About Daughters and Sons..

This article also got featured in The Hindu -Open Page.

One thing that I often hear being said by fellow mothers is that I am lucky to be blessed with daughters. The compliment given till here really pleases me though I seriously believe whatever God chooses to give is lucky for any person. Daughter, son, special needs kid, no kid. Everything that we have or not have is for the best of us. Because  life is not about having or not having. It is about the aim of reaching the state of a higher being.

A Successful Community Effort

This article also got featured in The Better India and The Huffington PostThe Huffington Post

The ladies in the picture by the side, appear to be kitty partying but they are doing far more serious work, a work which all of us might ignore but which makes a huge difference to the world we live in.
These are passionate women who are making a difference to the world we live in by actively doing their bit. They are the definition of the new-age women who apart from managing their households, families and even jobs are taking pains to make everyone in their community realize the importance of each one's participation to maintain a clean, healthy & sustainable environment. 

Being Free - Short Story

<This story was published in Womans Era Feb 2nd Edition 2017>



Freedom is contagious.

It doesn't spread by touch, or microorganisms. It spreads by something more powerful - Self-awareness! I realized this recently when Sivamma came knocking at my door around mid-night to seek shelter for the night as she had left her husband. Sivamma was my maid.

Guardians To Angels

Some small incidents in my life made me realize the importance of good parenting not only for children but for society. Here is the snippet for the article I wrote for Parentous.

For complete article follow the link: http://bit.ly/1mpx7G0

Nanny Hiring - A Short Guide

For all those parents out there who look for Nannies for their little hearts, here's my article on Nanny Hiring on Parentous. After having different kinds of experience both good and bad, I have come up with a list of 10 points which we should take into consideration while finalizing a person for this important job.

Here's a short snippet and I hope it will be helpful for you. For the complete guide please visit the link:
http://bit.ly/WjMpq1

The innocent gurus

For my next post on Parentous, I came up with this topic "Infinite Infant wisdom". I just started to write how kids are more intelligent than adults and I ended with a whole list of surprising ten points. By the end of my writing streak, I realized how much enlightened I am, all because of my daughter. Here is a short snippet from the article:

It is an interesting topic. Please visit the page here, if you want to know how you can learn from infants :)

What I actually learnt while learning to drive on Indian Roads

Also published on Women's web

“Darr ke aage jeet hai” (Success lies beyond fear) – though it’s a tagline for a brand, I can’t agree with it more as I drive to go shopping or to pick up my husband from his office. Fear is fear. It is never big or small. We all have to fight our own battles against our fears. I have won one such battle. If you are also trying to win over any such fear, then this story is for you.

People complain about the Bangalore traffic but it makes me happy sometimes when I am behind the wheel, waiting in the traffic. I drive occasionally so you might say that’s why traffic doesn’t bother me much but I tell you there is another reason for that.

For a long time, I had an unusual phobia about riding a bicycle. While my friends and peers would ride their bicycles to school, to the city market, or just to play, I was struggling to make friends with gravity. To me, man riding on two wheels was a far greater invention than the wheel itself. After several years of attempting this feat, I gave up.

On one pleasant summer evening, my mother persuaded me to give it another try. And eureka! It was magic when while riding I turned back to see that my mom was no more supporting my cycle. I felt super confident. But then, I realized that by this time I was a grown-up and my peers were already driving scooters. To my dismay, I found learning to ride a scooter again an impossible task for me. I was lean and found the vehicle too heavy to kick-start or even to put it on the stand. Once again, I thought of giving up. But then what remains in life if we stop trying? What remains of life if ‘to give up’ becomes a habit?

So, after a few years of trying, untrying and retrying, I bought a light-weight scooter or Scootie as I would love to call it. In a short time, I learnt it and would drive it across our small city. With that, I learned something else too. That driving freely on Indian roads is not just a struggle to win over personal inhibitions but there is an additional challenge for girls – to ignore the mocking and staring eyes ready to pounce on you, to harass you at every opportunity, at every nook and corner especially in either scarcely or over crowded areas. Initially, the comments, the chases, the stares, the attempts to make me fall or even molest me scared the hell out of me but then one of my experienced friends advised me that ‘ignoring is bliss’ while driving on Indian streets.

For a girl who struggled to ride a bicycle carefree, I can now drive a Swift. But it became possible only after years of crusading against my fears and not giving up. I smile and pass by when they crack jokes about the ‘lady behind the wheels’. I understand that maybe my driving is not as perfect as some guys, as many prejudiced people boast about. Maybe I overlook things while starting the engine, changing lanes, or parking but I have earned whatever little skills I have for driving all sorts of vehicles against all odds. After all, there are lot of men too who are not able to overcome their fear of driving even when nobody is out there to harass them or scan them from head to toe. So even if I drive badly, I have the courage to try irrespective of the judgmental and perverted eyes.

As the tussle with my fears continues, I have discovered that trepidation towards doing anything is just a crawling spider. The more one lets it crawl the mind, the more it entangles the mind in its web. So the best way out is to kill this spider with a constant hammering of ‘Yes, I can do it!’ and this spider will turn out to be nothing but a myth. The feeling of winning over any fear is simply ecstatic.

I have experienced it, what about you?

The Roommate - Short Story

Three roommates discover the bond of togetherness and learn how things are not always as they seem to be.

published in Woman's Era (May 2015) in slightly different version

Switching roles with my father

Unedited version. Published in "Chicken Soup for the soul- Indian fathers"- 2010 titled "Not a Superman, but my hero still"

'What do you want - a girl or a boy?', asked the lady doctor from my father when  I was on my way into this world.
'I have a boy and am blessed with a girl too. So, this time I leave it to GOD'. And pop I came in this world into his arms. 'My elder daughter is special because she's my first child, my second child is special because he's a son and third one is special because she is the youngest', he said proudly looking at little me.

Bride Forever

Published in "Chicken Soup for the Indian Bride's Soul" 2010

“Girls like it, especially if they’ve never been                                             married before - it’s the dress. Girls want a                                             wedding, they don’t want a marriage.”  - Salman Rushdie

 Marriage brings with it the thrill of shopping and I too did mine like a princess.  The most important item on my list was my bridal lehenga. After looking at almost a hundred, I selected a beautifully embroidered bright red one. When I draped it on myself, I experienced the immense joy of becoming a bride. I wanted to look the most gorgeous woman on the planet that day.

My Angel

My Angel is my first story that found its way to publishing through Chicken Soup for the soul: Indian Mother. This is my real life incident which happened one day as I was returning back to my University Bansathali Vidyapeeth after spending the summer vacation at my home.