17. The Puzzle of Patience: How "Dear Zindagi" Validated My Perspective on Healing
A love letter from Qinza Malik Khan to "Dear Zindagi" (2016).
Dear Zindagi, mon amour,
In this fast-paced sea of content where everything is competing for my attention, you are one of those few films that slows everything down. You showed me what would happen if I made a conscious effort towards living my life, validating what my own life had been trying to show me for years; Life is too short to spend being angry at yourself. And that anger, along with destabilizing fears of abandonment does nothing good for anyone. Neither does pushing good people away. And when we are all alone our minds often punish us for not taking better care of ourselves.
After many years I can finally sleep at night and I breathe easier during the day. And I think the journey of self-love as you portrayed mirrors my own life. I still have much work to do, but this no longer frightens me. I think life is like a Rubik’s Cube. If you want to solve the whole thing, you cannot solve one side at a time. After you complete one side you solve the rest simultaneously. I think life is like that, you can’t solve just one part of your life separate from the rest. Life needs a holistic approach as the same mechanisms that destroy your relationships may also be sabotaging your career. At least that is what happened in my life.
Only after I started to slow down and approached life with balance and consistency rather than perfection, was I able to move forward. I spent many years in a limbo state where nothing really moved no matter how fast I was. And the best part was that it took less effort than I assumed it would. It was easier than I expected it to be. It became easy to let go once I experienced how good it felt to finally let go. But that took time. Lots of time and lots of patience.
That is my one gripe with you: the journey that I’ve been on has taken me years to see progress, yet you portrayed it as something that can be done in just a few therapy sessions. With an almost fairy tale happy ending…which I don’t really believe in as there is never really a finish line. Every run I go on I tell myself this. That tomorrow I’ll have to do it again. And that I think is life. That is my life and I love my life. And it didn’t have to take some dramatic changes to get me there. Small microscopic changes. Letting go of bad habits and unhealthy people that made me sick. Letting go of unfair expectations that were placed on me. Letting go of my need to control everything. And really just changing my inner monologue.
I think women of my heritage desperately need to learn some of these lessons as our culture and religions seem to be an incubator for depression. And that is why I think you, even with your flaws are an important film for me and for South Asian women in general who are taught that self-sacrifice is their purpose from birth otherwise we are bad women. Having the charming Shah Rukh Khan play an attuned therapist certainly doesn’t hurt either, a man I adore and whose journey I have been always inspired by.
Well, this is getting long and one of my new goals is to learn to be more concise. But I will write to you again. Someday.
Love,
Qinza
About Qinza
My name is Qinza and I am a filmmaker / photographer who enrolled at Binghamton University with the intention of constructing a research methodology for my creative work. My long-term goal is to make science documentaries through my own production company, Membrane Pictures, which I was inspired to start after completing the One Year Conservatory Filmmaking course at New York Film Academy. With this company I plan to combine my interest in the science with filmmaking.
