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 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.

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.

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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.

#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…

Whisper Ultra Clean Review

I do a lot of reviews on this blog. Beauty products, subscription boxes, books and heck… I have even reviewed a laundry service. I would never buy a lipstick without reading a review and yet when it comes to something like a sanitary pad, I have never bothered looking for a review online. Out of curiosity, I googled Whisper Review and…

Overreaction or Genuine Rage? #MicroblogMondays #MondayMusings

This morning I was wondering about what to write for my regular Monday post. I had no life updates to give, have been incessantly talking beauty for the last week and have reviewed the books I read too. Suman Kher solved that problem for me when she shared this tweet.. https://twitter.com/Suman_Kher/status/643265244882595840 It has started a debate that is still going on…

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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 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…

5 Tips to choose the right daycare and creche for your kid. #Parenting tips for working parents

5 Tips to Choose Daycare Centers and Creche

Finding a daycare near me was one of the biggest tasks I had to do while relocating to Mumbai. I was very sure I wanted professional childcare while my daughter is still young. I was not comfortable in having a nanny at home while she is still in preschool. So finding a good Creche was the only option for me. It was…

Windmill Festival Mumbai

Windmill Festival is happening in Mumbai on 16th and 17th December at Jio Garden, Bandra Kurla Complex. This is the second season of the festival. Till recently, I did not know about such. festivals and some big ones, I did not really bothered about taking my daughter to those citing reasons of crowd and chaos. My opinions changed when I…

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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.

Urby Passport Holder #Review

Urby is a brand that believes in good quality products at affordable prices. Their brand story talks about eliminating middle men and making fine products available to the urban consumer at non-luxury prices. In the Indian market flooded with high price, low quality Chinese imports where you pay more for the brand than the product itself, Urby’s approach is refreshing…

5 Must Have Beauty Products for Working Mothers

Hi everyone, hope all of you are doing well. I know I have been missing from this space lately but I am back and have loads of stuff planned in December. So without further ado, let me talk about 5 must have beauty products for working mothers! Women in general and working mothers in particular are forever short on time. “Oh,…

Santas Box November 2017: Unboxing

Santas Box – even the name sounds like a gift coming your way. Does it not? It is a new beauty subscription box. This month, they went with a christmassy red box that included 5 products. Have a look at my Santas Box November 2017 unboxing video https://youtu.be/ZZLZnxi37fE The price of the Santas Box is INR 590 and it has…

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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.

Indian woman looking at her reflection in a mirror with a soft peach-toned glow, symbolising identity stories we tell ourselves, self-perception, and how personal identity is shaped

Identity: The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Who We Are

We don’t arrive at an identity. We inherit one, repeat it, and slowly start believing it. This is about the stories we live inside, and what happens when they stop fitting.

Warm, softly lit reading nook with stacked old books, a wand-like object, and a glowing lantern, evoking a layered, magical world built through quiet details rather than explicit fantasy imagery.

Harry Potter: The Stories That Built a World

You don’t realise it the first time. The story has already shown you everything. It’s only when you return that the threads begin to pull, and the world reveals how carefully it was built.

South Asian women in a warm peach-toned living room, leaning in mid-conversation, capturing the intimacy of shared storytelling and how gossip shapes perception and relationships

Gossip: The Oldest Story Nobody Admits to Telling

Gossip has always been dismissed as small. But it carries everything a story does. Power, perspective, consequence. The story doesn’t change. The person telling it does.

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Most Recent Posts

The Woman I Never Met

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.

Cartoon illustration of a woman at her laptop, flanked by encouraging and critical versions of herself, surrounded by notes about praise, criticism and feedback

Are You Friends With Feedback?

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.

Warm editorial image of assorted handmade chocolates arranged on a counter, suggesting a blog homepage imagined as a carefully curated chocolate storefront.

If My Blog Was a Chocolate Factory

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.

Warm kitchen table arranged like a filing desk, with cards labelled Alpha Mom, Beta Mom, Almond Mom, Tiger Mom, Free-Range Mom, Snowplow Mom, and a crumpled Tired Mom card beside school items.

Types of Moms and the Labels Motherhood Refuses to Fit Into

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.

Woman standing slightly apart in a softly blurred crowd, suggesting the quiet visibility of ordinary people in everyday life.

The Tiny Fame of Ordinary People

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.

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.

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