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Nimish grew up in a three-room apartment shared by nine people.
In one room were his dad's three younger brothers, Nimish's uncles.
In another, his three aunts.
And end of the day.
We would like sort of pack up the living room and turn it into a bedroom for my dad, mom and me, which was good because I had access to the TV at late at night and just sneak out and watch Dragon Ball Z.
The family lived in the heart of Kathmandu Nepal, which sits in the foothills of the Himalayas.
It's one of the oldest cities in the world.
So like temples everywhere and roads behind houses that are like just barely like a kid can like squeeze through them.
Nimish spent much of his childhood running through these streets, passing his days with friends as they explored home.
It was the time of his life.
We'd go out and just hang out on the stoops of these like really ancient temples and just like ride our bikes around.
No straight road in sight.
Everywhere was just curves.
It would feel like you'd gone pretty far, but turns out you just went in like a real windy path and you're very close to where you started.
In 2016, Nimish made a decision that took him farther from home than he'd ever imagined.
He moved to the United States for college.
That decision changed his life, his career, the way he saw the world.
But after leaving Nepal...
Namish found himself in a cycle that felt a little like those streets back in Kathmandu.
For a long time.
No matter how open he tried to be or how hard he worked to grow, he always ended up feeling stuck, like he was right back where he started.
His way out of that loop?
It came from a place he never expected.
From the Boston Globe and PRX, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
One of the things I've learned in all my years doing this is that outside help can make our romantic lives stronger and healthier.
There's this temptation to go it alone, to think that it's your job, and your job only to make a relationship work or untangle your love life.
But our communities, our friends, our families, not to mention the mental health professionals, have lots of experience with this stuff.
It only makes sense to crowdsource.
I do it all the time.
Another thing I've learned is that help, can come in many different forms.
Sometimes it's pretty straightforward, like you're wondering whether to go on that second date and your friends give you their take.
Other times, help can be more subtle, more surprising, more personal, and meaningful.
Today's story, Namisha's story, is all about that.
Namesh is 19 years old when he and his dad step off the plane in Boston in the summer of 2016.
It's Namesh's first time outside his home country.
They're heading to Medford Massachusetts, a small city north of Boston that's home to Tufts University, where Namesh is starting his first semester.
I did not want to leave Nepal initially, but I wanted to study math.
And those two ideas were sort of opposed to each other, because there wasn't really a place where you can just didn't study math in the vault.
And you went to Medford.
Yeah, beautiful Medford.
So what were your first impressions getting to campus?
So it was funny because I knew someone here and they drove me, for I had a pre-orientation thing and they were like going past all these like Boston landmarks.
It was like, oh, look at that.
That's like MIT, that's Harvard, and I guess you're just beyond that.
But when I came to Medford, I was like, all right, this is reasonable.
This is not too massive.
And I was a little intimidated because first I had to speak in English with everyone.
And that's a little bit of an adjustment.
Fortunately for Namesh, the first semester of college is an adjustment period for everyone.
No social groups have been formed yet.
People are going to as many events as they can, being their friendliest selves, just hoping to make a good first impression.
It's at one of these events that Nimish bumps into a girl.
And she was a person that I'd talked to a couple of times before.
And in hindsight, I think we'd hit it off.
And then I think she was a little confused as to why I wasn't making a move.
Because some of my friends, they were like, you should have asked her out.
But I think she got tired and she basically was like, hey, I think you're cute.
We should go out.
And I was very shocked by just the directness of it.
And I think I said yes and sort of like shuffled away.
It was not cool.
And it haunts me to this day.
Namisha and the girl do go out for coffee, but the vibes end up being just friends.
What was it like to be around people who probably had very different aspirations and assumptions about their romantic lives?
Like, what was that like for you based on your own background?
I think it sort of melted in with like all the other shocks that I was feeling.
Because it's not just with like dating that people would be so open about.
It would be with like everything.
I wasn't used to just people being so open about how they how they felt about stuff.
And I came in during like when Trump was elected president and people were like very politically active and they were sort of had like very strong opinions.
And I was surprised by that, because usually that sort of talk is reserved for like a more closed audience back home.
And in regards to like dating and everything, I did not know that quote-unquote stages of dating someone.
Namisha's romantic reference points are pretty different from many of his American classmates.
On one end of his spectrum are the exaggerated Bollywood films he's grown up watching.
There's a mixture of, like, yearning and machismo, like, big romantic gestures.
But also, like, very, like, macho, like, you know, there'd be a fight scene.
And then it'd be like, well, despite being such a badass, tough guy, I also am capable of love.
I knew it was not realistic, but I thought it was like oh, you like yearn for someone and then you go ask their parents for permission.
On the opposite end of that romantic spectrum are his teenage dalliances.
Those were much more clandestine than the American teen rituals he knew of.
He didn't have anything like promposals or relationship status updates on social media.
In fact, the goal was to keep your love life invisible.
It was very coy, hush-hush.
You didn't tell anyone.
You talked to them at the corner of the playground but everyone started like peeking out from like a tree, just like looking at, like oh, they're meeting they're.
Once I got slightly older, like in high school, people would do the stereotypical things you do.
You go out on dates, you hang out with the person.
Let's go to a cafe, let's go to a show.
But also let's not go anywhere where we can see any of my relatives, because it would be hard to explain.
If one of your relatives caught you, everyone would gossip and it would reflect badly on your parents' parenting.
You know he or she is hanging out with boys or girls and you know not being studious, which is what kids are supposed to do.
Nimish had always been one of those kids who fulfilled his family's expectations.
He figured his romantic life would conform, too.
All the examples I'd see were everyone getting, like, an arranged marriage.
Well, all my uncles got arranged marriage.
I was at most of their weddings.
As the family patriarch, it was Nimish's dad who helped facilitate these weddings.
Nimish was young at the time, so he wasn't privy to all the inner workings of the arrangements.
But the formality of the process, it stuck with him.
They just, like, met the families and got married off.
I thought that was what was in my cards.
And my dad and my mom, they weren't openly affectionate.
Occasionally, I would, like, catch them at a moment, but usually it was very fleeting.
I think even they sort of felt like a responsibility to not put it out in the open.
It's that much more interesting to me that there were so many things not spoken about when you were kind of in the same room a lot of the time.
And were there questions you wanted to ask, but you felt like it was none of your business or you just don't do that.
I had questions, but I would not ask them because they were not the people to ask.
That was like sort of impressed upon me, where it was like your parents have their roles and you have your role and stuff like this you do not bring up with parents.
With all of these things swirling around Namesh's head, his first semester in America, love and dating are the last thing on his mind.
He's already adapting to a new language, a new education system, and a new culture.
He just wants friends.
But even that is proving difficult.
Because at a school like Tufts, an elite private university, the biggest culture shock Nimish is facing comes from his classmates' staggering wealth.
They would talk about things that seemed like unfathomable to me.
And that would be so normal to them.
And that made me feel sort of separate.
Like what?
Like give me an unfathomable example.
Like just going to vacation into the countryside.
Caribbean like every summer.
Owning like multiple properties.
I don't know, being family friends with like that.
Actually, can you not say that?
That is very specific to one person.
It's a lot for a first year college student to navigate alone.
But Nimish soon finds a confidant, a girl who lives in his dorm.
As it turns out, she's also wrestling with a level of privilege on campus, also feeling a bit isolated.
She seems to enjoy spending long hours in the dorm common room, processing her new life with Nimish.
I guess like the big disconnect was not that everyone was so financially different.
It was that they didn't sort of respect my upbringing.
Like I tell that story of being in like three rooms, three uncles, three aunts, my dad, me and my mom.
And I'm not scratching for pity.
I'm not trying to make anyone feel like, oh, like I had a blast.
It was maybe like a highlight of my life.
But the reactions I would get would be like not understanding that I was, I don't know, happy with my station in life.
And we would talk about these things, the disconnect we felt.
Nimish and this girl bond.
They spend Thanksgiving together.
They visit New York together.
They talk constantly.
For all intents and purposes, they start a relationship, except they never actually call it that.
Everyone would always ask me, oh, is she your girlfriend?
I was like, I don't know.
I don't know.
At the end of the school year, when Nimish returns to Nepal for the summer, the pair have a conversation and reevaluate the state of things.
What are they exactly?
Because for whatever reason, their relationship has stalled.
They agree to just be friends.
I sort of chalked it up to just being new to America, because I was still trying to find my footing.
And that was definitely a factor.
But one of the big reasons I think I didn't move forward with it was I was like how do I say this to my parents?
Knowing he was expected to have an arranged marriage back home, knowing that any relationship he starts organically in America is probably going to go nowhere.
Nimish is kind of frozen.
He doesn't know what kind of love life he's allowed to have.
So what's he supposed to do?
His story continues.
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We're all out of the ordinary.
There's a battle playing out right now over who should control American universities.
We're going to bankrupt these universities.
In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
Now, we know.
We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard.
From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of The Harvard Plan.
This time, it really is personal.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, we're back.
So Namesh is not the first guest on this podcast to say that movies he watched as a kid directly influenced the way he imagined his romantic life.
In fact, that's something we hear quite a bit on Love Letters.
Just last season, there was Erica, the screenwriter in L.A.
I thought I was going to be Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy when I was older, because I love, like the witty banter and the you know will-they-won't-they of that.
And Jackie from Chicago.
If it's going to be like hardcore teen, like romance, it would definitely be like High School Musical or like Twilight.
It turns out High School Musical also had quite the influence on one of our producers, Jesse.
Junior year of high school, I'm on the varsity basketball team.
And basically, I quit the basketball team and was like, I'm going to be a theater kid.
Just left it, left it all behind.
Are you Zac Efron?
That was in my head.
I mean, part of it was like I was like all right, if he's brave enough to do it, then I could do it.
Because I was watching it, so I was like eight years old.
This example because it shows that movies don't just impact the way we think about what a spark looks like or how we think a romantic relationship should play out.
Movies and TV also shape our perspectives on so many things surrounding love, like qualities that are attractive, places that are romantic, or even the roles that friends, siblings and parents can play in our search for love.
Which brings us back to Nimish.
You mentioned Bollywood in the specific movies that you remember growing up watching?
Yeah, I mean, for people my age, it would be Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gaam.
That was a big one.
Big might be an understatement.
After its release in 2001, Kabhi Khushi, Kabhi Gaam became the highest grossing Indian film ever outside of India.
In classic Bollywood fashion, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gaam is epic.
The plot spans multiple continents.
There are extravagant set pieces, and of course, elaborate dance sequences.
It's three and a half hours long.
But for all of its grandiosity, the movie centers around a very intimate conflict.
The main character doesn't want the arranged marriage his father has set up for him.
When he tells his father this that he'd prefer to marry someone his father disapproves of it, tears the family apart.
In the fall of 2017, Nimish returns to Tufts for his sophomore year.
Over the next three years.
He goes on dates and has a few more casual relationships, but nothing lasts.
He calls home often, usually just to tell his mom about school.
And my dad would just be in the background, And then my mom would be like, oh, dad says hi.
And then I would be like, oh, I say hi back.
But he never mentions anything about dating to his parents.
Was it your expectation and their expectation that you were going to return home after school and take a more traditional route?
With regards to marriage, I think so, yes.
I think they expected me to go back and like marry someone that they've like sort of picked out.
And I... didn't feel like that.
And I think that the seeds were already there, I think previous to me coming here, where I didn't feel like I had that traditional route was for me, but I sort of like affirmed myself on that.
So there was always this like inevitable confrontation that was going to happen in my head.
And I think I didn't move forward with a lot of relationships because I was just pushing back that confrontation.
Nimish's freshman year relationship had been just the first in a years-long cycle that he describes like this
It's sort of a snake eating its own tail.
Step one, Nimish meets a girl he likes.
They start hanging out.
Step two, Nimish starts to feel some anxiety.
I would have a hard time figuring out what's next.
Like, is there some way I should be acting?
Step three, Nimish feels anxiety about his anxiety.
I would get anxious about progressing this relationship and then that would sort of derail any progress that I could make with this relationship.
Step four, Nimish overcomes his initial anxiety and becomes more comfortable with the young woman.
But now he's even more anxious, because he's wondering what might really come next, if this relationship progresses into something serious.
You could take all these like dates that you could probably do like an experiment where you could find out the exact date where like, the anxiety would move on from being anxiety about just being in a date to anxiety about having to explain this to my parents.
Like the stakes all of a sudden got too high.
Like I don't.
I don't know if this will all turn out to be worth it.
I don't want to draw the ire of my family over something that just probably won't work out.
And we're back to step one.
It's the thing where I think When you're I don't know freshly in love and you sort of want to like imagine, like a future with them.
It doesn't matter if it pans out or not, but you just want to let your mind run a little bit.
To me, like that never happened.
For more than six years.
Namesh lives through this cycle pretty much every time he meets a woman he likes.
It was getting to a weird point where I wanted to be in a serious relationship just to bring that like confrontation forward.
So I was like very...
Desperate when you imagined telling them.
Oh, I'm seeing somebody What did you fear or think they might say?
I didn't know what actually concrete action they would take, but I just knew that it wouldn't be Good for me to do that, Or like it wouldn't be good for them to hear that, because I would worry about everyone of gossiping, like making me out as like a problem child who is sort of you know out in the usa, just forgetting where he came from.
In the summer of 2023, nimish visits nepal for a month.
It's only a second time back home since 2019 because of how difficult travel had become with the pandemic.
At this point he's 27, fully an adult.
He has a math degree from Tufts and is now working on his PhD in biostatistics at Boston University.
He's taught himself to play the bass and the drums.
He's picked up skateboarding.
And his beard grows a little fuller than when his family saw him last.
But he's still single, which he's reminded of constantly.
27 is marrying age.
My grandma, she's like, I'm going to die if you don't get married soon.
And I'm like, okay.
Sorry.
I apologize.
Nimish feels conflicted.
Even though he's single, part of him just wants to force the confrontation when he's home.
Just get it over with.
Maybe it would be better for everyone in the long run.
But another part of him is still terrified about what the conversation might entail and the consequences it might trigger.
At the very least, he doesn't want to ruin his family's happy reunion.
One day...
Namesh sits down in the living room with his parents.
I was on the couch.
My dad was in a chair and we're just talking about like, what was going on with me like career academics and whatever.
And he's just suddenly out of nowhere, just says, which translates to, I don't know you well, right?
And I went, yeah.
And the implication, I would imagine, is that he'd like to.
Yeah.
I think he wanted to, and I think he used that as like an in to start this conversation.
Namesh's first reaction is shock.
He realizes he's seeing a side of his dad he hadn't even known existed.
That little bit brought him down to earth for me, where I wasn't like oh, my parents are on a pedestal.
But I always thought they were like people, very like separate, very different from me.
And in him asking that question, I sort of saw my own sort of mannerisms.
And then we had a conversation about why he thinks the way he does and why I think the way I do.
Their conversation lasts for hours.
It feels like they're taking turns, interviewing each other in 30-minute intervals, asking difficult questions and saying things.
Namesh has always felt like he couldn't or wasn't allowed to.
At one point, the conversation turns to marriage.
Namesh's father tells him point blank I would like it if you followed tradition and accepted an arranged marriage.
He literally just did say him and my mom loved each other, which was another, like, big thing.
It was never said in my house before, but he was like, it worked great for me.
And I think we can also make it work for you.
Like, we're not going to force you into anything, but we understand what kind of person you need and we can facilitate that for you.
What did you say?
I basically was like, well, you don't know me because...
The part of me that I show is what I've been sort of conditioned to be open with.
There's parts of me that I never discuss with you.
And I don't think you could have a full picture of a kind of person that I would want with just this idealized portrait.
There's things that I've kept hidden, things that I've done that may not be what they expected of me, but is pretty important in my life's trajectory.
Like what kind of things?
Like the fact that I went to a therapist.
That's kind of taboo, you know?
I got anxious a lot, so I went and got treatment for it.
And I remember trying to broach that conversation once.
My dad was like, oh, you don't need to go to a doctor.
All they do is lie.
So there's like these parts of me that like they hadn't seen.
As they keep talking, Nimish senses that his parents are in a place where they truly want to understand him.
So he decides to hold nothing back.
He even brings up an especially sensitive issue.
The role caste can play in arranged marriages.
The people that your parents will find you will fall under the same caste, same class category.
And I said that to my dad.
Like you and I and like everyone in this house like knows that that's wrong.
And his answer to that was basically, well, it'll be tough to break from that.
And I just don't want you to have a tough time.
Revealing the side of himself is a mixture of catharsis and fear for Namesh.
He's pretty sure his mom understands what he's saying.
In the past she had shared with him stories of her own small breaks with the culture, like how, as a girl, she used to tell people she was studying the more acceptable home economics, when in reality she was an economics student.
And she's talked a lot about how there's like parts of the culture that she appreciates and parts of the culture that has sort of hindered her in a way.
His dad, who had worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 30 years, cuts a more traditional figure.
Namesh is less sure how he's going to respond.
His dad finally asks him, are you dating anyone?
And I was like, no.
Then his dad says, do you see yourself getting married anytime soon?
And I said, I don't see myself getting married anytime soon.
Do you see yourself getting married ever?
Yes, at some point.
Do you see yourself getting married to a Nepali person?
And I was like, I don't know.
After that he basically thought for a little bit and then he was like I think at the end of the day, I would have liked for you to marry a Nepali person, but it's fine.
It's fine for my dad is basically, I'll be happy for you no matter what you do.
And that was like a big relief to me.
I asked Namesh whether the difficulty in traveling back home because of COVID might have caused this conversation to finally happen.
Maybe made it seem more urgent because he had grown up a lot in his time away.
I think initially it surprised me seeing them after so long because it felt like they like visibly aged.
And that was a very shocking thing for me.
And that sort of made me want to reach out to them more and talk to them more and try to get to understand them more.
And I'm sure the same thing happened to them with me as well.
Nimish also gives credit to his little brother, who was 11 years younger and grew up without his extended family in the house.
In that different dynamic and with a decade of more experience being a father, Namesh's dad learned to take a more relaxed approach to parenting.
That sort of made him realize that he didn't need to be this big figurehead controlling everything.
He could just be a dad that's just cool with his son.
I always thought that I was the one playing this role.
And when I was talking to my dad, I was like, wait, no, he is playing a role.
He's playing a role of like a stern father.
It's not inherently who he is.
He's like a, I don't know, like a soft, sensitive man.
Before this conversation, everything in Namesh's love life had felt impossible.
He was always anticipating the end of a relationship, that point where he'd have to tell his parents what he wanted and everything would implode.
So he never got past the beginning with anyone.
But his dad, with the gift of a few direct words, had given Nimish the joy of freedom to find love or not, but on his own terms.
The surprising effect of this is that when Nimish gets back to the US in the fall of 2023, he deletes his dating apps.
Suddenly, there is no rush to do anything.
He can just meet people and take it all one day at a time.
I think at this point I am very comfortable and like I will pursue things as they come to me.
It's like a big weight off my shoulders.
I didn't think I would be this relieved.
It feels a little embarrassing because they were like, oh, I was waiting for my parents' approval.
But I think I'm more relieved in the fact that that eventual concentration that I was sort of building myself for never came, that we could just talk like adults and figure out a solution for it.
Now I just call my dad directly and talk to him and get to know how his day is going and what he's been up to.
My dad also does that, where now he'll just call me and tells me what's been bothering him and what's made him happy and things like that we didn't talk about before.
I've just been living right now with the knowledge that I got an okay, I got a blessing from back home that I can just do things that make me happy.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe and PRX.
Today's episode was produced by Jesse Remedios and Scott Hellman.
Ned Porter does our audio mixing, sound design, and mastering.
Maddie Mortel does our audience engagement.
Love Letters Illustrations by Ali Riza.
Special thanks to Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
And remember, Love Letters is an advice column.
Send all of your problems, worries, and troubles to loveletters at boston.com.
We'll answer.
Or online at loveletters.show.
The bad thing about some of the Bollywood movies is that some of them run like three and a half hours long.
Listen, with the right snacks, I just, it's like a Marvel movie.
That's like a Scorsese movie at this point.
Scorsese movie at this point.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
