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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Sometimes when we struggle to fit in, it may be because we deserve better. We don’t always need to change. We owe it to ourselves to do justice to the self.
Editor's note: “Mamma, it’s our birthday tomorrow,” our firstborn told me the night before she turned 20 this week. “My birthday is also your birthday of becoming a mother.” “Yes,” I said, hugging her softly. “It is.” The pandemic years have been extra disruptive for the April-born. Sahar turned 17 when the first lockdown had paralyzed the country in April 2020, creating an unprecedented hunger crisis for India’s working poor. The next year she was sick in bed as the second wave of COVID-19 struck, bringing in a tsunami of death and trauma. We were still reeling as a family and a society in 2022—unable to distinguish anymore what the direct causes of our prolonged fatigue and restlessness were. “I want to talk to a therapist,” Sahar started telling me at some point in the last three years. I listened to her. I put in extra effort, trying to be a parent who was more present than absent even if we were in the same spaces most of the time. She was crying a lot. It was difficult to separate her personal …
To be a teacher means being open to learning all the time. To stand upon the desk and stay in touch with my inner student. To make mistakes and get used to being humbled.
We wanted to change things but needed a safe space for ourselves, too. My elderly in-laws, Ammi and Papa—the two people we had been most afraid of offending with our inter-faith marriage—became our allies.
We are buckling under pressure to brush off anxieties and pretend that everything is back to normal in our workplaces, homes and schools. We are not alone, yet we feel isolated.
