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.
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.
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.
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.
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,…
Period leave should have been a simple conversation about pain, rest, and choice. Instead, it became another place where women were expected to prove strength by pretending their bodies were not asking for help.
What is Appropriate Makeup? I always get miffed by people who judge women based on their choice to wear makeup or not. The feminist in me says that every woman should be allowed to do what she wants. That said, I firmly believe that there is a time and place for everything and anyone exercising a choice needs to be…
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.
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.
-by Anjana Malakar Your beautiful pregnant bump holds the most precious thing in the world, doesn’t it? But that gorgeous bump is also responsible for the not so pleasant “mommy scars” or stretch marks. Almost all pregnant women get stretch marks on their belly and breasts. Some even get them on their legs, thighs, back and arms. While it may not be possible…
Motherhood is probably one of the most celebrated terms in human culture. In all cultures across the world, the mother is the primary caregiver and is expected to do everything right for the child. Each and every little or big thing she does, is going to shape a personality, a life. If that isn’t scary, what is? When I was…
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.
Hi my lovelies, last year I was invited for a hair makeover at BBlunt. If you have seen that post, you probably know that post the makeover we had a fun filled event. It’s highlight was interaction with Adhuna Bhabhani, founder of BBlunt. Adhuna introduced the whole range of hair care products and then took on lots of audience queries….
Travel – whether you do it because your job needs you to or because you love it, there are always some chores that are a part and parcel of travelling like packing and laundry after you get back. For me, packing is such a huge headache that I am normally packing upto the last minute. However, there are somethings I…
A wardrobe is rarely just about clothes. For Indian women, it often becomes a mix of practicality, expectation, memory, occasions, comfort, and the versions of ourselves we keep dressing for.
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.
A post about a car service centre trying to steal parts from my car reached more people than anything I had written in over two decades. Not the pieces on motherhood, work, identity, or the slow work of figuring out a life. Just one moment of outrage. It felt like validation, until it started to look like something else entirely.
We act as if saying no is harsh, so we wrap it in softer language and call that kindness. But the soft no does not remove discomfort. It simply hands it to someone else.
We grow up being told what is right. What is proper. What a good person does.
But watch closely, and the lesson is rarely in the story itself. It sits in the gap between what is said and what is done, in the way rules bend when they become inconvenient, and in who is expected to follow them anyway.
Morality sounds universal….
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.
