Let yourself choose You
I grew up in Mumbai. Studied there, worked there, fell in love there, and built my entire life there. I loved it. But somewhere along the way, a quiet fear started forming: what if I never knew who I was outside of everything familiar? To understand why I needed to leave, you need to understand what I was carrying. My sister and I have a big age gap, and that meant I stepped into something close to a parental role early on. I didn’t think of it that way at the time. It was just me being a good sister. But it shaped me in ways I’m still realizing it. I became responsible before I needed to, mature before my friends were, and developed empathy that comes from learning to read someone else’s needs before they say them out loud. I grew up faster than most people around me, and for a long time I wasn’t sure if that was a gift or a weight. Now I know it was both.
That early independence also made me deeply individualistic. I started taking solo trips, making decisions alone, trusting my own compass over anyone else’s. I liked that version of myself. But this past year has quietly challenged it. Living in a new country, surrounded by people from everywhere, I’ve come to appreciate community in a way I never expected. Not in a loud, extroverted way. If anything, I’ve realized I’m more introverted than I ever thought I was. I love experiences, I chase them, but I also need my time and space more than I used to admit. The growth hasn’t been in becoming more social. It’s been in learning when to let people in and when to protect my energy without guilt.
I worked hard to get here. Really hard. I’m the first person in my family to move abroad for studies, and that still means something to me every single day. I wanted my parents to be proud, yes, but I also wanted to prove something to myself: that wanting more from life isn’t selfish. And through all of it, my grandfather has been my biggest cheerleader, my guiding light. The kind of belief that doesn’t waver, even when yours does. I carry that with me more than he probably knows.
And life, as it does, refused to wait. I got engaged to my partner, Shubham right before the MBA started, and I’ve been planning a wedding in India while sitting in strategy classes in Barcelona. It’s been absolute chaos. Beautiful, exhausting, and sometimes absurd chaos. Late-night calls across time zones, vendor decisions between case study deadlines, homesickness I swallow because I chose this.
And that’s the thing: I chose this. For most of my life, my instinct has been to show up for other people. To take care, to plan ahead, to hold things together for everyone around me. This MBA, this move, the whole terrifying leap across the world, was the first time I chose myself. Not against anyone, not at anyone’s expense, but for me. And what’s invisible but essential about my journey is that permission. The quiet, hard-won permission to want something of my own and to go after it. It doesn’t show up on a resume or in a photo from Barcelona. But it’s underneath every single thing I’ve done this year, and it’s the one thing I know I’m taking home with me.
Invisible but Essential 