By March, I had started thinking seriously about returning to Bangalore.
I had left a job that was affecting my health, spent months applying and interviewing and watched promising opportunities disappear without clear explanations. My visa deadline had moved to April 14, but more time did not guarantee a job.
The confident version of this story would say that I always believed the right opportunity would arrive.
The honest version is that I did not know.
When the job market went quiet
For around 10 to 15 days, calls and updates slowed down. Ramadan and wider uncertainty appeared to pause hiring, and every quiet day felt more significant because the deadline was getting closer.
I continued applying and following up, but I was also preparing myself emotionally for the possibility of leaving Dubai.
There is a difference between choosing to return somewhere and feeling that circumstances have made the decision for you. I wanted any next step to feel like my decision, but I was running out of control over the timing.
I questioned my resignation. I questioned the offers I had declined. I wondered whether setting boundaries had made my life more difficult than it needed to be.
At the same time, I knew I could not rewrite the truth. The previous job had been affecting my health and taking away all my energy. Staying would have had a cost too.
The opportunity that returned in April
In early April, calls began coming again.
One opportunity that had previously gone quiet returned. Until then, I had assumed it was another conversation that would never become anything concrete.
The timing felt almost unbelievable. I had moved from hoping, to waiting, to preparing myself to return to Bangalore. Then, just as the possibility of leaving became real, a door I thought had closed opened again.
The delayed opportunity became my next step.
It did not erase the months of uncertainty or prove that every risk will always work out. Life does not offer that kind of guarantee.
What it gave me was a chance to continue in Dubai with a clearer understanding of what I wanted from work and what I was no longer willing to normalise.
Independence is more than managing alone
When I first arrived in Dubai, independence meant taking the Metro alone, finding the interview location and learning how to manage daily life in a new city.
Over time, its meaning changed.
Independence also became the ability to make difficult decisions without knowing whether other people would understand them. It meant taking responsibility for resigning, living with the uncertainty that followed and continuing to choose carefully even when fear made quick decisions tempting.
Being independent does not mean never feeling scared or never needing support. It means recognising that the consequences of your choices belong to you and learning to trust yourself enough to make them.
Leaving can be a decision, not a failure
One of the strongest lessons from this period was that leaving is not always the same as giving up.
I used to think success meant staying until everything improved or proving that I could tolerate difficult circumstances. Now I understand that endurance alone is not always growth.
Sometimes the stronger choice is to admit that something is no longer right for you.
That does not make leaving easy. It does not guarantee that the next opportunity will arrive quickly. My own experience included rejection, uncertainty and the genuine possibility that I might have to leave Dubai.
But a difficult consequence does not automatically make the original decision wrong.
What I value now
Work still matters to me. Stability matters. Growth matters.
But I no longer believe a job should consume every part of a person’s life.
I value my time differently now. I value creativity, energy and having enough space to build things that feel like me. I want a life that includes work without being defined entirely by it.
That is part of why Raagas Version exists.
This space allows me to talk about Dubai beyond the polished version. It gives me room to share fashion, skincare and everyday life, but also the choices, doubts and lessons behind the life people see.
I am still figuring things out. I do not have a perfect ending to offer, and I do not want to pretend that I do.
Would I make the same decision again?
If I could speak to the version of myself who was working in Bangalore and wondering, What if I try?, I would not tell her that everything would be easy.
I would tell her that she would feel lost, excited, exhausted, proud and uncertain, sometimes within the same week.
I would tell her that one interview would change the direction of her life, but that finding a job would not be the hardest part of the journey.
I would tell her that Dubai would teach her how to navigate more than Metro routes. It would teach her how to recognise her limits, make practical decisions and begin again without seeing herself as a failure.
Most importantly, I would tell her that taking the chance was worth it, not because every part worked perfectly, but because it helped her understand the kind of life she wants to build.
This is where I am now: still learning, still creating and still choosing what feels honest to me.
The story is not finished. It has simply reached the point where I can finally tell it in my own version.