She's Brave Podcast - Kristina Driscoll
She's Brave Podcast - Kristina Driscoll
Golden Handcuffs: An Immigrant's Pursuit of Happiness with Author Varuni Sinha Part 2
In part 2 of 3 of this multi-episode conversation with author Varuni Sinah, she narrates a pivotal moment in her life when she confronted her CEO about being fired.
Varuni describes her challenging work dynamics, her employment struggles that followed. She provides a candid look into the ensuing depression, the pressures to maintain family traditions, and how this period contributed to a significant identity crisis.
The discussion shifts to capture her perseverance despite constant setbacks, eventually leading to a deep depression marked by severe self-neglect and alcoholism, further straining her marriage.
Evocatively, Varuni shares an extraordinary subway encounter with a homeless man whose words made her realize her negative behavior towards her husband. This encounter, coupled with her husband's heartfelt plea and temporary move to Los Angeles for a job, propelled Varuni towards self-healing.
Her journey towards recovery saw her engaging with the city’s vibrant life through street photography and volunteer teaching at the Bowery Mission, where she found profound connections with children. These experiences helped her rediscover purpose and meaning in her life.
The episode doesn't shy away from discussing the COVID-19 pandemic's impact, recounting Varuni’s husband’s heroic efforts as a stroke surgeon in New York City. He faced severe challenges, inadequate PPE, the loss of colleagues, and incidents of prejudice. Varuni also outlines their joint effort to raise awareness about the disproportionate COVID-19 deaths among African-American essential workers.
The episode concludes with a focus on Varuni's continued journey of healing and the couple’s reunion at the end of 2020, reminding listeners of the resilience and strength found in love and determination amidst adversity.
Part 3 of this multi-episode conversation airs August 13, 2024.
Varuni Sinha Bio:
Varuni Sinha is a New York City-based writer and multimedia producer. She has written for The Post and Courier, Time Out New York, and created 360-degree campaigns for global brands such as Yamaha and Panasonic. A former guest lecturer at the University of Delhi, she taught “Race and Politics Through Literature” and wrote a dissertation on the history of Indian comic superheroes, tracing their origin story to Hindu gods and their American cousins. Her paintings have been displayed in solo and group exhibitions in galleries across India.
Varuni Sinha Bio:
Varuni Sinha is a New York City-based writer and multimedia producer. She has written for The Post and Courier, Time Out New York, and created 360-degree campaigns for global brands such as Yamaha and Panasonic. A former guest lecturer at the University of Delhi, she taught “Race and Politics Through Literature” and wrote a dissertation on the history of Indian comic superheroes, tracing their origin story to Hindu gods and their American cousins. Her paintings have been displayed in solo and group exhibitions in galleries across India.
Purchase Golden Handcuffs: An Immigrant's Pursuit of Happiness
VaruniSinha.com
Loved this episode?
Leave us a review and rating here: She's Brave Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Connect with Kristina:
She's Brave Podcast Website
Instagram
Facebook
Curious about podcasting? Join Podcast Mastery Facebook Group
Episode 98 - Golden Handcuffs Part 2: An Immigrant's Pursuit of Happiness
Intro - Kristina Driscoll, Host of She's Brave Podcast:
Welcome to part two of this special series of she's brave podcast with author Bruni Sinha. In our last episode, we left you with a bit of a cliffhanger. Let's begin.
-
Varuni: So the next day, I just walked to straight to my CEO's office and she is a woman I still respect today. I do truly respect her. But I was afraid.
Kristina: Of course.
Varuni: Very afraid. And I told her that, did you fire me? Because I think I used the word, did you fire me because I'm an Indian I just said what I felt. And I said that, all I asked my editor in chief was, could you tell me what is wrong with my writing? I did not point fingers at anyone.
Is this because of the conversation yesterday? And she said, no, it is not. And I wish I could say something else to change this, but I would like to help you. I said that, can you keep me employed at the minimum number of hours that, you need me there for? And that would allow me to legally stay in the United States.
And so she said, yes. I still had to turn in the same amount of work. Because, like they, they didn't have another writer and so I was in the office only for a couple of hours and I worked only a few days and I would go to a coffee shop or I would work from home. And from the next day that girl who was my, who was the senior editor I was the assistant editor.
Her attitude completely changed. She stopped. She was still responsible for giving me the work. But there was no shouting, there was no screaming, everything went smoothly. And I did have to train the next, once they hired the next writer, just like the guy who'd trained me, I had to train that person and it was pretty bad.
It just sucked. Yeah. But having lost my job just around then, during that time, there were these relatives that Of my husband's who were coming over just then, and they'd made this plan to come and stay with us. South Asian women are supposed to take care of family members, that's an added pressure on them. Here, I had just been fired, and I had to go to work in these very small. Like cringe situations. I had to come back home and take care of these people that who were frankly speaking, just interested in being like in looking into our private lives. They were very gossipy in nature. And they were just like, why does, like, why does your husband do all the cooking?
He's a doctor. Because he knew during that time I was not functioning properly. Yeah. So he took over the cooking? Yeah. He took over the cooking and he was trying to, because I wasn't eating, I was in such a state of shock that he would order in food, so that I would see it hanging on the. apartment door before I entered it, from the hospital, he would order in Chinese or something. So here I am, I come back home and these, this family is trying to get into my clothes and wash my clothes and try to pretend that they're trying to be helpful, but they actually want to see what's in my closet.
And it was a very strange dynamic because I grew up in a very liberal family. And I, this was never expected from me or my mother because we'd always functioned as a nuclear family. And here there was this role of a very traditional housewife, which these people expected me to fulfill and. My husband did not know what they were really like.
These were people who had helped his mother when she had gone through a very difficult time with her husband. So he did not want to not have them. But this is something else, which became my prominent role once I lost my job and went to the spousal visa that if anyone from India came to work, came to, America, it was my job to take care of them.
So I could not even focus. On trying to figure out what I'm going to do.
Kristina: Yeah. That's a lot because you're in a state of high anxiety, which makes you shut down. And in that state of wanting to, and just. Literally trying to force yourself not to shut down. You've got to take, step up to the plate to take care of these people.
Yeah. So next, what happens is a very dark chapter of your life. And I just want to say, Varuni, you, I just want to commend you on how brave you are to be a hundred percent vulnerable about. What happened to you, like how deeply depressed you were and how you were drinking too much wine and how you were treating your husband, which wasn't very nice.
You guys were not getting along and you're really transparent about this whole chapter, but it was such a struggle because. You lost your identity. You didn't have a job. Like how you were trying to find another job. That was interesting too. How, you touched on it a little bit earlier, but in the book you describe it too. And it makes, it helps when I read it, I was like, Oh, I can see why she can't get a job. Yeah. So what essentially happened was I realized that if I have got on this visa, the spousal visa and the spousal visa still gives you this sort of like work authorization.
Varuni: Now what happens is that it's not forever. It's like for one year or two years or something like that. And I'm like, okay, so now I have to figure out how to get a job like this week. So in the beginning I was very optimistic that I'm going to start my day by fielding all these applications.
Kristina: I remember reading this part of the book and just being like I was just gob smacked.
Varuni: Yeah. It was like, get up in the morning, just start looking at all the all these websites that have jobs, which are advertised. That is how I landed my internships and my first job.
So I didn't think there was anything wrong in the strategy at the same time. So imagine I get up in the morning, I'm doing 20 applications or 50 applications. Then later on, I made an Excel sheet and I would follow up on the few people who would, if at all, they would, return, they would they would ask me to send something else, right?
I would also send emails just for networking, right? Going and meeting people in the city so that, They can, somehow tell me about any opportunities that they might have. So it was just like I treated finding a job as a job and I did it really seriously. But it was a time like this in America where all of a sudden, immigrants are seen in a certain way as people who are taking away American jobs.
And that was the climate back then, too. And I would get Ask more questions about my visa on the few that I would land. So the, it wasn't that people did not respond to me, people did, but then they would ask me very specific questions on, Oh, what visa is this? And many of them would get spooked out as soon as I said, it was the age for.
And I couldn't understand what was happening. There were also jobs that I got where people would say, do you want exposure or do you want money? And I was like, what does that even mean? And that means that I would write for them with my name going in the byline, some cases not and I would not get paid for it.
And so like that, or there would be situations where they would say, Hey, can you like send us the articles on these topics by end of day Friday? So like in three days, like a sample.
Kristina: And yes, I remember this part of your book. And again I just was like, wow, I've never. Heard of this, but it makes so much sense where a company would be like, Hey let's see a sample of your work.
We're going to send you a product. I want you to write about it and write a pitch about it. And then you would do it as a job interview. And then they would turn around and use your job interview pitch and not hire you. They're just like, Oh, we can just get this for free. Yes. And this is something which happens to Americans as well.
Varuni: That is why a lot of writers, musicians, and artists that's sadly the true of the industry. And that has nothing to do with my race. That has nothing to do with my immigrant. Yeah, I know. It's just a fascinating detail that I never thought about. And I didn't know and there was this I don't want to call out that company, but basically they took 40 articles from me on different topics.
And basically at that point I had already, like this had been more than two years of trying to, yeah, feel applications when I had agreed to work for this website and they wanted. Proper articles, like a thousand words, 800 words to a thousand words. And I did write, I wrote like movie reviews.
I wrote think pieces and things like that. And I was just happy that I had something to do and that my name was going next to these articles. So my name is in the byline. Just that to me was enough. But they had a system where they were like, if you are able to get so many views on your article, then after some time, we can start paying you.
After some time, they eventually changed their domain. So I couldn't trace them. I couldn't contact them. And then very recently I was able to trace just by the names of the articles that I had written, that those articles still exist, but they keep on changing their domain. Who would know?
I wanted to paint an accurate picture of what it was like for me. When I started out, when I started fielding these applications it starts with hope and it starts with a lot of grit and determination. It also starts with problem solving where I did go back to my school, to my professors in Newhouse.
I showed them my work and I asked them, could you tell me what I'm doing right or wrong? I wanted to solve this problem. And when you're starting out, like when you start out with a, with an exercise plan in the beginning, you will go to the gym every day. But if you don't see any results and if you still keep on accumulating weight, you would think, why am I even doing that?
It was like a groundhog day for me every day after one and a half to two years felt absolutely pointless. I was defeated. I was like, this is a joke, like trying to even convince myself that it's possible Me lying to myself. And so I completely just broke down. I think I told my husband that, in the beginning I couldn't say anything to him. I just I stopped being able to I, I wasn't a human being after that.
Kristina: I was you guys went through a period where you weren't communicating at all. I just thought during the lockdown, like when people were stuck in their homes, this was before the lockdown. This was before the lockdown, which we haven't even got to, that's a whole, that's a whole another fascinating chapter but you fell into a very deep depression.
Varuni: Yeah, because I would get up in the morning and I would be like, why do I need to take a bath? What am I taking a bath for?
I don't have anywhere to be. So my, my hair, like you can see is curly. It basically became like dreadlocks. It started falling off in bunches after some time. I, started losing weight. So I first started losing weight, which was like, just very strange that it had never happened to me before I wasn't eating.
I didn't realize that I wasn't eating at all the whole day. I would wait for my husband to leave for the hospital and I still, as the wife of a doctor, I knew that if I didn't give him food, he is so dedicated to his work and his patients that he can go hours without eating. And he'll come back and he'll still eat something small or, and be fine.
He never complains. But I still gave him something right. And then I would just, as soon as he was gone and I was sure that he was gone, I would just go to bed. That's amazing. Wow. Yeah. That's such a deep depression. Yeah. And then it got worse where, so it started off with not bathing, not brushing your teeth to not to like. He's always kept like really good wine at home or very good whiskeys at home. And I, it wasn't that yes, back in college, like I said, I had smoked, but it was just for a year, but here I was like, what's the point of even I was trying to numb the pain. So sleeping was one way of doing it, but then I couldn't even sleep.
So I was like, I'll just, maybe if I drink a little, I'll sleep better. So it started with that. And then I started drinking more before I knew it, I was finishing off more than a bottle a day and then As soon as he would go, I would start drinking. In the beginning, it was still like somewhere in the afternoon.
And he did try, like he did see that certain things were going wrong because I had started telling him that I'm seeing ghosts. Like I'm seeing things in our apartment in Bay Ridge. So he's I told him I want a dog. I want a dog. A dog can fix me. And so he's okay, fine we'll go, but we can't, because that apartment did not allow dogs.
So we went to these high rise apartments in right opposite Manhattan. This would be a place that people would love, would die to live in. You described how beautiful it was. Yeah. You step out and you can see the Chrysler building. There's you can see the East Rivers right in front of like from the balcony and like all around you have this gorgeous like view people would kill to be in that place.
And I felt that was my prison. Is it had all the amenities, it had everything. It had the gym. An office space. So you said in the book, you didn't even need to leave the building, but that was a bad thing. That was a bad thing. Yeah. Now I wasn't going anywhere at all. And I would just get up super early in the morning.
I remember because I didn't want my husband to go to work. I wanted to be with him as long as he was, like awake or I could still see him because as soon as he would go, I think I was never shared this in the book, but I think I was scared that I was going to jump off. That balcony. Wow. We're on the 10th floor.
I do remember that I felt like I'm completely. I'm an utter failure. And these are these big, tall glass buildings, which looks so fancy and beautiful, right? You have all the fancy amenities at home and all that. And I'm like, because this is a glass building, everybody can see through it and they can see what a fucking big failure I am and what a big disappointment I am.
And that's when my dad's words came back to me, that if you choose to get married, a married woman is all you'll ever be. And that you're a disappointment to me. His words kept ringing in my ears uh, and I never told my husband that I thought that I could, but…
Kristina: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could really feel your pain and I really want to talk about the isolation and the loneliness because you're talking about how this related to you being an immigrant, not being able to get a job, but it ties back to everybody in today's world in social media and how, here you can live in New York City.
And still be extremely isolated and then get really depressed and then go on this downward spiral that you were on. And I want to have you share about how you got out of it because some of the stories are just really magical. There's this story of, and I believe you were, was on a train and it was a gentleman who was homeless and he was shouting things out and, New Yorkers, they were just trying to tune him out.
But tell us what was really going on in his life. Yeah. And what he said.
Varuni: Yeah. I think, yeah I'll get to that point for sure. But before that, what happened was the The isolation compounded with this feeling of failure and then actually becoming this sort of like I actually believed I was this ugly, disgusting thing, like an albatross hanging on my husband's neck, and that it was He is so ashamed of me that I would also, the few opportunities that we had to even go out and meet friends, or I would not want to do that, and I became extremely judgmental of other people in my community, in the South Asian community and this is something which happens to immigrants, where when you come here, instead of being able to rely on your community because everyone's on a different visa and everyone's trying to make money and get ahead.
It just becomes a thing where everybody is very suspicious of each other or very competitive. Really? And I didn't know this happens. I just thought that maybe just Indians are like that. But there are very few who are able to form those steady communities. And that also happens over a long period of time.
But mostly it is this suspicion. And when some of my friends now who are Koreans, they've also shared that with me, or Japanese immigrants. So you have different groups of immigrants who are Like, especially first generation, you're trying to figure this out.
Salvaged the human part in me. And at that point I did start turning completely against my husband, anyone who's ever been through any kind of depression to such a degree that they start in, they go into a very dark place in their head.
What happens is you start enjoying the pain. of being there. You start enjoying the darkness. You start it's you, it's you get drunk, and then you want to get more drunk, and then you want to feel sorry about yourself, because being sorry allows us to feel self important, almost like tragic heroes, and then you go deeper.
The only person who was trying to get me out of that funk was my husband, because he still believed that he could help me. And I thought that he was trying to, he was trying to insult me. I was like, what do you really want from me? Do you want me to get up and apply to more jobs? Do you even know what it's like?
Do you know the questions that they ask? They don't ask anything about my writing. They ask about my visa. And guess why I'm on this visa? Because I'm fucking married to you. So I just completely would turn on him, like on him. Yes. And that's in the book. And I read that and I was just like, wow, conversation would end like that, where he was like, why don't you go to continuing education school?
Why don't you go to school of visual arts? And he said, I'll pay for it. He did. He would go and he would just buy courses for me. And he's just do it. Just do it. Try to, this is a problem that we can solve together. And I'd be like, Wow, you want me to go back to school again? Yeah let the child try and impress his dad again, because that's what I am.
So everything that he said, you would just flip it, basically.
Kristina: Wow.
Varuni: And so now this is a man who's working so hard and he comes back home and his wife is drunk and she is just waiting to attack him. And it reached a point where it started getting very difficult for him to even come back home and just rest and go back to work and his work is very important.
And at that point I hadn't even forgotten what it was like for him. I was just so drunk with my own pain. And this had been now more than three years that I was completely locked in. And you let lose every part of yourself. I. At that point, he, I was in the train, like you said, one day I was in the train on the subway and I had started, there was something that had started happening to me, which was very bizarre I would just go outside and walk around on the streets yeah, and then people would start, they would just start talking to me.
It was very bizarre. This was before I got my dog. It was almost like I'm just going somewhere and randomly there would be an old woman who would walk up to me and then she would just start saying something and that something could be as little as, Hey, what do you do?
And I'm like, nothing. I'm a writer. So she's isn't it amazing to know what to actually do with your time? And then she would start telling me her story. And so the, these were these bizarre, broken episodes that would start happening to me where I did not really start these conversations, but these people started talking to me.
And so I start, started spending more time outside. on the subway, on the streets of New York, because somehow these conversations were making sense to my brain, which was already in a state of funk. I didn't know what it meant back then. And so I was always, I would have my ears, Yeah, into all these whispers I thought from the streets and I would call it, I would come back home and I would call it strangers on the street and I would write down whatever they had said these were clues or messages from the universe.
That's how I thought it was. And I did not really share any of that, but I still, I was going for classes, but because my husband said, you need to, You need just to learn and so I had taken that bit of his advice, but I was also going to other meetups.
I didn't want to stay at home because I was actually scared. Now I know I was scared that if I stayed at home, one day I would get so drunk that I would jump. from the balcony, which is not there in my book because I don't think I had that much clarity.
Kristina: You did not put that in the book.
Varuni: No. Now that I've been through so many years of therapy, I understand that's why perhaps I was trying to stay outside on the streets. There was this one day where I'm on the subway. And there's all kinds of people who come on the subway. They'll dance for you. They'll shout and scream.
They'll do a rap song and they'll do all kinds of things just to get money. And so you know what that look is from everybody else on the subway. They're tired. They're jaded. They know what this is about and they don't want to like, if they even have a nickel, they will not give it because, you The New Yorkers and New Yorkers know exactly what this is.
It's a circus, right? And so there was this guy, he started shouting sermons. Like he was talking about like Jesus Christ and things like that. And it started off with that. And everyone's rolling their eyes. And I know that half the people are asleep and he's what? I'm here because I need to tell you about my life and I need to tell you that.
Stop feeling so sorry for yourself. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself. You don't know what you have right now. You don't know that the richest man on the earth or the CEO of a company could have cancer. And could die like next week. Be grateful for what you have right now.
And suddenly something about what he was saying, because he kept repeating certain phrases like you have no idea how bad life can really get. You think that, you can go and shit all over your husband or your wife because you think that they are doing something to you. Guess what? What if they die next week?
What if your best friend, is cheating on you, like things like that. And suddenly all of what he was saying started making sense to me. At first, I think I started tuning in because he was, it almost felt like he's speaking directly to me. He's and then he actually used these words where he was like, What are you so sad about, that you don't have a job?
Yeah, he literally said that. He said that, and he said that you don't have a job. At least you have somebody who cares for you. And do you care for that person? What if that person dies next week? And he's, I'm not going to take any money. And I think like people usually, like when someone's making so much noise, people try to give money or something, and he refused to take the money.
And he's, I'm not here because I need your money. I'm here because I'm going to die. And I have a disease and I'm going to die. And God came to me and God told me that I need to go out there. I need to go all around the city because in this city, you're like hamsters in a wheel working so hard, running and running until you'll be dead.
You need to hear this, somebody needs to hear this today. And just then it just clicked in my head and this went on for 40 minutes. I think I skipped my stop. And I kept thinking about what an ass I'm being to my husband, which I was.
I was being a complete ass to him. I blamed him for everything that had gone wrong in my life. When I was reading this part of the book, I was cringing because Rooney, I just was like, this isn't going to end well, and I saw I just because, we were underground. So I saw all these missed calls from my husband and there was this voicemail and he never leaves me a voicemail.
Unless it's really he's left me two or three voicemails till now. We've been married for 10 years and he, I was just like. What is it? And then it was a very deadpan voice in which he said that you don't need to call me back. You don't need to come home because frankly speaking, I don't know where the hell are you?
Because I would never tell him where I'm going. I would, hide things from him because I thought he was judging me. So even when I started doing these classes, I would not tell him that I'm doing it because he, I thought he would want me to show my grades and because I'd made him into a monster in my head when that wasn't the case.
And he said that I want you to come home because frankly speaking, this is over. I need to talk to you and it's done. And He's like literally like an appointment. I'll be home by this and this time I ran back home. It was, I think it was nine o'clock or something at night that he said he'll be there.
He wasn't there. He took his own sweet time to come home until then. I was just pacing the apartment like a mad woman. And when he came home, he told me that he's had enough and that he's going to leave me and he's going to go to Los Angeles and he had been talking about an opportunity Holy cross in Los Angeles.
And he was considering it and I would talk to him half heartedly. Because I didn't want him to take the opportunity because I was like, something's finally beginning to make sense for me.
Kristina: New York was starting to work for you. You would just go out in the streets. People were talking to you, the event in, on the, in the subway, like things were happening to you and you knew that was part of your healing journey.
Varuni: Yes, I didn't understand how to explain it to him in as many words, but what was happening was, I would sometimes take my camera and then go and when these random people would start talking to me on the streets, it wasn't like humans of New York. It wasn't that I went and asked them like for a photograph or recorded their story.
No, it was when these chance encounters would happen. Then I would record the story and then I would sometimes take permission, but most of the time I would just go out and just photograph the city and wait for these moments to happen where someone would come and talk to me. But how would I explain this to my husband? Because once I tried to tell him that, there was this person that I met who was talking like this and this, and then I said something else and he actually looked at me like he needs to give me medication because he was very concerned.
Kristina: Of course. Yeah. And I can see where he would be coming at it. He was coming at number one from a doctor's perspective. Number two, he's looking at you, like she's got severe depression issues. She's having severe mental health issues. So he's probably, he was literally probably questioning every behavior every sentence you said, it's, it would be normal in that under those circumstances.
Veruni: Yeah, was. And so I was, I had started hiding a lot of my life from him. And then on that night he told me that he's going to Los Angeles and he is already, he had taken a job, I remember that. He said, I already took the job. He already took the job that he's going. And I'm like, so what is this mean?
So what are you doing? Are you leaving me? He's yes, I am. I'm leaving you because I don't see any point of us being, I think he did use the words back then that there's no point of us being together. I can't live under the same roof with you. And I just I, it was like the guy on the subway had just said that, whatever he'd said had made me see for the first time in so many, I think more than a year.
What a demon I had become to my husband that I was like, he is justified, but I still like, what would I do without him? It just hit me so hard. I was like, so that means that this is it. This is the end of our story. Is this what it is? This is what we let this country do to us. And I started getting more angry at him.
And he was like, see, this is what happens when I'm trying to tell you something, you just start shouting and screaming. And he's yes, because We allowed this visa, and I'm also responsible for this, we allowed this visa to contaminate our relationship. I think we had something beautiful between us, but we let this, devolve into the madness that it is.
And at that point he said, I'm not saying that I'm leaving you. But maybe we need space. So yeah, in the book, the way I interpreted it was, I he basically said, you need to heal on your own. Like I have to physically be away from you. I need to be in LA. You need to be in New York. This is, we need to be apart.
This is not the end of our marriage though. And I just was like, I cannot believe how strong this man is. Yeah. Yeah. He said that those were the exact words that he used. He said, imagine that you have, that you already have a job, which takes care of this fancy apartment in Long Island city, right?
That's, it was a two bedroom on the 10th floor facing the river. It's really beautiful. He's I'm leaving you, but if you want to move, if you want to downgrade to a smaller place. By that he meant another fancy apartment in Williamsburg, which is Right. Which is what you did.Which is what I did.
Imagine like that. That's my perspective. Like of what? I had no idea of what I had. Yeah. Because I was I was so like in my tragedy, right? Yeah. And he basically said that if you wanna downgrade, that's fine. So think that you already have a job which takes care of the electricity, the gas, the rent.
Now you have all this time. What would you do with this time? Figure out what would you do? But he seemed to know also that New York was healing you because, it's basically in the book where he's you have to stay in New York and get better like that. That's basically, it wasn't those exact words, but he was like, I've got to go to LA.
I've got to take this job and you have to stay here and do your work, to heal. And he knew it. He knew that you needed to heal in New York. It was, the guy's just amazing. He's fricking amazing. Yeah. He knew that I was, so I thought he was ashamed of me or he thought that I was a lunatic, but actually he said that I know you write these interesting stories about your plants and counters in the street.
And I had created a page on my Facebook called Married in New York. To put a spin on my situation that look what I am, I'm married in New York and that's all that I am. And I would record these stories and these experiences on that page and that page had slowly and steadily started growing back then.
And there were people from all around, like from different parts of the world who would start listening to my stories. And if I did not put like a little story on one day, they would actually send me a message just to check on me. Whether I'm doing okay or not. Wow. Yeah. It start recording these stories.
And he told me that I know you're doing something pretty cool with you. He saw that you were starting to heal and you knew you need to get out of the way. Yeah. I'm like tearing up. Yeah. He was like, I, there's something interesting, amazing that you're doing with your camera on the streets. I don't know what it is.
Maybe you don't know what it is either, but you need to do this. You need to allow this to happen and you will figure this out. And imagine a world because he's I just can't even imagine. He said, imagine this world where people will not have jobs because the machines would have taken care of the jobs.
What would make life meaningful for them if, everything's taken care of? What would you do with your time, Veruni? What is it that you want to do? In that moment, now I remember this was the same question which my dad was asking me. He was like, everything's already taken care of and you're thinking about love.
And here, because I had still not answered that question back then when I was 21 or 22, right? The same question came back. And I think these moments exist in everyone's life. We cannot run away from these questions. It was a very deep question that I had run away from when I was 22 or 23, when I should have continued as a writer.
And I had escaped to academia. It was the same question, which was coming back to me in completely different circumstances in New York.
And my husband, wanted me to have a dog, like a therapy dog. So he. Yep. He. But that a golden retriever combined with a Labrador is the best therapy dog out there. And we drove down to Virginia. He got the dog home. We called him Mowgli. I know. I love the name Mowgli. It's so cute. Yeah. We called him Mowgli and he was like, okay, the dogs. And he also made sure that he taught the dog like properly.
Kristina: Yeah. He did. He helped. He, I just, He gave you the greatest act of love.
Veruni: He gave you the greatest gift, an act of love.
Kristina: Yeah. He let you go. He let you go. Yeah. And I'm, I'm sure he didn't know if he was going to get you back. He didn't know. He knew he had to do it.
Varuni: Yeah, he knew that he had to leave me in that situation, that even parents would find it very difficult.
They say that the most unconditional love is the love from a mother. Even a mother in this situation would find it so difficult to leave a child who is going through something like this. Because I think back then, I had become a child, and this is, again, something which happens to women in these circumstances.
And while I'm saying it's immigrant, it could also be other circumstances. Women lose themselves, sometimes in their marriages, sometimes in other situations and they find themselves completely broken. And yeah, he left me in the hope that there was seeds of some sort of healing that were beginning to germinate.
And he left me and he went away. And frankly speaking, for the first couple of weeks, I didn't know what am I supposed to do? Cause here's the dog, a very active dog who would wake me up. a puppy and he would just be on my head at five o'clock in the morning. You wrote about that. Then you'd be like I guess I better get up.
Yeah. I better take him for a three hour walk. Yeah. He would like, he would start like chewing all my like shoes and he ate through one of the, like this leather couch. So he started eating through that. And I was like, if I leave him. For 10, 15 minutes after he's up, this can do some serious damage.
So I need to get up. And so he became my alarm clock. And he forced me to be out in the streets of Brooklyn and New York for what started off with four hours and then it was oftentimes six hours and or the entire day. And this is when those encounters with the strangers on the streets became even more frequent.
I cannot explain this with as much conviction, because it happened for those two to three years, almost. It just happened almost every day. I felt like I was this sort of magnet that was attracting these intimate stories that people would share with me about what they were going through.
So I would be walking the streets and they would just Randomly there would be a guy who would walk up to me and it would start with maybe he wanted to pet my dog and then suddenly he's talking to me about his love life and there was this one other dude who told me about how he lost all his weight just by smelling his shit and his shit would smell so bad that he knew what he was putting inside his body was not good.
And so he started paying attention to the smell of his shit and lost all the weight and he looked spectacular. He was in great form. So it was a true story. Yeah. That was You know, there would be like, there was this other man who told me how he had this amazing relationship with his mother in law because she enjoyed making food for him, and now he had this sort of a surgery because of which they had to completely remove a certain part of his esophagus or something like that, and he had to take in food in a different way.
And so his entire, he was lamenting the loss of his relationship with his mother in law. Because now they didn't have any common grounds. So there were these bizarre stories that started coming to me. And as I started going back home and recording them, what I actually realized was that the universe is showing me a mirror.
It's a mirror of to show that on either side, we are all the same human beings, full of the same emotions. Whether it's greed, whether it's happiness, whether it's falling in love, we're all the same. At the same time in America, the politics of the time, like the politics today, was completely different.
Ripping people apart was making them feel suspicious. Somebody is a Democrat. Somebody is a Republican. Somebody is voting for someone. Somebody is not. But here on the streets where I'm listening to the common person, I just saw human beings. And what I realized was that we are being played not only in America, in every country of the world, human beings are being played and we are being trapped.
And being forced to look at the world in reality through the echo chambers created by these media houses or by these politicians who want us to see a certain part of the population as heroes and a certain as villains. At the end of the day, this is all just a way to keep the power in certain people's hands and for certain industries to gain money.
But on the streets, what I found was only love. Wow. Wow. That's what started slowly. So if you're feeling right now, cause we're coming up on another very divisive topic. Thank you. Very difficult election period, but this is such a beautiful story about connecting with people one on one.
And when you connect with people one on one, there's nothing but love. And I gotta tell you, I, after 9 11, I did struggle with, some of the Muslim countries, and I figured out that the only way I was going to Understand these people and learn to love them was to spend time with them.
So I ended up going to Morocco and Egypt and same thing, nothing but love was there. Because what happened was that when I was out on the streets. There was this incident that happened with me where I was out in the streets with my camera. I have a DS 160. It's a pretty big camera and it's good for street photography, but I would never like, for example, invade a person's space.
I would be at a distance taking their photographs. So you can imagine I'm at least a couple of feet or at least half a block away, but because I have good prime lenses, sometimes I can, and good zoom lenses, I can zoom in and get what I'm. Basically my subject and my intent was not to capture stories like the humans of New York, but I knew that what was happening to me is what he had experienced at a much different level.
And he'd made a, he'd made an entire platform out of it for me. It was just about healing. So what I did was that particular day I was with my camera and I'm taking a photograph of this man and he Somebody walked up to him and realized that I was taking his photograph and told him that hey, that girl is taking a photograph and he got really angry and he just turned around and he was sitting on a, he was sitting on this chair or a stool and I think he threw it and he walked angrily towards me and he was like, get out of my fucking country.
And I remember reading that. Get out of my fucking country and he was big and tall and it was scary because I knew he was going to come and hit me. And I just was in a state of shock then he was like, he actually called me by my nationality. So he was like, get out of my fucking country, you Indian girl.
And then I was just like, you have no right. So somehow something in me said that you have no right to call me that. And we were both people of color. And I, that's why I felt that I need to say this. And then I tried to say something else and I was like, I'm going to delete the photograph if you want me to do that but you have no right to say that.
In fact something's he just didn't do it, but I could see that his entire body language and his fist, the way he had his fist and his face was contorted in such a way that he could have hit me. It was just that I was, or he would have broken my camera, but for sure, after those 10 to 15 seconds, I did not have the strength to, be there and continue this experiment because as soon as I turned around, I saw there was a group of boys.
Who were laughing maniacally was what was going on. And I was like, what the hell? It's a joke for them. And I was just I was just like so scared. But in that moment, I also felt very humiliated and I sat down I just held my head, in my hands. And I was just like, this is what this country has come to, right?
This is what this country has come to. And I had a choice then. I could have, this was still very early on in my street photography journey in New York City. I could have gone back home and then just locked myself in the apartment the way I had done before and then just thought this entire experiment was stupid because it's not like I was making money out of it.
It was just allowing me to believe that this meant something, right? But something told me that if I went back and I succumbed to that fear, then I would be afraid again, the way I had been. And I would be imprisoned by my fear. I decided to just walk away and go to a different block and continue my photography.
But I still couldn't get myself to pick up the camera and shoot. I just couldn't pick up the camera. And that's when I met another man. Which is within 10 minutes I meet another man. And he starts sharing his story with me, and he tells me how he's been to India and how he's traveled to different parts of India.
And he's this really kind man with these beautiful, kind eyes. And then as he tells me his story I'm just thinking about one thing that I wish I could, I wish I could photograph him. I wish I could photograph him. And by the end of our conversation, he's can I just, Save one thing. He's like, why do you have this camera?
I'm like this is what I do. I go around photographing people. So he's so why the hell are you not taking my photograph? So I was just like, it was almost like he'd read my thoughts. And it's really bizarre that just this. Extreme moment of hate followed by this extreme moment of kindness and love showed to me that you will see both these sides in America.
Right now, this is what I want people to understand. You will see hatred because that hatred is being directed at you by people who have a certain agenda. And then as a human being, you have to understand, are you going to focus on the hate or are you going to focus on the love? And I made a conscious choice because this has happened to me multiple times.
Now I've lost count. It's happened to me even last week where I'm constantly shown two sides of the same coin. And I have to consciously focus on the positives on the love. I focused, I chose to focus on this gentleman who shared his story with me. Without me asking him any questions and I still remember the photograph that I took.
It's a very shaky photograph but it is a photograph which I'm very proud of and I still have it and he's holding his hands like in a namaste and he has the most beautiful smile, the most beautiful kind eyes and that was a huge turning point for me because from that day I decided I needed to do something more with what I'm, discovering on the streets.
The more I talk to people, I now started talking to homeless people, and I wanted to do something for homeless people in New York. So I looked up an institution called the Bowery Mission, and the Bowery Mission is one of the oldest institutions that takes care of the downtrodden in the city.
And I went to them. I was like, I really want to work for you and they had a place for the kids. They wanted teachers who would help with teaching like Bible stories. And I convinced them that, yeah, I could teach Bible stories, but I wasn't a Christian. So they were like, why don't you teach art and creative writing?
So I went to Montlon City Camp for close to about two or three years. I was with them teaching the kids from East Harlem, art and creative. They were so curious about you too. They were so cute. All the little questions they would ask you about India. Yes, they asked me all the questions, which as an adult, you would think you, I would have gotten like offended if someone was like, why do you speak like this?
What, where is India on the map? What is your mom doing right now? But why the hell are you here? Isn't your mom missing you? And it was yeah. It was very, yeah, just to be with those kids was amazing. And I honestly don't feel that I taught them as much as they taught me because so What these kids, how poor the communities were, what they were up against, and their families, their mothers, they did not have the money to send them to a great afterschool.
And this was the only way they can keep their kids off the streets. Otherwise they are vulnerable to drugs and other things. And they taught me how to get chopped cheese, which is something which you, you know, it which is like a Philly steak, but it's a New York version of a Philly steak.
And they taught me how to like, their body language and how they would just say hi and how like things like that, or even the way they spoke they helped me American English way better than having worked at a publishing house. Because I was playing with them, I was interacting with them, I was teaching them how to work with clay, or make a little painting.
And so I had to mirror their language. And as I was mirroring their language, I was automatically, learning in bits and pieces. And kids, they'll say things as they see it. And that also means that they're truly honest and they saw my soul and I saw theirs.
And so this is something else that when we are in that situation this is the face of religion that I want. America to see. This is, this was a missionary place, right? This is the face of religion and healing where they told me the director of the program told me, I, we don't want to convert you or anything.
We understand that you're not a Christian. We really value that somebody as intelligent as you is willing to put in so much time with kids in our community. That's exactly what she said. That's a beautiful face of true wisdom, which is present in every religion of the world. Which I experienced, which allowed me to heal.
Kristina: Yeah. So good. So good. So you guys were living apart and he was in LA, you were in New York. You started, like again, you just talked about this incredible volunteer thing, which I think, was a huge part of your healing as well, working with the school kids and everything and then eventually.
Your relationship healed and you guys he ended up moving back to New York. Your husband moves back to New York. Wasn't it the end of 2020? Am I correct on that?
Varuni: Yes. Yeah. We don't know what. Timing. Yes. We don't know what's going to hit us.
Kristina: No. Not at all. Yeah. I cannot even believe it. So there he is a stroke surgeon working in New York city and COVID hits. And tell us a little bit about that because I feel like we can never forget about people like your husband and what they went through and what you went through, what, the families and you also talk about in the book. The support workers you're talking, you talked about your husband was realizing that the essential workers, the grocery store people, the bus drivers, the subway people, they were getting sick and dying, and nobody was talking about it because they were black, ouch.
Veruni: Yeah the hospitals that my husband was working at are not these big, fancy hospitals in Manhattan. He was working in hospitals in Brooklyn and Queens. So the, what he was seeing on a daily basis, even before the newspapers spoke about it was a lot of young African American men who were dying in huge numbers.
And these were people who were in the essential services because they were working, like you said, they were bus drivers. They were people who were dropping off food at people's homes, including medications. And they were in grocery stores. And the thing is that what happened very early on is that a lot of people started getting strokes.
Because of COVID. And my husband has done a lot of work on it. But at that point, things were happening so fast that when the first few cases came knocking on the door, he did not even have adequate PPE. So he had no protection other than the scrubs and the general mask. You didn't mention this in the book, but did he get COVID?
I think he and I both got COVID, but we did not show, maybe he is asymptomatic. And maybe we both did not display those symptoms but we both for sure must have got it because now we downplayed as, a slight cold and things like that. And we both were, we were in Bed Stuy, which is where a lot of African Americans live.
We were in a one bedroom apartment. And so there wasn't even that much like he couldn't just be in a separate room because it was one big living room and one bedroom. We could just hear sirens nonstop. And he told me the first few cases that came in, everybody in his, in the practice that he was working at that time, they were too scared to go in because they had heard reports of some doctors who had died because of exposure. So at that point, I told him that I'm not letting you go. And at that point, he told me that if I act like that, he's going to leave me again, for sure. And I called up the rest of our family and I convinced them to talk to him and to not let him work.
And he just blocked all of them off. And he was What a hero. He's like, how can you expect me to do this? I'll tell you certain things like one of his nurses got, she went to the grocery store after I think 10 hours, very long periods of work.
She got, somebody saw a person in scrubs coming inside their store. That individual got scared. And their response was hit the nurse, the female nurse straight on her nose. So these are the kinds of things that we were hearing when he would go down. We were just on the first floor, suppose he used the elevator, which he stopped using because people would get scared in the elevator when they get scared.
Yeah. Yeah. And when people started actually clapping for doctors, my husband would never step out of the car because he would be like, this is bullshit. They're making us into heroes right now, and they don't care about us. So he would wait for the clapping to stop, and then he would go out.
Because he had seen the ugly side of fear, right? And he had seen his colleagues die. He had seen these African American men who were dying. And then basically, at that point, this was, I think this was four to five months. This was the peak of the pandemic. Maybe it was maybe three months or something like that.
He came back home to me. He said, I need you to write an article about what I'm seeing in the inner city hospitals. And he told me exactly the stories of some of these men. He wanted to pitch the story to one of the big newspapers here, which is mentioned in the book. And this is something which happens to a lot of immigrant doctors, which is a question they're often asked to like when someone interviews them or asks them what they do, they always start with, so doc which medical school did you go to?
And it's a question not to compliment them. It's a question to actually put them down because then they would often say that they went to a school in India and then they would try to justify that it's as good a school as a school in America. Yeah. So it's to make them feel put them in their place.
So this reporter from this big newspaper in the city she started the interview like that, but when she finally got to the heart of the story, then we shared what I had written with her and she did publish the story. But for whatever reason, she didn't include his name.
Kristina: I read that. I was like, what?
Varuni: Yeah, she didn't include his name for whatever reason. His photograph and name was about to go. And in the last minute, they, someone took an editorial call. I don't know.
OUTRO:
Hey, Brave Friends. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to listen to today's episode.
I love learning about what makes you brave. I'm here with you. I see you, I hear you, and I want to hear from you. I want to know how you are showing up as brave and resilient and authentic.
Connect with me on Instagram @ShesBravePodcast,
or check out my website at www.shesbravepodcast.com .
If you're interested in learning more about podcasting,
join my Facebook group, www.facebook.com/groups/podcastmasteryjourney.
I'm sending you guys so much love. Until next time, keep being brave.
