love | existabovethenoise

The word ‘Best’ in Hindi – Devanagri Script

I went to Mumbai to fall in love. And I found love at its best.

I was ringing in a new year in a relatively new city, for reasons beyond flashy parties and beautiful sunsets.

There’s something about feeling worthy of greatness that brings greatness about. Something about feeling deserving of love that brings love about. And something about Christian talk radio that helps solidify all the awesome thoughts you (ahem: I) may have about yourself (ahem: myself). Shout out to Dr. David Anderson and Joel Osteen!

Yes, I was listening to an inspirational podcast when I set foot in Mumbai. But, whenever I set foot in Mumbai, I feel great. This time, in particular, I felt a pulse that I haven’t felt since I left New York. Mumbai is a city with a torrid past, a promising future, and an invigorating present. It, like New York, is electric.

Whatever it is you don’t like about Mumbai is a reflection of what you don’t like about yourself. (This is a fact.) And, I love Mumbai. So what does that say, exactly? I found myself feeling overwhelmingly deserving of everything the city has to offer. I loved the gritty women who just don’t give a damn what you think and the eerie presence of violence under the surface of fame. I loved what it lacked by way of high culture and what it exudes by way of inclusion. I found myself wondering what this overwhelming exuberance said about me. Feeling at home in its shops and cafes in Bandra and among its jewelers, galleries, and design shops in Colaba, should mean something about my future. It couldn’t just be a reflection or a remembrance of my New York City past.

Instead, Mumbai has been for me a choice to be where I breathe easy, a choice to be where I can have the sea and the skyscrapers. It has meant believing that I can have it all. It has meant finding that place and thriving there – not fighting against a current in an environment not meant for me. It has meant believing that I deserve it all, without compromise. And believing that the only kind of love I will accept is the kind that loves me when I am in this state – when I can (and when I do) almost get hit by a speeding scooter in front of Pali Village Cafe on my way to meet up with a friend in a flat I’ve never been to. Careless and reckless and passionate but divinely protected.

Love is such an uninhibited and adventurous spirit. Somehow its both illusory and ever-present. But, it is – surely – a result of individual choices made. It’s a choice to move past partition, past the riots following the Babri Masjid demolition, past the terrorist attacks, past everything that means that success is too far away to be real. Moving past pain and death, past lies told and atrocities committed by people who swore you allegiance. It is this fight under the surface. It is the gentle tremble of disquiet that is motivating. It is this constant agitation that makes you remember that you have worked for what you have – your view of this sunshine is not actually priceless. Your little sliver of Linking Road was fought for and won, so you best be worthy.

This trip to Mumbai made me feel just that – un-mistakeably worthy: in the right place, at the right time, and for a purpose. The pride of the place is contagious. You have to explain to yourself just how exactly it is that you found yourself hobnobbing, schmoozing and snickering amongst these lovely people. Then someone points out that you are a member of this bunch, a card toting up and comer in a world that believes you should have your work and your wine on hawk covered balconies too. It is a city of balance for believers, and a venus fly trap for those who lack self-confidence.

Fortunately for me, this is where I find myself feeling like a princess – enamored and endearing, but demanding ‘what do you bring to the table?’

As I departed Chatrapati Shivaji Airport, I could have sworn that city answered, “You’re a stubborn hard ass, but I love you biotch! ”

I reclined in the emergency exit row, stretched my Michael Kors boots, and exhaled my exhaustion of fairytales.

Some of us aren’t looking to be saved.

I got what I came for.

Nicole Young is currently a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is studying Education Policy. When she is not reading a million pages a night for class, her hobbies include loud laughing, eating, and pretending to be the star of her own music video/broadway musical.

“Don’t forget me” was scrawled in a particularly high school girl style, with flourishes and a smiley face, underneath a framed picture in my cousin’s room. The picture was of my little cousin holding another high school girl, presumably the one who wrote the note, on her back – piggy-back style. Both of them were grinning madly and you could almost hear the giggles through the picture. It was adorable and one of many in a carefully crafted collage. And as I sat on the edge of my cousin’s bed, talking to her about silly things as she did her hair in the bathroom mirror, it really touched me. The three words struck me in such a deep way that I paused and lost my train of thought. “What were you saying?” she asked. I grabbed for something and began again, all the time thinking about the little graduation collage.

What struck me the most was that the phrase, “Don’t forget me” is one I think about almost daily. I don’t want my friends or family to forget me as they go about living their lives. I don’t want ex-boyfriends to forget those special things, those uniquely us things, that we shared. I don’t want the world to forget me when I die. I don’t want my living to have been just another flash in the pan. I want my being here to have meant something and I know I’m not alone. Everyday I watch people make fools of themselves on reality TV or social media all in an attempt for their 15 minutes of fame. Anthropologists and pop culture junkies talk more and more about the unique accessibility the Internet has afforded our generation. And while they discuss the ability of one idea or event or name to quickly saturate every single media market in a matter of seconds and how that has forever changed the human race, for good or evil, no one ever talks about WHY people want those 15 minutes. Maybe everyone’s in on that part but me. Maybe inherent in the phrase “15 minutes of fame” is a perceived opportunity for immortality, but the idea is pretty novel to me.

Believing that no one else loves the way we do or feels sorrow’s depths the way we have, is an inherently human flaw. And as we chide the less talented for their tawdry hopes of gaining celebrity through being a contestant on “Flavor of Love” or even the next “Love and Hip Hop: ATL,” we, the more intelligent, driven people of the human race plot our own 15 minutes. We call it policy, or a contribution, or art, but at the end of the day our attempts to change our stars and make the world a better place are just a cry out against the fleeting nature of life. We don’t want to be forgotten. And this 17 year old girl, writing a note to her friend at graduation, summed up the feeling perfectly in 3 words. It’s amazing how young the awareness of loss begins and how hard we fight from the beginning of recognition to prevent it. We don’t want to lose that piggyback ride or the laughs that followed. We never want to forget that sunset. We hope that even when we’re gone, there will be someone left to remember or something left to remind them that we were here. And what happens in our eternal struggle to make our mark, is that in a particularly human way, we forget that our friends don’t want to be forgotten either. We neglect to tell them that we think of them and that they matter to us.

So there’s loss, the permanent kind, the type that is so final that it leaves us breathless. And then there is quasi loss: the gradual falling away that happens as you get a little older. The kind where something triggers a hilarious, warm memory and you want to talk to the one person who would remember and you realize that you’re not really friends anymore. Sure, you like each other’s statuses and peruse each other’s instagram photos, but you don’t TALK. You can’t remember the last time you spoke and more importantly, you don’t even know if they remember. Somehow it’s even worse. To know that you could reach out to that person if you just had their number and even if you do have there number, if you could get past that first awkward, “So what have you been UP to for the past…9 years.” But you don’t do it. And the moment passes and you’re left a little lonelier, wishing you were your 16 year old self, if only because that version of you would have been able to talk to them.

So then I’m right back to this girl’s three words and the question her message poses. What if you never get your 15 minutes? How do you make them not forget you? After a million years, how do you let them know you haven’t forgotten them? How do you fight the quasi loss that’s bound to come? I’m really no sage about these types of things, but I think you just tell them.

I think you brave the brief moment of discomfort (and the nervousness about rejection) and remind them that their life matters to someone that they don’t see every day. You message them and say that even though middle school was ages ago, you think of them every time Titanic comes on TV or let them know that your Sunday brunch ritual, no matter how long past, was one of the highlights of your 20s. Shoot them a text that conveys ‘yes, you are thought of and often.’ You don’t have to have those awkward phone conversations if you don’t want to and you can continue to skulk on each other’s Facebook pages afterward. But why wouldn’t you want them to know that you remember?

Because truthfully, aren’t we are all hoping that in the busyness of living, they don’t forget us?