the yearly appointment

Yearly check-ins are a quiet reality when you live with a lifelong illness.

This year’s visit wasn’t much different. The same waiting. The same low-level anxiety. The same wondering whether the brain scan would show changes from the year before. You brace yourself for news before it even arrives.

And then came something I never expected to hear.

“You might not have to take forty four tablets a day anymore.”

Relief doesn’t even cover it. Ecstatic comes closer. Because those tablets are a daily reminder. A reminder that my brain works differently. A reminder I sometimes try to avoid by forgetting them on purpose, just to feel normal for a moment.

But hope, with illness, rarely comes without an asterisk.

“We have to be cautious,” the doctor said. “Your brain disease is rare. We don’t have the data. I don’t want you to be the patient we experiment with.”

And just like that, relief tangled itself with confusion. With sadness. With the possibility that forty four daily tablets might still be my reality.

It’s a strange emotional balance. Being grateful for the chance of change, while also sitting with uncertainty. Feeling lucky to be monitored, supported, looked after, while still wishing things were simpler, clearer, easier.

I don’t know what the next year will bring. I don’t know whether the number will change or stay the same. What I do know is that living with a lifelong illness teaches you how to hold multiple truths at once.

Gratitude and fear.
Hope and caution.
Relief and disappointment.

And above all, gratitude for the opportunity to keep checking in, even when the path isn’t certain.

the biannual family staycay

This year, milestones didn’t arrive one by one. They arrived all at once, packed into a family staycation with over twenty-five of us, spanning ages one to eighty. Different generations, different stages of life, all under one roof. Loud, chaotic, warm in the way only family can be.

We went away together, something we’ve started to do every other year, and it’s slowly become a tradition without anyone formally naming it as one. A pause in the calendar where life slows down just enough for us to celebrate us.

We celebrated Diwali, lights and colour and togetherness, but we also celebrated the quieter milestones of the year. First birthdays. Fortieths. Sixtieths. Seventieths. Eightieths. Moments that mark how far we’ve come, and how much life has unfolded in between.

There was something grounding about seeing all those ages side by side. Watching a one-year-old take in the world while an eighty-year-old reflects on a lifetime of memories. It put everything into perspective. Time felt less linear and more shared.

These celebrations weren’t about grand gestures or perfectly planned moments. They were about presence. About being able to sit together, eat together, laugh together, and acknowledge the passing of time without fear. Just gratitude.

I felt deeply aware of how lucky we are to still have these moments. To still have each other. To be able to gather generations together and celebrate life while everyone is here to be celebrated.

Not everyone gets this. Not everyone gets to mark milestones like this, in full rooms, with overlapping conversations and shared history. And that awareness makes it feel even more precious.

I’m grateful that this has become our rhythm. Every other year, stepping away from routine to honour the years we’ve lived, the ones we’re entering, and the fact that we get to do it together.

the same person

You hear it in the phrases we use, the jokes we repeat, the quotes we casually drop into conversation as if they’re original thoughts. You see it in the way people dress, the colours, the silhouettes, the aesthetics that cycle through everyone at once. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Like we’re all pulling from the same shared reference sheet.

Is starting to to feel like we’re becoming versions of the same person.

We often blame the algorithm for this. We talk about it like it’s some ominous force shaping our tastes and identities. But what actually is an algorithm? At its core, it’s a recommendation system. It shows us things it thinks we’ll like based on what we’ve already engaged with. In that sense, it’s not so different from a friend saying, “You’d love this,” or “This reminded me of you.”

And that’s where it gets complicated.

Because so much of what we’ve ever loved has been recommended to us by someone else. Music passed down by siblings. Books lent by friends. Films suggested late at night. Even personal style has always been influenced by what we see around us. None of us have ever been entirely self-made in our tastes.

So what is really different now.

The difference is scale, speed, and sameness.

Recommendations used to be personal, contextual, shaped by intimacy. Now they’re mass-produced. Thousands, sometimes millions of people are being shown the same things at the same time, framed in the same way, praised using the same language. Taste no longer trickles, it floods.

When enough people are recommended the same things, individuality starts to blur. Not because people lack originality, but because the pool we’re all drawing from has narrowed. We’re all discovering things simultaneously, reacting in similar ways, internalising the same references.

We don’t know where our genuine preferences end and where repetition begins. We don’t know if we like something because it resonates with us, or because we’ve seen it enough times to feel familiar. Exposure turns into affection. Familiarity turns into identity.

There’s comfort in shared language. Connection in mutual references. A sense of belonging that comes from knowing someone else understands the same joke, the same feeling, the same aesthetic. The internet hasn’t just flattened us, it’s also linked us.

The tension lives in that in-between space.

We want to feel unique, but we also want to feel understood. We criticise sameness while participating in it. We long for originality while relying on recommendations to guide us toward what feels safe, validated, already loved.

Maybe the issue isn’t that the internet has turned us into the same person. Maybe it’s that we haven’t yet learned how to sit comfortably with influence without losing ourselves to it.

The question isn’t whether recommendations are bad.
It’s when they stop being suggestions and start becoming instructions.

And maybe the work now is learning how to notice the difference.

the anniversary

Thirteen years ago, I was diagnosed with a brain disease.

Six years ago, on the very same date, my boyfriend asked me to be his girlfriend.

Two anniversaries. Both held quietly, deeply, differently.

The first is a silent marker of survival. Of months spent searching for answers, of being so severely unwell. It reminds me how long and heavy the road to diagnosis was, how much patience and resilience it demanded before anyone could finally name what was happening.

The second anniversary is lighter. Softer. It marks a beginning rather than an explanation. The start of a relationship that brought ease, laughter, and the feeling of being chosen without condition. A life opening up rather than narrowing in.

I carry both with me.

I want to get to a place where I can fully celebrate living with a brain disease. Where survival doesn’t feel like something I have to downplay or apologise for. But each year, there’s a quiet guilt that sits alongside that desire. A voice that reminds me that many people never got the chance to reach this age. That some never received answers. That others live with symptoms far more visible, far more limiting.

I live with very few visible signs. I get to have a personal life. I get to travel, to love, to exist without my illness announcing itself before I do. And sometimes that privilege feels complicated to celebrate.

But this year, I’m trying to hold gratitude without apology.

I’m writing this from Mexico, celebrating six years with my partner, overwhelmed by how much life I get to live. Not because the illness disappeared, but because it didn’t take everything from me.

Both anniversaries matter. One honours how hard it was to get here. The other honours what became possible once I did.

And maybe the quiet truth is this: celebrating survival doesn’t take away from anyone else’s struggle. It simply acknowledges that I’m still here.

And for that, I’m deeply grateful.

It’s not your fault your face isn’t as beautiful as it is

This weekend, someone said something to me. They looked at me, unprovoked, unprompted and said, “It’s not your fault your face isn’t as beautiful as it is.” The worst thing was, i genuinely thought this person had my back after we reconnected from being distant for a couple of years.

It was one of those comments that catches you off guard not just because of the words, but because of the context: there was none. No tension, no discussion, no reason. Just someone deciding to let their inner voice spill out, with no concern for how it might land.

I’m not one for confrontation. I rarely say something in the moment. But I do write.

So here’s what I want to say, now that I’ve had a moment to feel what I felt.

When did we normalise making unsolicited comments about people’s faces, bodies, or appearance, like it’s nothing?

When did it become socially acceptable to blurt out a judgment, especially one coated in faux sympathy, and expect the other person to just take it?

We’ve created a culture where people think they can say whatever they want, under the guise of being funny and walk away untouched by the impact of their words. But the impact is real.

I know I don’t fit the traditional, cookie-cutter standard of beauty. I’ve known that for a long time. I've even got a blog post about it down below. And the thing is, I’m okay with that.

Actually, I’m more than okay with it. I’m comfortable in my skin. I like the way I look. So does my boyfriend (not that that should matter, but since the world can be superficial and likes to tie value to attractiveness by whether or not you're desired, I thought I’d toss that little fact in for anyone keeping score) 

What I’m not okay with is someone thinking they have the right to voice their thoughts about my face as if it’s public property. As if their opinion adds value. As if I was asking to be rated. There’s a difference between honesty and rudeness. Between being direct and being careless.

If your “truth” involves someone else’s appearance, and they didn’t ask for it, keep it to yourself. Especially if you think you’re being helpful. Spoiler: you’re not.

What you’re doing is projecting your own internalised beauty standards, insecurities, and expectations onto someone else. And that’s not radical honesty, that’s just ego and insecurity. 

My value doesn’t rise or fall based on whether someone else finds me pretty.

And honestly?

If beauty were tied to kindness, I’d be beautiful as fuck.

I’d rather be the person who made you feel seen than the one who made you feel small.

Roots

 As South Asian Heritage Month rolls around, I find myself reflecting on where I come from, not just geographically, but spiritually and culturally.

My identity is rooted in multiple places, layered through generations. My dad’s side of the family has ties to Kenya, my grandfather was born there, part of the large South Asian diaspora lived across East Africa. My mum’s side traces back to India, though she herself was born in Uganda. My dad was born in India, and yet here I am, born and raised elsewhere, never having visited Kenya or Uganda, but still carrying their stories within me.

It’s a heritage that doesn’t sit within one neat box, and I’m proud of that.

There’s something deeply powerful about knowing your family has moved across continents, not just for survival, but for opportunity, for education, for a better future. That movement carries with it stories of courage, resilience, and strength. My grandparents’ generation worked hard to lay foundations for the lives we now lead, building communities, holding on to language, recipes, rituals, and values, while adapting to their new environments.

Even without setting foot in Kenya or Uganda, I’ve felt their presence in the background of my childhood. In the food on our table, the Gujarati phrases dropped into casual conversation, the Bollywood music blaring on our Saturday morning resets, the framed sepia photographs of relatives I’ve never met but somehow know.

There’s something beautiful in the way South Asian identity stretches across borders. We are not just one story, one version of history, or one place on the map. We are global. Diasporic. Interwoven. And while that can feel confusing at times, especially when you’re not “from” where your family came from, it’s also empowering. Because you realise your identity isn’t about being pinned to a postcode, it’s about the people, the culture, and the values you carry with you.

I’ve learned that you don’t need to have lived somewhere to feel connected to it. Sometimes it’s in your name. In your grandparents cooking. In the way your family tells stories. That connection lives within you, quietly powerful and always present.

Too young to be the one in charge

There’s a strange kind of battle that plays out quietly, one I’ve had to navigate more than I’d like to admit.

It’s the quiet push and pull between how I look and what I know.

I’ve always looked younger than I am. And I used to take it as a compliment. “You’ll appreciate it when you’re older,” people would say with a smile, like it’s this eternal blessing to be underestimated.

But the truth is, when you’re building a career, owning your ideas, leading teams, and carving out space in rooms that weren’t made for you. Looking young stops feeling like a compliment and starts feeling like a fight for legitimacy.

I’ll walk into a meeting, pitch and I can see it. The split-second pause."Is she the exec?"

I have softness in my tone, sharpness in my mind, and clarity in my vision, but too often, all of that gets clouded by the assumption that I’m too young to know what I’m doing.

And that’s the internal battle:
Wanting to be seen as competent without having to perform authority.
Wanting to lead without needing to harden myself just to be heard.

Somewhere along the way, we were sold this idea that authority has to come wrapped in sternness, rigidity, or a louder voice. That if you don’t project a kind of hardened confidence, you’ll be overlooked.

But here’s what I’ve been learning, slowly, stubbornly:

Authority doesn’t have to be loud. It just has to be real.

It’s in the way you stand by your work.
The way you speak with purpose, not performance.
The way you hold your boundaries, even when it’s easier to fold.

I can lead with warmth.
I can look like the youngest person in the room and still be the most prepared one there.
I can speak softly and still be powerful.

If you’ve ever been underestimated because of how young you look, remind yourself there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s something wrong with the systems that make us feel like we need to look a certain way to be taken seriously. That confuse experience with appearance. That equate age with value.

I remind myself that my voice is earned, not borrowed.
That I don’t need to overcompensate to belong.
That I can be taken seriously without performing someone else’s version of power.

Looking young is not a weakness, it’s just one more thing we have to learn to navigate with grace and grit.

AI isn't just a buzzword anymore

Remember when "AI" felt like something out of a sci fi movie? Well, those days are absolutely, definitively gone.

AI isn't a buzzword anymore. It's real. I see it when I'm skimming an article and the language feels a little too polished. Even in LinkedIn comments and that ever familiar chat gpt dash.

Sometimes, it's genuinely brilliant, and tools like chatgpt can be a real lifesaver, helping to draft that difficult email when your brain feels fried, or polishing up a presentation. It absolutely can enhance your work, making you more efficient. But lately, I can’t shake this knot in my stomach. A feeling that while it's making us more effective, it's also quietly, stripping us of our personality.

It's a weird thing, isn't it? In a world where so many of us are already starting to look eerily similar (and trust me, that's a whole other rant for another time), now our words are beginning to look the same too. It just feels… clinical. Like we're all being nudged towards sounding like the most optimised, least offensive, perfectly generic version of ourselves.

This feeling hits even harder because, well, I'm a consultant. And not just any consultant, i work for a tech firm that builds AI solutions. So, admitting this, writing this out loud, feels a bit contradictory.

And then there's the really personal layer to it. I live with a brain disease. There are days when my cognitive function feels like walking through the trenches, when every thought takes immense effort to articulate. On those days, the temptation to lean on AI, is incredibly strong. It offers a promise of ease, a way to keep up when my own brain feels like it's failing me.

But then, the other voice pipes up. The one that asks, "If your brain is already fighting an uphill battle, shouldn't you be it more? Pushing it harder? Isn't this exactly when you should be flexing those mental muscles, even if it hurts, to prove you still can?" It's a constant tug-of-war.

A profound irony that a tool designed to help me be more productive sometimes makes me feel less human. Less me.

So yeah, AI isn't a buzzword anymore. It's in every digital corner. And while it offers incredible power, I can't help but wonder what pieces of ourselves were losing in the process.

Because right now, for all its undeniable brilliance, it feels like it's blurring the very lines that define us, one perfectly crafted sentence at a time.

*above is not written with AI.

so, when are you getting married

 A love letter to South Asian girls who are tired of the question

It’s the question that follows you everywhere once you hit a certain age as a South Asian girl.

You hear it when long-distance relatives visit, usually before they’ve even asked how you are.
You hear it at garba, when you’re literally there to celebrate God!!!!, music, and community.
You hear it at the mandir, of all places, where the focus is meant to be faith!!!! not your marital timeline.

And somehow, no matter the setting, it always finds you.

“When are you getting married?”

Sometimes it’s asked with curiosity.
Sometimes with concern.
Sometimes with judgement disguised as humour.
And sometimes as if it’s the most important milestone you could possibly reach.

I understand that for some people, the question feels natural. Especially when you’ve been in a relationship for years. Especially when marriage has been the ultimate marker of stability, respect, and “settling down” in our communities.

But here’s the part that rarely gets said out loud.

I’m not waiting because I don’t love my partner.
I’m waiting because I love myself too.

I’m waiting until I’m old enough, strong enough, and secure enough that people stop walking all over me. Until decisions about my life aren’t made through pressure, guilt, or obligation. Until I can have the wedding I actually dream about.

An intimate wedding.
Filled with people who are genuinely close to me.
Not people invited simply because we a lineage.

I want a day that reflects love, not politics.

Yes, I’ve been in a relationship for five years. And yes, I love him deeply. But I also want more from life than being his wife (sorry mosh I do love you), and I know he wants that too.

I want space to grow.
To build.
To explore who I am beyond a role that society is eager to assign me.

So no, I’m not delaying marriage because something is wrong.
I’m not waiting because I’m unsure about love.
I’m waiting because I refuse to be pushed into something I’m not ready for.

In our culture, marriage often feels like a finish line. As if once you cross it, everything else somehow makes sense. But life is not a race, and marriage is not a reward for endurance.

It’s a choice. A huge one.

And it deserves intention, not pressure.

So how do you say it kindly, without offending, without explaining your entire life story?

Sometimes it’s a smile and, “eeeeewwww.”
Sometimes it’s, “I’m literally just a girl.”
And sometimes, it’s simply changing the subject.

You don’t owe anyone your timeline.
You don’t owe anyone your reasons.
And you definitely don’t owe anyone a version of your life that makes them more comfortable.

I’ll get married when it feels like a celebration, not when people want a party (that I will be paying for!!)
When it feels like a partnership, not a performance (for others to judge how well myself and my partner are together!).
And when it feels like my choice.

Until then, I’m living.

btw we have already made our guest list and we are going to piss a lot of people off wooops x

go to sleep

 For as long as I can remember, sleep has never come easily to me.

I’ve always been the one lying awake long after the house has gone quiet, my mind still busy while the world seems to soften around me. Even growing up. I would replay conversations, imagine future moments, or simply sit with thoughts that refused to dim.

Over time, I tried to fix it. Earlier nights, stricter routines, trying out gentle rules from my therapist in the hope that it would coax my brain into rest. Some things helped briefly, others didn’t. What stayed the same was this quiet resistance to switching off on command.

Lately, I’ve realised I don’t want to frame this as going offline. That idea doesn’t feel honest to me. I don’t think I’ll ever truly be offline, and maybe that’s okay. That feels like a conversation for another day.

Instead, I’m trying to find my way.

There’s something about the quiet that always welcomes me. Not silence exactly, but a softer version of the world where nothing is demanding my attention all at once. In those moments, I’ve started turning to writing. Not to be productive or profound, but to let my thoughts settle somewhere outside my head.

When I write at night, my mind feels less crowded. Thoughts stop circling and start landing. Worries loosen their grip. Feelings I hadn’t named suddenly make themselves known. Sometimes it leads me closer to sleep, sometimes it doesn’t. But it almost always leaves me calmer.

I’m learning that rest doesn’t always mean sleep arrives quickly or perfectly. Sometimes rest is about allowing space. About not forcing myself into someone else’s rhythm. About trusting that the quiet will hold me, even if I’m still awake.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be a great sleeper. But I’m starting to believe that the goal isn’t to shut everything down, it’s to soften into the night. To meet myself gently where I am. To let the quiet welcome me, again and again.

And maybe that’s enough, for now.

chat gpt

Chat gpt is fun. I like to use it to test my critical thinking and arguing. It’s interesting to throw an idea at it, push back, refine a thought, see how something can be framed differently. As a tool, it’s clever. Useful. Even impressive.

But I hate when you can tell when people are it on the daily.

There’s a very specific tone that gives it away. Polished but empty. Overly balanced. Slightly too neat. Messages that say a lot without really saying anything. You can feel when a human hasn’t actually sat with the thought themselves.

And it’s starting to creep into places it really shouldn’t.

Those hidden phrases in text messages, why are we using it to text!!!! Texts used to feel personal. Messy. Impulsive. They sounded like someone. Now they’re starting to read with perfect grammar, neutral tone, emotionally correct but somehow emotionally flat. No quirks. No edges. No personality leaking through.

I miss personality in text. I miss the badly worded message that still somehow feels warmer than a perfectly constructed paragraph. I miss people sounding like themselves instead of like a softened, optimised version of what they think they should say.

There’s something unsettling about outsourcing our voices. Using AI to help think is one thing. Using it to replace how we communicate feels different. Communication isn’t meant to be perfect. It’s meant to be human. Full of pauses, tone, humour, mistakes, emotion.

When everyone starts sounding the same, we lose the small details that make connection real. The way someone phrases something. The way they ramble. The way they over-explain or don’t explain enough.

I don’t want my messages to sound impressive. I want them to sound like me.

Use Chat gbt to think. Use it to challenge yourself. Use it to sharpen ideas. But don’t let it flatten your voice. Personality is messy and imperfect, and that’s the point.

beyond the scroll

There's a quiet beauty in the phone, one that often gets lost in conversations about being chronically online. Like every twenty something, I probably look like I'm glued to my screen, scrolling endlessly, lost in an algorithm. But beneath that assumption, there's something deeper, the privilege of preservation.

The pandemic pushed us all into URL instead of IRL. But perhaps that shift only magnified what was already true, our phones are more than just distractions. They are a vessel for memories and a tool for connection.

It is such a gift to take a picture, not just to remember what something looked like, but to capture what it felt like with a live photo. 

I often find myself looking through my grandad's old black and white photos. They are beautiful, filled with a nostalgia I can't fully grasp. But they also leave me with questions I'll never get to ask, stories I wish I could hear from him directly. I'd give anything to watch a video of him as a young man, to hear his voice tell me about his life in his own words.

We owe it to ourselves, and to future generations, to document our lives. Not just the highlights, not just the curated, but the ordinary and the unfiltered. 

One day, someone will look back at our photos and videos the way I look at my grandad's, searching for connection, for a glimpse into the past, for a sense of who we were.

So take those pictures, record those videos. Capture moments, not just for now, but for the future. Because one day, those moments, will mean everything to someone else.