HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SHREYA
"I thought a long time about what to give you for your birthday. In the end I did the one thing I'm actually good at. To Write" - Teja
ONE · A WEEK AGOShreya,A week ago you were a name, a phone number, and a photograph my mother liked.Since then you have texted me or been on the phone with me at every hour there is. From cars, from temples, from coffee shops, from the middle of your friends, and from at least one wedding. On my side I have been on a call with you while putting fuel in the car, while pulling groceries off supermarket shelves, at work, outside work, and with a plate going cold in front of me. You are now the largest single line item in my phone’s battery usage.And somewhere in all of this, you put a widget on your lock screen with two clocks on it. Australia and India. The people around you have started teasing you, because you were never the quiet one, and now you go quiet and you type messages with a stupid smile on face.
TWO · THE HUNCHI make the biggest decisions of my life very quickly (or I like to think I do, which may just be for dramatic effect Haha.)Coming to Australia. Taking the computer science route. Moving into different organization for work. Trying to becoming a homeowner. Writing my first novel. The career pivot after PR.Every one of them began the same way, with a hunch. And I don’t mean a thought. I mean something physical. It starts at the back of my neck, comes down through my chest and lands in my stomach, and once it hits, I have stopped deliberating. I go forward and I do not look back.Every single one of those decisions, the expensive ones, the ones that actually shaped my life, has worked out for me.The newest entry on that list is saying yes to Shreya.I spoke to you for a couple of hours and I already knew. The hunch had started. I didn’t want to be in a hurry about it, so I sat with it and gave it real thought. Then I spoke to you again for a few more hours over the days after that, and it was the same feeling, only steadier. It had been a long time since I had felt it that clearly.Then came the night you sat with all of it yourself and thought everything through. The next day you told me you knew where this was heading, and then asked me where it was heading. I told you I had liked you already, and I just hadn’t wanted it to look like I was in a hurry. Which, of course, gave the whole thing away.The day after that, my father asked me. I said yes. I have not looked back once since.
THREE · AN OPEN NOTE TO SHREYA’S NEAREST AND DEAREST.Hello, everyone. I hope you have all been well.I know most of you have been teasing her and I have had a good laugh hearing about it. But there is one question that seems to be common to all of you: how did she say yes so quickly?I would like to answer that properly, because I don’t think she is getting enough credit for how carefully she actually did this.She took it layer by layer. Like threading a needle. Precision.Before she ever spoke to me, she went and found my Twitter account. Roughly 10 or 15 thousand tweets, replies, retweets, going back fifteen years, and she read enough of it to work out how I think and what I represent. Full credit to her for that, because it took real effort to find the right handle and go through all of it. Twitter is where I say what is on my mind. It has been my most-used and most-active platform for close to fifteen years. She then went through my LinkedIn to understand my professional life and what the career pivot had actually looked like.Only after all of that did she start talking to me.And then came the questions. A great many of them, framed several different ways, to clearly see not only what I would say but whether I meant it. I could tell that she knew exactly what she needed to know, and she was not hesitant for a single second. Not about asking, and not about letting me talk at length about the things that made me who I am. So I spoke openly. I told her what it took to get here, and what it is actually like to be with me. She considered every bit of it. She built the decision the way you build a wall, block by block. She got to know me better each day, and she is still doing it.I asked her ten times over whether she was deciding earlier than she had planned to. Whether she felt rushed, by her family or by me. I told her she could take as much time as she wanted before saying yes, and I meant it, because that mattered to me more than the answer did. Every time, she said the same thing: she had thought through every last detail, and only then said yes. She also told me that nobody can talk her into anything that easily. Which is exactly what I would want. I suspect it is what all of you would want for her, too.
FOUR · AND WHY SHREYA?Shreya asked me the other half of the same question. So here it is.
Honestly, I have a plan. A big one. I want to lay a strong foundation and build something that lasts, and all of it rests on one thing: a happy and successful family. Families make societies, and societies make everything that comes after them.I believe this life is an enormous thing to have been handed. The point is not to live quietly, survive, die. The point is to make something of it. To make it better, bigger and more beautiful than it was when it reached me.For that I needed a particular person.
1) Someone not like me. I am somewhat introverted, and in a room full of people I don’t know, I go quiet. I wanted someone easy-going and genuinely extroverted, who can be warm with anybody.
2) Someone smart. Almost every person who spoke to my parents or to me about this match used the same word about her: smart. That was the single most important thing on my list. Someone intelligent, who thinks clearly and gets things done. A family does not go far without a smart woman at the centre of it.
3) Someone I actually match with, because the ambition I am describing was never a solo project. I want to see the same world I have been looking at for thirty years, but with her hand in mine while I look at it.
4) Someone who carries herself well and meets the world cheerfully, and who walks into a room and makes it lighter.
5) Someone who understands my hobbies and passion. A few interests of mine are niche and, frankly, capable of being boring. Writing. Following global politics far too closely. I needed someone who would not merely tolerate that but be genuinely interested. She has shown real fondness for what I do, and I am more grateful for that than she knows.She walked straight off that list. How do I say no to that?
FIVE · AUSTRALIA.Like I told you. Half a decade ago, on one of those cold windy nights, I landed in Australia with dreams in my eyes and a flight ticket in my hand.I came here a boy. Australia made me a man.I learnt a great deal. I saw struggle. I saw the highest success I knew at the time, in the form of PR. I stayed up late for more exams than I can count and woke up early for long journeys to work. I built a life here, and it is a good one, and none of it came easily, and I am proud that I worked for every single thing I have today.But I cannot stop here. I want to make it great. I am only getting started, and for the next chapter I need someone. Someone whose shoulder I can rest my face on from behind, and watch the world go by. Someone whose hand I can hold on an evening at Shorncliffe Pier, looking out at the ocean water and say: this is life. Someone I can come home to after a long day and feel less tired simply for looking at. Someone my mom, dad and sister genuinely like.I have started seeing you in all the above.I want to go back to every place I have already been in this country, but this time with you, and watch something I have seen a dozen times turn into something completely different.
SIX · EARNING ITI call Brisbane my city. The cost of calling it mine was seven years of my life. I earned it. The same way I earned the degrees I am proud of, and the stories I wrote because I wanted other people to read them. I earned all of it.And in exactly the same way, I have started earning you. I intend to keep doing it. Because this is not the short form of anything. We are playing a five day test cricket, not a T20. It is a value investing, not day trading. We are writing a PhD thesis, not cramming for a B.Tech final. We are watching an HBO’s slow burn drama, not sloppy reality TV. It is like a soft power diplomacy, not an airstrike.I want to quote from Robert Frost: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.”
SEVEN · AND SO, TODAYAll of it. The thinking. The reading, the watching, the listening. The thousand questions, including the ones you had been saving up because you needed to know exactly who you were saying yes to. And then, at the end of all of it, still wanting to say yes.Somewhere in the middle of that, this stopped being something that impressed me and became something I can stand on. That is the most honest way I know how to put it, and I am not going to decorate it any further.You get one year older today. I get every year after this one. Happy birthday, girl. Many more to go. This is only the beginning. And you stay exactly as you are, and I will stay as I am, because that is precisely how the two of us ended up here.“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” The Merchant of Venice · William Shakespeare
EIGHT · ONE LINE OF HERS.There is something she said to me that I am going to be repeating for a very long time. Straight out of her own head, with no warning at all:
“I’m like a holiday. Around me, everyone is happy.” Shreya, entirely unprompted Haha.I am genuinely looking forward to finding out what she meant by it.
NINE · MAPPING YOUR BRAINShreya, one last thing.What I have worked out so far is that you overthink. A little. Which made me wonder what is actually going on in there on an average day. So here is my best attempt at mapping it, working with very limited information and no formal training.Shreya’s brain, average day: (pic below)
