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.

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.

A softly blurred silhouette of a person sitting alone on a bench against a warm peach background, evoking quiet reflection and the feeling of sitting with a story

Fredrik Backman: The Stories That Make You Sit With People

Some writers tell stories. Fredrik Backman makes it impossible to walk away. You carry his characters into ordinary days, where they feel more real than people you know.

A woman sitting by a sunlit window, holding a cup of tea with an open book resting on her lap, lost somewhere between the page and her own thoughts

Emotion: The Stories That Change Without Changing

Same song. Same book. Same film. But not the same experience. The story doesn’t change. What you carry into it does.

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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.

Sexist Messages: Why they are damaging

Some time back, I had attended a workshop organised at work. It was meant to help a bunch of women find their voice and open up their minds. One of my take away points was about self respect and another was how we continuously use sexist messages and the sub conscious conditioning they provide. Image: Flickr/henrikj The…

#MicroblogMondays – Weight Issues

Today Morning I weighed myself in. I do this every week to adjust my water intake. This morning I realised that I had gained 2 kilos more. For the first time in my memory, this upset me. I am no stranger to weight fluctuations. However, today I was upset at the gain and angry at myself. Very Very Angry. The…

Tomboy or Girly Girl?

Am I a girly girl? I asked the BFF. And the answer was no. You are neither a girly girl nor a tomboy. You sit somewhere in the middle. Not that there is anything wrong being either but extremities of any kind make me uncomfortable! There was a time I viewed the world with rose tinted glasses. I read and wrote…

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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.

Fun O Factory – A Play Area Review

Fun O Factory is an indoor play area at R City Mall in Mumbai. LifestyleProBlog reviews the three sections – softplay, ropecourse and trampoline park.

Are We A Generation of Anxious Parents?

My daughter was sick last week. She missed school almost the whole week. Missing school means missing out on lessons and falling behind your studies, a whole lot of homework and catch-up when you get back to school and a whole lot of worry for the parents and children. This seems like a pretty common scenario. Right? In fact, as…

Is My Child Growing Right? The Parental Anxiety Story!

I am sure Paediatricians all over the world will agree that the most common query they get from parents of perfectly healthy children is “Doctor, is my child growing right?” In today’s world of fierce competition, we start off as soon as the child is born. Looking at percentile growth for the weight, the height and even the circumference 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.

Violet Box May-June 2017 Unboxing, Review and a Promo Code

Hiya people, you know it is raining subscription boxes in India! Of the few I have tried, I really like the Violet Box and hence I am reviewing the Violet Box May – June 2017. Violet Box is different because it is released once in two months and contains products that you can use for the two months. The box…

What does Instagram know about me?

I was scrolling through my Instagram feed this morning and was curious about the ads that were shown to me. Why were these particular ads shown? What was the basis of targeting? What does Instagram know about me? I took screenshots and then tried to analyse what Instagram knows about me. So, here are the ads : Smaaash Smaash is a…

Haircut at Jean-Claude Biguine – My Experience and an Offer!

Why did I go for a Haircut at Jean-Claude Biguine? Well, it is a longish story. Sit back, relax and read 🙂 I have written quite a bit about my hair on the blog. My hairstyles story is a two-part series where I talk about my decade-long journey with different hairstyles. The rebonding experience is one of the most popular posts…

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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.

People in conversation showing how stories influence perception, memory, and control

Control: The Stories We Tell to Manipulate

We think we tell stories to explain what happened. But every story leaves something out, rearranges something else, and slowly becomes the version we can live with.

Bias: The Same Story, Told Differently

We like to believe there’s one version of what happened. But most of the time, what we hold on to is shaped less by the event itself, and more by what we needed it to mean.

Crowded street scene with everyday people moving through a city, capturing ordinary life without a single focal subject

Average: The Stories That Don’t Get Told

If it doesn’t look like success or struggle, we don’t call it a story. But most of life happens in that unnamed space in between.

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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