationship. I know its cheesy but I am still positive that love does exist.  It would be a app in which there would be different categories for different people who have different dating preferences. Love sees no age, anybody can find love or companionship. You can do a search as per your age preferences.  This app would allow you to search for someone who is the same city based on the location preferences. One more thing, I want to make different in my app is that there would a security measure which would verify whether the person is actually who he is. It could be as simple as someone adding a valid document or  check conducted via a phone call. This feature would allow the girls to feel more secure in terms of being on a app. 

Also, people cannot send more than five messages to five new people in a day, this would give time for them to know someone rather than just simply liking someone and not bother to message or talk. My application would help you login via facebook which would be good because in that case you don't have to fill in all the information. There would be some specific questions which would allow people to know little bit about the person rather than just liking their pictures and swiping right. The chat application would be better than other applications.
 
Once you have spoken to someone and are comfortable meeting them, my app would allow you to book a ticket for a movie or make a reservation for dinner or lunch or simply coffee so that you can know each other better.  The app would link movie theaters and coffee shops, thus getting them more business. In order to make the app more successful there could be events like speed dating which all the people on the application can attend and meet someone face to face. 

Hopefully in the near future I would be able to work on this application and bring more love into people's life.