On some days life seems unreal, love is endless, and dreams are all so tangible.

You wake up on the right side of the bed. The sun is shining and you can hear birds chirping. Your skin is glowing from the skincare last night and your coffee is ready exactly when your bread pops out of the toaster. You call your sister and she picks up in the first ring. You guys laugh about something your mum said last week. You bite into a peach and it’s ripe to perfection. There are three rejection emails in your inbox. And suddenly for a minute, you realise you moved continents and haven’t been around your people in six months, your bank account is struggling, you just got your heart broken and you cannot find an internship for god’s sake.

You are 16 tossing sleeplessly in your childhood bed, praying that you remember the year of the Battle of Plassey in tomorrow’s SST board exam. Your sister is caressing your hair, you are shaking with anxiety and she tells you to imagine what you would do once the boards were over. And now you are in this world away from the now. I’ll get my nails done and get a new piercing. In the next one hour, your mind has taken you 5 years into the future and you are at Oxford University studying literature on a 100% scholarship and you are flying back home for Diwali with expensive gifts for everyone, Narendra Modi has sent you a letter congratulating you for writing a bestseller.

Dreams are farfetched, almost unreal.

You have a flight to Chandigarh at 11 am, you are moving to join a corporate office, you are 19. You wake up at 5 and knock on your parents’ door, mum comes and opens it half asleep- “everything ok?”
You nod yes and run to Dad. He lifts his blanket and makes space for you. You scooch in. He says you still fit in his arms just like you did when you were a baby. The world is your oyster but it is also so big and you are tiny enough to fit in your dad’s arms. You have to leave home and the comfort of his arms now that you are an adult.

Dreams are demanding and full of sacrifices.

You are on the train back from Amsterdam after giving an interview for an internship. You are 21 and comfortable in your skin. You are aware of your brownness in Europe and you have accepted you have a thick desi accent, you quite like it. Yet, you sit uncomfortably wondering what sassy comeback you could have had when the co-founder asked you where you learned to speak English so well. Instead, you tell him everyone in India speaks English because we were colonised by the British. You chose to give him a history lesson instead of a piece of your mind because you need this internship so desperately to get where you plan on being.

Dreams are too difficult to reach.

Your phone buzzes in your hand and you snap back into the now. Mum has sent you this dramatic motivational reel and suddenly the rejections don’t hurt that bad. You remember you are still waiting to hear back from other companies and Dad said you keep trying and something will fall into your lap when the time is right. Your childhood best friend has sent you irrelevant details about her love life, and your group chat with the cousins is buzzing. Your flatmate washed your dishes and your friends are making plans for the weekend already. Your sister might get a promotion this week and your 9 am class got cancelled.
So now you are sitting in your Hungarian friend’s room, and it smells of incense she bought from India during her exchange. You are sitting in silence working on your laptops. You have a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge and fresh flowers waiting to be put in some water lying on the table. She is playing Russian songs and French songs and Britney Spears and suddenly you hear beats to Chikni Chameli on the speaker. You look up from your screen, it is late now. The sun is setting. You have been on her couch the entire day. She offers to make you dinner and you smile.
In this little apartment in Rotterdam, you sit amongst friends who genuinely care about you, listening to music you grew up dancing to and music you would have never come across on your own, witnessing the sky change colours, preparing for your Honours class tomorrow and waiting for a goodnight text from your parents back home.

Life seems unreal, love is endless, and dreams are all so tangible.