And sticking out of the sofa were two feet. One shod in a red stiletto, the other bare. The yellow nail polish on the hallux chipped at the edges. The little toe bent in an unnatural position.

A scream rose and died in the throat. Like the body in front of her.

Broken.

That’s the kind of opening I love reading. It’s the kind of opening that breaks me to write. There are few pleasures as satisfying as being professionally misled by a good mystery. To muddle along with the detective, pick up clues like breadcrumbs, distrust the wrong person with great confidence, and then realise the author has been laughing quietly into her sleeve since chapter three. And you are none the wiser. Not even mentioning the unreliable narrator or the closed-room mystery.

As a hardcore lover of mysteries, I was raised on Agatha Christie and her murderous tribe after weaning off Enid Blyton. Mysteries were my thing, even more than romance. Though I have written about it earlier, too, this time the feeling is more personal.

I had always imagined that crafting a mystery would bring readers the same pleasure I’d experienced as a reader. A tribute, in a way, to the authors who made this geeky kid’s childhood magical.

Reality, naturally, was on another planet. Possibly one without oxygen.

I cried when I wrote one. Bona fide ugly crying. With snot and all. While writing a mystery, one is balancing so much at the same time. The actual clues, the suspects’ motives, the detective discovering (how, why, what, when), ensuring the discovery feels earned, the red herrings, no logic flaws, the lack of loopholes, then destroying the red herrings, and the lead-up to the finale.

And THEN comes the toughest part - the explanation at the end, without making the reader feel dumb or over-witted, if I may. One holds so many threads at once. One is not just solving a puzzle, but managing the reader’s ego in real time while they’re not even in the room!

So, why do it at all? Why not just stay on the reader’s side of the page, where the only thing required of you is a working brain, nitpicking the clues, and the patience to wait for chapter twenty-four?

Because somewhere in all that juggling, a woman showed up who refused to leave. And spoke. And was sarcastic as heck. Almost like my Bakasura-Teen, but with better roasts. She wanted to be out, and she practically held my hand and made me type. Subtle possession, anyone? Just make sure it’s literary.

Satyadarshi, my detective, simply refused to stay quiet. Freckled nose, sharp canine tooth, nicknamed “Sleuthing Fang” by her father, and a Mumbai attitude sharp enough to put a native Puneri to shame.

Satyadarshi wanted me to tell people why she does what she does. Why, even after leaving the police, even with an unstable, erratic income, even with her mother’s disapproval, she continues to detect. In her calmer moments, she admitted that while money mattered, it was crimes against the underdog that raised her hackles. The strong survive. The weak perish. And for them, justice isn’t just delayed. It’s often denied. That is the anti-jungle law driving her.

Along with the fear of disappointing the reader, my tears were never really about the technique or the craft. It was also about carrying her sense of justice inside of me for months. I’ve always been the kid rooting for the one nobody else believed in, the underdog. Satyadarshi just gave that instinct a badge and a body count. And gave them the one thing they needed most, someone in their corner.

I started out writing as a tribute...a fervent wish to give people what Ms Christie had given me. But in the end, it was again I who ended up receiving the gift. The gift that Satyadarshi in The Seventh Swar gave me.

To the version of me who had forgotten, buried beneath the debris of daily life.

Satyadarshi wasn’t just a tribute to my childhood heroes, but a mirror. To remind me where I once stood. And where I should stand now.

Looks like I’m back in someone’s corner. And Satyadarshi placed me there. While lecturing me relentlessly through one book, with two more waiting to continue the assault.

Methinks she deserves her mother Ragini’s bad cooking. Every bite of it.

This was a private comment that I received on my story. My story about my mother’s dementia and how it was ravaging me emotionally. And after sifting through similarly worded comments, as expected, I started thinking.

There lies a lacuna in who I am professionally and how I am perceived or received publicly. A huge, huge gap. The commenters out there don’t read what I’ve written, but they immediately want to opine about the supporting photograph. About my dress, my looks, my hairstyle, my pose. About my “vibe.” About messaging me, and I quote, “before others can hijack this conversation.” Essentially, how I appear physically.

This brought me to a question I haven’t been able to shake: what does a woman’s public intellectual presence actually signal to the world, and why does it apparently not signal “I am not available for this.”

The answer is something like this. It signals that she is available. If she is on social media, she is automatically rendered available. To the general public. For comment, correction, appraisal, pursuit. Because if she didn’t want to be approached, why would she be visible?

And available women must be approached. Politely, if possible. Persistently, regardless.

Most people have been raised to be polite. When someone, irrespective of their gender, asks you, “How are you?” You respond with “I’m fine. Thank you. How are you?”

Simple basic courtesy, right?

Wrong.

In the digital world, responding to someone implies that my politeness is a cover for my interest. Because every interaction is viewed and assessed from a dating perspective.

It doesn’t matter how many times the woman may emphasise that she is happily married or is not interested; it is never enough. Every refusal is fresh grounds to try once again. Every refusal is viewed as “a no for that day.“

Not no, equilaterally. Not no, permanently. Not no, because no apparently expires overnight.

I know this because it happens to me.

There are men who turn off history in chats. And then they hit on you. Your refusal disappears, lost in the ether. So, they hit on you again. Because who can remember whether one has already hit on this woman, and anyway, how does it matter? Let us try once again.

Every time someone “re-approaches” me, doubts rise in my mind. Was I too polite? Too friendly? Too slow to block? Too available because I replied once? Should I just block?

Every single person knows the cost of harassment. But the cost of repeated harassment, especially after a clear no, plays differently on the mind. You start to audit your internal reactions and responses instead of questioning their persistence. The thought stays in your mind – colouring your entire day, affecting your mood, making you feel icky. When you have said no. And, clearly so.

The act may not be yours, but the cost is so yours.

Then there is this category of folks who think women shouldn’t mind when they are complimented. A few of my friends, including me, received “compliments” from a serial complimenter.

“What a beautiful DP. Honestly, take it as a compliment.”

Dude, didn’t even change the wording. Because why would he? The woman was never the point. The opening was.

Because DMs are a portal into the dating world. A dating world where they can say whatever they want, and we shouldn’t mind it because we need to “respect the spirit in which it was spoken!”

I can sit here and say it is only the men who keep doing this, but that would be dishonest. Several women also walk on similar shady paths.

A woman–again a serial DM-pinger with a repeatable script–pinged me to persuade me to switch sides. To take me out on a date. Plying me with scientific studies about “how all humans are really bisexual.” I had (mistakenly) assumed that as a woman, she would be more attuned to consent, more sensitive towards it. But it was as if “no” was a word she couldn’t hear or decipher. Eventually, she got so aggressive that I finally blocked her.

And while you are reading this, I can literally sense the question forming in your mind…and it has been one that has been asked of me.

Why do you entertain such people?

Sometimes I don’t know they are “such people” until it’s too late.

But then why chat at all?

Because I think I believe that people are still good. That not everyone is a monster. That not every chat is a solicitation. Some readers genuinely ping me to tell me how much they enjoyed a certain book of mine or a Substack post. And for that little piece of sweetness, I can tolerate the other crap.

But sadly, the relentless barrage of “Hi beautiful” and “Hello chikni” has put me off the messaging scene.

I believe people are still good. I used to believe it without thinking.

Now I have to remind myself.

For the uninitiated: This is Rahul. He is my cousin’s brother-in-law’s neighbour’s friend. He stays in the lane behind ours.

Introductions like these are often overheard at marriages, receptions, or whichever place we Indians deem to congregate. And introduce people.

In my history of four decades on this overcrowded Earth, I have rarely been introduced simply as Natasha. There is always a suffix. Always a locator. Always someone else’s name attached to mine like a return address.

I am always Natasha, Sharmaji ki beti. Natasha, meri bahen ki best friend. Natasha, the oversmart geeky whiz (why not? Self-love is love too 😉)

But I am Natasha, suffix. And that suffix is someone’s identity attached to me. Like scaffolding on a building in almost all of Bombay. As if, without the weight of another person’s name, I might fly off or collapse.

This begins early. Before you even know your own name, you are already someone’s something. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s granddaughter. Someone’s sister. Someone’s neighbour’s child who gets good marks. Someone’s cousin who became “healthy.” Someone’s friend, who is “very bold” because she once answered back in public.

Even our gods (except our Trinity) are not exempt.

Ram is called Dasharathi, the son of Dasharatha. He is also called Raghava, the son of the Raghu dynasty. Sita is known by multiple names. Janaki (daughter of Janaka), Maithili (from Mithila), Vaidehi (from Videha). This wasn’t restricted only to India–even the Greeks, Arabs, and others did this. You don’t need to seek further–look at the Marvel Universe: Thor, son of Odin.

Every single name locates us through a man, a kingdom, or a place rather than through ourselves.

But women are located until they are nearly lost. We never become our own. Boys become fathers, and their names travel forward. A girl begins as her father’s daughter, becomes her husband’s wife, then her children’s mother. Somewhere in this naming relay race, everyone receives the baton except her. She is not the runner; she is the baton passed between hands.

But here is what I find truly interesting. That this is not as ancient or inevitable as we like to pretend.

Women taking their husband’s surname is not an ancient Indian practice, it hardened under the colonial standardisation. Sociologist N. Jayaram noted in a 2005 paper that naming practices in India followed geographical, patriarchal, professional, clan, or caste-based norms. Then colonial paperwork arrived, carrying its own ideas of family, property, legitimacy, and whose name mattered on a form, and it travelled to all its colonies.

Including ours. Where eventually the form won, as forms usually do.

Even though Sita, after her marriage, remained Sita of Mithila, not of Ayodhya, somehow, over time, we stripped women of their rights to be “a person with identity”. We shrunk them to just daughters-in-law of the house, while expanding the son into the ‘kuldeepak’ – the lamp of the lineage.

Which is funny because biology, that cool aunty who ruins family myths, has other opinions. Opinions backed by science.

Studies say that mitochondrial DNA passes from mother to child. Her sons receive it. Her daughters receive it, but only the daughters pass it on to their own children.

So, the maternal mitochondrial line is an intergenerational, unbroken biological inheritance. Women carry their family’s “name” forward in their cells, invisibly, generation after generation, while patriarchy tucked that part behind surnames, ceremonies, and forms. Before someone begins to compose a corrective comment, yes, there are exceptions where paternal mitochondrial DNA transmission has occurred.

Daughters are the kuldeepak. Or kuldeepika, if we are to honour language and be grammatically petty.

And yet, despite carrying the unbroken biological line, a woman still has to fight to keep her own name on a hospital form. Whether a woman takes her husband’s name is her choice entirely, and I have no sermon to give on that.

I continue to use my maiden name, and boy, did that create situations. When I was being admitted for my delivery, the lady at the counter asked me for my full name. I gave it. Then asked me my unborn baby’s father’s name. I gave it.

She looked up.

Confused Worker: “Are you sure this is correct?”

Nine-month-pregnant me, short on patience, dangerously high on sarcasm: “Yes, madam. I assure you, I can tell the difference between my husband and my father.”

Confused Worker: Huh.

She didn’t appear convinced, but accepted it because I had a government ID that claimed it was true. And despite this, my daughter’s certificate still managed to list my father’s name where her father’s name should have been. A case I had to fight while laid up in bed post-delivery.

A few months later, at a family gathering, I was introduced as: This is Natasha, the bahu of the house. She just had a baby. She used to work in Mumbai. She did her Master’s in Computers.

As I thought of the many “me”s, my mind turned towards Sita.

Sita, whose name meant the furrow. Sita, who came from the land and returned to it. Sita, daughter of Bhoomi.

The land carries everything without asking for credit. No one asks the earth for her surname.

I am Natasha, suffix. I’ve been a daughter, sister, wife, bahu, mother, friend, neighbour, “that writer”, “Bakasura-Teen’s mamma”, “Sharmaji ki beti”, and occasionally “madam” when a shopkeeper wanted to sell me something.

But in my cells, quietly, without permission, I am also the unbroken line. The one that was never announced.

The one that carries it forward.

But in my four decades, I have rarely stopped to ask who I am beyond these roles.

Who is Natasha, suffix?

It took me longer than I’d like to admit to search for the answer. I am Natasha.

Just Natasha.

And it turns out that was always enough.

Note: The image concept was mine. Execution was ChatGPT’s. The suffixes, alas, are all real.

I was born an aunt.

If you are Indian, this statement suspiciously doesn’t sound atrocious. My father’s sister (my bua) and his mother (my dadi) were pregnant together (with different fathers, please) in the early 1930s, or so.

So, by the time my parents were hitched, my bua was already a grandmother; my nieces and nephews were a decade older than I was. And took perverse pleasure in calling me buaji or maasiji, depending on the relationship.

One would think this fact would lessen the hurt and bruised ego when a teen actually called me auntyji? One can think that, but one would be wrong.

Epically wrong.

By the time I was 22 (I think), I was engaged and married by 24. Twenty-four is, by any stretch, not old age. Ideally, not a marriageable age either, but hindsight is 20/20. But the moment you tie the knot, you automatically become “aunty” as if with the marriage certificate, you are being given an aunty card.

The first time it happened was the day after the rituals. As a young, shy bride, a cousin-in-law’s son, who was in his early forties, called me auntyji, plunging me into shock. Not mamiji, which would have been a bitter pill to swallow, but still swallow-able. But aunty. With a ji.

The man had two teenagers, and he called me auntyji.

As an aside, the equation aunty > auntyji holds true for life. The limp “ji” at the end makes you feel even worse. Not only are you old, but you are an old person who needs the suffix “ji”.

In Indian kinship, age and relationship-names are mutually exclusive items. Which is why a 45-year-old man can call a 24-year-old woman aunty with a completely straight face and zero guilt. Rishta hai na. Not going to argue with the rationale, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying to me.

I don’t remember my exact reaction to the cousin, but I know that even after two decades, that thorn still lies somewhere in the wreckage of my heart. And because I am me, I browbeat all the same-age-as-me cousins to call me Natasha, and not by our rishta!

For a few brief months post-marriage, I stayed in Delhi - precisely, in Sector 21, Jal Vayu Vihar, Noida. (And what a terrible time it was, but that is a different Substack in itself.) Coming from Bombay, where astute shopkeepers would always call you didi or madam, the aunty culture in the north was... rage-bait for a bull (to mix metaphors and full points for using Gen Z language.)

In a quest to buy panipuri masala, I encountered several “aunty”s, here’s how it played out:

Me: Kya aap ke paas Everest panipuri masala hai?

Ancient Shopkeeper: Hai na, Auntyji. Yeh lo.

Proceeds to hand over jaljeera masala.

Me: This is jaljeera. I want panipuri masala

I spoke slowly, in case my Bambaiya accent was the issue.

Ancient Shopkeeper: Haan, wohi to hai, Auntyji. Thande paani mein mix karliyo and paani taiyaaar.

To a Mumbaikar, jaljeera and panipuri masalas are TWO different things. Not cousins, not neighbours. So different that they are sold in different packets. Sheesh.

North’s “aunty” is South’s “amma”. While in Bengaluru, their amma, somehow, didn’t pinch as much as an aunty, and I have never known why. Maybe because amma sounded less like aging and more like affection. Maybe because language changes the bruise. Maybe because by then I had built some scar tissue.

But when I finally returned to (now) beloved Pune, the aunty-saga continued. The first time a kid said it to me was in the lift.

“Aunty, 7th floor daba do.”

I looked around the empty lift and, with a dhai-kilo-ka-hath wali feeling, pressed the button. After that, the sting became less severe each time. I seek solace in the truth that I am a very cool aunty. In my internal filmography. I do not need the “ji” tail.

When I became a mother, the tag became permanent. Between the lift children and my daughter’s friends, I had made my peace with it. Not because it stopped making me feel old, but because I began to treat it as a title.

I still remember the iconic day when I entered Bakasura-Teen’s school, and her friends gathered around me, giving me high-fives, exchanging secret handshakes, wanting to tell me about their day, and the best part? Being greeted (and met) with affection. I became that aunty.

Aunty: the one who knows things. The one who has tissues. The one who presses the lift buttons. The one who feeds you a mean, cheesy omelette. The one who remembers which child belongs to which flat, which parent, and which annoyance category. The one who laughs when you age her, because what else is she supposed to do?

That is the trick, na? Indian society doesn’t wait for women to grow old. It simply gives them responsibilities until the word begins to fit.

The other day, I had an aunty moment.

I caught myself giving unsolicited advice to someone. Caught myself midway. I turned to them, smiled, and said, “I’m sure you know this already.”

I felt what I imagine a vampire’s first victim feels when they realise they have become one. Terrifying. Count Dracula never warned anyone about this part.

Though when Pooja “Aunty” in Hum Paanch used to say: “Aunty mat kaho na,” the college-me laughed. The now-me, sympathises. She was not rejecting age. She was objecting to premature classification. Because being called aunty is not about age, but is a social reassignment.

Ask a man if he feels the same about being called uncle. He will look at you blankly. Uncle is just a term. Aunty is a classification. Someone should really look into this. Can we call a female detective whose name, maybe, just maybe, is Satyadarshi?

I was born an aunt.

I became an aunty.

Turns out they are not the same thing at all.

Tell me.

When did you become {{shudder}} “aunty”? Or when did you first call someone “aunty” and immediately regret it? Comment here or email me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com

Grey rock response? Indian women have been doing it for generations. We just called it: Haan, theek hai.

It starts when one is young, occasionally reckless.

“Turai ki sabji kaisi bani hai?” your mother nonchalantly asks.

And for a moment, you pause: your mind running over the sins committed, past, present, and future. Then, with self-preservation kicking in, you smile and reply,

“Haan, theek hai.” Then you shove three more mouthfuls of tasteless turai down your gullet. Phew. Danger averted.

At a wedding, when your bad luck detonates and an old aunty corners you with a full TED Talk on how young girls these days don’t know how to stay married, holding you hostage with a stare and sentences showered with spit. Good manners and the muscle memory of childhood slaps have muzzled you from flying off the handle and judging her as a patriarchal patron. You murmur, “Haan, theek hai, Bua ji. You’re absolutely correct.”

(Would’ve preferred the turai to swallowing that lie.) This one is the judgemental flavoured one.

Mansplaining evokes its own category of “Haan, theek hai”, and it’s the ripest. When you, the paper-maker of the households in yours and the next three galaxies, are being explained: “how to fill a form”. And you also know that saying anything else will upset the apple cart, and you can’t afford it in the current situation, so you whisper it in the way a semicolon ends a coding statement. With feeling and finality.

Arguing with a person who has the emotional range of an emancipated kakdi, and the aftertaste of one, you realise that the only way to end this mindless discussion is with “Haan, theek hai.” The “you, bleddy moron” is silent. Like ‘e’ in cake. Like the frustration that is flowing in you.

Replacing the urge to murder with “Haan, theek hai” is a chef’s kiss and a pardon in itself. You’ve had a long, shitty day, dealt with an upset stomach and even more upsetting people, have finally called home and requested the significant other to just order upma for you. You return to palak paneer.

“Where is the upma?” you ask with patience that you didn’t know existed.

“I thought palak paneer was best for your tummy.”

While you stare in disbelief, and add up the defence-lawyer-for-homicide bills in mind, concluding freedom is better, a bitter, “Haan, theek hai” slips out. Murder, she spoke.

There is also the maternal myan mein talwar. The one your mother deployed with surgical precision. “Haan, theek hai”—deadly pause—”jo karna hai karlo.” Which, when translated from Ma to English, means: I’ve washed my hands off this and have warned you. When this goes wrong, and it will go wrong, remember this moment. This is not permission. This is documentation. And now, bloody well, do as I say.

Then there is the everyday one.

Not being seen. Taken for granted. I don’t want to eat dal. I don’t want to eat lauki. Wake me up at 4.00 am. Did you take the printout? Crocin kahan rakhi hai? Can you pick it up? Where is the food? There is too much salt in the dal. Why are you still not ready? We’ll be late because of you. Did you keep the gift?

Resignation. Acceptance. Unwilling to extend the fight. Don’t have the energy to extend the fight. That “Haan, theek hai” hits at another level. The grey rock one. The one we just mutter, so the inner weather remains unreported.

And then there is the one that doesn’t protect you from other people. It protects them from your truth. When you hug your mother at Tapas Elder Care for Dementia, and she asks,

“Tabiyat kaisi hai?”

You look into those eyes that have seen you from a naked newborn to an adult, functioning daughter. You ache to say, “Ma, I’m drowning. Without you, I’m just drowning.”

Your mother tilts her head while you vacillate. So, you smile, pat her arthritic hand, and say with all the honesty you can muster, with love.

“Haan, theek hai.”

Sab theek hai.

Yeah, I get it.

But this is seriously not the point I was getting at. I was born in Bombay. Speed entered my bloodstream much before breast milk made its presence felt. Reaching the station for the 7.23 train from Vashi to VT (OK, CST) or taking the 11.34 Vadala to Andheri. If you don’t have speed, you don’t get anywhere, and I mean that literally, not metaphorically. In Bombay, even metaphors have speed.

Circa early 2000s. Maybe 2007. Location: Newly opened Big Bazar, Pune. Characters: Zombie-as-cashier.

We shopped. Like serious Mumbaikars, we queued. While the previous person’s items were being billed, like a true-blue Bombay-ite, I made a neat pile of our shopping.

Then it was our chance.

The Zombie-on-a-saline-drip picked up a noodle packet. Looked at it. I could see the cogs in her brain chugging along. Moved it towards the scanner. Beep. Looked at the screen. Scanned it again. Beep. Looked at the item. Cog rotated. Moved it to the other side. Repeat.

I stood there with my mouth open while the sixteenth grey hair sprouted on my head. Those were the days when the grey-brown ratio was like chocolate and calories. With a clenched jaw, I muttered. “Can you do it faster, please?” and realised my immediate mistake.

Cashier-girl stared at me. Then at the items on the belt. Then at the one in her hand. And didn’t respond.

Pune had spoken.

Pune and I have known each other since the early 1990s. When we’d travel by the red Asiad (90 Rs ticket!) and spend all our seven lifetimes crossing Lonavala ghats on overfilled bladders and a prayer on our lips. So, the slowness wasn’t really something new to me. But when you stay here, and the lack of speed is an everyday occurrence, you quickly become intimate with your lack of tolerance levels.

But magnanimous that I am, I let the cashier live. Also, because the idea of the Yerwada jail wasn’t too appealing.

Then I discovered Pune evenings.

Mumbai has two display settings like Android phones. Light and dark. Both come with humidity. Evenings and nights are humidity-plus-plus minus the sun. Pune, au contraire, had an actual temperature difference. Come 18:00 hrs, and a cool breeze would blow, which felt…oddly pleasant and suspicious at the same time. What could be the endgame of the wind? Chirped my Bombay-khopdi. But lulled by the gentle caress, my natural suspicions were gently nudged aside, and I fell in love with the weather here. I will never be able to shift to Mumbai because humidity exists. And loudly.

While the weather was lovely, the chaats were another thing altogether. Pune, I discovered, has an over-excessive love for meethi chutneys in chaats and no red chutneys in vada pavs. Even the frankie (never again!) was sweet. An offence to my Mumbai-raised-teekhat-loving tastebuds. Everything was overdosed with meethi chutney. It took me a while to adjust to it, and now I openly ask for mirchi pani while guzzling pani puris.

When I mentioned this incident to a Punekar, he laughed and said (and don’t kill the messenger here): Punekars need the extra sweet to balance their not-so-sweet behaviour. I didn’t say it, I would never say it, so there! And of course, in the next breath, he said: “Arrey, tu Marathi pan bolu shakte? Tujhi bhasha khoop chhaan aaahe, pan Mumbai chi Marathi thodi vegali aahe, na? Amchya Puneri shuddha Marathi saarkhi nahi.” (I swear I got Swapnil Joshi vibes in the movie Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai. For the record, I love the Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai movies. Swapnil and Mukta understood the assignment completely.)

Nobody warned me about the two-wheelers in Pune. Especially three people riding on a single bike, and also Scooty (what I call non-motorbikes). Bombay had little two-wheeler traffic, but in Pune, women dressed from head to toe, not sparing the fingers either, and men riding dual-wheeled vehicles were everywhere. The “manache” traffic rules were exasperating. Pune lesson learnt: two-wheelers and attitude are like clutch ani gear. Never automatic. But travelling by autos driven by sullen drivers, I realised why the women covered themselves! Dust, dust everywhere, not a clean patch to be seen!

But seeing Pune deck up for Ganeshotsav was life-changing. I had visited many pandals in Bombay where speedy darshans, quick service, and enormous crowds were the norm. But here? The dhol tasha, the culture, the sheer pride in the festival, the love, the aartis turned me into a lifelong fan.

It was while watching one such dhol tasha performance led by women and men that we conceived the idea of having a child, because I wanted her to witness what I had. The matching lezim dancers, the cyclical beats, each strike on the dhol an invitation to be a part, each strike, where you are a part.

While Bombay gifted me my (awesome) attitude, it was Pune that gave me my ultimate home. A daughter, who is as Puneri as Puneris can be–a perfect balance of less sweet and more teekha. Pune gave me my books, my furry baby, Biscuit, and friends who are like family. And the yearly ritual of us hosting Lord Ganesh during Ganeshotsav.

And just like that, Pune entered my bloodstream.

But even now, while watching Kabaddi Premier League, whenever U Mumba plays against Puneri Paltan, with the entire house, including Biscuit, supporting Pune, a small, stubborn part of me grieves when they lose a point and cheers when they score one. A very maher vs sasar situation, not exactly sasural, but you get it. Bombay is like one’s first love. You may not be married to it, but it occupies high-value realty space in your heart.

Having said all that, I will never eat vada pav in Pune. Aloo-flavoured garlic ball with no red chutney.

Shakya nahi.
Jai Jai Maharashtra Majha.

Bombay people, Pune people, transplants of all kinds and places, talk to me. Which city pickled you? Which parts do you love, which parts annoy you?

Comment here or email me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com. And bring kala-khatta chamach golas.

Shoutout to for the line in the Bombay-Pune meme.

Ek hazaron mein meri behna hai.

Saari umar hume sang rehna hai.

(Everyone agrees my sister is one in a million, and we will stay together our entire lives)

When this song from the movie Hare Rama Hare Krishna first came out in 1972, I wasn’t born, nor was my elder sister. Heck, my parents were not even married then. But somehow this song became an anthem of sorts, a go-to dedication between my sister and me. As children, we believed it with full sincerity and naivety. That we would always stay together.

Especially in the soft glaze of post-fight make-up scenes, the feeling doubled because then, the extra dose of love overrode logic. And we believed that togetherness was a given. And it was.

Until life happened. Marriage. Kids. A life besides the one we shared took precedence. And ‘saari umar hume sang rehna hai‘ became a memory. Whenever I stumbled upon its box of recollections, I would fondly smile at myself. Childhood was dumb but sweet.

I remembered once, after a vicious fight, I drew a sorry note. With a drawing of badly folded hands, and a scrawled “Please, don’t be mad. Love, your Nunnu” had prompted us to sing it, however badly.

Then our mother got FTD.

And suddenly the very ‘saari umar hume sang rehna hai‘ was replaced by ‘saari umar hume ek sorrow ke saath jeena hai‘. Our separate lives met at that juncture. A juncture of shared grief, shared anger, and shared frustrations.

My sister lives abroad. Her knowledge of Ma comes filtered through my voice, my updates, my carefully chosen words. And one day she asked—Will Ma remember me when I visit? I said, I don’t know. With this disease, we never know. And that not-knowing travelled across time zones like its own kind of grief.

Last week, my sister was in Pune. For a brief hour, in the aftermath of Bharatmilan, we forgot everything else. Even Ma. But when the visiting hours loomed over us, we took her to the centre. Watching Ma hug my sister in a frail but bear hug was emotional. Watching her try to interact with our mother, talking, feeding, placing an arm around her bony shoulders, resting her head on Ma, made me realise how, how, how cruel the disease was.

I meet Ma more often, so the good and bad days balance out because there is no expiry to my visits. With my sister, she had only six mornings. And in those six mornings, five days, Ma wasn’t very responsive, always sleeping or being fussy. Demanding ice cream and chocolates, like an ill-mannered toddler throwing a tantrum.

Which is when I realised that while my meandering grief was equally heavy, for my sibling to compress everything into one week was painful to watch, especially when there were no good days, just a meh one.

And that made me sadder. To watch her hug Ma, who in return gave her a pat on the back, was like tearing at my scabs with short nails, reopening the wound. It took me back to a few weeks ago when my mom shook my hand to wish me a happy birthday.

As children who are grieving, we want our mother to give us what we need... a heartfelt hug. Which, if you think about it, is the catch-22. You are grieving your loved one’s loss of memory, yet expecting them to comfort you because you are upset. Because when we hug our mothers, we are children again. Back to our childhoods, irrespective of how artificially coloured our hair is. We are young again, seeking assurance from our mothers. But dementia strips you of that.

As I stepped back, giving my sister time with my mother (and if I am being honest, recharging myself), it gave me more time to observe. And watching my sister’s face fall and our shared look of understanding reinforced the feeling of being together, however, distance-caused unequally, on a road we didn’t choose. We often spoke about this late at night, reliving our antics, her idiotic nicknames for me, and me for her, of Ma, our silly fights, and sometimes other things, because even overpowering grief needs a break.

On her last evening, when she returned from my parents’ (parent’s?) house, we held each other and cried. At how neatly Ma (she was a neat freak) had arranged her drawers and cupboards. How her lipsticks, saris, salwar kameezes, shawls, cups, plates, and stitching paraphernalia were arranged. And how she would never touch them again.

Never come to my house and scream at me about how untidy my fridge is, and then spend the next hour cleaning it. Never wear her rings and favourite Lucknowi mukaish suit. Never wear her perfume again.

Never be our mother again.

Because each time her eyes get more vacant, each time we lose our mother more. And, each time, when we, hand in hand, look at our Ma, one thought comes to mind.

Saari umar hume sang rehna hai.

We didn’t know, when we sang it as children, that this is what it would mean. Not the same city. Not the same time zone. Not even the same grief.

Just two sisters, clasped hands, standing in front of a mother who arranged her drawers perfectly and may never touch them again.

Ki hum saari umar sang rahenge.

We are.

Since my birthday, when Ma shook my hand after solemnly informing me that her second daughter’s birthday falls on Maharashtra Diwas, she had been on an upward swing, growing more alert, more aware.

Yesterday she was on fire. She was sharp, articulate, able to recall. The pattern on my kurta happened to be letters of the Devanagari script, and that sparked an idea. I asked Ma to recite the Hindi varnamala (A-Aa,E-Ee…), and though she fumbled on the last few, she managed well and moved into Ka Kha Ga Gha vyanjan.

Together, we formed words with the alphabet printed on my sleeves.

B se baat. Tra se trinetra. Kha se khargosh.

Encouraged, I asked her to count in Hindi, and she did. I lost her after thirty, because that’s all I remember. Then she counted in English, recited the ABCs, and as a bonus, she even spelt the word stubble correctly.

It was such a fantastic day. A day when I had Ma back. She was joking, weaving conversations that moved appropriately between the past and the present. She was there.

And I found myself pleased. And then a thought floated up. The woman who held my hand and taught me ABC, Ka Kha Ga, was now being measured by her recital and recall of the same. I paused for a moment, watching her animated face, and felt the first stab of the knife.

When she grew tired, we let her go. Maybe, in that letting go, my own feelings loosened too. She turned around, looked at me, and gestured for me to join her. I lied and said I’d join her in a moment, that I needed to find her reading glasses. Convinced, she went with the aide.

As a general rule, I almost never cry in public, but yesterday? Yesterday, the day had been so full, my mother was so present, that when the tears came, I couldn’t hold them back.

I sat in the car and cried. Cried because it had been a good day. Cried because it had been a good day. And the fate of meetings with my mother now depends on a good day.

As we navigated traffic, a question kept circling. The unfairness of it. The fact that I got my mom back on a piecemeal basis, while others got the entirety. That I had to wait for a good day to feel satisfied, while others never had to learn the concept of a disappointing one.

The rage built in me, piece by piece. Anger at what I was being made to suffer. None of it was my fault, yet the suffering, the sorrow, the grief, all of it bore my name. I had not asked for it. I had not even wished it on anyone.

Then why me?

Why strike me in the one place where it hurts this much? I’m a writer, an author, a novelist. Language is my everything. Words are my temples, sentences my mantras, and it was my mother who taught me all of it: the building blocks of vocabulary, fascination with history, love of reading.

And I am here at the centre of it all, occasionally hearing Ma say 35 comes after 20. Or read the word mantra as mandir. Or ask me for the sixteenth time where my daughter is.

The second stab was the not knowing. The uncertainty. Not knowing when I visit her today, will I get the happy Ma or the subdued, vacant one?

The third wound was the deepest. Why am I determining my mother’s intelligence by the words she can speak, or cannot? Why can I not be satisfied by the warm embrace she still gives me, or by the way her face lights up like a ghee diya when she sees me? Why the need for coherence?

Because I’m a lover of words?

Because I bleed through my words?

Because I turn my pain into sentences?

My heart wants to ask my mumma for the answer, but I cannot…

So, I don’t know the answer.

And I keep promising myself I won’t quiz her when I meet her next, and I keep breaking the promise. Every. Single. Time.

Because for me, Ma and words are the same.

Ma and sentences are the same.

Also, a train, airplane, boat, cruise (somebody sponsor me!) girl.

This summer—yeah, yeah, I know, summer—the Pune–Hubballi–Bengaluru–Mysore–Chikamangalur–Hampi route drew the short straw. Leaving at 2 PM because school diktats must be adhered to, even in 39 degrees, with windows up, sunscreen down, opinions ready.

The first thing the Maharashtra-Karnataka border told me with pride was: We don’t do hotels here. We do Lodges. Not Rooms. Lodges.

Which immediately ignited an argument about the exact definition of lodge. For the curious, it’s a rustic place. For the record holders who care, I won. The entire 425 kms to Hubli was peppered with advertisements for lodges. Made me want to lodge a complaint with the ad nauseam department, but they were out looking for rooms.

As we bumped along the Maharashtra highways, sometimes gently, sometimes with the axle threatening to divorce the car’s underbelly, Karnataka roads felt…like an oasis. As a lifetime occupant of Maharashtra, I’m used to the terrible roads, and when the smooth-as-Dharvad-peda roads began, it cocktailed into shock, delight, and wonderment.

Can roads this straight exist? On roads: Maharashtra: 0. Karnataka; Big Fat One.

We were cruising on the buttery highway with the car flooded with snacks and drinks (blessed to be an over-planner and by drinks I mean coffee, sheesh!), when the Bakasura-possessed teen woke from her snack-induced stupor, demanding real food like pastas, burgers, and Mogu Mogu.

But where were the restaurants?

As a native Mumbaikar and now a proud Punekar, I’m used to seeing food stalls every ten metres. Karnataka obviously missed that memo. Kilometres went by with no eateries showing up. Not even a chai tapri.

Didn’t folks in this state eat? Where was the food?

SHOW ME THE FOOD yelled Bakasura-Teen, scaring us silly.

Finally, a cluster of shops appeared. Amongst the blue AC DE Urea boards and the Lodges and Bar, we found a family restaurant, where the beast was calmed with chocolate ice cream, and peace was restored.

For inciting the beast and denying food, Maharashtra: A Lai Bhari 434. Karnataka: Minus 718.

There was this one stretch of highway where the road was so blemish-free, crater-devoid, it felt like a fever dream. I had to pinch myself with an Intense Café Cappuccino (desperate times call for desperate measures)

A hundred kilometres to Bengaluru was when the fun started. Errant traffic, colonies of bikers and cars forming an impromptu road commune, and generally taking 37 minutes to cross 500 metres. Returning after almost twenty years, the sheer number of cars boggled, but what hadn’t changed was the size of the number plates.

Bangalore possesses the smallest number plates I’ve ever seen in the different cities of India. As if the compression can be exchanged for the traffic and people expansion. As if the number plate square footage is charged Cuffe Parade real estate prices. Squint, and it disappears. I suspect the RTO ran out of metal, and kissi ko pata nahi chala!

When it comes to Bangalore traffic: Maharashtra and Karnataka tied at chaos. No winners. Only survivors. And horn blowers. Incessantly.

The Mysore highway was another catch-your-breath moment. Gorgeous stretches of even concrete roads, with no restaurants of course, but what a beauty! Mysuru also filled our tummies with excellent grub; Chakra House and Idly Bidly were absolutely worth the detour. But more than its culinary skills, Mysuru won our hearts with its generosity. Noticing our MH normal-sized-but-appearing-giantly number plate, three separate strangers—two bikers and an autorickshaw—stopped without being asked, offered directions, palace timings, road updates, and one of them switched to Marathi just to make us comfortable.

In a city not our own, we felt oddly, warmly, unexpectedly at home and welcomed. Athithi Devo Bhava!

And I also learnt the Kannadigas know the difference between a “hotel” and a “restaurant,” a fact that most of us who inhabit Maharashtra are bereft of. Eateries in Karnataka were named “XYZ Restaurant” and not “XYZ Hotel”. Though I did spot a shanty called “Biryani Hotel,” but benefit of the doubt and all that jazz.

For appropriate usage of words: Maharashtra: Zero (sorry), Karnataka: Ten.

Halebidu, the exquisitely carved temple, offered us more than a visual delight. A welcome hailstorm and a not-so-welcome tumble. An unexpected storm hit us (literally), and we sought refuge inside the temple. Someone had opened the main deity temple doors, and I sat there amongst the ancient stones, right in front of the Shiv Lingam, chanting Om Namah Shivay, while the rain and hailstones danced violently outside. When the intensity reduced, a local lady advised we make a run to our car as “this was the slowest it would get.”

Making a run for it was a misnomer. After hearing well-meaning and totally useless admonitions of “don’t slip”, the 12th-century soapstone had a trick up its sleeve. The actual flow was something like this: “I won’t slip! I won’t slip!” → Slip → Roll two steps → “I’m okay! I’m okay!” → Up → Running to the car. All within ten seconds. Best fall eve-ah.

We were staying in a coffee estate in Chikamangalur, and this part, where I imagined myself running my fingers over coffee trees (shrubs?) and taking deep caffeinated breaths while a soft song whispered in the background–was the one I was looking most forward to! Sitting, sipping local coffee, chatting with the owners, you know, general Natasha-stuff.

But Natasha proposes and bowels displaces. After the epic stone-kissing-fall, La Stomacha decided to join the groaning shoulders, back, knees, and toes, and let go. My dreams of coffee-bean-caressing, coffee-guzzling sprees were flushed down the toilet. I spent the night in bed, as far from the beverage as glee is from a teenager. But… I purchased two packets, which I sniffed until poopdom come!

Hampi was hotter than Hades. Beautiful, ruinous (made even more awesome when I did not trip over seventh-century stone, which I’m counting as a personal victory). But you know what I learnt? And this is for the Project Hail Mary fans (and for those who know me, my current crush: Rocky, the alien. Yes, I crush on fictional extraterrestrials, move on!)

Hold your breath, SubStackians.

Hampi. Is. The. Birth. Place. Of. Rocky.

Yes. Hampi is where Rocky was birthed. And because he’s my latest crush, Hampi scores a gazillion points over its warring neighbouring state.

Also, the Bakasura-Teen stepped on monkey poop in the Virupaksha Temple, ensuring a lifetime of jokes, roasts, and nicknames. Of course, some say, it was Lord Hanuman’s blessing, and while I think it might be lucky for her, it IS pretty lucky for us, because the jokes poop themselves over.

Maharashtra won lai bhari in the food, and I was ready to score my birth state (with whom I also share a birthday) higher, but…but…but…Hampi is where Rocky was born!

Who can beat that, man?

Karnataka: 543 Maharashtra: 542 (because I am fair and unbiased.)

Driving along highways, one learns plenty. Quirks, tics, goodness, love, and blue-coloured urea boards.

I’ve always been a road trip girl.

Everything but a bus.

(Side note: Despite what the pictures say, I did carry other trousers.)

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve learnt about a place just by driving through it?
Comment here or message me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com

Let’s keep them coming!

Maybe my BlinkIt order will be delivered sooner than estimated.

Maybe Pune will be less unhingedly hot this summer.

Maybe the most-anticipated email will make a landslide in my inbox.

Maybe… Maybe… Maybe…

Maybe is the most expensive word in the English language, second only to ‘if only,’ where both charge interest higher than society maintenance. And like all good moneylenders, they collect their dues.

I check my email seventeen times before breakfast. That’s 119 times a week. 6,188 times a year. Each time: maybe. Each time: nothing. The math is simple. The emotional cost is not. The self-esteem. Zero. The self-loathing. Infinite.

Because mathematics, at least, has the decency to be straight. A proof is always true or false. An equation always balances itself. But life runs on an endless supply of maybes, and a maybe never shows its working. No partial marks for showing working here.

Waiting would be easier if it appeared more dramatic. If it came with a band-baaja baraat, shagun ki mithai, and synchronised dancing. But real waiting is far less photogenic. It comes in ordinary ways, like brushing my teeth while refreshing my inbox. Opening Substack analytics with the air of a serious businesswoman but the emotional stability of a person who has missed the second crowded train in a row. Or putting a call on speaker, so you can quickly check messages.

Mostly, it’s convincing myself I’m absolutely not waiting, just checking, and then discovering I’ve checked often enough for it to become a habit. The worst part is not the waiting, but the negotiations with myself to make everything look dignified. I say things like: I’m not invested, I’m just thoda curious. I say, if something has to happen, it will happen. I say, I have a life, a job, deadlines, a dog, a work-life balance to pretend to have. And yet some embarrassing little statistician in my head is creating a chi-square distribution. For every checked hour, which has the same red-ink word: pending.

Maybe is never just about one thing, right? It attaches itself to everything that doesn’t arrive on time. A message. A courier. A decision. A version of life I thought would have shown up by now. And that’s what makes it so bloody expensive. Not the disappointment; the disappointment has clean edges, and maybe does not. Maybe keeps the air-conditioning on. Maybe keeps the chair pulled out. Maybe keeps you paying for a future that hasn’t confirmed itself.

Maybe is a god-damned non-winter orange carrot from Ooty.

So, I refresh my inbox before I’ve fully opened my eyes. I check my phone with the solemnity of a student preparing for the JEE. I open my Substack dashboard as though it contains hard data, not my increasingly futile hope. And I’m one click away from building a bungalow in Bandra with the full emotional basement on assumptions.

Once I’ve been afflicted by maybe-itis, it becomes impossible to tell whether I’m reading signs or merely decorating silence. I become, against my well-honed judgment, a believer in seepage. In prelude. In the possibility that something is already moving toward me, quietly, wearing a mask before it reveals itself.

And that is the worst humiliation of maybe. Not that it makes fools of us, but that it makes believers of us. It takes otherwise functional, logical adults and turns them into part-time connoisseurs of probability.

Maybe asks for patience, but what it really feeds on is masochistic, rude, stubborn, humiliating hope. The kind that survives statistics, logic, and self-respect. The kind that counts the silences. That measures the intervals. The minute swings of foolish optimism.

After all the counting, I arrive, every single time, at the same unsatisfactory answer.

Nothing has happened yet.

And still, infuriatingly, maddeningly, painstakingly, exquisitely: maybe.

(While I’m aware the title should be ‘Statistics of Maybe,’ but Mathematic sounded way cooler and also gifted me an opportunity to show off.)

What is your most expensive maybe right now?

Comment here or email me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com.
Me responding is a given, and not a maybe.

Snippets of me across different phases of my life lie strewn with the friends I have made. Some have most parts, some, a few. The childhood ones hold fragments of me that I had forgotten ever existed, deep in their memory. They are mostly about me in all my unvarnished, geeky glory. Whereas the newer friends hold a more finished-yet-still-geeky moi in their DNA.

My childhood friend and I have still (somehow) maintained our friendship through the different (and often difficult) seasons of our lives. She is one person who knew me before I was really me, before my public persona, my books, before my politically correct speeches. The picture she has of me, nobody else ever has – she has all versions of me. The bad haircuts, the braces, the ‘will I ever have boobs’, the crushes, the teasings, the school trips, the hideous, hideous fashion choices. And boy, what it must cost her to carry the weight of that witness.

Then there are the friends I made in college and post-graduate. Many, many of them still brighten my life with their humour, their kick-assery, and just the goofy-college-girl, the Maths-geek, the stick-thin figure with an overemotional heart on her sleeve view of me. They own my (and theirs) memories of the most carefree time I was ever given. Malhar, boys, SNDT ACM Students’ Chapter, good-looking professors, train crushes, bus crushes, festivals, less hideous fashion choices, the sheer time we spent together, it bonds you with a person for life – very much like the bond allows the Na’vi to connect with the creatures of Pandora in Avatar, minus the hair slotting experience.

Then there are the ones I made in later life – corporate world, mother group, society friends, and now author friends. The last category is the luckiest – or the unluckiest – as my friendship comes like a seasoned iron pan. The basement is built; the house is ready, we just need to add the friendship floors. This bunch – this gorgeous, talented, supportive, generous bunch – gets me on every level. They understand my nerdy roots and how it renders in my still juvenile humour to my angst, from my ‘teenagers sucks’ to ‘why is this sentence not coming to me’, and I get them too.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Because not all of these friendships speak the same language. My grammar for each one changes depending on who’s on the other side.

With my female friends, I am careless with words in a particular fashion, the carelessness of someone who knows the basic understanding is already present. We share a body of knowledge that was never taught, just lived. How violating a gaze can be. How a crowded train is a different experience when you are a female. And also, because female friendship goes everywhere: how a sanitary napkin can snag and pull in the most undignified way possible, the kind of thing you say out loud and every woman in the room winces in recognition, while every man in the room learns something new about the body, he has spent his life not inhabiting.

Male friends occasionally need me to set context about certain topics, mostly because they have never had to think of a situation from that specific perspective. My conversations with them range over such a variety of topics, and many a time I have learnt a thing or two from them. Even being humbled. What they understand differently, but not any lesser. Like the tall man who understands intimidation from the outside. The friend who doesn’t understand the gaze but will walk you to your car, anyway. The raunchy jokes that stop at a certain door and not cross it – unlike my girl gang. I share deep friendships with them where neither of us is performing our genders.

With my male friends, I am the same unhinged person, but softer around the edges somehow, just naturally arriving there. Maybe it’s protection (in my mind). Maybe I instinctively shield them from the full weight of what it means to move through the world in this body. Or maybe, and this is the uncomfortable truth, I am still, even now, slightly editing myself. Not my humour, not my opinions. Just the rawness. Just access to the very bottom junk drawer.

And then there is that absolutely rare male friend who crosses over. The one who gets it more than he should. Understands what is not said and doesn’t judge. The comfort level there is almost as pure as a female friendship, where I am the same everywhere. The no-holds-barred conversation, the venting, the uncomfortable truths spill out just as easily.

I didn’t always have access to this. In my younger years, sometimes unknowingly, I did “perform” for those connections. It’s only now, in my forties, that the performance has stopped. Femininity takes a backseat. Societal pressure eases. The worry about being judged dissolves. What remains is just pure companionship, unhinged, geeky, and honest.

And sometimes, in the middle of life, of firefighting, of existing, a friendship reaches across time and hands you back a piece of yourself you’d forgotten to miss. Last year, I met my childhood friend when she was visiting. And while sipping a coffee, I was confessing to wishing for something that was missing in my life. She looked at me and said: the young girl I once knew deserved this, and she would be so happy if it came true.

Stunned, I looked at my buddy, who knew me warts and all. And in my mind, I thanked her for reuniting me with the young girl I once was. And mostly, for remembering how I used to be, a shared sliver of me that still survived in her memory.

I am many things to many people, and many people hold parts of me not visible to others. Or parts of me that have been lost to life, but are alive in their recollections.

I am my own Horcrux. Bright and dim, lost and found, distributed across the people who chose to stay. And sometimes, in a coffee shop, over a Spanish Latte, one of them hands a fragment back.

And for that moment, I was whole.

Who holds a fragment of you that you’d forgotten existed? And when did they last hand it back?

Comment here or email me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com.

Those are the timings for when I can visit my mother in the dementia care. Evenings too. But I like to visit her in the morning to start our day.

Every three days, I pack my bag to meet Ma. Ice-cream. Check. One ORS Carton. Check. Album. Check. I sling my bag across my shoulders and enter the centre to reacquaint my mother with her daughter.

Or maybe, myself with being a child.

When they bring her to me – freshly bathed, oiled hair braided, nails cut – looking just like a thinner version of my Ma, for a moment, a brief blissful moment, I forget she forgets.

And then it starts. The ritual of erasing the forgetting, the love of remembrance. We look through the photographs, and I get to ask a question, not the ones I had planned, but: Who is this person? For each picture, we play the guessing game of hits and misses. The journey of connecting memories to faces.

Today, for a while, I put my head against my mother’s chest, and her arthritic, twisted fingers ran down my forearm. Up and down. Down and up. I had shown her an album of us – of a younger me and her – and for a few hazy moments she forgot who I was now, older and greyer, but the moment my head landed on her bosom, her maternal instinct took over.

In that pocket of love, I could fool myself into thinking I was a child again. Who just wanted to lie in Ma’s lap as she ran her fingers through my hair. Not this version of an adult who has to make decisions about Ma, but an innocent, responsibility-free child, whose only job was to be held.

Each visit, I prepare a list of questions I’ll ask Ma to jog her memory and to emphasise mine. Each time I land there, all my questions dissolve. Like dandelion seeds. There one moment, gone the next, scattered somewhere I cannot follow.

I thought I would grieve the garam masala recipe I never asked. The story behind the photograph where she’s laughing at something outside the frame. What she felt when she earned her Master’s in History. I thought grief would arrive as a list: specific, retrievable, answerable. With a bit of regret, if only I had thought to ask in time.

But when I embrace my mother, I realise I was wrong about what I would grieve.

It wasn’t her answers. Or my questions.

It’s her hands. The ones that knew, without being asked, that I needed to be touched. The ones that heal.

The moment the clock face shows up as 11.50 AM, a tiny part of me wants to throw a tantrum. How can the centre prevent me from being with my mother? Why must I abide by their times? Their rules? How can I extract myself from her hug and go back to being responsible?

But I know. I know. Ma needs the structure, regulating trained medical care, which was impossible to give at home. I know the centre’s decisions are correct; I know. But I don’t want to know.

The aide comes in promptly at 12.00 PM, and quietly, my mother follows her back without a backward glance. I watch her until she is out of sight, hoping for a minute she would turn back, hoping the way only children hope, but she doesn’t. Maybe it’s the medicine that makes her docile. Maybe she has forgotten. Or maybe, she knows. And knows how it would affect me.

I stand there a moment longer than I need to.

The bag on my shoulder feels heavier on the way out. The ice cream is finished, the ORS will last her a few more hours, the album is tucked back in. I still have my questions. The ones that dissolved and somehow reconstituted themselves on the walk to the car. The garam masala recipe. The photograph. Her Master’s in History. All the things I meant to ask.

I will bring them again next time. And they will dissolve again.

Because I think I finally understand what I actually came here to ask, the question underneath all the questions.

Ma, can I still be your child, even now? Even like this?

And today, without words, without memory, with only her hands —

She answered.

If this is your story too, even in a different form, you can write to me here or email me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com.

Made. Makes. I don’t know which tense to use anymore.

Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) doesn’t care about verb tenses. It just takes. Until the woman with the same hands, same long choti, same face—looks like my mother but isn’t.

And I’m supposed to be grateful she’s still here.

The Things I Didn’t Get

I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Not because Ma died. But because FTD doesn’t believe in clean endings. There’s no hospital scene where I hold her hand and whisper, I love you and she whispers it back.

There’s no closure. Instead, there’s this: a slow erosion. A gradual emptying. A person who looks exactly like my mother but doesn’t know why I’m upset when she asks—for the seventeenth time today—where my father has gone. (He has gone to the dentist's appointment)

I didn’t get one last mooli paratha. The one crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, the radish grated just right. I never wrote the recipe. Never watched her make it. I thought I had time.

I didn’t get one last cup of her chai. Lemongrass and ginger, less milk, with exactly the right amount of sugar. She used to bring it to me without asking, knew exactly when I needed it.

The other day, while we were speaking, she suddenly handed the phone to my father and told me: Talk to Uncle.

Uncle.

I didn’t get one last real hug. The kind where her arms wrapped around me, and I felt like a child again. Safe. Now, when I hug her, she pats me politely. Like I’m a well-meaning stranger.

Because to her, I am.

A stranger who should speak to uncles.

The Cruellest Part

The cruellest part isn’t that she’s gone. It’s that she’s here. Right in front of me. Breathing. Pacing. Existing. And I can’t mourn her.

People say, “At least she’s still with you.” And while I get it, I want to scream: No, she’s not.

Not because she forgot me. She knows exactly who I am. But because FTD didn’t steal her memory. It stole her personality. Her temperament, her kindness, her calm nature. Instead, I get screaming. Accusations. Rage that comes from nowhere and everywhere.

People think dementia means forgetting. A sweet, confused elderly person living in a fog. That’s Alzheimer’s. FTD attacks the frontal and temporal lobes; the parts of the brain that control personality, behaviour, empathy, anger. The woman who never swore now hurls abuses. The woman who was endlessly patient now has tantrums like a toddler. The woman who always put others first now screams that everyone is against her.

She’s here. But she’s gone.

And I don’t know which is worse.

Watching someone forget you, or watching someone become someone else entirely. Or what to do with the shock I experience. Grief, I can handle, but this person I don’t connect to my Ma, where do I take my shock? She would have known.

The Anger

I’m so angry.

I’m enraged at the disease, obviously. At the universe that decided this was how my mother’s story would end. When she finally had the chance to “live” her life, it wasn’t with a bang, but with a slow, cruel fade.

But I’m also angry with her. And I hate myself for it. The guilt of that is suffocating. Angry that she won’t let me help. That she makes everything so hard. That every visit is a battlefield, and I leave exhausted and hurting.

I know it’s not her fault. I know that. But knowing doesn’t make it hurt less when she looks at me with rage and says things Ma’d never say. Not always directed at me, but in my direction.

I’m angry that she can’t follow a conversation anymore. Angry that I have to grieve her while she’s still alive. That I have to be strong, patient, and kind when what I want to do is scream, “Come back! Remember me! I need you! I want my mother!”

But she can’t. And screaming won’t bring her back. So, I swallow it. I smile. Swallow the rage at FTD for stealing my mother.

What I’m Learning

I’m learning to keep showing up, hoping for a glimpse of the woman she used to be. Sometimes, I get it.

A moment where she looks at me and I see her, my Mumma. She’ll touch my hand gently. Or laugh at a joke. The other day she looked at my book and said, I really liked it, and I am so proud of you. Where is your second novel?

And for those ten seconds, I forget all the pain. I think maybe she’s still in there. Maybe she’s coming back. But then the moment passes. The stranger wearing my mother’s face returns, angry again. And I’m left holding that ten-second memory like it’s the last piece of her I have left.

To my mother. I’ll always love you. Even when you scream at me. Even when you push me away. Even when it breaks me.

Because you’re still my mother. Even when you’re not yourself anymore.

I love you, Mumma.

Even when you can’t love me back.

If this feels (or felt) familiar, you’re not alone. Maybe, reach out to me if it helps.

You crash into them, swim inside them. You cry with people who don’t exist, laugh at their jokes, and you stay up reading just “one more chapter.” Because abandoning them, and their troubles, feels like emotional atyachar.

And when you finally turn the last page, there’s that familiar pattern of happiness and loss. For a while, you lived another life, and now you’re back in your own.

Bittersweet.

You are, in the most dramatic sense of the word, sated.

Then comes the announcement.

This book is being adapted for the screen.

Suddenly, all that quiet, private reading becomes public excitement. Casting rumours, first looks, teasers, and trailers. You tell yourself it won’t be as good as the book. You also know you’re going to watch it, anyway.

Because, however fiercely we defend books, there’s always that small, delighted part of us that wants to see these characters walk, speak, breathe, kiss, kill.

And then the film drops.

You arrive as emotionally invested auditors now. Every single detail is under scrutiny. The casting. The tone. The dialogue. The way someone holds a cup. The way they flick their hair. Never Tom Cruise as Reacher. That deserves a refund on so many layers.

You are ready. Fully ready. Claws sharpened. Popcorn popcorned.

Change something fundamental, and you will notice. Change something unnecessary, and you will not forgive. Fingers hovering over Reddit, ready to assemble the mob.

And then it happens.

The twist.

Not from the book. The new one. The one that screenwriters added to make it “more suitable for the screen.”

This is where readers split into two very distinct camps.

The outraged.

And the…tolerant.

(The second group, of course, are traitors. But we’ll be civil.)

Because sometimes these added twists feel about as necessary as Mr Darcy having a third nipple. He doesn’t need it. You don’t need it. You didn’t ask for it. And now that you know it exists, you cannot unknow it. Or unsee it. Or unimagine it.

But occasionally, very occasionally, the twist works. Which makes it worse.

Because now we know it can be done well.

(So, spoilers ahead, proceed with caution.)

1. The Dukh Needs Amping.

Anyone who has read My Oxford Year can relate to the book’s ending. It is rare. Not a “happily-ever-after”. Not a “can-not-get-over-it” heartbreak either.

It leaves you with ambiguity. As life actually plays out. With a love that exists, matters, hurts, and doesn’t leave it neatly tied. It trusts readers to sit with it, to understand it.

The adaptation? Looks at the book and concludes: Nah, “too few tears” syndrome activated. Not enough pain to go around, written.

So, it kills the hero. Because apparently, we either need our modern romances to end in a wedding or a funeral. Nothing in between.

This is the worst kind of added twist. And not because it’s shocking, but because it’s lazy.

Ambiguity would ask the audience to feel.

Death tells them what to feel.

2. Pehchan Kaun Protagonist.

Take The Wheel of Time.

In the books, we know Rand is the Dragon Reborn. It is not hidden. He is the one; there are clues, trails. No other worthy contender exists. It’s a weight that settles gradually. Becoming a destiny harder to ignore with every chapter.

For the reader, the suspense and friction come from watching one person realise what he will do with his power, whether he will burn the world down or save it.

The show changes it. And, how. The narrative switches from “What will Rand do?” to “Who is the Dragon Reborn?” Is it Rand? Or Mat? Or Egwene?

Suddenly, every character is a possibility. Leading to endless guessing games.

In a pitch meeting, it is a perfect twist. It brings in inclusivity, suspense, making it broader.

But what really happens? It stops being about the chosen one grappling with destiny and aims at keeping the audience guessing (as if!)

Even the eventual reveal that Rand *is* the Dragon Reborn is as mediocre as a masala omelette without mirchi and dhaniya.

Meh.

3. Theek Hi Hai. You did good.

In The Gone Girl, the book flips the story midway, and everything you believed? Trashed. The narrator? Untrustworthy.

Total fliperroo.

What does the movie do? It does nothing. No extra twists. No gyan. No over-explaining. It follows the script, and how. It trusts the story. And when the reveal plays out.

Slow applause. It hits exactly as it should because the screenwriters believed the author.

Not louder. Not bigger. Just… precise.

And yet…

We’ll still watch. We’ll still show up, popcorn in hand, claws sharpened, ready to dissect every frame. Still arguing on Reddit. Still making comparison threads. Still saying “the book was better” even when it wasn’t.

Because here’s the secret we sometimes don’t like admitting:

We want adaptations to exist.

We want to see our favourite characters walk and talk. We want the validation of watching strangers (read: non-readers) fall in love with the same story we did. We want the world to know what we already knew—that this book mattered. And that it was good.

So, we arrive, emotionally invested and deeply suspicious, hoping for magic, secretly bracing for disaster.

Sometimes we get Mr Darcy’s third nipple. Sometimes we get Gone Girl.

But we keep showing up, anyway. Because every conversation matters, even the one between books and screens. And that one isn’t going anywhere.

Because the story already owns us. The screen just reminds us how much.

Tell me: what’s one adaptation that made you go: yeh zaroori tha kya?

Comment here or mail me: natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com

This post is a part of ‘Plot Twist Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under #EveryConversationMatters blog hop series.

Your most favourite one is where your thumb fits perfectly around the handle. The cup’s lip meets yours perfectly. It’s a match made in ceramic heaven. It is *your* cup. The one without which your morning cuppa feels incomplete. I know it’s not possible, but drinking tea out of it enhances the taste. Or I’m too tea-strained to really differentiate.

The other one is a chipped, faded mug you bought from a place you don’t remember – what you do remember is: how you felt while buying it. The naïve, simple you. The hopeful, beautiful you. Each time you look at the cup, your gaze skims over the faint print, but your eyes light up. A secret, private “pick me up”. A mirror into a time when happiness was the norm and not earned. It’s the one you reach for when certain days hover over you like the jhaapi-giving, always-sweaty bua.

The other 17? They are…squatters.

There’s the conference swag mug from “TechStorm 2019!!” with a logo that now resembles a geriatric ET with dentures. It reminds you of your corporate slavery. You are still enslaved, just not on the traditional payroll anymore. Then there’s the misshapen (intentionally) one made to look like a lovechild of a football and a French bulldog. It now hosts a luxury colony for spiders inhabiting its core. It’s hidden because it’s a misfit for the dishwasher. And frankly? Gives you the heebie-jeebies.

The one you’re somewhat okay with is a deep-blue one with “I Got Leh’d!” that you picked up at the airport because 1. You are probably stupid. 2. You were returning from Leh (duh!), and had discovered Buddhism for ten days and then immediately ghosted enlightenment (and occasionally the cup.) 3. It still makes you laugh (college humour be damned.)

Some of the crockery stays, while its genesis remains a mystery. Some have faded into beige resignation. Some of the ceramic power peddlers are passive-aggressive. They judge you with their texts. Like the “World’s Best Doctor.” You weren’t a doctor. Still aren’t.

You’ve considered getting rid of them–decluttering, as Marie Kondo advocates. Many have made their way to the trash bin, but the last vestige of your guilt saves them from de-homing. So, they stay. Stacked in the back, quietly resenting your fave mugs like underpaid backup dancers.

Mugs, like people, fall into hierarchies, but unlike people, can be demoted for crimes like “ugly handle” and “doesn’t fit well.” So, they stay. Not in the background, as you’d hoped. But front and centre, making their presence mandatory.

And somewhere in between them, making your house theirs and your failed attempts to get rid of them, they’ve become part of the household.

Throwing them out feels unkind, undeserving…and not you. And one never knows when you might earn that doctorate from a legitimate university and actually be honoured with the title of doctor.

“World’s Best Doctor” mug? It can then proudly sit on your desk.

And the spiders in the Frenchie? The spiders stay rent-free and unbothered.

"Naada!" — Nilu Phule, Woh Saat Din (1983)

I have nearly been undone by many things in life: love, ambition, anxiety.

But mostly, I have been undone by the naada.

I was on stage at my wedding, smiling for approximately four hundred relatives with my face growing numb, when I realised my father’s cream-coloured thermal lowers—which I was wearing backwards under my mehroon lehenga—had begun their slow descent toward my ankles.

‘It’s slipping,’ I whispered to my not-yet-husband through my smile.

He kept smiling, too.’I can’t do anything about it. We’re on stage.’

‘I know we’re on stage,’ I hissed, still smiling. ‘Which is why I’m telling you it’s slipping.’

The thermals were now somewhere around my knees. The lehenga was heavy enough to stay put, but underneath it, the elastic waistband of the lowers was staging a quiet rebellion against my entire bridal aesthetic.

Wanting to peek out.

Wanting to make an appearance.

My cousin Priya saw my face and came up under the pretence of adjusting my dupatta. After an intense three-way discussion conducted entirely through clenched teeth and fake wedding grins, she reached under the ghagra, yanked the thermals up, and somehow entrenched them into my lehenga waistline through what I can only describe as emergency textile surgery.

Ten minutes later, they started slipping again.

This wasn’t the first time my clothing tried to ruin my life.

Act I: The Bathroom Incident (Age 18)

I was in love with him. A huge crush. The kind that makes you rehearse casual sentences in your head and then forget your own name when he speaks.

He was older, charming, and had just flown in from the US, and had invited me home for tea.

I wore my sister’s salwar that day—a red one with tiny black flowers near the hem. The only problem was that my sister never tied her naadas as I did. She just tucked them in and trusted physics.

I should’ve known better.

His mother offered tea and chocolate cake. We were chatting happily, and then.

I had to pee.

The bathroom was down a hallway. I closed the door, locked it, then pulled down my salwar—

—and that’s when the naada retreated into the waistband like a snake returning to its hole.

Gone.

Completely, irretrievably gone.

I stood there, salwar around my ankles, staring at the waistband as if sustained eye contact might intimidate the string into reappearing.

It did not.

I pinched the fabric. Nothing. I shook the salwar. Still nothing.

The naada had fully committed to its new life inside the waistband, and I was standing in my crush’s bathroom with no exit strategy.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

Outside, I could hear murmurs.

‘Is she okay in there?’ his mother asked.

Him: ‘Should we check?’

I wanted the floor to open up and take me directly to another planet. I looked around desperately.

On the sink was a toothbrush. Blue. With a foreign logo.

I picked it up with the kind of resignation usually reserved for people defusing bombs. I told myself I’d buy him a new one. I’d buy him ten. I’d anonymously leave a lifetime supply of toothbrushes on his doorstep if necessary.

I used it to poke at the waistband opening, trying to coax the naada back through. Ten minutes of frantic prodding later, I finally snagged the string and pulled it out like a magician producing a rabbit.

I tied it so tight I nearly cut off my circulation.

When I emerged—twenty minutes after entering—they were standing outside, concerned.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes,’ I said far too brightly. ‘Totally fine. Just… took a minute.’

I wondered if he could somehow sense that I had just performed emergency salwar surgery with his toothbrush.

I never went back to his house.

I also never told him about the toothbrush.

Act II: The Train Platform Sprint (Age 21)

By the time I was pursuing my Master’s, I had learned to tie my naadas properly. Double knots. Sometimes triple.

But I hadn’t learned to account for structural failure.

I was running late for a morning lecture and sprinting through Vadala to catch the 8:47 Andheri local when I felt it.

The snap.

Not a gentle loosening. Not a slow unravel. But a full, catastrophic surrender.

The naada had given up.

I had two choices:

1. Stop running, miss the train, deal with the situation calmly.

2. Hold the salwar with one hand and keep running.

I kept running.

I made it onto the train, collapsed in the ladies’ compartment, panting, gripping my dignity and my waistband in equal measure.

Somewhere, I found a bent, rusty safety pin—possibly from the 1900s—and pinned my salwar back into submission.

I went to class.

I told no one.

Act III: The Wedding Stage Thermal Incident (Age 24)

A month before my wedding, I got LASIK. I reacted badly. By the time my wedding day arrived, I was putting steroid drops into my eyes every hour, including through the night.

I was a walking zombie.

It was also the coldest day in years, and by the time I reached the venue, lack of sleep had made my eyes bloodshot and my blood pressure very low. I was shivering so violently that my makeup artist had to stop mid-lipstick.

My cousin disappeared and returned with the only warm thing she could find: Papa’s cream-coloured thermal lowers.

The kind with a front zipper.

The kind designed for sixty-year-old men in North Indian winters, not brides in mehroon lehengas. I was too exhausted to understand.

She helped me into them in a rush. Which is how I ended up wearing them backwards, twisted, and entirely wrong.

They were also, obviously, too big.

And then I went on stage.

Everything was fine for about twenty minutes.

Then I felt it.

That familiar sinking sensation of the elastic giving up.

The thermals were slipping. Slowly. Surely.

Cream-coloured men’s lowers descending toward my knees beneath a bridal lehenga in front of four hundred people.

‘The thermal’s slipping,’ I whispered.

He kept smiling. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Pull it up.’

‘I can’t pull up your thermals on stage.’

‘I know,’ I muttered. ‘I’m just telling you it’s happening.’

Priya appeared again, yanked it up again, wedged it in again.

It held.

For ten minutes.

Then it started slipping again.

Thankfully, the photo session ended. I walked off stage with one hand subtly holding my ghagra, the other waving regally at relatives, as if nothing under my lehenga was actively attempting escape.

The first thing I did in the bridal room was change.

I peeled off the backwards thermals and threw them into a corner. My cousin started laughing.

I started laughing.

And then I went back out to get married.

Epilogue

I still wear salwars. I still tie my naadas. I check them twice now. Three times if a stage is involved.

I’ve learned that dignity is not about avoiding disaster.

It’s about surviving it with enough composure that no one realises you are currently fishing a drawstring out of your waistband with a toothbrush, sprinting through a station holding your pants up, or clutching your father’s thermal underwear under your bridal lehenga while smiling for photos.

Some people have meet-cutes.

I have near-nada catastrophes.

Because life doesn’t go wrong in neat, manageable ways.

It goes wrong while you’re in your crush’s bathroom. While you’re running for a train.
While you’re on stage at your own darned wedding.

And you deal with it.

You fish out the naada. You clutch the waistband. You smile for the cameras.

You survive.

And then, years later, you write about it.

Because if my wardrobe is going to try to kill me, the least I can do is get a good story out of it.

And honestly?

At this point, the naada and I are in a long-term relationship.
It's toxic. But we're committed.

Your Turn: The Naada Support Group

If you’ve ever been personally attacked by a drawstring, please comment or email me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com.

I need to know I’m not alone.

Most of us know the ritual. You insert the USB confidently. It doesn’t go in. You flip it. Still wrong. You flip it again, even though you just flipped it, because clearly the universe is enjoying itself a tad bit too much. Eventually, after a brief loss of dignity and an unreasonable amount of muffled curses, it works.

This is normal.
This is human.

And then there are people who get it right immediately.

No pause. No second attempt. No awkward rotation like they’re decoding a lock. They don’t even look closely. Their hand moves once, and it’s done, as if the USB and they had already agreed on the correct orientation in a previous life.

These people are unusual.

I don’t mean this morally. I mean it observationally. I’ve noticed a pattern. (Pure research. For science, obviously.)

They’re often good at other things too.

They find parking easily. Not “I manifested it” easily. Just… easily. Their beverage stays inside the cup. Their glasses, keys, and phone are exactly where they thought they left them. They don’t do the frantic pat-down, pockets, bag, table, chair, panic—before leaving a café. Time seems to cooperate with them. They instinctively know whether a door needs to be pushed or pulled. Their face doesn’t betray them by mid-afternoon.

Life’s small daily frictions, like queues, spills, delays, misunderstandings, don’t seem to cling to them the way they cling to the rest of us.

They also seem to know exactly when to text back. Not instantly. Not after three days. Just… correctly. And relationships? Those also seem to fit.

Not dramatically. No will-they-won’t-they. No interpretive dance around timing. They meet someone, it works, and life quietly accommodates the fact. If it doesn’t work, it ends without a toxic residue. No flipping. No recalibrating. No lying awake at 2 a.m. replaying a sentence to see where it bent.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are busy flipping things.

USBs, for one. Fingers, for some, or most.

But also expectations. Interpretations. Ourselves.

Life, I’ve begun to suspect, behaves a lot like a USB port. Some people approach it at exactly the right angle. The rest of us keep trying. This way, then that way, then back again—convinced that logic and finite possibilities must eventually prevail.

I find myself watching the first-shot people and wondering what it feels like to live like that.

Do they miss trains?
Do they ever send a message and immediately regret it?
Does their face, at the end of the day, also declare war on oil?
Do they ever stand at a door that clearly says PULL and still push?
Or does the world simply open for them, quietly, without commentary?

Sometimes I wonder if they fumble too, but invisibly. Whether their wrong turns happen in private, behind closed doors, while the rest of us conduct ours in public, under fluorescent lighting.

Because surely no one moves through life without ever turning something the wrong way.

Still, I notice them. The first-shot people. With the kind of fascination reserved for people who parallel park in one smooth motion while you’re still adjusting your mirrors and softly chanting the Hanuman Chalisa.

And as for me, I usually get there. Eventually.

It takes a couple of tries. A pause. A small sigh. Sometimes a full reset. But the connection happens. The light switches on. Something fits.

And I’m starting to think that maybe fumbling isn’t a flaw. Maybe it’s just another way of arriving.

After all, some of the best things I’ve made—including a certain detective novel that took months, wrong turns, and an impressive amount of flipping before it finally worked—did not go right the first time.

And unlike USB cables, life doesn’t tell you which side is right.
You only know after you’ve tried all the wrong ones.

Know any first-shot-ers?

If you know someone like this, please identify them. For research purposes only.

Comment, or email me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com

One of the earliest and powerful Indian rulers relied on women for his personal security.

Chandragupta Maurya.

You read that right.

His elite, inner circle bodyguards were women.

Not as an ornament.

As strategy.

As a cold calculated decision.

Women were preferred as guards for reasons that were, frankly, brutally practical. They were less likely to be perceived as threats. They could move through the private quarters without raising alarms. Their proximity was permissible in ways that male guards would never be.

And there was an even sharper reason.

A king with a harem was most vulnerable not to a stranger with a weapon, but to someone already inside.

A queen. A consort. A dancer. A woman whose presence was expected.

In that crucial moment, a male guard could hesitate–propriety, conditioning, hierarchy, fear of “raising a hand”.

A female guard would have no such compunction.

And she was trained to observe.

Chandragupta ruled in an era where power was new, and betrayal routine. Protection meant anticipation rather than force. It meant noticing shifts in tone, pauses in speech, the moment when a room changed temperature. His female guards weren’t just protecting their King’s body, but they were reading the space around him.

Minutely.

Greek ambassador Megasthenes recorded the presence of women in Chandragupta’s security detail with fascination. Arthashastra recorded the logic with none. While the practice may have had Persian precedents, it was Chanakya who institutionalised it in India for centuries.

Protection, it turns out, has always depended on two things: the absence of hesitation and the ability to notice.

Women were trained, disciplined, lethal if required–and most importantly, underestimated.

But then history did what it always does.

It circled.

Chandragupta’s grandson, Ashoka, inherited an empire and, after Kalinga, redirected its idea of protection altogether. Not just guarding bodies, but guarding principles. Not just keeping a ruler alive, but keeping a state from losing its conscience.

And somewhere along the way, we quietly rewrote the role women played in all of this.

What changed wasn’t the instinct to protect, but what was being protected, and who was allowed to do the protecting.

The protector slowly became the protected.

Women stopped being framed as the people trusted with vigilance and became those everyone claimed they were “saving.” The most reliable watchers were recast as the most fragile ones. The ones who stood closest to danger were told their job was to stay away from it.

Which is, frankly, a neat historical trick–if you’re in the business of redistributing power.

But it’s time we got it back.

Not the empire part. God, no.

The framing.

The acknowledgement that women have always been stationed where it matters most–at thresholds, in private spaces, in the quiet minutes when harm arrives politely. Trusted with proximity because they are observant. Trusted with force because they can act. And act without hesitation, act on instinct.

That’s why my writing keeps returning to women who no longer wear uniforms, yet retain vigilance as muscle memory.

Women who understand systems so well they can leave them, and still read danger faster than it can introduce itself.

One of them quit the police.

She didn’t quit noticing.

Some stories don’t begin with rebellion.

They begin with attention.

With the willingness to do what others hesitate to do.

Mine begins there, too.

Her name is Satyadarshi.

Where have you seen vigilance mistaken for fragility?

I keep thinking about who history allows to notice, and who it asks to look away.

If you’ve noticed this pattern elsewhere, I’d love to hear about it.

Comment or email me: natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com

Image: By অজয় দাস - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114098108

As I gathered them, a thought threaded itself into me.

For my mother—an early-to-mid patient of Frontotemporal Dementia—memories feel like this.
Scattered. Elusive.
Hidden in crevices she can no longer access, no matter how hard she tries.

Some things don’t return to order the way they once did.
But some can still be gathered—carefully, patiently—into words.

This is for her.

For Ma

Who loved poems.
Who taught me history, grammar,
and the exact moment when the masala splutters.

Who gave up everything
so I could have options.

My first guru.
My safest space.
The love I carry so deep
even silence knows its way there.

You were sacrificial,
but never small.
I honour you today
in the only way you taught me well—
words.

You may never read this.
But in my heart lies delight,
as if you are peeking inside—
once for pride,
and once to correct my style.

Soft as a feather,
you took on the weight of shaping us.
Moulded your daughters with patience,
taught us how to be strong
without losing our softness.

Everything I have,
everything I’ll become,
may carry my name—
but the fingerprints will always be yours.

You fed us your dreams,
folded them into our meals,
nourished us with a body
never asked to be thanked.

Now memory is veiled.
It hides more than faces.
Confusion, haze, anger
sit beside you like uninvited guests.

I know a time will come
when you will not remember me.
The child in me will break.
But the woman you made—
she will rise.

Until that forgetting,
and even after,
this daughter of yours will live.

Not just survive.
Live.

Because you couldn’t,
I will try.
I will spread my wings,
fall, crash,
and then learn to soar high.

You taught me this too:
that falling is not failure—
it is the earth opening her arms,
kissing scraped knees,
and saying,
Well tried.

Ma, I love you.
I will keep my promise.

I will thrive.
And somewhere in my happiness,
I will find your smile.

Some losses don’t announce themselves loudly. They arrive slowly, rearranging the memories from the inside. Today, I’m gathering what I can.

If you’ve loved someone whose memories are changing shape, you’ll understand why some words take time to find their place.

You can write to me here or at: natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com

Warm under the duvet, the ghosts of my past snuggle in. Most of them are fun—they remind me of the weddings I loved, the food I inhaled, the people who made me laugh. And then a few sour-faced ones wander in and ruin the bonhomie like uninvited baraatis who didn’t even bring mithai. (If you’re going to haunt me, at least bring chocolate barfi.)

Trailing behind their blanket-draped drama is the one emotion that thrives in the cold.

Longing.

Longing for the past.

Longing for a future that slipped away.

Longing for the person you used to be.

And sometimes, longing for things to just—stay.

For children to not sprout overnight,

to not outgrow your lap

to not wake up one morning and suddenly need you less —

or differently —

or not at all.

Longing embroiders all our memories. But on the embroidery hoop, pulled taut between your hands and held steady, another thread always appears—one whose colour belongs not to the past, but to something still on its way.

Hope.

Hope is unruly. It refuses to stay inside outlines. Its hues bleed across the pattern, spill onto the cloth, demand attention. Longing, meanwhile, is neater. Tugs you gently backwards, wants the old back, wants familiar scenes.

It creates space inside you—a hollow, a quiet, a small room with no furniture. That’s where hope barges in, as if it owns the place—conjuring furniture, claiming chairs, behaving like it pays rent.

Because without hope, longing is just grief. But with hope, longing becomes direction.

The trouble is: they rarely agree on pacing. Longing wants to replay the old film. Hope wants to fast-forward to the happy ending. Meanwhile, I’m just trying to watch the present scene without someone stealing the remote. (Which, knowing my luck, is probably stuck between the cushions anyway.)

Longing is the anchor. Hope is the helium balloon. And I’m suspended somewhere in between, like one of those Hit-Me wobble toys that sway with every gust but somehow stay upright. Emotionally speaking, I am basically an inflatable clown. Not grounded. Not floating. Just navigating the wobble.

Maybe longing is what makes us human.

Maybe hope is what keeps us moving.

And maybe—on most days—that’s enough.

Until it isn’t.

Until hope stops asking permission and starts knocking on doors, and is already on its way.

If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you.

What are you longing for? What are you hoping for?

Sometimes just naming them out loud helps. Or tell me about the time hope barged in when you weren’t ready for it. What furniture did it bring?

Comment here or just email me: natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com

I read and reply to every response.