Chapter 1: Life is but Perfect!

To be perfect in life was my dream. Whether be it in school, extra-curricular activities, dressing up for parties, hosting parties, each moment of my life was spent to make it perfect. And we all know when we try too hard for something, we either achieve it or we completely lose direction and end up somewhere we had not planned for at all.

As a 9-year-old Kolkata born, a big middle-class/overachiever joint family’s fourth among seven brother’s only child, I faced the first perfect imperfection of my life. My mom, my best friend, my closest pal, my dance partner, my scariest teacher, my world-best chef decided life was too painful to handle and left me to deal with my fears, set my goals and find my way in this life “my perfect way”. I cried for two days, lived with my aunt for a month, answered odd questions and stared down odd looks from friends, neighbors, and relatives, and missed her for the rest of my life. However, after the first month I was back at it again, to make my life perfect. I never cried in front of my dad ever since, I never ever made him feel I missed her. My eldest aunt “Mamma” bravely took up the role of my mom. I was always close to her, but we started bonding a whole lot more like a mother-daughter. She had to teach me about periods, face my teenage tantrums, bear my mood swings, and finally help me with my newborn. So, after my perfect life train almost derailed it seemed to have been fueled by some positive energy and speeding across the empty platforms as planned. I always worked to be the best and finally I was a topper in my class, became the head-girl of my school and even got good results to get into college.

Life was finally looking up, or was I still dreaming of my favorite Shahrukh Khan movie where he travels across Europe with his lady love with no money and baggage but still looks amazing in brand new designer clothes every day. Yes, it was time for the next perfect moment to blow through my life. I had a plan about my career, I mean why not I had a plan about which pen I would use each day of the week so definitely I had the entire blueprint with a timeline typed up for my career. I did get through the college of dreams for many (not mine) with a subject desirable by many (not me). The three years at college were anything but exciting. I went through each day like an athlete trains with heavy tires with the goal to build strength for the final day, though it was heavy and burdensome the athlete knows he has to push through and once the exercise is over the tire lies there in heat and sun with no emotional attachment. While I felt like a sore loser, this college of dreams for millions but mine was getting ready to stamp and design my so-called perfect career.

So, the first twist, since I was having such a great time at the college, I really needed a focus in my life and the newly found online chat rooms provided the ultimate space for that. I had till then never done anything out of the norm of a middle-class geeky Bengali family’s daughter except I never wore Indian traditional clothes, I did not have any close friends who were females, I hated fish, I scraped my knees all day long playing “pittoo” (a traditional Indian street game of piling up uneven marble stones and then knocking them over with a tennis ball only to rebuild it again as a team joint effort), I wanted to cover wars and crime-scenes on television and I could not properly read or write Bengali. One thing though that was very Bengali in me was I was a huge fan of Dada (Sourav Ganguli, then India’s cricket captain), his care-free attitude, him flaunting his bare Bengali (strictly rosogulla-Bengali sweet and lamb curry) abs in Lords, his aggressiveness in the field and his passion for something he wanted made him quite perfect in my eyes.

Back to the chat rooms, never knew an online dial up network would set me up for a “unlimited don’t dream only do – LIFETIME plan”. I met my “Rahul – naam to yaad rahega na” at one of the rooms. We got to chatting everyday and eventually decided to meet and before we knew we had already been planning our far from perfect life together. Fast-forward next couple of years – we got married, had a home in England, I completed my first Master’s and was in my first job. That’s when the neat whiskey moments with my office laptop walked into my life and they were forever to stay!

Cheers to an almost perfect life!