Over the past few months my family has been on the craziest, scariest and seemingly never ending roller coaster. My dad's been taking multiple business trips to find a property to invest in and in May, he moved to Kentucky when he found one he was interested in and with the help of some local Punjabi business owners, he found THE business for him. My family practically fell apart, which is what a select few people who are "close" to us secretly wanted all along. But what they don't know is that as much as the three of us may not get along, we're going to come back stronger.
For almost 2 months I've been the "man of the house", taking care of bills, the house, cars and anything else that my dad would do while he was still at home. I realized how time consuming it is to take care of daily household tasks. From sending my dad his mail, to doing a lot of his online and paperwork from home I was practically running half of the business from the comfort of my bedroom. It all seemed so easy.
A week ago my mom announced that she took a week and a half off from work and wanted to visit my dad. Shaking my head, I thought this would NOT be a good idea, at all. My mom (like most moms) tends to interfere in everything and stress us out 20x more than we already are so I had a feeling this trip would be a nightmare. Plus, I get anxiety if there's no Desi's around so leaving New Jersey for a week and a half definitely wasn't my idea of fun. We left home at 5am on Monday.11 long hours, 3 stops for gas and an embarrassing Subway trip later, we got to the business, 1 hour earlier than planned.
As soon as I walked in I gave my dad the biggest hug ever, bigger than the hug I gave him right before he left home. Let's just say I'm surprised I didn't TOTALLY suffocate him. I finally see that running your own business, specially for the first time is not easy by any means, but I also see that my dad has put his heart and soul into what he's doing. He treats his employees ( even the shady ones) more like family than employees and the people who see him regularly truly do respect and appreciate his efforts. Everyone's constantly telling me how hardworking and sincere he is and how he's improved things at the business so much since he took over. Although he's works 16 hours 7 days a week and stays constantly stressed out, I can see that he's truly happy with what he's doing.
One of our employees is probably the sweetest person I've met here. She's told me about the best places to eat and I have to say she's the most honest person working with my dad. I'm truly happy that someone's keeping an eye out for him when we're far away. I wish I could remember all of the details that I wanted to mention but 1. I think this post is long enough and 2. I've been so busy that I've forgotten half of what I had in mind.
By the way if you're ever in Kentucky, try this soda called Ale8. It's so bomb and it's a locally manufactured soda that's only available in this state.
Oh and I did meet one Punjabi customer who I gave a free soda to because I was just that grateful to see another Punjabi around here.
I've also developed a slight Southern Accent over the past few days AND I've gotten some people here addicted to Punjabi music. This trip has been an amazing break from my everyday routine and it's definitely helped me think about what's more important in life.
Lesson 1: Family is everything. Even a small suffocating 1 bedroom apartment can feel like home if you're with your loved ones. Sounds corny AF but it's so true and I realized that this week.
Lesson 2: If you do what you love, you can overcome anything no matter how difficult
Lesson 3: People in the South are some of the nicest people you'll ever come across
Lesson 4: Do NOT push the red button behind the counter because the cops will rush over.
Lately I've also been dealing with some personal issues. I've realized that 99% of the people I come across can not be trusted and are only befriending me for their personal benefit which I'm just not cool with, so I've been slowly filtering un-needed and toxic people out of my life. Sometimes you need to stop thinking about how much others need you and focus on yourself because in the end of the day most friends, or family even will forget what you've done for them in the past and chances are that the majority of them won't be there when you fall (speaking from experience). Is my circle of friends much smaller? Yes. Do I get bored a lot? Yes. Is it easy accepting that some people just don't truly care? No. But am I a much happier person overall? Yes.
If anything semi interesting happens in my life I'll be back then, but until then be happy and do Bhangra! In the mean time check out some recent pieces I wrote for Brown Girl Magazine!
"Leh!" By Superwoman and Humble the Poet
Interview with Mickey Singh
