When realisation hits you

 When You Finally See It: Choosing Yourself in a Patriarchal Family

There comes a moment quiet, uncomfortable, impossible to unsee when you realise your family isn’t just “traditional,” it’s patriarchal. Not in theory. Not in abstract debates. But in the everyday ways your voice is softened, your choices are negotiated, and your autonomy is treated like a privilege instead of a right.

And that moment changes everything.

Because once you see it, you can’t go back to playing the “good girl” who keeps the peace at . It shows up as “concern” that slowly becomes control. It shows up as expectations be agreeable, be accommodating, be less. It shows up in decisions made for you, disguised as decisions made for your own good. 

For a long time, you participate. Not because you agree, but because resistance feels like betrayal. You tell yourself this is love. That compromise is maturity. That endurance is strength.

But then something shifts.You start asking questions. You start pushing back. You start holding up a mirror.

And that’s when it gets uncomfortable not just for you, but for them.

Because when you make people confront a truth they’ve benefited from ignoring, it doesn’t land softly. It lands hard.What follows is rarely accountability. It’s defensiveness. Denial. Rewriting of narratives. Attempts to cover up, justify, or dilute the very patterns you’re calling out. Suddenly, your reality is questioned. Your intent is doubted. Your courage is reframed as aggression.

Because systems like this don’t like exposure. They survive on silence. And your choosing to speak disrupts that.So you become “difficult.”

The one with too many opinions. The one who is disrespectful. The one who has changed. The one who is influenced.

But what they’re really reacting to is loss of control.Here’s the truth no one prepares you for. Choosing yourself in a patriarchal family will cost you something.

It might cost you approval. It might cost you emotional ease. It might cost you the version of family you thought you had.

And yet, not choosing yourself costs you far more.

It costs you your voice. Your identity. Your ability to live a life that feels like yours.

Being the “bad bitch” in this context isn’t about attitude or aesthetics. It’s about clarity. It’s about knowing who you are and refusing to negotiate that for acceptance. It’s about setting boundaries, even when they’re met with resistance, especially when they are.

It’s also messy. You will doubt yourself. You will feel guilty. You will wonder if you’re being too much.You’re not.

You’re just no longer willing to be less.

And here’s the uncomfortable part. They may never fully own it. They may never say you were right. They may continue to soften the edges of what happened, or bury it under intent, tradition, or sacrifice.But your healing cannot depend on their admission.Breaking out of patriarchy within a family isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s in the quiet refusal. The boundary held. The decision made without permission.

It’s not about rejecting your family. It’s about rejecting the parts of the system that diminish you.Because you can love them and still refuse to be limited by them.

So if your eyes have opened, don’t force them shut just to keep things comfortable.

What you’re seeing is real.

And the version of you that refuses to shrink is not the problem.She is the reckoning :) 

Baa baa black sheep ? Have you any life ?

Do you ever wonder if you are the family’s black sheep?

Not in the loud, rebellious way people like to label, but in the quieter, more unsettling sense. The feeling that you see things differently, feel things more deeply, question things others accept without pause. The sense that you don’t quite fit into the version of life that seems to work so well for everyone else.

There comes a point when you realise that no one, not even the people who raised you, truly understands you.

They know your name, your routines, the version of you they have grown comfortable with. But the deeper parts remain untouched. The music you have heard and felt the lyrics hit you in ways only you understood. The way you have loved, intensely and without instruction. The way you have tasted love even in something as simple as someone’s recipe. These are not things that translate easily. They live in a world that is entirely your own.

And yet, you bend.

You bend to meet expectations that were never designed for the person you are becoming. You soften your edges, silence your questions, and slowly trade pieces of your truth for approval. It does not happen dramatically. It is gradual, almost invisible. A part of you does not break, it simply fades.

In its place, something else begins to grow. A quiet obsession. The need to pursue something that is acceptable, respectable, and approved by family or society. You chase it relentlessly, believing that somewhere along the way you will finally earn the validation you have been waiting for.

But the truth is far more uncomfortable.

The people you are trying to impress have not lived your inner world. They have not heard the music the way you have. They have not felt words rearrange something inside them the way you have. They have not loved with the same abandon or found meaning in the smallest, most ordinary moments.

Their understanding of life exists within boundaries they have never felt the need to question.

And still, you look to them for approval.

You seek validation from people whose worldviews were never meant to hold the fullness of who you are. People who might struggle to confront their own truths because those truths would disrupt the sense of order they rely on.

So what are you really chasing?

Approval from those who cannot fully see you. Validation from those who have never had to truly see themselves.

If this isn’t a quiet, existential joke, then what is?

And maybe the real shift happens when the question changes. Not “why don’t they understand me,” but “why do I keep needing them to?”

Womaniya din especial

This article is a little late for Women’s Day, but it’s something I still want to talk about—the absence of strong female role models for many women growing up in India.

In patriarchal households like the one I grew up in—even the supposedly educated ones—free-thinking women are often villainized. A woman who demands her rights, sets boundaries, or simply states what she wants is seen as difficult, rebellious, or “too much.”

When I was growing up, I didn’t see many women who lived unapologetically. I saw educated women, yes—but many who quietly deferred to husbands and families, women who had voices but rarely used them. Some had romanticized struggle so deeply that sacrifice had become their identity. Others had convinced themselves that destiny had already been written for them.

And when a young girl grows up watching this, how exactly is she supposed to learn to draw boundaries? How is she supposed to look at a room full of male heirs and say, “I am just as capable, if not more”?

Some of the women I saw growing up carried silent battles their entire lives. A few of them left this world far earlier than they should have. I often wonder if the constant emotional negotiation required to exist within a system that treats you like a burden simply became too heavy.

What disturbed me even more was how easily women were persuaded to give up whatever financial independence they had—to sons, brothers, or male relatives who promised “support.” Or how they quietly held entire households together while unemployed husbands chased abstract spiritual quests but still claimed the authority of being “the man of the house.”

This is my perspective, shaped by what I saw growing up.

And it’s why I believe the absence of strong female role models is not a small cultural gap—it’s a dangerous one. Because when girls grow up without women who embody agency, courage, and self-respect, the only model they are shown is sacrifice.

And sacrifice alone is not empowerment.

Young women deserve better role models than the glorified image of the endlessly self-sacrificing woman who believes that silence is strength. True empowerment begins when women see other women claim space, speak openly, and live on their own terms.

Stranger things have happened

Stranger Things: When the Ending Didn’t Stick the Landing

I’ll admit it I was disappointed. Not immediately, but gradually, the kind of disappointment that settles in once the dust clears and you realise the show you loved didn’t quite end the way you hoped it would.

Vecna’s (or Henry/mr what’s it” as I kept emotionally processing him) arc was probably the strongest part of the finale. His pain, his isolation, the slow corruption—it worked. You felt for him, even when you weren’t supposed to. That tragic villain energy was done well. But for all that buildup, I kept waiting for a bigger twist. Something that would flip the story on its head the way Stranger Things used to do so effortlessly. It never came.

El leaving felt inevitable. Somewhere deep down, I knew this wasn’t going to be a neatly wrapped happily-ever-after—especially after Kali alluded to it seasons ago. So while it was emotional, it wasn’t surprising. And maybe that’s the problem: the show once thrived on surprise, and here, it played it safe.

What disappointed me more was what happened to the rest of the characters. They drift off into separate, almost boring lives. For a group that survived interdimensional monsters, government conspiracies, and psychic warfare, their endings felt oddly… flat. It was realism, yes—but dull realism. And for a show built on chaos, wonder, and constant escalation, that felt like a letdown.

Will’s arc was handled gently and with care, and I appreciated that. But it came too late. His emotional truth deserved space earlier, not as a quiet afterthought near the finish line. It landed—but softly, when it should have hit harder.

And then there’s Winona Ryder hacking Vecna. I’m sorry, but that was unintentionally hilarious. Iconic? Maybe. Intense? Not really. It pulled me out of the moment when I should have been on the edge of my seat.

Overall, it was the last episode that disappointed me the most. Not because it was terrible—but because it was underwhelming. For a show I loved for its twists, risks, and emotional punches, the ending felt like it chose comfort over courage.

Stranger Things will always have a special place for me. But this finale? It didn’t haunt me the way the Upside Down once did.

On breaking some bonds

People talk about karmic bonds as if they dissolve through insight or acceptance. They don’t. Most of the time, they end through exhaustion.

A karmic bond is difficult to leave because it doesn’t live in memories alone. It lives in habits of thought, in emotional reflexes, in the nervous system. You can understand why it didn’t work and still feel pulled back into it. Insight helps, but it doesn’t free you.

What keeps the bond alive isn’t love in the ideal sense. It’s unfinished business—things never said, choices never made, accountability that never arrived. The mind keeps returning, not because the connection was right, but because it was unresolved.

Breaking it is rarely graceful.

It involves repeatedly choosing against your own impulses. It means stopping yourself from revisiting old conversations, resisting the urge to check, compare, interpret signs, or imagine alternate endings. None of this feels spiritual. It feels like withdrawal.

There is also anger in it. At them, for their avoidance or inconsistency. At yourself, for staying longer than you should have. At life, for allowing something intense to exist without a viable future. This anger doesn’t mean you haven’t healed. It means you’re seeing clearly.

What finally weakens a karmic bond is not forgiveness or closure. It’s disappointment that you no longer override. The moment you stop excusing what hurt you, the bond begins to lose its authority.

You don’t break a karmic bond by reframing it as meaningful. You break it by admitting that it required too much self-betrayal to continue.

Even then, it doesn’t disappear all at once. It fades unevenly. Some days you feel free; other days you feel pulled back into old emotional muscle memory. This doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means the bond was real and deeply ingrained.

Eventually, something shifts. Not peace—just neutrality. The story loses urgency. The person stops feeling central to your inner life. You don’t need to replace the bond with something else; you just stop feeding it.

Permanently re tired

At 40-plus, I’ve discovered a superpower I never asked for: being permanently tired. Not regular tired soul tired, the kind that makes you question why people over 30 are still allowed to create drama. At this age, my bandwidth is so limited it might as well be prepaid data in a remote village.

Which is why I’ve officially decided: I have zero capacity to entertain sub-par behaviour from anyone. Colleagues, neighbours, relatives, that one overly enthusiastic cousin everyone is on notice.

Everyone… except my offspring.

Because motherhood apparently comes with a lifetime subscription to nonsense we never signed up for. So while I won’t tolerate adults behaving like toddlers, I will, paradoxically, tolerate an actual toddler trapped inside a teenage body—complete with eye rolls, mood swings, and a mysteriously empty fridge.

Avoidant behaviour

Yes  we absolutely do. Some love with words, some with silence. Some show up, some withdraw. But sometimes, what we call “different ways of loving” is actually emotional avoidance dressed up as personal style.

Take the now-normal behaviour of leaving someone on read or disappearing mid-conversation — not because you’re angry, but because “it’s not a convenient time.” It’s called emotional disengagement or avoidant behaviour. It’s when someone pulls back, consciously or subconsciously, to protect their own comfort instead of nurturing connection.

What does it do to the other person? It creates uncertainty — a quiet kind of rejection that says, “You’re not a priority right now.” It teaches them to self-doubt, to hold back, to mirror that same distance. Slowly, intimacy is replaced by caution.We may tell ourselves we’re just “busy,” but love doesn’t demand constant presence  only emotional responsibility. A quick message that says, “Hey, can we talk later?” takes seconds, but it says: I see you. You matter.

Because yes, we love differently. But loving responsibly means realizing that even silence speaks  and someone is always listening.