page forty: Extending the Romance

It happened in the most ordinary of moments, on my drive home after grocery shopping at Patel’s, where I go for my Indian vegetables and spices. The store had been playing familiar Bollywood melodies, creating a little pocket of India in Morton Grove as shoppers filled their carts.

I walked back to my car with that satisfaction you feel when you know your refrigerator and pantry will be well stocked for the days ahead, still humming a song that had floated into my ears while shopping. It was a popular romantic number, and I found myself singing along, smiling as a love song touched a familiar chord.

But as the refrain repeated itself in my mind, it seemed to take on a life of its own.

Tum kya mile, hum na rahe hum, tum kya mile… (Since I met you, I am no longer myself, not since I met you...)

The words, meant for a lover, began to unfold into a love that felt deeper and far more expansive. I began thinking of all those “you’s” who had entered my life and altered me into a newer version of myself. It started with the most obvious: my high school headmistress who inspired me; a family friend who helped me with math; my spiritual teacher, whose very presence introduced me to a dimension I never even knew existed; and a mentor who encouraged and supported me in becoming

a Chartered Accountant. After each of these encounters, I was not quite the same person who had arrived there earlier.

I once read these words on a poster: “You touched me. I grew.” It felt exactly like that. Each meeting had birthed me into a newer version of myself.

And then my awareness widened further. It wasn’t only people. Books, places, conversations, and experiences, both fleeting and fully lived, had also shaped me. Many of them had been game-changers, though I could only see them as such in hindsight. The many pilgrimages to holy places, breathtaking moments of beauty in nature, a student’s heartfelt sharing, lines of poetry that pierced straight through, and also the struggles, failures, and disappointments that reshaped me from the

inside out. All had slowly dissolved something that was no longer needed.

By the time I reached home, tears were flowing freely, not from longing or sadness, but as an outpouring of joy and gratitude. I realized how many portals life had generously offered me for growth. Some I had stepped into with awareness; most I was only recognizing in hindsight.

Life is such a generous teacher. Each meeting, each passage, is an invitation to die a little to the old self and be reborn as something more open, more light. Perhaps this love affair with life itself is the invitation we are being offered in the second half of life, to meet it with such love and openness that we are altered every day, until we finally merge with it, fully and endlessly.

As I unpacked the groceries, that song still played softly in my mind. Its romantic flavor had become a hymn of wonder and gratitude: Tum kya mile, hum na rahe hum.

This Valentine’s Day, I offer my gratitude not only to those I have loved, but to every encounter that made it impossible for me to remain who I once was. Thank you to every teacher, every friend, every heartbreak, every glimpse of beauty that has shaped me, undoing my ego just enough to let my heart breathe a little wider.

And what about you, who is reading these words? Who or what has been a true game-changer in your life, an encounter after which you were no longer quite the same? What great love and gratitude will you celebrate this Valentine’s Day?

May we all keep morphing joyfully into who we truly are, growing brighter and lighter with each passing year, allowing every relationship to open our hearts a little more.

And if you’d like, you can listen to the song that stirred this reflection.