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The women we become in waiting

There is a particular kind of womanhood that is built around waiting. Waiting to be chosen. Waiting to be enough. Waiting to become thinner, softer, calmer, prettier, less emotional, more desirable, more accomplished, more lovable. Many women spend years of their lives standing at the edge of themselves, believing life will begin once they finally become the right version. But what if the waiting never ends? What if the standards themselves were designed to keep women endlessly occupied with self-correction? I have been thinking lately about how many identities women inherit before they are old enough to question them. Daughter. Good girl. Caregiver. Peacemaker. Strong one. Selfless one. The one who holds everything together. And sometimes these identities become so familiar that we stop asking whether they ever belonged to us at all. There is grief in realizing how much of your personality was built around survival. Not survival in the dramatic sense. The quieter kind. The kind where ...
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Decolonising Food: the 7th Sense is Naan-Sense!!

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The first time I traveled outside India, I heard the word " curry " being used to describe Indian gravy based Salan/Sabzi, and instantly I felt sad because the word took away the charm and charisma that Indian food carries. Since then, I have been discussing this word with my students and friends, educating and introducing them to the variety that Indian cuisine has to offer. So what is Curry? It is a plant that can be a shrub or develop into a full-grown tree. The leaves of this tree have been used in Indian cooking since the 1st CE, approximately 2000 years ago. It has fantastic medicinal and healing properties. No tampering in Indian cuisine is complete without the humble Curry leaves.  And the second term that threw me off compeltely was Naan - although not as estranged as curry, Naan doesnt encompass the goodness and variety of various flatbreads that India has. There will be another post dedciated to "Curries" but this one is to turn on our Naan-Sense! Let us ...
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Language as Empire: The Need for Decolonisation in Writing Indian History

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Slavery and Foreign Invasions in the Indian Subcontinent Slavery is broadly defined as coerced labor and the ownership of people, and it has existed in different forms across cultures long before the transatlantic slave trade began. The history of the Indian subcontinent, meanwhile, has been shaped by successive waves of migration and foreign conquest that reshaped its political, social, and cultural fabric over millennia. Early Traces of Servitude in India The earliest South Asian inscriptions from the 3rd century BCE mention obligations of slaves and hired workers.^1 References to dasa and dasi appear in Vedic texts and in Panini’s grammar. Some historians interpret these terms as denoting slaves, while others argue they are referring to servants, dependents, or war captives.^2 Evidence also suggests that individuals labeled as dasa could rise to positions of power, as names like Divodasa appear in hymns as kings or chiefs.^3 In other contexts, dasa is used to describe wealthy no...
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Colonisation (1757 to 1947): The Indian Retrospect of 200 years of Exploitation!

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Colonisation (1757 to 1947): The Indian Retrospect of 200 years of Exploitation!  I was born in the 1980s, 37 years after the Britishers were made to leave India - NOT 'left' because they didn't, they were forced to. My parents, however, were born in the chaotic aftermath of the 1950s, and some of my uncles and aunts were born as the war of independence was being fought. My grandparents, great-grandparents, and most of their siblings were born, lived, and died in colonized India. I had the privilege of spending some time with some of my parents' uncles and aunts who were still alive when I was young, and the stories they held in their hearts, the pain, the challenging times they saw - the horror of it all is something everyone should know because they were not the only ones. India has a complex history of colonisation and slavery, and its academic writing. which has led to misinformed educational practices in India and other parts of the world. The intention of this ser...
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Turning 30 - Keep the child in you alive.

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  NEOTENY  is a trait in humans that causes us to retain juvenile characteristics, enhancing our curiosity and capacity to learn. This "juvenilization" leads to a prolonged childhood, allowing us to absorb more from the environment, including cultural knowledge. Furthermore, our brains are designed for synergistic processing, combining different information types to enable complex cognitive functions like learning and social cognition.  As a 30-year-old, one of the most important questions I asked myself daily was "What did I learn today?" Learning doesn't have to be academic, it doesn't have to have a measure, or even always have a monetary expectation after. Learning to me is to feel alive, to feel like myself. And the best teachers in the world are kids. I hate that the term "childish" has a negative meaning attached to it. When in reality, in my experience, free people are childish, those who allow themselves to feel deeply, to experience life,...
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Armenia - A year to remember

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After spending 4 years in China, we moved to Romania, and after 4 years there, it was time for a change again. I was still doing interviews and wasn't sure what I wanted to do. It was tempting to move back to Asia for a bit, but the transition would be too quick for us both, so I started looking at Egypt and Turkey. The day I had decided to reply and accept Egypt, I received an offer from a very interesting place, Armenia. I immediately knew that I had to go there.  Armenia is a magical, mystical, and almost even mythical place where the ark from the narrative of Noah’s Ark rested last.  In the Book of Genesis, it is here, upon the mountains of Ararat, the ancient kingdom of Urartu, that the ark came to rest. Noah planted the first seeds of grape here when he came out of the ark, and the first wine ever brewed is believed to be here, in Armenia, in 4000 BC! The sky put on a show every morning and evening, changing every few minutes, leaving me in just as much awe as  the ...
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Turning 30: Be Your BFF!

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  Turning 30 was quiet an experience for me.  I wasn't nervous or sad that I was turning 30, I was excited - I always thought that people in their 30s has their shit sorted out and I wanted to be that person. I had had a challenging late 20s due to many factors so 30s felt like a breath of fresh air.  I learnt so many thing about me, my relationships, my body, my health and so much more. If I had to turn 30 again, I would want to know some things so here are my top 5 pieces of advice for those turning 30 soon, as I cross it and move to my 40s.4 1. Your relationship with your body is THE  MOST important one Learn to listen to your body, its limitations, its strengths and what it loves. Mine is a movement body. I need to move whether I am happy or sad, excited or upset - for me, movement is the secret to feeling everything, to feeling deeply and to experience it all. I was diagnosed with  endometriosis  when I was 32 and learnt that I had been living with it ...
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