Chapter One: Choosing To Be Inaaya

Have you ever imagined living in a beautiful bungalow in the woods, by the banks of a river? A place where the winter paints mountains white with snow and freezes the river enough for one to walk across without blinking an eye. Snap, we are back to reality- in the city that never sleeps, a place that compels you to struggle just to survive.

Hi, I am Inaaya, an investment banker by profession with a leading bank in the country. We work long hours, and most weekends are spent number-crunching. I live in an apartment with my parents, who also happen to be busy bankers. They have spent most of their adult lives striving to meet their dreams, and will not stop even past their retirement age.

With the rage of this pandemic, we are all camped in at our houses, staring at the screen all day with only time to eat & sleep. While companies are reporting more employee productivity now, but little are they measuring fatigue, & happiness levels. I am thirty, but already exhausted with my working life- I wonder where the fun & excitement is? I want time to myself, to revive my dreams of being a writer, a philanthropist, and reading books all day long but with my current situation, this all seems distant. While this job has made me financially independent and given me a solid foundation, I am planning to quit & start afresh- this time as a writer holed up in a cozy study somewhere in the mountains.

While these thoughts weighed in on my mind day after day, night after night, I decided to discuss this with my parents. I explained to them how I wanted to start afresh in a smaller city, possibly in the mountains, and work on my writing. However, being bankers, they believed my decision would result in my doom. I wished my parents could understand that the heart wants what it wants and if I wanted to do something that made me happy it wasn't irrational. I wanted to take this leap for myself and start a new life where the focus was on me. I think living your dreams is not a sin, they may not make you as much money, but they make us more content.

After a lot of back & forth with my parents, we decided I could take out one year of my life to focus on my writing, and build myself my cocoon. They were aghast when I told them I was shifting to Bandipur, Nepal, a country I had only been to once on a school holiday. It was a little place nestled in the Himalayas, with frigid winters & beautiful springs. My parents were concerned about how a typical city girl would adjust to unknown languages, unknown culture & unknown people. But I stayed my ground, and in the end, they came around.

I started tapping my network for people with connections in Nepal, and in Bandipur to help find me a place to stay. Most of my network was surprised at my decision to move, often questioning how a girl could live by herself in a strange new place. Our society undermines what a girl can do- they fail to understand that the 21st century is a century for equals. Finally, after a month of never-ending international calls, and internet searches I managed to find my dream home. I told myself that this was possibly my only opportunity to do what I loved, and I had to seize it. In the end, I charted my path, and Bandipur was just the right place to start.

"You are what you choose to be

To know my story do wait for a thrilling second chapter.

Until then please stay safe, stay home and be yourself!