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The first time I met Gurdeep, it wasn’t some lightning-bolt moment.
No dramatic music, no butterflies, just an ordinary afternoon at our family’s Dosa Plaza in Ranchi. My younger brother Karanveer introduced us. She was pursuing her Master’s at XISS, Ranchi, in HR. Heard stories like 89th percentile in XAT and gold medalist in computer science, awarded by Nandan Nilekani himself.
As for me, I was a hotel management grad, fumbling for ground beneath my feet. I still wonder if gripping that glass of water tighter might’ve masked the awkwardness spilling out of me. My shyness kicked into high gear. A nervous energy buzzed under my skin, contrasting with her stillness. But what anchored me in that moment wasn’t her impressive resume; it was the quiet, unassuming presence she held. In a world where everyone, especially me, seemed to be performing, she just was.
That day, I froze, struck by the simplicity of someone meeting my eyes and smiling kindly. For the first time in years, my focus, which was tuned so destructively inward, now had a thrilling outward direction. It pointed toward her.
But I had a taste of love even before I met Gurdeep.
Frantic search for self-love
After my big heartbreak years back, I decided I needed to master the art of self-love. I treated it like a project with neat stages: inner discovery, self-awareness, acceptance, and self-love.
What I didn’t realize was that I was building a fortress around my heart.
I filled journals with affirmations I didn’t believe, sat through meditations where my mind screamed, and repeated mantras that echoed hollow in an empty room.
I was performing healing.
The more I focused on loving myself, the more it felt like a strange obsession taking hold. It wasn’t peace; it was a constant, anxious monitoring of my own internal state. My self-love had become a polished, high-stakes performance for an audience of one: my ego.
Awareness in bits and pieces
And one of the first places my ego started to falter was in Jaipur. I was studying hotel management at an Amity University campus. An intimate world of just 700 students on a sprawling, green campus. For the first time, I felt grounded. I wasn’t just the brat from Ranchi but the captain of the cricket team, the lead singer in the college band. A tanned, skinny sardar, with an average height of 169 cm, who was the class topper.
I was seen.
Then, six months in, the ground gave way.
After our first semester, all 700 of us were moved to the main Noida campus. We were thrown from our contained world into a chaotic, impersonal sea of 45,000 students. The person I had started to build in Jaipur vanished overnight. From feeling seen to becoming utterly invisible, the shock to my system was brutal.
This is where my so-called self-love project began to curdle. The depression that followed wasn’t a crash; it was a slow, creeping fog. I spent the next seven years adrift and turned to alcohol to numb the emptiness and loneliness. The affirmations and journaling felt like a strenuous job, more performative, more impostor.
I was polishing the cage of my ego, mistaking its reflection for ‘freedom’.
That was the man carrying a ghost who returned to Ranchi.
That was the man Gurdeep met.
When her presence felt like bliss
Our beginning was deliberately real. She listened, truly listened. She saw through the carefully constructed persona I presented and, without judgment, called me out on my nonsense. One day, she handed me a diary.
“Maybe you can put some of that noise in here,” she said.
Gurdeep introduced me to writing. She made space for my dreams while holding up a gentle mirror to my flaws. Somewhere in that shared, honest space, we built a life.
We married after knowing each other for just five months. We met almost every day–car drives, bike rides, open terrace cafés, clubs, and restaurants. Our courtship was magical, and when we married, it flowed just the same.
But magic, as it turns out, can fade in this utterly logical world.
Life, interrupted
A year into marriage, she began talking about starting a family. Gently, but firmly. She shared her struggle with PCOS and how difficult conception could be. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I assumed we’d figure it out in time. But she had already calculated the risks.
In 2016, we had our first daughter, Nirvana. Her name reflected what she brought into our lives–steady stillness, a stark clarity. I was content. For the first time, I felt what it means to truly show up toward your responsibilities. That my soul was healing from my self-generated suffering.
But as they say, healing isn’t a destination; it’s a practice of returning.
Years later, Covid’s second wave hit. We joked about “safe days,” until the test strip turned pink. Gurdeep was pregnant for the second time.
Her PCOS made this pregnancy a miracle. The lockdown made it a nightmare. Hospitals overflowed with bodies, our home with silent panic. We weren’t ready. Not emotionally. Not financially. Definitely not during a global pandemic. When I suggested abortion, her face collapsed inward, like a bridge giving way. An image I will never forget.
We went through with it.
We made the choice together. Quietly. Without telling anyone.
What followed wasn’t grief. It was annihilation. She was never the same after that. Even with Nirvana beside her, a part of her transformed into something fierce, grieving, and divine.
Breaking open
She packed school tiffins. Skillfully managed our ten-person joint family. Taught Nirvana. Made zucchini muffins and gluten-free wraps for my healthy cravings.
And me? I barely noticed her struggles and stopped tending to her inner conflicts. I was lost, too, in my own gloomy world.
I numbed the self-blame with alcohol. With distraction. I became a monster. The one who failed her again.
Maybe I was mourning too, for the father I hadn’t become yet, the partner I failed to be.
There were silent fights. Distance. Void so thick, it felt a strangulating choke.
She wasn’t just mourning the child we lost but was suffering the version of herself that never got to be fully seen, supported, held.
She never blamed me out loud; I felt it under her silence.
Until she couldn’t hide anymore. And I couldn’t hide from it either.
One day, I snapped about something trivial. And for the first time, she snapped back.
She yelled.
And it cut deeper than I expected. Not because her words hurt me, but because she had finally held up a mirror. Not in rage. But one held for me to be aware or beware.
That mirror reflected someone I didn’t want to be: a man who spoke of self-love but used it as a weapon to justify being emotionally unavailable. A man who called his burnout “boundaries” and his detachment “growth.” A man who had let her carry the heaviest burden alone while he performed his spiritual healing.
That night when she broke down, her voice wasn’t just expressing anger–it was honest. Raw. Human. And it shattered the illusion I had been clinging to.
That moment didn’t feel like healing. I was being ripped open.
But sometimes, that’s how healing transmutes.
How the healing started
Healing began in the confrontation of pain. In deep breaths taken after sleepless nights. In brisk walks where silence spoke many words. Somewhere in that quiet simmer, Gurdeep and I chose to begin again. We didn’t want to mend what was broken. We simply wanted to plant something entirely new.
We planned our second child with care and hope.
Neev, our second child, turned two last month. Her name means foundation and that’s exactly what she has become. A reminder that the most lasting things in life often grow from the quietest places.
She doesn’t know it yet, but her laughter rebuilt something in me that had long collapsed. Her tiny hands taught me how to hold without holding back.
What I return to over and over is that Neev stands on the shoulders of someone even stronger.
Gurdeep.
Coming home to her
To the woman who carried us through every storm without asking for applause. Who kept showing up–through painful hell, through silent healing, and all the messy middles. She rarely needs the world to notice her. And yet, she holds up our whole world.
She is the reason there’s anything worth returning to.
What stays with me is the diary she gave me.
Maybe love is when someone sees through all your noise and hands you back your own voice.
Just stillness arising out of her presence. Stillness that once unsettled me but now holds me. Stillness that races my spirit home.
