MUSINGS

From the Notebook

Writing about everything under the sky β€”Β and the life that happens in between.

Singapore, With All of It

It began with the wrong MRT station. We were staying on Orchard Road. Dhoby Ghaut was two minutes away. Instead we walked ten minutes in the wrong direction and took the longest route possible. Not one person told us. Every time we passed that Holiday Inn for the next four years I laughed...

Who Lights the Fire

I wanted to be present for every ritual, every prayer, every step of the journey the tradition says the soul takes after the body is gone. I wanted to light the fire. Instead I watched...

Dependency Is a Trap. Even the Loving Kind.

This is not a dramatic essay about crisis or collapse. It is about something quieter β€” the slow accumulation of small moments that eventually add up to a realisation. Dependency, even when it comes wrapped in love and good intention, is a trap. Even the loving kind...

We Are All Living Inside the Mahabharata

I could see all of it in the Mahabharata β€” the jealousies, the manipulation, the disrespect toward women, the power of money, fighting for what is rightfully yours. And then I looked at the modern world today...

Karna – Was He Betrayed by Destiny or by His Own Heart?

Something about Karna's life has always unsettled me. Not sympathy β€” something closer to recognition. A quiet awareness of how profoundly unjust a life can be, even one lived with extraordinary courage and generosity...

When Astrology Felt Like Therapy

The most unexpected thing astrology gave me was not a prediction. It was relief. For years I carried the question of my career as though it were a verdict on my character. Then I found a different explanation β€” and it changed something...

Dear Daughter, Earn Your Own Money

If I could give my daughter one gift β€” not a thing, not an experience, but something that would stay with her through every season of her life β€” it would be financial independence. Her own money. Earned by her own hands. In her own name...

The Weight We Were Never Asked to Carry

There is a kind of exhaustion that does not show up on your face. You still show up. You still manage. But somewhere beneath all of that is a heaviness that has been there so long you have stopped noticing it. Like furniture you have walked around for so many years you no longer remember choosing it...

She Carries Everything and Still She Smiles

She worked in my home for six years. Every time I see her β€” cheerful, unhurried, arriving with a smile that has no business being there given everything she carries β€” I think the same thing. Would I have her grace?...

Everything I Found While Looking For Something Else

I kept trying to photograph the yaksha. Every time I pressed the shutter, Devi appeared instead. It took me a while to understand that she had been there all along β€” and that I had been dismissing her because she was not what I came for...