Looking back on my first year of moving to Bangalore

Exactly one year ago today I stepped into the city of Bangalore and it was love at first sight. Sure there were ‘genuine’ reasons like work and building a network that got me here but more than anything it had always simply been a lifelong dream to navigate my adulthood independently.

All brown girls who have never really lived more than a week or two away from their homes know how difficult it is convincing parents to let you move to a city where you don’t know anybody’s name and nobody knows yours. I have also been working remotely for about 3 years now so there was no real obligation too. But I always knew I wanted to get out of my comfort zone. I wanted to get out of the rut and experience new things, meet new people and find the answer to the question I asked myself everyday — what if I got another shot at starting my life all over again? So it began.

Yes, it’s not easy. Living alone means juggling a million things — a full time job, figuring how to make new friends, maintaining those new friendships and connections, maintaining your mental health, exploring the new city, keeping your house clean and your bills paid, all while simultaneously staying in touch with your old life, your family and your oldest friends from back home. Overwhelming doesn’t begin to describe it, right?

But soon you start finding the joy in little things like walking home with a bag full of groceries after squeezing a workout into your busy week, seeing how successfully you are adulting, like folding your laundry while catching up on the phone with your old friends, sharing small and big life updates, laughing and sometimes crying while doing so, like managing your own money, imposing self curfews so that you can wake up on time the next day, holding yourself accountable and taking responsibility of yourself, like pushing yourself to go to social events and talking to strangers only to finally see how they show you a different perspective of life.

And soon enough, within all these little moments, you look around and it hits you — you started over and built this life, you made it, and there’s nothing in the whole world you would trade for this.