Welcome to my blog 🙂

Hi! My blog is a collection of stories about my personal experiences, my learnings as a mental wellbeing advocate, my journey as a dancer, and issues concerning the South Asian diaspora. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed penning them down.

Dance and the Five Ways to Wellbeing

In some of the most challenging phases that I have experienced in my life thus far, I have somehow found myself pulled towards the dance studio to ease my mind. I was drawn to the idea of leaving all aspects…

A Year On from the Delhi Riots

On 23rd February 2020, the streets of Delhi were on fire. While India’s capital burned, so did a big part of my childhood. Delhi to me was falling in love with Urdu through my ancestor’s names. It was the poetry in…

Syaahi: Ink of Black Fear

It can’t be a coincidence that my birth month, September, is also Suicide Prevention Month and Alopecia Awareness Month, the two causes fueling my social work over the past two years. For anyone trying to imagine what the mental health…

Equating Working to Wellness

Recently, I have been invited by a few organisations to give talks on workplace culture, and especially on how to incorporate mental wellness into potentially stressful environments. I don’t want to spill the beans on the presentation content too much,…

A Dedication to Kashmir

While many of us are facing woes about lockdowns and inability to meet loved ones, it is painful to think that much more drastic militarized and blacked-out lockdowns are not uncommon for Kashmiri citizens. This piece is dedicated to the…

Eat More Palak (Eid Mubarak)

I have been celebrating Eid for as long as I can remember celebrating Diwali. Every year, on the morning of Eid, I would jump out of bed to wear the shining salwar outfit that my mum had laid out for…

Training the Mind to Love The Mirror

As much as people tell you that looks don’t matter, the truth is that to a 20-year old girl, it does. And I needed to work with that fact. For so long, I had lived under the notion that there…

Catch-22: Health vs. Education

Four years ago, I moved to California to pursue my higher education. My parents being expats in Singapore, I went through the international baccalaureate education system – a western-centric education. At the age of five, I recognized my identity as…

What is the difference between a woman and an elephant?

Gods, Goddesses, Kathak, and Humanity   There has been collective outrage amongst Indians upon the news of a pregnant elephant intentionally being fed a pineapple filled with firecrackers in rural Kerala. Naturally, I saw my social media flooded with calls…

To my Family and Friends of Indian Descent:

I see you speaking up to show solidarity with the black community, and I am proud of you. I see you passionately voicing issues that you feel strongly about, and I am happy that you are doing so. But why…

The Hardest Breakup: An Ode to the Class of 2020

As international students, we flew across the world as naïve 18-year-olds with the end goal of flinging our caps up into the sky, popping that bottle of champagne, and seeing the proud look in our parents’ eyes. As the global…

Starlight, Star Bright

My mother once took me to the window and pointed to the stars. She told me to find the brightest one. “That’s where Nana is. He is watching over all of us from up there” she said. And that answer…

Dilli Photo Diary: Mine and Theirs [Delhi Riots]

A collection of simple photos that I took of some of my favorite moments in Delhi in August 2019, placed against recent media photos of the city in February 2020.                    â€¦

Heartless Dilli [Delhi Riots]

Today Delhi is on fire. And while the country’s capital burns, so does a big part of my innocent childhood. Delhi to me was the slightly misty mornings where I would go out to the balcony to hang my towel…

It Takes Two to Tango

Wake me up when October ends October hit and suddenly, my mind decided that it would be cool to turn into Facebook’s memories feature. Each day I would think, “this is roughly the day two years ago that I looked…

A Balancing Act

It is challenging to juggle dance, academics and being 21 all at once. On top of that, now is about the time where I am meant to be formulating potential plans for my overly exciting and ambitious future. And I…

Guru-Shishya

I began to see it in myself. I began to look at myself and see a dancer smiling back at me. And that is the magic of a Guru. Someone who with one look, can take you from not even…

Weaves of Love

She irons and lays them out the night before so that they can be aired. She delicately runs her fingers across the weaves to even out any creases. She carefully selects her jewellery and accessories and places them at the…

Saawan: A Monsoon Melody

Saawan is arguably my favorite performance to date not only because I was in love of the versatility of kathak that I was able to display through the show, but also because of what it meant to myself in terms…

Adaa: The Mysterious Essence of a Dancer

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my kathak training, or what I would be able to do with the art form once I started college. But, following the success of my Manch Pravesh and the immense encouragement…

Manch Pravesh (Arangetram)

The Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society’ first kathak Manch Pravesh (Arangetram) and my first solo debut, where I was officially presented as a disciple of Guru Mulla Afsar Khan. A Manch Pravesh is a graduation ceremony, it’s your first steps…

What happened when I turned twenty

I turned twenty and I didn’t feel any different. Why would I want to? It had barely been a month since my best stage performance yet and I was living in its glory, I loved my classes and the school…

The Storm Before the Calm

I was looking back at my journal, at some of my entries from my summer in Singapore and I came across something that I had completely forgotten I had felt and written down. Here’s an excerpt:

Summer Mornings in Civil Lines

Three identical mugs of milk. That’s what we woke up to every morning. A warm welcome by Nani’s soft hands and soothing voice. It’d be a wild rush between my brothers and I to shower and get ready before Shakuntala…

8 Ways you live differently if you love your life

People have frequently asked me how I love my life so much, how I get so excited about it or how I balance the things I love. Guess what?! You don’t have to have a different life to love it,…

Steps to Positivity you can Count on Your Hand

I started this year with a confused heart and intense fever. Lying in bed and not being able to do much made me reflect on how helpless I felt. This was in terms of health and heart, but also in…

The Uncle with the Smile in his Eyes

I clearly remember the summer day we spent together in Cambridge. He’d driven all the way from London to visit the sister he’d adored, excited to spend time with her kids. His presence always brought a smile to our faces,…

9 Lessons You Pick Up when your Hair Drops

Alopecia is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes hair loss primarily on the scalp but also on other parts of the body. It occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s hair follicles. The disease does not have any…

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