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.

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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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.

The Guilt of a Working Mom

A working mother can be competent, committed, and deeply loving, and still feel the quiet guilt of missing things, choosing things, and never being fully where she is expected to be.

Self Love, Not Self Critique

A WhatsApp conversation about body shapes and clothes becomes a larger question about how quickly women turn awareness into criticism, and why self-love needs more room than self-correction.

6 Tips for Getting Back to Work post Maternity Leave - Do’s and Don’ts about returning to work after that will help you and your family ease into the new routine

6 Tips on Getting Back to Work post Maternity Leave

Becoming a mother is one of the most overwhelming experiences in a woman’s life. Once you have popped the baby out and gone through the joys and struggles of being a new mum, the pregnancy is long forgotten. Your days and nights blend into one. Time is now measured in terms of feeding, nap and diaper changes. Amongst all this,…

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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 That Help New Moms Feel Good

It is said that every pregnancy is different. I have felt it in both my pregnancies. The impact each left on my body has been different. While coping up with these new bodies, most new moms are looking for only one thing – comfort. Unfortunately, comfort translates into old de-shaped tees, loose yoga pants and oversized jerseys. Add to that…

A Guided Meditation Video for Children

It’s children’s day and I wish all the mommies and their kiddos a very happy children’s day. Today I want to talk about something that is not generally associated with kids activities. Meditation. When we were growing up religion and spirituality was intermingled. In my house, we were taught to do pujas As per Hindu rituals with the singular aim of…

The Guilt of a Working Mom

A working mother can be competent, committed, and deeply loving, and still feel the quiet guilt of missing things, choosing things, and never being fully where she is expected to be.

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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.

Kajal – My Tips and Tricks

Indian women have a love-hate relationship with Kajal. We love to wear it and love to discuss it but hate that it smudges and is a pain to take off. Like most, I too am forever on the lookout for the perfect Kajal. It is like chasing the holy grail and I truly believe that you don’t find the perfect…

Cute #AtoZChallenge

Ever since I remember, people praising me have called me cute (not that there have been many instances when I have been praised for my looks, I think I have been praised more for my mind and I prefer it that way!) As a teen, I used to wonder what was the difference between cute, pretty and beautiful, especially when…

Yves Rocher Shampoo & Conditioner Review

I have been genetically blessed with decent hair. Coupled with the regular oiling my mom did for the first decade of my life, my hair have not been a problem area for me until recently when they started greying. This problem started a few years ago and I started to look for better products for my hair. I used to…

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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

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.

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.

Professional woman entering a warm-toned office space while a blurred group is already in conversation, suggesting her reputation has arrived before her.

Reputation: The Stories That Arrive Before You Do

By the time you walk into the room, the introduction is already over. A version of you, edited, shortened, passed along, has arrived first. And you spend the rest of the time responding to it.

A group of people in conversation against a warm peach background, with one person mid-sentence and others leaning in, suggesting a subtle shift in the discussion.

Questions: The Stories We Ask Instead of Answering

There are questions that open a conversation, and then there are questions that quietly replace it. They sound reasonable. They often are. But by the time you answer them, you are no longer where you started.

A woman walking away along a quiet residential path, her posture slightly contained with arms close to her body, set against a warm peach-toned background.

Posture: The Stories Our Bodies Tell

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…

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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