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 woman seated at a dining table with two daughters nearby, in a warm peach-toned home setting, capturing the quiet tension of family conversations, boundaries, and the difficulty of saying no.

No: The Stories We Tell to Avoid Saying No

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.

A group of adults lean into a conversation while one person sits at the center, reflecting how judgement and moral expectations are reinforced socially.

Morality: The Stories We Use to Govern Behaviour

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….

Woman sitting quietly on a sofa, looking away in a moment of reflection, captured in warm peach-toned light

Lies: The Stories We Tell Ourselves to Delay Ourselves

“I’ll start tomorrow” doesn’t sound like a lie. It sounds responsible. Temporary. Reasonable. Until you notice how often tomorrow arrives and nothing changes.

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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.

Roles Women Play – Mother #WomensDay

Every year as March rolls in, tons and tons of blog posts, articles and videos begin to circulate the net about challenges a woman faces. All of it sounds cliched but then there is a contant need to remind ourselves that feminsm exists because women’s issues do. They do need to be talked about so they can be acknowledged, identified…

Drape A Smile – A JAMM’s Social Initiative

JAMM’s now brings Drape A Smile – their fifth Social Initiative. After Step Up and iLight, they are now collecting 910 saris to commemorate the 910 days that JAMM’s network has been in existence. I am sure that like me, you too have some saris tucked in to the back of your closet or under your bed that are rarely ever…

#KarwaChauth… Regression or Choice?

From the last few years Indian social media and even mainstream media sometimes goes crazy every October. The reason… the big KC. KarwaChauth…. Those who call it regressive, do not understand that celebrating festivals and observing fasts is about the sentiment and the gesture. All festivals are symbolic then why the big hullabaloo for KarwaChauth alone? Why do people light…

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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.

The #WorkingMomsGuide Handbook

In the blink of an eye, it is the end of December! Throughout the month, I really enjoyed creating the WorkingMomsGuide. This is a project I intend to keep doing and hopefully I will have a few more posts in the coming year. Would you like to see more of those? Please let me know in the comments. I asked…

All About Christmas – a Christmas Activity Book

December is All About Christmas! Is it any wonder then that we have a lovely activity book for kiddos that is all about Christmas 🙂 What I Liked The book starts with the Nativity story and explains the birth of Jesus. Growing up, I did not know this story and had no idea why my school always did the Nativity…

5 Tips for managing maids and household help

Being a working mom is a game of balancing many things on a daily basis. Your work, kids, home and other social demands on your time. As any structural engineer will tell you, the key to balance is the right support. Thankfully, in India we do have support available in the form of household help. I know a lot of…

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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.

My Nails Transformation with Laque Nail & Lash Lounge

Nails – I have mixed feelings about them. Nail paints were my first foray into the world of beauty. I had just reached class 11th and while we had a uniform, the restriction on nail length and colour was lifted. Our manicures became the most discussed things in class. Now these were the 90s. Think pre nail art days, reds-pink-browns…

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.

5 Last Minute Ideas for your New Year Eve Dresses that won’t break the bank!

If you are the kind os person who leaves things till the last minute or you thought you would not go and party this new year eve but only just decided that you will in fact go and party, chances are you are wondering, “What Do I Wear”? Before you go hunting the malls or boutiques for new year eve dresses,…

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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.

Lies: The Stories We Tell Ourselves to Delay Ourselves

“I’ll start tomorrow” doesn’t sound like a lie. It sounds responsible. Temporary. Reasonable. Until you notice how often tomorrow arrives and nothing changes.

A group seated at a dinner table in a quiet moment after an awkward remark, each person looking away or disengaged, capturing the subtle shift in energy after something doesn’t land cleanly

Kidding, Just Kidding: The Stories We Tell Sideways

Something is said. It lands a little too cleanly. You feel it before you fully understand it. And then, almost immediately, it’s taken back. Just kidding. Except nothing has actually been taken back. The words are still there. Only your ability to respond to them has changed.

A South Asian woman stands beside a glass wall filled with business jargon, acronyms, arrows, and strategy diagrams, appearing thoughtful as she recognises the language around her.

Jargon: The Stories We Tell to Belong

Jargon explains things on the surface. Underneath, it signals who belongs, who understands, and who gets left out. We learn the language of the room so we can stay in it. And then one day, the room changes, but the language doesn’t.

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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