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