I was heartbroken, in between jobs, fresh out of a live-in relationship, and doing that very glamorous early-20s thing where you pretend you’re ‘figuring life out’ but are actually another minor inconvenience away from bursting into tears.
Two suitcases! That was my life for a while. Them and a few boxes dumped at a friend’s place, a temporary apartment situation, one deeply confusing relationship, a job that felt like a social experiment, two freelance gigs, and one brain (cell) that would not stop asking: Why the hell do you keep making wrong choices?
You know that phase where life doesn’t gently transition? It just picks you up by the collar and says, ‘New chapter, bi*ch!’
Yeah. That.
I had just come out of a live-in relationship, and staying in the same city felt like it was killing my soul. If you’ve ever broken up with someone and had to exist, roaming the same cafés, roads, grocery stores, and breathing the same air, you get it. The city starts feeling like a shared Google Drive you no longer have access to, but somehow still keep getting notifications from.
So I went back home, to a small town called Katni, in Madhya Pradesh.
Not in a dramatic ‘I’m healing in my childhood bedroom’ way. More in a ‘I cannot afford an apartment in Pune alone, and also I don’t know what I’m doing with my life’ way.
I needed space. I needed to clear my head. I needed a job. I also needed to not spend metropolitan-city rent unless I was actually making metropolitan-city money. Very spiritual.
Very practical. Very Indian daughter coded.
And then, within a month, I landed two jobs. One was back in Pune, the same city I had just run away from. The other was in Mumbai.
Naturally, like a woman committed to character development and questionable plot twists, I chose the job in Pune.
I know. You can judge me.
But in my defence, both jobs were paying the same, and we all know Mumbai is adorably more expensive. Romance may make you stupid, but rent makes you practical.
So I went back.
I started hunting for an apartment near my new office in Camp, and the area is… let’s just say it has the emotional texture of a bad decision. It felt like a huge step down as I had lived in Baner for a year. Not ‘quirky old neighbourhood’ down. More like ‘will I become a true crime headline?’ down.
There was one apartment I really liked on SB road. Better neighbourhood and a better chance of me not texting my friends, “if I go missing, start here.”
The only problem? It was a good 10 KMs from this office and was going to be under renovation for the next month.
Anyway, because I still needed a roof and could not rely on just potential, I kept looking around Camp. And despite the general, bad-decision energy that made up the neighbourhood, I did find another place there. Just more immediate and only slightly shady.
I was about to pay the token amount. Then life, being life, dropped a LinkedIn message into my inbox. It was from an editor at one of my favourite magazines. They were looking for someone like me.
Someone like me.
“Na waqt kha pehro, na naseeb kha zyada, kehke kuch milan do aahe, na milando.”
Do you understand what those three words can do to a 22-year-old girl with a dream, a breakup, and no stable address?
I didn’t pay the deposit. Obviously.
The selection process would take nearly a month, and so, I continued with the job. I didn’t commit to my apartment either and waited to see if this dream opportunity would turn into something real.
Except now I had a new problem. Where was I supposed to live?
Who gives a 22-year-old an apartment for a month? Who trusts a girl with two suitcases, unresolved emotions, and hope that came in the form of a LinkedIn message?
Drumroll.
My ex enters. Yes, that ex. God bless him (lol)
How he re-entered the picture is a story for another time, because that relationship had its own syllabus. For now, all you need to know is that he helped me find a temporary apartment.
The flat was his best friend’s investment in Narhe, a far corner of the city, an area I had heard about for the first time in my life. It was not ideal for so many reasons, but desperate times do not care about your standards.
Seeking that help was killing me a little. My self-respect was standing in one corner with a clipboard, judging me. But I also couldn’t afford to self-respect my full-time accommodation plan. So I took the help. Not because it was uncomplicated, but because sometimes survival is not aesthetic.
To recap, my life looked something like this:
Boxes at a friend’s place, two suitcases by my side, a temporary apartment, a new job, a magazine assignment hanging in the balance, a relationship in limbo, and two freelance gigs.
A nervous system running on vibes and Google Calendar.
AND THEN the job I had moved back for started showing its real face.
While it had a decent setup, a coffee machine, and some sense of freedom, within days they moved into a bare room with white walls, white desks, white lights, and the emotional warmth of a government waiting room. I had moved cities for this job, and suddenly I was wondering if this was character building or just a bad decision.
But the office was only part of it. I had joined to write, but was suddenly handling client communication I hadn’t signed up for, while being micromanaged over every message, line, and piece of research.
And then there was the politics. ‘Let’s take a walk’ never meant fresh air. It meant someone was about to tell me who to avoid, who was “too slow,” and how I, the junior-most person there, should manage conflicts between people twice my age.
It felt less like a workplace and more like high school with invoices. Then my appointment letter arrived with a salary lower than what I’d been promised. If they couldn’t get that right on paper, how was I supposed to trust the magical three-month hike they’d sold me?
There were some perks, though.
I made a great friend there, who was also being professionally tortured like me. There is nothing like trauma bonding in a corporate office.
But the setup? The workflow? The toxicity? The fake promises about hikes? The way juniors were used as pawns?
It was, and I say this with editorial restraint, F*CKED UP.
I was trying to act like this was all part of a plan. It wasn’t.
It was a pickle.
Actually, not even a pickle. It was the entire achaar jar falling off the shelf.
And through all of this, my brain’s (last cell) was doing what anxious brains do best: turning every inconvenience into a full-blown investigation.
“Should I have stayed home? Should I have chosen the other city?”
“Should I have made the relationship work? Should I have taken the apartment?”
“Should I have thought more carefully? Oh shit, I have not been eating healthy!”
“Should I have become a person who makes better decisions and drinks more water?”
But somewhere in the middle of all this, one Sindhi saying kept coming back to me:
“Na waqt kha pehro, na naseeb kha zyada, kehke kuch milan do aahe, na milando.”
