Juggler of hats

[Music]

our four parents

our fortitude give us so much of

power to shape our own destiny but

oftentimes we get

bogged down by all that we set out to

accomplish

that we tend to lose sight of who we are

and where we want to be

i have no claim to fame no stellar

achievements to my name

and no trophies or awards to frame

i’m sorry that cheesy rhyming the poet

inside of me is going to keep making

appearance from time to time during my

talk so pardon me for that

so what am i doing here so i’m here

because i want to share my story with

you with a hope

that millions of women out there who are

listening to my story

will be able to resonate with it they

will find something that they can relate

with

and this will give them some hope to go

back and rediscover themselves

so i’m going to start uh with my story

right from the beginning

i’m not going to get into the details

except the fact that i had a very normal

childhood

or my growing up yours were pretty

uneventful and the only disappointments

that i faced were probably around

teenage crushes and heartbreaks

okay so a pretty comfortable life

after i finished my education i started

working

and i was doing pretty well um from a

professional perspective and that’s

where i met my

future husband oz was a whirlwind

romance

uh stuff that fairy tales are made of

and uh

we got married after a brief courtship

set of challenges because it was an

interfaith marriage

but as they say love conquers all we

overcame all those challenges and pretty

soon life fell into a comfortable

routine as time passed by um

and my family grew so did my

responsibilities

so while i was doing pretty well

professionally but i wanted to focus on

bringing up my children

and i keep getting a lot of compliments

on how well they have been brought up so

it’s time well investment so

um no complaints on that because

eventually that was what i wanted i

wanted

a picture perfect family

a loving husband two beautiful children

and a warm cozy home

and i had all of that however

good things don’t last forever at least

they didn’t last in my case

so last year around same time of the

year uh there were certain

um changes and upheavals that i

experienced in my family

there was a laggy thought at the back of

my mind i

tried to ignore it but you know how it

is you know it’s like your

spidey sense that something’s wrong you

call it a woman’s instinct

so i decided to do some

digging around and in the month of march

trust me i really didn’t have to dig

deep it’s just a scratch on the surface

and a lot of information was revealed to

me uh which

shattered the world that i had so

lovingly and

carefully when with so much of effort

had built around myself

and what you heard in my introduction

the life that i knew

my identity that i had built it all came

crashing down

in a matter of minutes my 17 year old

marriage was over in

probably less than 17 minutes um

that was a very very dark phase for me i

had recently lost my mother

i was still grappling with the void that

she had left in my life because she was

a big support system to me

so that one support system gone and then

this

another shock back to back after that

broke me completely and all of this

happened

uh within a month of uh so within a

couple of months

and in march when this final blow was

dealt

i didn’t know what am i going to do with

my life because

uh it was an out of syllabus question

for me i had never prepared for it

because not even in my wildest dreams

had i imagined that i will ever come

face to face with a situation like this

and the timing of this all could not

have been more ironical

because while my world inside was

crashing the world outside was coming to

a stand still because of the lockdown

so i did not have any means to reach out

to anybody to find that support system

or any distractions

to help me move away from the pain and

the agony that i was experiencing

it was like i said the darkest time of

life i would spend sleepless nights

thinking about

what did i do wrong what did i do to

deserve this

was i at fault how will i ever come out

of it and it was a downward spiral

the more questions i asked the more

entangled i got in the web of lies

and it was becoming impossible for me to

come out of that

i could not no longer recognize the

person i saw in the

mirror every morning i had turned into

such a

cynical and a bitter person and that was

not me people who know me know that

that’s not

who i am so um

that is something that i was struggling

with and i had no idea how to

come out of it but one fine morning just

like that

i had an epiphany maybe i got off to the

right side of the bed that morning but i

had a realization

and no matter how many questions i ask

how many answers i seek

it’s not going to change the situation

that i am in

i need to accept the situation and look

forward to building my life again and

trust me when you’re on the wrong side

of 40

starting from scratch is not easy okay

so it was basically resetting

my entire life but i was determined to

do it

i owed it to my children and more

importantly i owed it to

myself and that is how i tried to make

or turn around in my life

so during lockdown we know it was a very

difficult period

uh for the entire world people struggled

with even making

you know their ends meet and get one

square meal a day

however i use that time to introspect so

the world was locked down

but we as a family were able to unlock

the strength that we had hidden inside

we worked as a team we three of us

my children and me we worked together to

do household shows we tried new recipes

we listened to music

we read books we had discussions where

we tried to come to terms with the

change dynamics of our family

it was a period of a lot of

introspection and

bonding together as a family although

the family structure was

changed but we were still a family and

we had to preserve that value at its

core one thing that helped me

immensely during this period of time was

writing

[Music]

i used to write a poetry when i was much

younger and over a period of time with

increased responsibilities i had lost

touch with it

so i got back to writing poetry

it started as a means to express our

unresolved emotions my daughter also

started to write with me

or she’s all 15 years we started our

blog

we started our instagram page we started

posting our poems there

and uh our work was getting noticed

all over the world we didn’t have too

many followers to begin with

uh however we got a lot of

acknowledgement and appreciation from

people across the country even uh from

abroad

and they that gives us a lot of

confidence to take it further

so as it happened i came across a post

on instagram

which invited poets from across the

country to send it their

poems uh to be included in an anthology

on mental health

and as my daughter and i were grappling

with or dealing with our emotions and we

had

moved from being in a very dark and um

desperate space to uh you know moving on

to more hopeful and optimistic side of

the life so we had a broad range of poem

which covered the entire spectrum so we

decided to send our entries for this

competition and as luck would have it

our poems got selected

and they were published in a book this

gives

this gave me a lot of confidence because

as part of the promotional activities

for the book i had to speak at different

forums

i got in touch with a lot of poets and

got introduced to a lot of poetry clubs

and forums where

poetry and literature was discussed and

gradually i started performing

on open mic events so all of this was

virtual to begin with and hopefully from

next week i

will be performing to live audience as

well that is

the plan going forward so as great as it

was

sadly it does not keep the fire in the

earth

burning and like i said i had taken a

break from working

so uh i was out of touch of what is

happening in the professional

arena especially around my skill set for

last eight years i had absolutely no

clue

and because of the lockdown and the

whole covet situation the economy is in

a slum

job market is virtually dead

but i did not let that uh deter me

what i decided was that you know at

least i can use this time to

add new skills to my arsenal so that

when the market opens up

i am ready to take on any opportunities

that come my way

so i utilized that time i got certified

as an emotional well-being

coach now this is something that i felt

very closely

identified very closely with and this

was something that was also built on my

past experience as a behavioral uh

trainer and facilitator so i’m on my way

to establish myself as a life coach

so life is still far from being perfect

and it will always be work in progress

but at least i have the confidence that

i’m on the right track

but i often think that

could i have handled this situation in

any other way

okay it makes me think that was it all

worthwhile to put all my eggs in one

basket

was it a wise decision not to invest in

myself as a person

and that is a contemplation that has

brought me to a conclusion

that there are three lessons that i

learned from my situation

and i’m here not to tell you what

happened to me

my purpose here is to share with you the

lessons that i learned

from what happened to me the first

lesson that i learned is to let go of

the victim mentality

and that’s very very important if you

want to

overcome any setback it’s a very easy

thing to

start blaming circumstances people

around

us and not accepting that okay

whatever has happened has happened now

we have to

move on okay you and when i say accept

i don’t need submit acceptance is not

submission submission is giving up

giving up

so you accept okay this is the

circumstances

i can’t do anything to change what has

happened to me

but the decision to do what needs to be

done next

lies with me survivors so the fact that

we all are gathered here with sitting

here we are alive here well

means that we are survivors we’re not

victims

so let go of the victim mentality

accept your circumstances take

responsibility of how you will deal with

them and move on

don’t get stuck the next lesson that i

learned was

know yourself now if i was to ask

most of the people here mainly women we

identify ourselves with the different

roles that we play

we all spend a considerable amount of

effort and money in getting our regular

health checks done

how many of us really invest our time

and effort

in getting our emotional checkup done

or invest in our emotional well-being

being a woman is not easy especially in

today’s world

when we are juggling so many things we

have profession we have

a home to tend to uh you know children

husband social obligations and we want

to be perfect

everywhere because we can’t give anybody

opportunity to say okay you know you’ve

slipped

on this particular aspect there’s a

whole lot of pressure that we carry on

our shoulders

but how much time are we investing in

nurturing ourselves

loving ourselves let me tell you the

only person who will remain with you

till your last breath is any guesses

you yourself that’s the most important

relationship in your life

please please work on nurturing that

relationship

trust me that’s one relationship if you

build it well will never let you down

and once you have a meaningful

fulfilling life

all the roles that you play will also

not seem like a chore

you will have your heart and soul into

that because you will do it with the

consensus of contentment

[Music]

so that is the second lesson last but

third lesson is

find your equal guy this is a japanese

concept simply put this means reason for

being

what is the purpose of your life what is

the reason

that motivates you to get out of the bed

every morning

and look forward to the day and what it

holds for you

it is essential to have a purpose in

life the purpose

need not be grand purpose to change the

world that you will solve the

environmental problems or the economic

crisis or the racism

no it doesn’t have to be that grand you

can obviously make your contribution

towards the cause which is

close to your heart but your purpose in

life is something which is exclusive to

you

something that gives joy to your heart

and meaning to your being alive

every day of your life has to be spent

in pursuit of that purpose

every day of your life is a step towards

achieving that purpose

and those are the three lessons that i

learned sad thing is i learned them the

hard way

okay but it’s not necessary that

everybody has to

undergo a trauma or a setback to

implement these things in their lives

all i

have understood is that if i was in

touch with the real person that i

am probably when i went through this

dark

period and the kind of agony i

experienced would not have been this

intense

because i would have known that my end

game is different

and these are just temporary roadblocks

because

i have to be somewhere else so

it’s extremely important to know who you

are and

where you want to be

so that is what i wanted to share with

you today

i will end with another poem of mine uh

this is something that i wrote when i

was

on the road to rediscovering myself i

will not say self-discovery completely

but rediscovering myself

and this is how it goes i hope you will

find something that you can

resonate with failed relations

rising debt out of work am i out of luck

oh no no no not at all on the contrary

lives on a new trajectory

i may be out of orbit but i am free

to find my destination a new direction

i am a shooting star a trailblazer

lighting up the sky

even if it’s for a moment before i die

thank you everyone