The Art of Letting Go

Oh boy, it’s been a long time since I’ve written something like this. But this time, I’m not here to tell a story about me. It’s about something else. Something that caught my attention and stayed with me long after.

I just finished watching A Suitable Boy on Netflix, a limited series that feels like a window into a time long gone yet strangely familiar. The story is set in post-partition India, a world trying to piece itself back together after being torn apart. It’s poetic, raw, and deeply human. While I felt the cinematography lacked a bit of finesse, everything else... every little thing... felt like it belonged.

As the series ended, I found myself with this overwhelming urge to talk to someone about it. You know when you finish something so deeply moving that you want to share it with others, feel understood? That was me. But then it hit me, A Suitable Boy is such an underrated show that nobody I know would have watched it. So, instead of letting those thoughts sit inside me, I decided to write them down. Not my technical views, not an analysis, but something else. Something raw, just like the story itself.

What stayed with me the most wasn’t the politics or the cultural richness. It was the love story—the way it unfolded so naturally, like a sigh, only to dissolve into nothingness.

Lata, the central character, caught my heart in a way I didn’t expect. A young woman surrounded by expectations, traditions, and a lineup of suitors, yet she dared to love someone she wasn’t “supposed to." Isn’t that what love does? It doesn’t ask for permission, and doesn’t follow rules. It just… happens.

She falls for Kabir, a charming, poetic boy from a different faith. And for a moment, you believe in their love. You believe they’ll break free, run away, and write a story of their own. But life has a way of reminding us that love alone isn’t always enough.

Kabir is mature enough to know this. He chooses not to run away, not to leave behind a trail of pain for something that, in the end, might never last. And just like that, their love becomes one of those stories we carry in our hearts, unfinished and bittersweet.

It made me think about how love is often like this, messy, complicated, and rarely tied up with a neat little bow. It’s not the grand, moving gesture we see in movies. It’s in the stolen glances, the unspoken words, and sometimes, in the quiet understanding that what you want isn’t always what you get.

And then, I don’t know why, but I started thinking about how men and women handle love so differently. I’ve noticed this pattern when a boy falls in love, the guy either falls harder or not at all. There’s no middle ground.

With my friends, too, I’ve seen it. Guys? It’s like their time freezes. They get stuck in this loop of “what could have been.” Nothing hurts a man’s fragile ego (no offense) more than a love that doesn’t last. And when it leaves, it breaks something inside them.

I’ve seen it happen, how they carry this long, never-ending path of change within them. It’s like a beautiful kind of regret they wear quietly, but it’s there in their eyes, in their silences. Love becomes this bittersweet ache that never fully leaves them.

Maybe that’s why Kabir’s decision to let go hit me so hard. It’s not easy for anyone, but for men, it’s often more about enduring the pain in silence. They don’t talk about it, don’t cry about it, but it’s there, shaping them, changing them.

There’s a saying in India: Moms are never wrong. And in Lata’s case, this couldn’t be truer. Her mother is the kind of woman we all know—overdramatic, persistent, and with a firm belief that she knows what’s best. But isn’t that what mothers are? They see what we can’t, even when we’re blinded by love or stubbornness.

In the end, Lata marries the man her mother chooses for her. Not Kabir, not the man who moved her soul, but someone “suitable.”

How often do we let go of what we want for what we need? Is it wisdom or resignation? Maybe it’s a bit of both. Who knows?

There’s something so universal about Lata’s story. That feeling of falling in love for the first time, of believing it could conquer anything, only to realize the world doesn’t work that way. It’s a quiet heartbreak we all carry, isn’t it? The first love we couldn’t keep. And yet, there’s a strange kind of beauty in it. First love is never forgotten. It stays with us forever. Even if we don’t end up with it, we carry it like a whisper, a reminder of who we were and what we felt.

What I loved about A Suitable Boy is how it doesn’t try to sugarcoat anything. It doesn’t give you the perfect ending. Instead, it leaves you with a sense of reality, of life as it is messy, imperfect, and often unfair. And maybe that’s why it feels so honest, so relatable.

Watching A Suitable Boy felt like reading a poem—a bittersweet one that lingers in your mind long after it’s over. It reminded me of the beauty in imperfection, in unfinished stories, and in the art of letting go.

Because in the end, life isn’t about perfect endings.