Fifteen Years In - and Still Finding Our Way

Fifteen years.

When I look back, what I see first isn’t the milestones.

It’s the distance we crossed to get to each other.

We’ve come a long way from Skype calls –

from screens and time zones and waiting.

From that first meeting in Bangalore,

the Taj Hotel,

walking early in the morning through Lalbagh,

in the quiet of those hours before the city woke up, even before you really woke up,

breakfast at Koshy’s –

as if we were already practicing how to build a life in the in-between moments.

Neemrana still lives somewhere in me –

not as a place, but as a feeling.

The beginning of “us” when we didn’t yet know what shape that word would take.

Fifteen years later, I can see the shape of my life more clearly.

There are the big markers –

leaving India,

building a life in another country,

raising two boys into men,

illness, reinvention, endurance.

And then there are the smaller markers.

The ones only we would recognize.

The ones that never made it into photographs

but made it into memory.

The quiet victories.

The shared exhaustion.

The laughter that arrived unexpectedly.

The ordinary days where nothing dramatic happened,

except the choice to stay.

The first time you brought me to the U.S.,

I remember how unfamiliar everything felt,

how the world announced itself through small, ordinary details –

the aisles at Publix,

the abundance,

all that cheese,

For the first time, extended time with you,

A different life quietly saying, this is possible too.

Then came the work of loving across cities and borders.

Across systems and paperwork and waiting.

The documentation.

The responsibility you took on –

for me,

for the boys.

The steady, unglamorous labor of building something real –

the kind of work that doesn’t get celebrated,

but holds everything else up.

We didn’t always do it gracefully.

We didn’t always get it right.

But we kept going.

We’ve had more than enough opportunities to go our own ways.

We could have taken them.

Instead – through the good and the bad,

the happy moments and the flawed ones,

through our strengths and our weaknesses –

we chose each other.

As we stand at this 15-year milestone,

I am deeply grateful for that.

I’ve always called you my anchor.

And you are.

You hold me steady.

You’re the one I bounce things off when I’m upset.

You calm me down.

You offer perspective –

not always the one I want to see,

but always the one that matters.

Over the years, we’ve learned how to be better with each other’s faults.

How to accept one another through change.

How to grow without demanding perfection.

Thank you for accepting all my quirks –

my chaotic self,

my never-ending dreams,

the ideas that spill out faster than they can be contained.

Thank you for accommodating all of it.

For making space for the way I move through the world.

And thank you for accepting my Indian ways –

the rhythms, the habits, the instincts that must once have felt strange,

and that now feel more familiar,

perhaps even comfortable.

The list of thank-you’s is long.

Longer than this page could ever hold.

But if I had to name the one that matters most –

thank you for finding me in this lifetime.

When I look at you now,

I don’t just see the person I married.

I see the man who shared the weight of building a life.

The man who became home long before we shared one.

Thank you for loving me through every version of myself

these years have asked me to be.

You once promised me you would find me in every lifetime.

And you did in this one.

It happened later in our lives.

It came with history, responsibility, and depth.

But it came with choice.

And it came with growth.

It has been a journey.

And I know the next many years will be one too.

But we have both grown through this –

together.

I trust that you will find me again,

in every lifetime that waits for us.

However many there are.

However they arrive.

So here we are.

Fifteen years in.

Still walking.

Still choosing.

Still grateful that this long, unlikely, beautiful journey

was with you.

Happy anniversary, Sweetie.

Eternally grateful for being together.