The Second Chapter of My Life
Tehran, Iran
In my life, “education” was always the major reason behind me uprooting myself from one place and moving to another. It was the main motive behind me shifting to the capital city of Iran – Tehran ,for further studies. After getting admission in Tehran , all I had to do was just pack my bags and get going as we already had a house back there. That was the first time I stood in my room, looked around at everything and asked myself, “Maral, what is the most important thing here without which you won’t leave this house?!!!” Suddenly everything looked extremely vital to me! Everything from the things I did not even know I owned, to the things I used on a daily basis…! Funny, but true, that was the time I realized I have a fear of losing … losing my things, my loved ones and lot of other things!
Well, no problem! It’s all about self-analyzing yourself… So, what I ended up doing was taking everything that belonged to me, along with me to Tehran. I even took the sea shells and sand from the beach adjoining my house and ended up making myself a small home in the new city!
That is how I realized that “Happiness is a choice”. So I always manage to find a way to make myself happy!
As my tale continues, I settled in Tehran, was admitted to a nice college, met a bunch of fun-loving people and ultimately made them my ‘friends’. Everything was a little different here… It was a crowded city. Everything from the people to their habits, from the traffic to the tall buildings, it all spelled a distinctive lifestyle! Even the birds were different here!! My newly found companions helped make Tehran a second home for me, a home away from home! On the exterior my outlook towards life had changed, but on the interior, deep inside my heart I was adapting myself to the new environment. Those four years of my college life passed in the blink of an eye, as if my life were on a fast-forward mode! I was evolving as a human being, I was growing up now!
As time passed by, days into months, months into years, I understood that I wanted to see the world; I knew I was going to travel sometime soon, but never knew “India” was calling!
After that, I got busy in preparing and applying for admissions at universities in the UK… I was reading about everything, researching, asking friends, and taking plenty of opinions and advices! I needed a direction; I needed an answer to the eagerness building up inside me! It was one those days of my life, when my entire life changed without me even knowing it.
I was sitting in the library and reading a fat book on Rules and Regulations of students and visas for the UK, that’s when I clearly remember one of my faculty members walked in, looked at me with a faint smile playing on his lips, and then he asked me “What is the next plan? I said “Mmmmm….. The United Kingdom!” He looked at me and said “I do have an office in Belarus, I need to hire a new set of employees, you can move there, work and study (I wondered, God was playing a joke with me?!) Definitely NOT…” Then he suddenly said “Why not INDIA?!!!” Something started tickling me… All the way back home I was thinking about “INDIA”
I felt an affinity towards India. As though destiny knew I would like it there, and had already made fine plans for me to settle in India! I had a strong spiritual side, an inclination towards meditation and art of living concepts; adding to it all, my mind kept crawling back to the photos which were hanging in different parts of my house when I was a child. The photos were memories that my mother had captured when she visited India a decade ago (she had set out on a backpack journey to different parts of the Indian peninsula).
So I took the big step, called mom and told her that I think India is the place I want to go to for my further studies…! She said, “Maral, that’s a different world, go, give yourself time to think about it before your take the final decision. India is crowded; it’s different and not very easy compared the lifestyle here in Iran or in the UK!
After that conversation, I went to my room, thought about it in peace and got all my answers. I found my direction! Then nothing took time, something inside of me shouted out loud and clear – “INDIA is the place, INDIA is the place for me… I am going to INDIA!!!!!”
The following days passed by in getting everything sorted… Now that’s something you guys don’t know about me…if I want something to happen, I make sure it will happen…
My loving mother bought me a backpack, a sleeping bag and she told me “That you must have done very good things in your previous life and that you must be God’s special child as you have got the opportunity to go and live in India! India is our “Mother Land”; your life will take a different turn henceforth…”
Yes, I guess I was very special indeed 😉
And then she said ….
“Travel,
Observe,
Live your Life”
