I have been here for 2 days now and not really seen much of this beautiful city. I had been told so much about how romantic this place was to be. And it really is. With a huge lake which I circled on a boat to watch the sunset, I couldn’t have imaged a more romantic moment. I shared such a trip with a fellow Brazilian girl, Anna, which was lovely as I don’t think it would have been quite the same to see alone.

There are a few things which I still need to see here like the huge palace, some temples, bazaars and havelis but I’m stealing this time to chill out for a bit too. Paying only 150 rupees a night, I feel this would be the cheapest place to do nothing for a while. Give myself some time to spend with myself, write about myself, realise about myself. And I really do feel like I know more about myself, again. It’s gotten me thinking about the guy I met in Jodhpur called Imran. He was the sweetest of guys and was only 17. One night we were speaking through the night when he informed me of his situation and plans for his future. He has had a girlfriend who was absolutely gorgeous (he showed me plenty of pictures) and he was completely infatuated by her. By how he spoke I could easily tell that he loved and cared for her more than anything. It was a beautiful thing to hear and witness. The dilemma was that his family was from a different cast to hers. Both families didn’t approve of their 4 year relationship from the beginning and so they have had to keep their love affair a secret since. Imran’s parents have got a wife planned for him to which he will have to marry if he doesn’t want to be excluded and rejected by his own family. I knew that this was the norm in India with their cultures, but it was still shocking to hear about a real life situation involving such a lovely guy.

He informed me of his plans to save up money and then run away with his Ani so that they could marry and spend the rest of their lives together. Given that he seemed so close with his family, this beautiful yet heart-breaking to hear. He told me that ‘If you truly love someone, nothing should get in your way. Nothing should stop you. You must fight until your love is proven. And the love is returned to you then you know it must be. If it is rejected then at least you know that you followed your heart and were true to yourself. You can never ask for more than that.’

And he was right. This 17 year old boy who didn’t have enough money to have an education and only learnt English from speaking to travellers was right. Which shows that knowledge isn’t just something you pay for. It’s something you experience. Something you feel.

So I plan to follow my heart. And in this heart following quest, I may end up breaking it and crushing it to pieces. But I believe that it’s a lot easier to fix a heart from scratch, starting from the very beginning building blocks than to try and polish the outside of it when you are still able to see the damages on the inside.

Everything is always alright in the end. If it is not alright, it is not yet the end.

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