Who am I !

A girl who is conventionally unconventional.

Personally, I’m not a strong believer of school education and its impact on life, even growing up grades and marks never motivated me.

 I was very curious inquisitive child and was encouraged by my parents to learn a lot of things my dad is a very handy person and equally techno savvy he always included me in everything he did and called me his little helper “Ramu”. I used to get thrilled to finish up his job of tightening the screws or holding the flashlight at the correct angle or handing him the right tool, I used to feel very proud of myself as a little Ramu. Similarly, I was also exposed to all of cooking mending of clothes, cleaning, banking literally everything my parents did, I did it with them.

I remember one regular incident from childhood, one of our neighbors was a smoker and he used to sometimes ask me to get cigarettes for him from a corner panwala. I used to be delighted to do that as I would get to buy candy with the spare change my parents never objected that either.

Doing all this kind of odd jobs day in day out by the age of 15 I was very independent young lady I didn’t even understand how ready I was as an individual at that time.

 I did not do great in academics but managed to pass all my tests and go through college. I was told that whatever I do I should do a job any job for that matter, any legal, legit and socially acceptable work is okay.  It gives us perspectives. My mom use to tell me we should be always able to do everything we need an want, wherther we need to use the skill or not. tkaing up small jobs will teach me about people an give me perspectives. I used to teach people MS DOS, MS Word, MS Excel, how to use computer and some other things. I also worked at a tuition center doing some data entry work. I used to work for my uncle since I was 10 years old. My job was to collect 5liters Baygon tins from all the local grocery stores clean them and once they were filled with varnish I would paint them in blue and stick new labels on them. I used to write sales receipts and many other odd jobs that I enjoyed doing.

By the time I was 16 or 17 due to some issues at the workplace my Dad decided to quit his job in India and take another one in Saudi Arabia. My mom and I were left behind, we never felt that the man of the house was missing. We missed my dad for different reasons as in having conversations and fun and just being around, but we knew everything. My mom, as well, was a very independent woman. She used to help manage her dad’s business in our native place in 1960s all those siblings all of them were very independent confident and tightly bonded people.

 I knew how to deal with anything and everything, I mean everything Electrical, plumbing, carpentry, managing people/situations, making decisions, religious stuff, handling bullies, fighting, negotiating, all sorts of banking Investments everything. I was so comfortable in my life that my parents decided that, I will visit Saudi once or twice a year and my dad will visit once a year and my mom will split time between India and Saudi, so all through my college until I got married almost 7 years of my Prime teens, I used to manage our India House all by myself and I never felt anything special or different or odd. I have no idea what our neighbors or family members thought about our lifestyle and living situation.

I always was judged for not being intelligent based on academic grades and especially being a struggler in math. Indians and their obsession about math!! I struggled to fit in until well in my thirties I struggled to understand that I was very different I was actually smart and intelligent but all the people judged me based on my grades and the institutions I attended, which were both very mediocre.

This whole thing of introspection started my journey of asking myself what is independence?