A common question I encounter in each of these situations when I advocate walking away is “What is the alternative?” What indeed is the alternative? Walking away from years of investment into a relationship meant to be for life? Or is it walking away from the security of a roof over the head? Walking away from everything you have known and are familiar with? Where do you go from there?

Groaning with pain inwardly, I gritted my teeth and stood behind my colleague showing him how something was done. I eyed his chair longingly and realized I couldn’t really ask him to get up and give it to me without invoking either pity or disdain. Year after year of dealing with intense pain as my [...]

Swapping the pearl pendant for the teardrop onyx one, she paused, the image in the mirror reflecting the uncertainty in her mind. Ten years. Ten years since she left behind stereotypes, conventions and the weight of expectations. Over the years she had traded in her salwars for dresses, her metti* for bare feet and her kumkumam* for an impassive blank face. Morph as she did into a nameless faceless entity in the great melting pot that was her adopted country; there were moments like today where she paused.

I did not hear melodramatic music. The heavens did not come crashing down. Nothing dramatic happened. My realization that I could not be a biological mom was born from years of trying to have a baby with no success. As I alternated between grief and pragmatism, somewhere in the middle I realized how much of [...]

While the society I grew up in is slowly giving way to one that is more progressive, these issues have not vanished. They are only mutant and thriving. I see it even today in the classified ads. In commercials that objectify women. In pictures of an abused pop star. In antiquated passport forms that ask for father’s or husband’s name. In the protective hand that steers the woman away from sitting next to a stranger who is male.