‘You choose your friends, but you don’t get to choose your family’.

I am so glad that I managed to be a part of the same one as you, Guddu. Even though I have lost count of the number of times we have cracked the joke that if/when all of us are married, our spouses will feel that they are meeting people from a different planet when they meet our family. 😀

You have taught me how to be practical about everything. You have taught me how to carry on with life smoothly. You have taught me how to deal with situations smoothly. You have encouraged me to not take bullshit from anyone. You have taught me how to build long and lasting relationships. You have encouraged and guided me about how to be adaptive to situations and not be rigid about anything. You are so good at it! Although it is also because of the fact that you are casual about most petty things in life. 😀 It is funny how every elder person of our family keeps asking us to learn something from you because let’s face it, in the Indian patriarchal system, it does help a girl to be adaptive to situations. You have also helped me in learning things other than those intended. For example, I have learned that since I probably cannot be as casual about petty things, I might as well direct myself towards achieving things that actually matter, instead of stating and justifying my opinion and life in general to everyone. As for you, you care about everyone, but you can live without anyone of these. You have taught me how to be strong, how to be adjusting and how to simply keep going. I have never seen you come to us crying about your life and I know it for a fact that you have faced bigger challenges, maybe you do discuss things with Anku because you have lived together.

We have never lived together in our entire lives (so far) but the (almost) perfect sister that you are, I and Anku can discuss anything under the sun with you. I remember the time after my first year in college when I was really depressed about my life due to some petty reasons. We were just having a casual conversation when you explained to me how I was not standing up for myself in that particular situation. You probably do not even remember this conversation because it was too casual, but since then, there hasn’t been any looking back in this department. 😉

Guddu, you have encouraged me to come out of tough situations by simple, casual talks of yours. You have helped and guided me to be a stronger, self-reliant person. You have taught me how to be easy-going, how to worry less and do more. You have also taught me how to bring people together. Basically, you have helped me to grow. You continue to help me in growing as a person.

As clichéd as it may sound, I am lucky to have you in my life.

This post has been written as part of IndiBlogger’s happy hours campaign with HDFC – ‘Apno Ko Apne Dum Pe Jeena Sikhao’. Wow, I just realized how perfectly the tagline fits to my post! For more details about the HDFC campaign, you can check out http://www.hdfclife.com/ and there’s a video for this as well, I am attaching it below and in all honesty, it is quite touching. 🙂