Lifestyle of a Professional

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

Open notebook with unfinished handwritten notes and a blank page beside a black pen, illustrating why I don’t journal.

Still Not Journalling

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.

$A woman dressed for work stands near the door, paused before leaving. Around her are small visual cues of calculation: an office outfit, a stole, heels, a work bag, a phone with a cab/location screen, and a small notepad or floating paper scraps with simple arithmetic-like markings.$

The Real Girl Math

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.

Warm editorial-style illustration of two South Asian women in a softly lit peach-toned home interior, with an older woman seated calmly on a pedestal while a younger woman looks up at her thoughtfully from a dining table, symbolising the idealisation of mothers and the shifting perspective between daughters and mothers

Mothers, Mistakes, and the Myth of Perfection

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.

A warm peach-toned kitchen counter with serving bowls, plates, tea cups, sweets, and a handwritten food list as a woman adjusts one final dish before guests arrive, in an attempt to have perfect hospitality.

Xenial: The Stories We Tell Around Hospitality

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.

A reflective Indian woman sits at a warm peach-toned table near a softly lit window, surrounded by a work bag, child’s drawing, mirror, shopping bag, receipt, phone, and journal, suggesting the many explanations women carry around work, motherhood, self-care, and success.

Women: The Stories We Tell About Ourselves

Women are often asked to explain choices that men make without a story. Work, travel, ambition, self-care, success, even distance from people arrive with justification attached. This essay looks at the stories women learn to tell before anyone asks, and how often we pass them on.

Warm peach-toned editorial image of an Indian woman standing in a softly lit room between two layered scenes, one showing a younger woman listening to an older woman and the other showing a mother with a child.

Viewpoint: The Stories That Look Different From the Other Side

Viewpoint changes everything. Through motherhood, work, myth, judgement and myth, we look at what happens when the story moves from where we stood to where someone else did.

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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.

What It Actually Means to Be a Woman Today

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.

Self Care

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…

Am – #AtoZChallenge

Am PC – Golden Hour Photography Am posing behind these leaves, am not hiding! However this picture reminded me of a discussion I had with my college girl gang. It was New Year’s Day and we were all sharing our family pics. I noticed that in all three photos shared, my friends were hiding. They were hidden behind the kids….

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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.

5 Things People Need To Stop Saying To Breastfeeding Mothers

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.

5 Cloth Diapering Lessons No One Taught You

Five Cloth Diapering mammas talk about their cloth diaper journey. They share cloth diapering lessons no one taught them.

Cloth Diaper Diaries – 1

Cloth Diapers are budget friendly, earth friendly and baby friendly. Here are my reasons for switching

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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.

slow fashion for consumers with timeless neutral clothing, linen shirt, espadrilles and natural accessories on a soft peach background

The Slow Fashion Conundrum: What Slow Fashion Means for Consumers

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.

5 cool ways to incorporate Menswear in your wardrobe

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…

Type of Shoes a Working Mom really needs

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…

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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.

Young Indian woman with a messy braid sits alone at an airport gate at night, holding her passport and boarding pass while looking at her reflection in the dark glass window, with warm peach lighting, blurred runway lights, and a small steel dabba visible in her open handbag.

The Girl With One Braid

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.

holding a cup of coffee in a quiet morning garden reflecting on anxiety during uncertain times

A Morning of Doubt

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.

What It Actually Means to Be a Woman Today

peach-toned still life of a mirror and tweezers illustrating chin hair after 40 perimenopause ritual and personal grooming

Not By The Hair of My Chiny Chin Chin

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.

Warm peach-toned balcony scene showing a woman with loose hair holding a mug and looking out over a hazy city skyline across the water.

Urban: The Stories That Live in Cities

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.

Warm peach-toned still life with rattan, brass, fabric swatches, wall notes, and soft shadows, suggesting taste as an accumulation of choices and influences.

Taste: The Stories We Tell Ourselves About What We Like

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.

Three abstract female silhouettes against a warm peach background, loosely referencing see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil as symbols of learned silence.

Silence: The Stories We Don’t Tell Out Loud

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.

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Most Recent Posts

Opened online shopping parcel with children’s socks in pale, navy, yellow, and grey colours, reflecting a personal essay on gender stereotypes in children’s clothing.

It Began With Socks

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?

Woman holding a water bottle and duster while looking at a lived-in room, with a thought bubble showing her internal auditor holding a clipboard.

Perfection Is the Problem

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.

Still Not Journalling

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.

Warm nostalgic desk with an old keyboard, landline phone, cassette tape, notebook, vintage mobile phone, and modern smartphone, reflecting the Gen Y vs Millennial bridge between analogue childhood and digital adulthood.

We Could Have Been Gen Y

We could have been Gen Y. Instead, we became millennials: the generation that remembers landlines and floppy disks, but somehow also has to manage passwords, updates, and overflowing cloud storage.

Woman reflecting on ChatGPT personality analysis through three glowing AI screens in a warm creative workspace filled with books, notes, lipstick, and soft peach light.

I Let AI Describe Me. Then I Had to Do It Myself.

I asked ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini what kind of person I am. They knew the documented me: the prompts, drafts, edits, searches, and patterns. But the missing parts were more revealing.

The Girl With One Braid

The Real Girl Math

An open vintage English literature book lies on a wooden desk beside cherries, a fountain pen, peach-toned fabric, and a small note, with soft afternoon light and green hills outside the window.

Ruskin Bond and the Art of Quiet Storytelling

I first met Ruskin Bond in a Standard 10 English classroom, through a boy, his grandfather, and three cherries. Years later, I understand why that moment stayed. His stories taught me that quiet writing is never small. It notices ordinary people, simple moments, and everyday details until they become unforgettable.

New Here? Start with these

Stories about Ordinary Life

My Personal Favourites

A to Z Storytelling Series

Most Recent Posts

Small stories from ordinary life