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“It’s okay. Leave everything and come back home.” She says. A hundred thoughts go through my head, the least of them not being that I am actually considering it. Like it would really be that easy.

It’s New Year’s Eve Eve, and I am sobbing at my computer screen, telling my parents yet again through uncontrolled tears, about how much I hate this. Actually, I don’t. I know that. They know that. But I am alone and sick and it’s cold outside and I haven’t felt joy in six months so all I want right now is to go home. It’s childish. Foolish. Yet she doesn't need to hear the rest of it. Doesn't ask me to elaborate. Doesn't even flinch for a heartbeat to think of the consequences before she says, “It’s okay. Leave everything and come back home.” Like it would be that easy.

It’s not. We both know that, and that she shouldn't be indulging my stupid emotions, which rival those of five pregnant women. My tears shouldn't be taken seriously anymore, even the hysterical ones. I cry over everything. Not being able to sing the national anthem on Independence Day, when it shouldn't matter, because I haven’t been to a flag hoisting on August 15^th in 3 years. Too much homework. Not finding banana leaves in time for Onam, and having to be the hand that cooked the Onasadhya, not the tongue of the child that relished it. Bored because there is no homework. Watching K3G on NYE. The first time I taught a class here, knowing I will never have students like the ones I had in India. The general store guys in Vikhroli where I bought stationery from for twenty years, and how I’ll probably never see them again (I wrote a blog post about them that never made it to my blog, because it’s too embarrassing). When the title track from ‘Yaadon ki Baaraat’ plays on my phone. Not to mention six hundred and ninety seven other songs on my phone that induce waterworks. Every Bollywood movie ever. Even thinking about Swades (I refuse to watch it). The list is endless. Really.

So at what point do you decide not to take my tears seriously, because it happens ALL THE TIME? When do you stop indulging them? I want to say never, because my feelings are valid, no matter how tiny the trigger that makes me weep.  To me, they are a huge deal, even if to the world they are silly things that you just need to man up and learn to ‘deal with’. I write about these things often, yet never post them because I am afraid of not just being ridiculed for being a drama queen (guilty!), but that my feelings are out there for public scrutiny. For the reader to decide whether my thoughts are worthy enough to strike a chord in their heart or to be passed off as something that ‘everyone goes through, and hence is no big deal’.

I've always believed it’s important that we validate our own thoughts and emotions. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re a wuss if you feel too much, or that your heart is stone if you don’t. What may not be a big deal to someone else may be the end of the world for you, and that’s okay. What makes or breaks someone else’s life may be of little concern to you. That is also okay. What is not okay is judging someone else for how much they feel, or how little. Be your own friend, tell yourself it’s okay.

And then there are some people who not only partake in our madness, but indulge it so much that we believe it to be sanity. They tell us to pack our bags and fly across the continents to come back home, if that will make us happy. They tell us to not worry about consequences, because they will take care of everything. They make you believe that everything will be okay, even when you know it’s not true, because you are an adult now and can see that life doesn't work like that. It’s strange; really, that ever since she told me I could come back home this instant if I wanted to, it has made me stronger in my resolve to stay.

How can I ever give my children what my mother gives me? The sense of absolute security, that no matter how much I screw up, no matter how easily I give up, she will be there for me because all that matters to her is my happiness? That “Main hoon na (I am here)” said with so much conviction, that you believe it fiercely, even though you know it means nothing in the real world but it means everything to you. Everyone needs someone in their life who loves them like that. Unconditionally - in the truest sense of the word. It gives me strength in my darkest days, and for that I am ever grateful.