I started writing online in 2004, when blogs were still personal corners of the internet. Now I write about small moments that reveal who we become while we are busy being everything else.
– Ankita Bhatia Dhawan
New Here? Start with these
I thought I disliked journaling because I don’t do well with prompts. Then I realised the problem was not the blank page. It was what the blank page might reveal.
We joke about girl math as if the strangest female calculation is justifying a handbag on sale. But the real girl math is the everyday arithmetic of safety: what to wear, which route to take, where to sit, who to call, and how much of yourself to make visible.
We placed mothers on pedestals and called it respect, without noticing how quickly admiration turns into expectation. The moment women become symbols of sacrifice and strength, they stop being allowed complexity, mistakes, exhaustion, anger, ambition, or even ordinary humanity.
Hi, I’m Ankita.
I have been a marketer, a mother, a reader, a reluctant organiser of school mornings, an expat, a woman rebuilding parts of herself in more than one country, and someone who still processes life best by writing it down.
This blog comes from that mix. Work. Motherhood. Memory. Books. Beauty counters. Airports. Irritations that refuse to stay small. The things women inherit without being handed a manual. Most posts begin with something ordinary. Then the ordinary misbehaves.
Read about my blogging journey.
Stories about Ordinary Life
Life Stories is where the ordinary things sit before they become stories. A sentence overheard, a room remembered, a small irritation, a moment that looked harmless at first and then refused to leave. These pieces are about everyday life, memory, family, work, identity, and the strange ways we become ourselves while doing everything else.
We call it a fresh start, a new chapter, ground zero. But sometimes the story of starting over is less about becoming someone new, and more about finding the courage to begin while carrying everything we always carry.
Sometimes, Yes doesn’t arrive as a decision. It arrives as duty, peacekeeping, family expectation, and survival. Then, years later, we call it “how things went” because that is easier to live with.
What looks like warmth from the outside often feels like responsibility from the inside. This is a story about overfeeding guests, hiding effort, and the inherited performance of hospitality.
Women’s Stories is where everyday life shows what women learn to notice, carry, soften, question, and sometimes quietly refuse. These pieces are about identity, safety, self-image, reputation, work, family, ageing, and the expectations that arrive long before we have words for them.
You think you’re noticing a person.
The clothes, the walk, the outline of a stranger moving through an ordinary evening.
But sometimes what you’re really noticing is a pattern your body already knows.
How to move without interrupting.
How to shrink just enough.
How to stay within the edges of space without ever testing where they actually are.
And once that recognition clicks, it’s hard to…
Women’s Day often celebrates a polished version of womanhood. This post looks at the everyday reality behind it: invisible work, mental load, quiet negotiations and the expectations women carry without applause. Everything that shapes what it means to be a woman today.
These days you hear a lot about self care. There are scores of articles and social media posts devoted to the importance of self care and women, especially mothers talking about how they practice it. When I started reading about it, I wondered, “What exactly is self care?” The fluffy articles and most social posts did not help, for the…
Motherhood Stories are full of moments that look small from the outside and feel enormous from the inside. These stories are about working mom guilt, mistakes, love, family life, school, judgement, exhaustion, and the pressure to be endlessly available, endlessly patient, and somehow still fully yourself.
It all began one fine day when I got this lovely hamper from Colgate. Along with the goodies inside, which I will tell you about shortly, there was a shocking elevation. This reminded me of my own experience with Aryahi. We too discovered her cavities very late when she was little. I suppose this is because the kids, especially young ones aren’t able to…
August 1 to August 7 is World Breastfeeding Week. As we collectively work towards normalising breastfeeding, let us talk about some things people need to stop saying to breastfeeding mothers.
Five Cloth Diapering mammas talk about their cloth diaper journey. They share cloth diapering lessons no one taught them.
Beauty & Self Image is where hair, clothes, skincare, ageing, grooming, and appearance stop being “just beauty things.” These stories look at how women learn to see themselves, maintain themselves, correct themselves, and sometimes laugh at the entire performance while still booking the appointment.
I thought I was doing the right thing. My clothes stayed in my wardrobe for years, lived multiple lives and were rarely discarded. But the more I read about sustainable fashion, the more I realised how confusing slow fashion for consumers actually is.
Menswear for women was a big trend some seasons back. Do you remember it? I did not really get on board then. The reason was that the trend circled around androgynous looks. In my humble opinion, androgynous is not for everyone. It takes a certain body shape and more importantly, a certain attitude to pull it off. With my plus-sized…
Let’s Talk Shoes Yes. Let’s. Let’s talk shoes. The love of shoes can grow quickly and if you have a hoarding tendency, the situation can escalate very very quickly. Trust me, I have been there. When I got married, I was collecting shoes in all shapes and colours. I explained to a perplexed husband, the difference between summer and winter…
My Personal Favourites
Some posts I call my favourites. They are the ones that may hit the hardest. Sometimes, they are the ones that make me smile the widest. Sometimes, the ones that came from the gut. And sometimes, the ones my readers loved.
Sakshi was the villain long before she left for Denmark. One braid, one book, one bus ride, one refusal at a time, she became the girl who put ideas in other girls’ heads. Sakshi owns the reputation she never asked for and the life she chose anyway.
Some mornings are too busy for anxiety. Packing lunches, tying hair, watching the clock. But when the house finally falls quiet, the mind sometimes catches up with everything it has been avoiding.
Women’s Day often celebrates a polished version of womanhood. This post looks at the everyday reality behind it: invisible work, mental load, quiet negotiations and the expectations women carry without applause. Everything that shapes what it means to be a woman today.
A funny, honest look at chin hair after 40.
Why it happens, and how it feels when you’ve lived it.
A to Z Storytelling Series
I chose storytelling as the theme because I kept noticing how much of our everyday behaviour is shaped by the stories we tell. We repeat them so often they stop feeling like stories and start feeling like truth. We tell them because they help us live.
Urban stories rarely look like the ones we grew up with. In cities, comfort can hide struggle, objects can become lifelines, and old instincts often misread what modern lives are built around.
Taste feels personal, almost instinctive. But food, clothes, homes, and even the sarees that break our own rules often carry older stories of availability, repetition, culture, aspiration, and the small choices that slowly become a self.
Some silences are taught as safety before we understand them as silence. They arrive as instructions, advice, concern, and protection, until one day you realise you are still walking through the world with your eyes straight ahead.
Most Recent Posts
If someone gave me a time machine and one message to send my younger self, I know exactly what I would say: live on your own.
Feedback didn’t exist in my childhood. There was praise, which was rationed like sugar during a diet, and criticism, which flowed like Lassi during Langar. Nobody told us there was a third thing. Turns out there was, and I’m still not sure we’re friends.
If my blog was a chocolate factory, the homepage would be the storefront. Bestsellers up front, favourites on one shelf, harmless-looking categories everywhere, and somewhere in the box, a sweet piece that leaves a bitter aftertaste.
Motherhood has become a filing system. Alpha mom, beta mom, almond mom, tiger mom, free-range mom. But most mothers are not one fixed type. We are tactics, adjusted daily, badly rested, and almost always answering to a label that does not quite fit.
The tiny fame of ordinary people is the strange visibility social media gives us in our own small circles. It is not celebrity. It is school moms, old friends, cousins and acquaintances knowing bits of your life before you tell them yourself.
I was buying socks for my seven-year-old when I noticed the girls’ section had already made a few decisions for her. Shorter socks. Softer colours. Prettier choices. And somehow, just socks stopped feeling quite so small. It is never really “just socks”, is it?
Perfection is the problem when it stops being about doing things well and becomes a way of measuring your worth. A personal essay on perfectionism, self-criticism, good enough, and the impossible yardstick we carry through work, home, rest, and ordinary life.
I thought I disliked journaling because I don’t do well with prompts. Then I realised the problem was not the blank page. It was what the blank page might reveal.
