Push the Ground, Pull yourself Up

Somewhere around the age of 56, I decided enough was enough. My knees were sending out distress signals—loud and clear—and I knew it was time to lighten the load.

I started simple: lose weight. Be kind to the knees. Move without sounding like a creaky door hinge.

What began as a weight loss mission soon morphed into something bigger. Somewhere along the way, I realized that just being lighter wasn’t the answer. I needed to be stronger. Not just in body, but everywhere else too.

Enter: weight training. Enter: discipline. Exit: casual excuses.

By early 2024, my routine was locked in. Office work wrapped up by 3:30 p.m., gym bag in hand, heading out like a woman on a mission. No lingering chats, no “five more minutes,” no late emails. Just the steady walk to the gym, the process, and my instructor, Ajay, waiting with that “today there are no shortcuts” look on his face.

That first year ended with a moment I won’t forget: lifting 100 kilograms off the ground. It wasn’t just the barbell that was heavy—it was the years of sitting, delaying, postponing, all bundled into that one lift.

Victory. Small fist pump. Slight limp out of the gym. Worth it.

For 2025, the goal is to lift 120 kilos. Will I get there? Maybe. Maybe not. But honestly, it’s no longer about the number. It’s about showing up for the process—sweaty, cranky, sore—and doing the work anyway.

What weight training taught me, in ways life hadn’t quite hammered home yet, is that success isn’t some grand, magical moment. It’s the boring, repetitive, almost annoying commitment to the fundamentals.

Take the deadlift. It looks simple—bend down, grab the bar, stand up. How hard can it be, right?

Turns out, very.

Deadlifting isn’t about yanking a bar up like you’re starting a stubborn lawnmower. It’s precision: centering yourself at the bar, planting your feet, fixing your gaze, taking a deep inhale like you’re about to dive into cold water. Arch the back—not too much, not too little. Fill your core with air until you feel like a human pressure cooker. Push the ground away with your legs, pull the bar toward you, and hope all the little moving parts inside you cooperate.

You don’t lift the barbell.

You lift Yourself

That’s when it hit me—this is life in a nutshell. Every project, every crisis, every damn Monday morning: same principles.

You have to center yourself. Breathe. Get the basics right before you even think of lifting the heavy stuff. You push the ground away with your legs—your base, your foundation—and pull the weight with your will.

There’s no substitute for that.

No fancy hack. No shortcut.

You either build the strength to lift your life, or you don’t.

And when you fail—and trust me, you will—it’s not because life was too heavy. It’s because the form and technique cracked somewhere.

When you deadlift wrong, your body tells you instantly. A tweak here, a pull there, and suddenly you’re googling “Can I live without a lower back?”

Life’s no different. Rush things, fake your stance, forget your core, and the damage is real.

Ajay keeps reminding me, in his delightfully annoying way: “It’s not about how much you lift. It’s about how you lift.”

And honestly, that one line deserves to be tattooed on every office wall, family WhatsApp group, and government policy.

Whether it’s a sumo deadlift (wider stance, shorter pull) or a rack pull (partial lift to focus on strength at the top), weight training breaks down big tasks into small, manageable parts. It’s about mastering where you are before you try going where you aren’t ready to be.

If that’s not life advice, I don’t know what is.

This discipline—the sheer boring beauty of it—has seeped into other parts of my life. I find myself breathing consciously before tough conversations. Centering myself before important meetings. Bracing my metaphorical core when things get unpredictable.

There’s a certain magic in knowing that you can carry your weight.

That your spine—real and metaphorical—can hold.

That you can ground yourself, push through, pull through, and stand up taller than when you started.

 

Of course, not every day is heroic. Some days the weights feel glued to the floor. Some days the bar feels like it has its own gravitational field.

Life, too, will have those days when just getting out of bed feels like trying to deadlift a small planet.

But the training teaches you:

You show up anyway.

You go through the form. You control what you can.

You pull. You push. You breathe. You stand.

Weight training hasn’t just made me physically stronger.

It has made me understand the deeper contract I have with myself: to carry my own weight, whatever it may be.

And to do it well. Not perfectly. But well enough to keep going, to keep lifting, to keep laughing through the sore muscles and the stubborn days.

The goal isn’t just lifting 120 kilos this year.

The goal is to keep lifting, period.

 

The Death We All Share – And the Betrayal We Didn’t See Coming

In early 2020, I watched my father die. I watched as life slipped out of someone I thought was untouchable. I didn’t just grieve—I boiled. At fate, at God, even at him. What gave him the right to leave me behind like that? I was angry, guilty, crushed. And I learned the hard way that grief is not something you get over—it’s something you get used to.

When a close friend lost his father last week, it all came flooding back. The hospital air, the silence, the helplessness. I didn’t need to say much. “I understand” was enough—because I did. You don’t truly understand loss until you’ve lived through it. That’s a brutal truth.

But I didn’t expect how this grief would connect to something much larger. Much darker.

Pahalgam.

Twenty-five tourists. Gunned down. Not for who they were or what they did—just because they were there. Innocents, killed on a vacation. That’s not just loss. That’s an execution. That’s contempt. That’s a statement: You don’t matter.

This time, the response wasn’t a script. The outrage felt real. Politicians didn’t play safe. Army officials didn’t mince words. Newsrooms echoed with fury, not just noise. For once, it wasn’t just optics. It was pain.

And yet—it still wasn’t enough.

Not because the reactions weren't fake but because the crime was deeper than murder. What happened in Pahalgam wasn’t just an attack on people. It was an attack on dignity. It was a punch in the face of every belief we’ve been raised with.

We were disrespected. As a people. As a nation.

Disrespect doesn’t bleed like death but leaves a deeper scar. Those who died weren’t just killed—they were humiliated. They weren’t just killed. They were mocked. One of the terrorists, when a desperate wife begged for mercy, told her, “Go ask Modi for help.” That wasn’t just a bullet—it was a message. A taunt. It turned the personal into the political. It turned every citizen’s belief in state protection into a sick joke. This wasn’t just a failure of security—it was humiliation. Not just of 25 people, but of 1.4 billion. Of the idea that our government, our leaders, our system would stand between us and a bullet. In that moment, it didn’t.

Betrayed by the belief that peace is possible. That faith in humanity, secularism, and tolerance was what died in that meadow.

And betrayal? It’s not a clean wound. It festers.

I remember, in 9th grade, giving a speech on Unity in Diversity. I said everything about secularism and tolerance and won second prize. But today, I remember that speech and feel nothing but anger. At the lie, I was taught to believe. At the pride, I was told to carry. What tolerance? What unity? Pahalgam has mocked every schoolbook chapter and Republic Day slogan we’ve ever clung to.

And here’s the part that stings the most: I don’t want to be tolerant anymore. Not if it means accepting this. Not if it means burying our people and lighting candles while the perpetrators vanish into the mountains.

I’m not calling for hate. I’m calling for truth. For honesty. For clarity. For the courage to say: this isn’t okay—and it never will be.

The 25 killed weren’t just victims. They were symbols of our trust. And that trust was spat on. They believed they were safe. They thought they were welcome. Instead, they were hunted. That’s not just violence—that’s contempt. That’s what every Indian should be raging about.

We’ve all felt betrayal—an abandonment, a lie, a promise broken. Pahalgam takes that private betrayal and makes it public. It makes it violent. It makes it national. And it reminds us: no, we’re not beyond this. We’re not immune. We’re exposed.

And what do we do in return? We process it like we process every tragedy. With shock. With hashtags. With shallow talk of resilience. But this isn’t resilience. This is numbness. This is defeat in slow motion.

I want more than justice. I want retribution. I want the message to be clear: this country is not soft. Not blind. And not willing to tolerate another inch of this cruelty disguised as ideology.

Because here’s the truth—when people are gunned down with that kind of arrogance, they’re not the only ones being targeted. Our silence is, too. Our dignity. Our flag. Our sense of who we are. This was not just an act of terror—it was a slap across the face of our national identity.

And we should be furious.

Not just once. Not just for a week. We should stay furious until the betrayal is answered. Until the disrespect is avenged. Until justice isn’t just an ideal but an act.

Because if we let this pass like the others, we are complicit. We are, in effect, saying we can be broken. We can be silenced. We can be disrespected—without consequence.

They mocked our faith in this country. They turned our trust into a punchline. “Go ask Modi for help,” they said—like our democracy was a joke, our government a ghost, our promises a scam. If that doesn’t light a fire under us, what will?

This wasn’t just murder. It was humiliation. And if that doesn’t enrage us into action, maybe we’ve already surrendered.

 

To the Doorstep, Not Beyond (and Please Stop Hovering Over Mine)

This morning I accompanied my niece to a workshop on entrepreneurship. She walked in with her notebook and nerves. I stayed outside with my book and my firm belief in boundaries.

Within minutes, I was approached by two well-meaning adults who looked at me as if I had forgotten my shoes or left the child in the parking lot.

“You’re not going in?”

“Wouldn’t she feel more confident with you beside her?”

I declined. First with a smile, then with the kind of practiced patience only a seasoned caregiver can manage.

What I didn’t say—but deeply wanted to—was this: She needs to build her own confidence, not borrow mine. And I need to know that when she walks into a room, she believes she belongs there without me having to hold her hand.

I’ll take her to the doorstep. But she steps in. She stumbles, asks questions, makes her own notes. She learns. Then she comes back and knows, without a doubt, that I’m here. Not in the room, but with her all the same.

Ironically, this workshop was on entrepreneurship—the art of taking initiative, managing risk, learning from failure, and creating value. And yet the behaviour of the outreach team hosting it was anything but entrepreneurial. There was no curiosity, no tolerance for alternative approaches, no openness to a different model of support.

Which got me thinking—parenting and caregiving might just be the most under-acknowledged form of entrepreneurship. A form where people need the quiet kind of support that makes people nervous. And when people are nervous, they judge.

It’s not new to me. I grew up watching my mother face it. She had a certain way of raising us—calm, reflective, not prone to panic or performative parenting. And she was judged for it constantly.

I remember her coming home, seething after a relative had given her unsolicited advice. “You should do this,” “Why aren’t you more strict?” or the dreaded, “If they were my kids…” She would vent for hours, then fall silent, reliving the indignity long after the words had passed.

She hated it—not just the advice, but the assumption behind it. That someone else had understood her children, her choices, better than she had. That they had permission to instruct her on how to mother.

Now, decades later, I feel that same fire rise when I’m politely cornered by someone else’s certainty about my way of caregiving.

Because here’s the thing: We parents/caregivers know how easily intent can be misunderstood. We’ve all had moments twisted, gestures misread, love mistaken for neglect or fuss mistaken for care. And yet, we turn around and do it to each other with remarkable efficiency.

And yet we cling to the idea of the “parenting community.”

In theory, it’s a noble idea. In practice, it often resembles an unlicensed AA group—except instead of alcohol, the addiction is control. We gather to confess our frustrations, share our latest failures, whisper our fears. And yes, there’s comfort in the chorus of “Same here,” “Mine too,” and “You’re not alone.”

But once that circle ends, we sometimes turn on each other—subtly, with raised eyebrows and veiled questions. A competition wrapped in empathy. You’re struggling? Me too—but look how well I’m handling it.

We’re desperate to know we’re not the only ones flailing—but equally desperate not to look like the one flailing the most.

It’s a curious contradiction. We crave solidarity, but often weaponize similarity. If my child throws a tantrum, and yours doesn’t, am I failing? If you hover, and I don’t, am I cold? If I stay outside the room and your instinct is to go in, must one of us be wrong?

Why is it so hard to allow another parent the benefit of context?

I don’t want to do to others what I saw done to my mother—or what’s been done to me. I want to step out of the judgment loop, the “I-know-best” carousel that seems to run endlessly in parenting circles.

I want to raise a child who questions everything—including me. Who doesn’t accept second hand opinions as fact. Who knows that curiosity isn’t disrespect, and debate isn’t rebellion.

Parenting, or being any kind of consistent adult presence in a child’s life, is a daily bet placed on a very long game. There’s no user manual, no clear ROI, and plenty of quiet failures. Every day brings the question: Did I do the right thing?

Many days, we don’t. Some days, we do. The failures are loud. The successes are whisper-quiet.

The toddler doesn’t say, Thank you for letting me scream for ten minutes without giving in.

The 10-year-old isn’t going to write you a note saying, Thanks for holding the line on screen time.

And the teenager? Well, if they acknowledge your existence without rolling their eyes, it’s practically a standing ovation.

Rebellion is the dominant dialect of youth. And as caregivers, we wait—often decades—before we hear the echo of our effort. If we’re lucky, we see the success not through their words, but their choices. We see it when they become kind. When they hold space for someone else. When they choose integrity over ease.

By then, we’ve usually become grandparents. Or ghosts.

Still, we try. And try again. Because we didn’t ask for the child. We asked for the relationship.

That’s what struck me most today—not just as someone who chose not to walk into that workshop, but as someone who chose to walk into my niece’s life.

I’m not her parent. I’m her aunt. I made the choice to be involved. I wasn’t asked. She didn’t sign a consent form. She’s dealing with my presence as much as I’m shaping it. That’s the strange beauty of caregiving—it’s built on a mutual unfolding. We don’t choose the person; we choose the bond. The meaning of that bond reveals itself over time.

And like all true entrepreneurship, it involves risk, effort, ambiguity, and the occasional sense of being in way over your head.

So no, I didn’t go into the workshop. I waited outside. She walked in on her own. She came out brighter, louder, full of questions. She crossed that space herself. But she knew exactly where I was.

Right where I said I’d be.

At the doorstep. Not beyond.

 

 

On the Edge of Myself

This is the third chakra workshop I've attended. By now, I thought I could recite the basics in my sleep. And yet, I keep hearing familiar things like they're new. The words haven't changed—but their meanings shift. Maybe I'm finally listening. Or maybe life has just worn me down to the point where the questions actually land.

Yesterday's focus was the root chakra. The one tied to safety, stability, and tribe—family, blood, and belonging. I was told to sit with the idea of presence. Not in a poetic, Instagram caption kind of way. Just Be in the moment. And from there, ask—Who am I?

It's a question that sounds abstract until it crashes into real life. And right now, my life is jam-packed. My sister's away, so I'm juggling care for my niece. Work is its usual hurricane. A close friend's father is slipping away. An ex-colleague has floated a consulting gig I should apparently be "perfect for." And somewhere in that chaos, I'm supposed to plan the interiors of a new house. Another friend is buzzing about his son's wedding—and in the same breath, calling me to vent about his 80-year-old mother, who decided to stand for four hours frying pooris precisely how she likes them. She collapsed from exhaustion, and Sanjay was stuck somewhere between panic, guilt, frustration, and the desperate need to take a breath. I was standing in my office, still holding the terrible cup of tea from the vending machine, fresh off a sharp, exhausting argument with my sales manager. My jaw was still clenched. My pulse hadn't slowed. And now I was trying to calm someone else down.

So there I was—one hand holding my mug, the other holding the phone—offering soothing words while my brain was still on fire—a banter of speeding words in a tornado of hurling moments.

Am I supposed to be grounded? In the moment? How? And where exactly am I supposed to be in this "moment"? They're all elbowing each other for space. Is it even possible to sit still in the middle of that? Or are we just cycling through our roles—caretaker, friend, professional, dreamer—without ever fully stepping out of any of them?

The other day, I had workers over at the new house: one contractor, four carpenters, a plumber, an electrician, and two drivers thrown in for good measure. All men. All marched through like they were prepping for a Mars landing. Measuring walls, tapping floors, opening cupboards, and announcing things like, "This will have to go," and "Madam, this floor planning is from another era."

I was nodding, asking questions, pretending to understand what "load-bearing" meant. Then, out of nowhere, the question—Who am I blindsided me. Not gently. It's more like an ambush. Borderline accusatory. 

Who was I in that room? The homeowner. The one with the budget. The final say. And I still felt like I'd wandered onto a film set and missed the script briefing.

So I did what anyone would do when existential dread meets electrical fittings: I breathed and said, "JUST just do what I'm asking you to do."

Not my most spiritual moment. But very much mine.

Strangely, all of this reminds me of when I was training for a marathon. My trainer—who I initially thought was a sadist in running shoes—insisted I run barefoot. Not to "connect with the earth" or anything romantic like that. Just to feel every step. "Rest your foot fully. Feel the ground with each stride. Every inch. Then move." It was agonizingly slow. I wanted speed. He wanted presence. One nano-step at a time.

It was like being ambushed by Victor Frankl mid-run.

It is the pause between inhale and exhale—that minuscule beat between breathing in and out. Like a lightning bolt, it reminded me of Frankl again—the space between stimulus and response. That invisible pause where choice lives.

If I believe in that pause—and try to notice it, even just once—does that count as being present? Or am I just dissecting the moment so much that I miss it entirely?

Honestly, I don't know. But it's forcing me to look closer at the "I" in all this. The one who is running, signing checks, planning house interiors, juggling emotions, and trying to track her breath.

The root chakra is supposed to be about stability. But maybe it's also about not falling apart mid-scene. Maybe it's learning to carry the chaos with a bit of humour, a little awareness, and the tiny hope that even in the blur, you're still somewhere in there—trying to land on your own two feet.

And maybe—just maybe—if I'd remembered the marathon, I could've placed my words like my feet and slowed down. Felt the floor. Said, "Yes, that floor plan is from another era," and take one grounded step at a time. But then again, that's the thing about wisdom. It always shows up just after the contractor leaves.

 

Instinct, Inheritance, and the Pause in Between

“My daughter gave birth last week,” Jyoti tells me, her eyes brimming. “It had to be a boy. But it’s a girl.”

She says it with the heartbreak of a mother expecting tragedy, not a grandmother celebrating life. I freeze. Not because I haven’t heard this sentiment before—but because it still lands like a slap.

This is Jyoti—my cook, my help, and a mother of two daughters. A woman who quietly pulled together 35 lakhs to get one of them married. Thirty-five lakhs!!! That’s years of grinding, saving, borrowing, and probably skipping things for herself. But all that still didn’t buy her the social currency she was hoping for: a grandson.

As if this wasn’t enough, she says that life decides to throw another weight at her.

Just weeks before the birth, her sister-in-law dies. And Jyoti’s husband is forced to pay for the funeral. Why? Because the sister’s husband—yes, the actual spouse of the deceased—believes it’s the brother’s duty to handle it. Not his. Because she was “his” sister. Because women, even in death, come with invoices. Apparently, being female means someone else always has to pay for you. You’re a burden at birth, an expense at marriage, and a liability even at your cremation.

This is the kind of logic that quietly shapes lives—especially women’s lives—across homes, classes, and generations.

I think of my mother and my aunt. Two women who don’t cry openly like Jyoti, but fight their own battles with as much pain—just tucked behind tight jaws and long silences. My mother, who told us we should be independent. Who held education like a sword in one hand and survival in the other. 

My aunt, who still demands and apologizes for wanting things for herself and does both with equal passion. It’s like her mind and heart are running in opposite directions—one charging forward, the other yanking her back by the collar. Watching her is like watching someone wrestle with invisible hands. She’s constantly negotiating with internal voices—some hers, some inherited, all loud.

Both are strong. But they are also caught in a quiet war—not with the world anymore, but with themselves.

There is what they feel.

There is what they were taught to feel.

And then there is what they’re only now, slowly, starting to feel—after years of reflection, rumination, regret.

It’s a strange and exhausting emotional triangle. One where the spontaneous collides with the socialized. Where instinct says I want more, but habit says be grateful. And somewhere in between, after enough sleepless nights and second-guessing, something real starts to break through.

That inner confrontation—between impulsive reactions, deep-rooted conditioning, and newly-formed self-awareness—can feel like an earthquake under your skin. A bewildering trilemma, as Erik Pevernagie puts it.

And that’s the thing about many women of their generation: they’re not just fighting patriarchy. They’re fighting their own internal wiring, built carefully by decades of society whispering (or shouting) what they should feel.

So no, it’s not always about rebellion. Sometimes, it’s about quiet disruption. Not the kind that makes headlines—but the kind that makes you pause at the sink, stare out the window, and finally admit: I wanted more than this. And I didn’t know I was allowed to.

My mother and aunt are strong. But they are also tired. Because they are constantly fighting. Fighting for voice. For respect. For space. For air. And above all, fighting their past. Every day. Like it’s a ghost that sits at the kitchen table with them, judging, doubting, reminding them of the women they were supposed to be but refused to become.

But here’s the thing: do we have to keep fighting the past?

What does it do to a woman to be in constant resistance mode? What does it do to her children to watch her always either defending herself or correcting the world?

There’s a cost to surviving. A fatigue that seeps into the next generation. We inherit not just our mothers’ ambitions, but also their trauma. Their anxiety. Their blueprint for “not this life.”

And what is that blueprint, really? Often, it’s a series of negations:

Not like my mother.

Not like my childhood.

Not like that silence.

But when you build a future only in opposition to the past, you’re not dreaming—you’re dodging. You’re not designing your life, you’re reacting to someone else’s.

So again: what do we pass on?

My niece, at 15, already knows something I took decades to learn. “If boys had periods,” she said one day, casually, “pads and tampons would be free. And we’d get a holiday every month.” No filter, no apology, Just pure clarity. 

But then I watch her mother—my sister—live out a very different reality. She wants to push back at work, to speak up when things aren’t fair. And sometimes she does. But more often, she sighs and says, “What’s the point? Nothing’s going to change.”

It frustrates me. I get angry. I start pushing—say something, demand better, fight back.

And then I wonder: how different am I from the very system I resist? The one that tells women how to behave. What to feel. What strength should look like. Am I just pushing a shinier version of control and calling it feminism?

She’s not failing the movement. She’s just tired. She’s just surviving. And she gets to decide what survival looks like for her.

Maybe the work now isn’t about insisting everyone fights the same way. Maybe it’s about making space for every woman to define her own fight. Her own wants. Her own worth.

We are what we remember, what we inherit, and what we challenge.

Jyoti’s tears. My mother’s resistance. My aunt’s exhaustion. My niece’s sass. My sister’s surrender. They’re all part of the same story. Women giving voice to disparity—across generations, across class, in kitchens and boardrooms and WhatsApp groups and whispers at 2am.

Some in grief. Some in fire. Some in punchlines. But always—always—in truth.

Change doesn’t always come roaring in. Sometimes it arrives in the quiet recognition that the mould we’re running from is still shaping us. And maybe the work now isn’t just to reject the past, but to reimagine what we build in its place.

So no—it didn’t have to be a boy.

It has to be a world where every girl is enough.

Where women can want more—without guilt.

Where strength isn’t measured in how loud we yell, but in how gently we allow each other to grow.

And maybe that’s how we move forward—not by erasing the past, but by refusing to be trapped in its logic.

Instinct, Inheritance, and the Pause in Between