Clash Of Cultures

Prologue

The introvert in me was convinced that my existence was fairly insignificant. After all, I was a 23 year old woman from a highly patriarchal society in South Asia. People like me were not supposed to have dreams and high aspirations. We were supposed to exist in the background. And to be honest, I would have been completely fine with this role.

However, I also had this insatiable urge to do exactly what people thought I could not do. So when the aunt of a cousin who I had just met at a wedding, scoffed at the idea of me becoming a physician and not getting married straight out of high school, I knew exactly which career I was going to choose!

I was lucky that my parents had always been supportive of my career. I had no problems convincing them that being a physician was my destiny. Frankly, I think they readily agreed to it because this career choice was a lot more mainstream than being a nuclear physicist, which was what I had wanted to do at the time I met the aforementioned aunt.

I was a straight A student and easily made it in to country's top Medical College after high school. But once there I immediately realized that I was not going to be an honor student in every subject. Other than Pediatrics! I fell in love with my young patients on the very first day of the rotation. People would say it was my caring, motherly nature that attracted me to Pediatrics, I would say it was my aversion to adult drama.

When the time came for my post-graduate training and I somehow managed to get accepted in to a top-tier Pediatric residency program in the US, I had to swallow my introvertness (yes! I made that word up) and remind myself of the challenge posed to me by an aunt whose name I could not remember now. I was finally going to do what I had longed for over the past so many months.

My parents were not thrilled about me moving to a new country by myself. So many of their friends had 'lost' their kids to the western lifestyle when they had gone abroad for undergraduate studies, and never returned home. They were fairly liberal when it came to me pursuing my studies. But beyond that I was not allowed to go to mixed gender parties that were not family events, or have any romantic relationships. Not that I ever did anything to lose their confidence in me...my most rebellious moment was when I went to the movies with a group of my girl friends instead of attending a pathology lecture. They never even found out about that, and so when it came time to me moving to the US they reluctantly agreed.

As a young, unattached woman who was going to pursue her dream career, and that too at one of the finest training programs in the world, I was prepared to live my best life. Little did I know that my life would be turned completely upside down by a man who was worlds apart from me. Who didn't want anything to do with me, yet invaded every aspect of my life, making me doubt my own reality. Who didn't know what he wanted from me, yet took everything from me. Who used my caring nature and ignored my aversion to adult drama, fundamentally changing who I was as a woman.

Ours was not a love story where girl-meets-boy and they live happily ever after...

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Author's Note:

Thank you so much for reading this story! Do 'like' and comment as you follow the characters. I will say that when I was writing this, the characters developed a life of their own (which was a fascinating phenomenon for me as a first time fiction writer!). So I am very interested in how you see that character development as the reader.

Also be warned: while there are no R-rated scenes in this story or people dating etc., and I have tried to keep the characters as real as possible, there are adult themes, swear words and adult relationships that may not fall under the conventions of society and religion. But the story reflects the everyday life of people in the West who struggle with the conflict between the Eastern and Western values, and don't always make the right choices.

Lastly, I am making minor edits, now that I have some time to read over the chapters again. But mostly just fixing grammatical errors. So if you see chapters being updated, rest assured I am not changing any plot lines.

Again thank you for reading! Hope you enjoy it!

Please, please, please, vote and comment (or at least vote - it is literally a click!). I have written this book and the sequels on my phone, while on the commute back and forth from work. So if you are enjoying it, please show it some love!!

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