Hello again, my friend!
It’s been a long time since my last post, and I’m really excited to be back talking with you again!
For the past month, I was visiting India, my birthplace and motherland. Between seeing relatives and friends, visiting Varanasi, and undergoing a transformative experience alongside my parents, I was focused on making the most of my time in this land that is both my home and a place of great spiritual knowledge and history.
There’s so much learning that happened in India, all of which I’m looking forward to sharing with you, but I won’t be able to fit it in only one blog post. So, I’ll be posting it in multiple letters to you, covering different themes of my learning.
The most incredible part of this journey was the fact I had one sankalpa - intention - for this trip: to undergo a transformative experience and develop my spiritual connection further; this included hopefully finding a Yoga guru, which I did (!!!), but I’ll talk more on that in another letter :) The truth was, my sankalpa was accomplished before I met my guru, when I was still in Bengal with family.
West Bengal, my birthstate, is a state with lots of turmoil in its history and arts/science in its blood. From Rabindranath Tagore to Satyendra Nath Bose, Kolkata is home to countless touching songs and poems to revolutionary discoveries that have changed the world. But over the years, especially in recent years, our state is no longer a hub of arts and science but more so simply a state getting by.
As home to many of my relatives, I have spent a lot of time in Kolkata throughout my life, and until this trip, it has always felt like a second home. Part of what was different this year was that, for the first time, I didn’t return to the home I was born in; my grandparents home in Baguiati, truly my second home, was sold in the time between my last trip and this one, so it was the oddest feeling, a mix of disbelief and heartache, stepping into my grandmother’s new apartment knowing I will not be returning to the old one. An enormous chapter of my life, one that began dwindling with the death of my grandfather, was finally over.
To preface the rest of this story, I'll start with a statement within the Geeta that I truly believe in: “To commit an injustice is a sin, but to tolerate an injustice is an even greater one.” The Geeta, a section of the famous epic Mahabharata, documents the conversation between the enlightened Lord Krishna and his friend Prince Arjuna on the front lines of the battlefield as the throes of war ache for the sounds of the horn to begin.
Arjuna, who is fighting for righteousness and his kingdom against his own family, has a mental breakdown at the beginning of the Geeta after seeing his relatives on the other side of the battlefield. Lord Krishna, Arjuna’s charioteer and dear friend, witnesses this breakdown and brings forth his knowledge as a god to bring clarity and calm to Arjuna in such a pivotal moment of the war and his life.
Hence, when this statement is told in the Geeta, the context of the war, with Arjuna fighting his own cousins and uncles and childhood friends, applies to the very heart of this statement. For me as well, this statement rings through to its very core and gives me the confidence that I have truthfully followed my dharma.
Personally, family means something different than blood relatives - if blood relatives and family were the same thing, why are they two different words?
To me, family envelopes the people in my life who truly love me, appreciate me, and support me, regardless of how many times we talk or how far we live or how successful I am. They’re people who are there for me just for me and no other reason, and for that reason, our relationship goes deeper than time, distance, and superficial/material things.
Blood relatives can be family, but only if they truly embody the meaning of family; otherwise, they’re just relatives and nothing else.
I have always believed this to a certain extent, but this trip has engrained this belief so deeply into me that it has completely changed my perception of family and the people I know.
After insulting my family’s guru and my dad while talking to me, and then hearing about a really insulting message sent to my mom, a discussion was warranted with my aunt because a line was crossed, and it was clearly not just a small issue. In ancient Vedic culture, the trio of father, mother, and guru encompasses the three most important people in a child’s life. To insult only one is already incredibly disrespectful, but to insult all three is intolerable and truly unjust.
After having insulted the three most important people in my life, I chose to have a more serious conversation with my aunt to mend our relationship such that there would be no further disrespect or crossing the line; however, after the conversation was construed as an insult, I was cutoff from the family for being so insolent and disrespectful and low… there was no acknowledgement of the insults that came before, no mature discussion of what happened or why, just aunts lying to avoid discussing the matter with me, returning gifts, or relatives straight-up blocking me… honestly, probably because the “successful” daughter of the “rich” sister was finally the bad person or because someone’s ego was hurt.
That’s when I realized that sometimes, a relationship is not repairable and not worth repairing. After years of jealousy and both direct and indirect bullying, not only was my mother free from the bondage of those relationships, but so were both my father and I. After the conversation went sideways, and my father and I left my aunt’s house, I felt so proud for standing up for my mother and following my dharma, so happy that I didn’t say anything low or disrespectful like they did, and so relieved because the negativity they brought into my life from the very beginning of my India trip was finally gone. Personally, I am not one to cut anyone off because I believe in honest, mature conversations and simply distancing when necessary, but at the end, I didn’t even have to worry about distancing myself or my family from my relatives because they were the ones to cut us off. All I had to do was forgive them, wish them well on their path, and move on.
It’s true, in so many ways, I lost family I genuinely thought I had. My little cousin, who I loved like a little brother, and my grandmother, who I thought had always loved and cherished me. But when they were able to cut me off or sit and yell at me to protect themself, I realized where I fell in their lives. To me, they were family; people I would protect and honor with a conversation or respect. To them, I was not that.
But, while I was in the midst of so many emotions and all the interactions that followed the confrontation as loose ends were closed and goodbyes were said, I realized there was no better way, or other way, for this to end.
I let go of all the negativity and darkness and jealousy that old family had brought, and in doing so, I cleansed the energy within me, strengthened the relationship with my parents, and released the anger I felt from the injustice and conflict of the confrontation. And in doing so, I discovered so many other people who truly are family on this trip - old family friends who invited us into their homes with so much love and light, the relatives who happily made sacrifices to spend their time with us, families who began as strangers to me and ended as pillars of support and love in my life. In shedding the negative, I made space for more positivity and love than I ever thought.
After everything that happened between my maternal relatives, my parents, and I, I’ve understood the value of true, loving relationships. I’ve come home now, but for the first time in my life, I’m making an active effort to message or talk to my family back in India… not my relatives, but my real family. I’ve spent incredibly valuable time with my dad, who was by my side every step of the way, protecting me and interacting with the relatives with dignity, and I cannot even put into words how much closer I’ve grown to him. And now, with my mom visiting me here in the US, I’m able to give her that last bit of love and support she needs as she heals from this experience she endured all on her own, as words were thrown around carelessly through a screen from over 8000 miles away, and my dad and my loving faces were all she had to hold onto until we could finally meet again.
I’m truly lucky to have such forgiving, loving, honest, and open-minded parents; parents who are willing to have difficult conversations and can put their ego aside to admit they were wrong; parents who have taught me to discern between right and wrong; and most importantly, parents who have taught me to stand up for what is right no matter how hard.
I know this blog post is incredibly personal to me; it’s the raw reality of what I’ve learned about my relatives and my family, but it’s transformed my relationships with the people I know, deepened my appreciation and respect for my parents notably, and transformed my view of family on such a deep level that it would be dishonoring my personal journey to not share this part too.
I had wanted a transformative experience when I went to India this year, and I got one. I’d just never thought this would be how it played out.
Until next week,
Shreya
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