Author: Vrush Dholakia

Just a Phase!

| Vrush Dholakia

During this quarantine phase, one cannot do anything but live through it. So this article is for all those people who are Living far away from their loved ones. This article is for those people who miss their loved ones and the delicious home made food. 🍰

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Missing your loved ones at this time is obvious. We are all living in times where we cannot be close to everyone, but all we can do is miss them and make sure they are safe. Some people prefer to stay in touch via SMS, video calls, etc. I know we live in a world🌍 full of technology and video calling is easy and the best solution for now, but the memories that you share with that special someone that is what stays with us and that is what you sleep with at night.

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Those who are away from their family might think about the amazing nights you have spent with your family playing stupid board games where most of them cheated their way till the end of the game and yet ended up losing, cooking sessions with your mother, which lead to a flour war, fixing the bike/car with your father, learning how to play a sport🏊 with your sibling and they are equally bad at it. These memories are with you and that is what you miss the most. Growing up you must have lost a few close relatives/ family/ friends, but their memories stay with you.

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The sleepover that you had at your best friend’s place, the endless conversation about everything that seemed important at that time, but was just so irrelevant, the fights that you had, tried to protect each other, all the crazy amount of munchies that you ate together while you were trying to have a meaningless conversation or the times where you all were stalking each others loved ones or so they thought it would be. These things/memories were the best part of your life while growing up.

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Those who are stuck in this lock down with their spouse or their loved ones are just lucky and those who are not are just holding onto all the crazy memories that you have with them. The first drive with them, the first ice-cream, the kiss on the Ferris wheel, sneaking out of the house just to meet them, the first romantic date, the first horror movie together, the comfort you get from them when you are sick, first trip together and a whole lot of other things which I won’t be able to put into words, you are going to hold onto these memories and that is what is going to help you through this phase.

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For all you people out there- Hold onto these wonderful memories and keep loving the people who help you make such memories. This time will pass just like any other, ONE DAY AT A TIME!

SINGLE AND HAPPY !

| Vrush Dholakia

Growing up we all believed in fairy tale romances. We believed that some prince charming will ride his magnificent white horse and will sweep you off your feet and you might live happily ever after. The reality check is quite different from our fairy tale love stories.

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First– we are not all damsel in distress who needs rescuing; we can help ourselves, we have made ourselves so independent that we don’t need to rely on some random stranger to come and save us from the evil witch.

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 Second– how can someone possibly fall in love with a person whom they just met; even movies are more practical than this and in today’s world. You don’t just fall in love with the face, you fall in love with the soul and their personality.

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 Third- not everyone out there is looking for love, some people just want to fulfill their dreams and make it big in life.

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There is one lesson that all these Bollywood and Hollywood movies have taught me i.e; love is just a part of your life just like everything else is also a part of your wonderful life, your parents, your career, your family, your dreams, your inspiration, your aspiration, etc, they are all a part of your life and together they sum up your life. So why would someone only focus on love and forget everything else. Your parents/guardians have loved you all your life so before taking a drastic step for the one who does not value you enough or who fell in love with someone else, think about the love your parents gave you. Now would you want to waste a love like that, a love so pure. Valentine’s Day is not just for lovers but for family and friends who care about us too.

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I had a friend who found her soul mate when she was in high school or at-least she thought they were soul mates. They survived high school together and then college. Their love was something that we all thought would last. They were going to get engaged in December of 2018 .On the day of their engagement they obviously threw an engagement party and that is when the had invited all of their friends, family and colleagues. While everyone was mingling around with the guests and having a gala time, the FIANCE was out in the guest room with his boss.

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 The only explanation she got was that he was trying to build his career this way.

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Working hard and then achieving the success you deserve would be more satisfying than sleeping your way to the top. The only thing I could tell the would-be-bride was that “I’m glad you found out about this now. It would be too late if this was disclosed after the wedding.”

TO ALL THE WOMEN OUT THERE : It is better to be single, successful and HAPPY than being with a man who thinks infidelity is normal and that it should be a way of living.

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IT’S YOUR LIFE- LIVE IT

| Vrush Dholakia

All someone wants is to be the best version of themself. So what would your New Year Resolution be ? If the goal is to be the best version of yourself then what version would that be? Would it be someone who inspire you or someone who would want to inspire people or just someone who wants none of the above and wants to live a blissful life by being invisible.

The best way to be achieve that New Year Resolution is by throwing out all the intoxicating things or people out of your life. The only way to do that is by moving on. Now, moving on doesn’t necessarily mean that your heart has to be broken. It might just mean that you are tired of unnecessary drama and want to get a life for yourself which you might enjoy and not regret.

20 days have already passed and if you still have not decided what you want or what you are looking for, it is okay ! Nobody is in a hurry. All you have to do is look within you. Look deep, try to find your roots, try to find yourself – NOW and the one you want to become. Nobody is counting your days.

We are often told that what we decide now will reflect our future and that will decide where we end up. No offence to all those people but I beg to differ. What you decide now, you might think you are happy and eventually realize that you were wrong and you might want to change that. Guess what! You can do that. You are allowed to change. You don’t need to take permission from those “well wishers” who think that they have the right to decide how many chances you get at life.

NEWS FLASH – It is your life. Only you get to decide what you want out of it. Only you get to decide where you want to be and how you want to live it.

All these people who think they can decide for you, well here is a piece of my mind, “Live your life and let us live our life. We want to make mistakes and learn from them and not learn from the mistakes someone else has made. We want an equal chance.”

HOPE

| Vrush Dholakia

Have you ever eaten something that you hate but still had to swallow it because someone made it with so much love ? I am someone who hates Sushi and when I had first gone to eat it, I was so excited. To me, the word Sushi sounds very fancy. It sounds like a type of dish a typical Gujarati girl like me would fancy, but from far. Being a die hard Indian Gujarati woman, my foodporn is “Daldhokhli” or “Khamand Dhokla” or “Jalebi fafda” or “Surati Undhyu”. These are the kind of dishes that would be my Sushi or Quesadilla.

Similarly, have you ever been with somebody who seem fancy or looks good but is not so much fun or fancy when you actually spend time with them. Now this may not be because they are arrogant or some ego maniacs. It can be simply because you two do not connect or because you are two completely different people or you two are just too similar. It can be anything.

Maybe the guy is Mr.Perfect but you just do not connect with him or just consider him as your friend. Maybe you two do not have that spark or maybe you are just meant to be best friends. The question is “How does one deal with such a situation?” How do you make sure that you have that person in your life but not hurt their feelings or yours? HOW DO YOU COMPLICATE AN UNCOMPLICATED SITUATION LIKE THIS ONE ?

For someone like me, relationships matter a lot. That relationship could be with your spouse, parents, fiancé, friends, anyone related by blood or not. I, personally dislike the break up phase in any relationship so I stay away from such situations. But when it is not meant to be then forcing or trying to make it work is definitely not in my nature. I would rather NOT FAKE A RELATIONSHIP just to make sure that it SURVIVES. I would rather BREAK FREE from such a vicious connection.

This is what dating applications do. You meet a lot of people who you might like or who would be your Mr. Perfect but you do not have that spark with or do not connect with. What can one do next ? You can keep meeting new people until you finally meet someone , your Mr. NOT SO PERFECT or just realise that Mr. Actually Perfect will just come along.

YOU DON’T NOT HAVE TO LOOK SO HARD. All you have to do is accept what you have now and be hopeful for tomorrow because “HOPE HAS A LOT OF POWER!”

GOOD WAR !!!

| Vrush Dholakia

TO BE CONTINUED…..

So I went out with this PERFECT GUY on a PERFECT DATE. We had what everyone would call it, “THE PERFECT DATE”. This went on for a couple of weeks until one day I decided to talk about my past, AGAIN! Although I had told him everything about it earlier, infact I had told him everything on our very first date. To my surprise, rather SHOCK, he seemed to remember everything else except that.

I did not have a problem with him so graciously forgetting this minute detail of my life but what I had a problem with was the way he seemed to suddenly have a problem with my past. Everyone has their own choice to make and how they live with it is upto them . There should not be any JUDGEMENT. This was the principle I lived by and I continue to live by it. Little did I know that not everyone believes in the same. Because of this petty issue, we had a fight. And what might seem like a normal fight to everybody else, for us it was magnificent and definitely not in a good way.

We did not speak to each other for days and that turned into weeks. But somewhere I still had hope for us. We used to always discuss how we would celebrate our birthdays together and mine was coming up. So I thought we might forget about our egos for some time and celebrate, little did I know that the feeling was not mutual at that time. Not only did he not show up on my birthday but he did not even drop a single message or call. It literally broke my heart to see someone that I genuinely cared about not care as much. I waited for another day and then out of anger I decided to give it back to him. What other way could I think of other than the same old app, TINDER!!

If Tinder has taught us anything, it’s that people do derive pleasure from judging people’s looks and not always in a good way. You might feel like that’s a sure sign that people really are just shallow jerks. But when you’ve been raised to place such an importance on appearance, it’s hard to shake that old mindset.

Later I realized that he was upset with me because he saw my profile on tinder and thought I was cheating on him.

What I fail to understand is that I downloaded tinder after my birthday and that was only to make him jealous so where was he all this while? To this he had a crazy answer that his friend saw my profile on tinder a while back and to back up this up he even sent me a screenshot. I decided to post this picture and stated that it was a fake profile and that it was not me on tinder. But even that didn’t seem to make him believe that it was not me. So I finally came to my senses and realised that I have not done anything wrong so why should I give him an explanation, it’s not that I owe him one.

So finally I thought to myself that, “if you don’t move on from your situation now , tomorrow will be too late”. After which I decided to move on and he decided to come back in my life and apologize. You must have heard that there are always two sides of the story; Your side, My side and the other invisible side that is the TRUTH. We were so stuck up with the flattering ego in our boiling heads that we did not listen to each other until it was too late. That is when we realized that we were both to be blamed in this situation and not just one.

Well the good thing that came out of this was that i realized that not only was he a good guy but he also passed the “5 step test”. And everybody was happy by the end of it since we dissolved the issue and decided to give it a fresh start but as F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

So who knows what story is waiting for me next !!!

UNTIL NEXT TIME !

Five Step Method Towards Love or Friendship ?

| Vrush Dholakia

Have you heard about Bro- code ? Sis- code? In most cases the answer tends to be Yes! But have you heard about Friend-code ? 🤔Like a chocolate 🍫is incomplete without it’s cake🍮, like Jalebi is incomplete without Rabdi, like Diwali 🎊is incomplete without Kajukatri, like Christmas🎄 is incomplete without it’s cookies🍪, the same way life is incomplete without Friends. 👭

You cannot finish your meal without dessert. Chocolate cake or fruitcake or any cake or ice-cream is necessary or else your dinner seems incomplete🙅. The same way when you have someone in your life and the opinion of your friends matter the most. You cannot be with someone that your friends don’t approve off. 🙅

One such instance happened with me as well. I was crushing really hard on this one man🙇 who not only behaved like a gentleman but we also shared the same interests. A woman will always share all her relationship secrets 🙊with her best friends and I’m no different. I tell my best friends everything, EVERY SINGLE DETAIL. So naturally I told them about the guy I was seeing and they have a 5 step testing method. This method is by far reliable and totally BOGUS at the same time !💩 Blimey !! 👽

5 STEP METHOD :

1) See if he is into you or just your body : look at his eyes and check where is he staring or gazing – 👁️at your face/ eyes or your bust .👀

2) See if he ready to meet your friends or not : this shows how committed he is when it comes to you.👭

3) Is he talking continuously about himself or is he interested in your talks as well : does he give you a chance to speak or is he a good listener? 🗯️

4) Is he so eager .. eager to take you home or eager to know your good and bad habits 💥

5) After all 4 of the above steps – your friends should approve . They should allow you to date him or else they will make your life A LIVING HELL !!

No matter how interesting all this seems and how stupid it sounds to someone, it has actually worked for me and I know for sure that if I don’t try this by myself they will make sure that they know the answers to all these above questions.

Friends are like the sprinkles to my ice-cream, Ghee to my Roti, Butter to my Pav- Bhaji ; Totally unnecessary but without it your food would seem incomplete. Your friends play the same part in your life. Life is totally and completely incomplete and empty without them. 😌

TO BE CONTINUED …….

friends

End of Self Pity

| Vrush Dholakia
pity party

So what is the craziest thing you have done after a breakup ? 🤔Maybe eat a tub full of ice-cream🍧 or dive into some rom-com movies or just go on a solo trip somewhere or catch up with your friends 👫or indulge in a rebound. So I would not call it crazy but I have done something remotely annoying, I indulged in self-pity.🙊 And this is the worst kind of pity. It is easy to feel bad for someone else but if the person you are feeling pity for is yourself,well that is really hard. Self pity is not hard but accepting that you have already indulged in self-pity is extremely difficult. 😭

So what do you do when you have realized that ? So what I thought I could do is adopt a cute little puppy🐶 just to have a buddy, but my mother is terrified of dogs, so I had to scrap that idea. Now I had to think of some other alternative. I thought that I could read a book📓 and that would help me to understand what my next step should be. Alas! That confused me further more. Tired of my brains I went to the best advisor, “MY MOTHER”👩. She told me the only way to stop all the unnecessary self-pity was to start loving yourself💃😍. Yes,the exact opposite word of self-pity was the answer to all my problems, “SELF-LOVE”. 😍

So I joined the gym🏋️ and that is when I realized that not only did I love myself and my curves but also respected myself. The only problem was that I let a man define my behavior.🙅 This is a universal problem. We women let men decide for us, the way we feel about ourselves, the way we dress, the way we eat, what we eat, etc. What I find difficult to understand is, Why do we allow that?🤷 It’s not the man’s fault entirely. Nobody would do something to you, if you don’t allow it. If you tolerate the ill things happening to you only then will the person continue doing so. So technically it is your fault.🤦 You allowed this. 🙍

I decided to take a good hard look in the mirror and finally decided that I would not allow anyone to demean me. I would not allow anyone to tell me that I am not enough. “ENOUGH! I CHOSE ME NOW “🙏 . These were not just words for me, it portraits how I feel about myself.

My mother was reading out all the morning quotes that people send in the morning. You know all the good morning messages 💌sent by your entire family which fills up the memory of the SD card,💬🗯️💨 she was reading that and one of them read something like this “IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO, BUT IT IS ALSO FINE TO DANCE ON YOUR OWN”.💦

So to all you readers Self-pity is like the typical diet food,🤢 looks good on the outside but is completely bland when you taste it, you need to add something to spice it up just like you need to add something to spice up your life. I would go ahead and quote another one from FRIENDS (TV Show) (read my previous article to know what I am talking about),”IT IS A MOO POINT”.🤔 It is like a cow’s opinion, just doesn’t matter. Self- pity just doesn’t matter.🌞💯

Dating : A Dilemma

| Vrush Dholakia

As I go through all the other interesting posts, I have this fear that maybe dating and dating app has been the talk of the town for way too long. It makes me wonder why everyone would make this a HOT TOPIC🔥. I thought it was normal to be on a dating app. I thought that since I am single💃, I have a legit reason to be on this app. Little did I know that my choice or my preference would be questioned in this process. People have now assumed that dating apps are not meant for dating but are meant for hookups 🙊only. The problem is when I joined this app I was not aware about this assumption. Little did I know that just cause you like meeting new people and having a good conversation with them, I was inviting everybody in my vicinity to judge me- as I was on a Dating app or rather a “A HOOKUP APP”. 🙉💏

The person sitting in front of me was not judging me at all but the people around me surely were👩‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👩‍👧‍👧👩‍👩‍👧‍👦. It is quite confusing to me as I thought that the vibe 🗨️ of two people who are meeting for the first time is what matters the most and not what the people around you think of you two. It is like a fat girl is ordering for a pizza🍕. The girl might love💖 pizza and the pizza might love 💖the girl back, but who cares, it is what other people think that matters right. Aaarrrgghhh !!!😟🤢 I have always been on the heavier side so I completely understand both the situations and the unnecessary eyes👀 that are being laid on you makes you more uncomfortable than the pizza ever could. What if the girl who is eating a pizza has been starving🤔 herself for days and has finally found the strength to love 💖herself and the only person or people (in this case) that are building a wall for that girl to reach the final stage of self- love are the pedestrians👫🏃🚶 or the people sitting around her giving her the nasty look.🕵️

While writing this article, I recalled something that I had seen and fell in love with. We all are aware of the amazing T.V show Friends and for those of you who do not know about it, let me tell you what I was thinking, the scene where Joey was trying to enjoy his 🍕 pizza and he was told that ” a moment on your lips👄 is forever on your hips” , to which he responded by saying, rather shouting that “I AM CURVY AND I LIKE IT” and he proudly ate the last slice of pizza.

So to all you nasty onlookers, “LEAVE THEM ALONE! LET THEM DO AS THEY PLEASE”🙏. It applies to both the girl with the pizza and the two adorable people trying to connect.

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