Empowerment

It was time for my parents to find a suitable boy for me. It gave me exciting encounters, interesting revelations and a name for my Substack account. This was during a two year period when Udit and I were ‘on a

‘I was her friend even before I was born.’ This thought raced in my young mind as my mother, and I crept silently to Lily’s mother’s room. The room was huge, with a high ceiling and windows with ledges and ornate

In between work and raising the kids, I tried to be a loving wife. My husband didn’t want me anymore. Late at night, I escaped into writing. At bedtime, I’d read to my children, as they were the stars of all

The Three Women in my Life: Lessons in Courage, Resilience, and Triumph “Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie.” Many afternoons after I returned home from school in 2002, I would memorise lines from this wonderful English poem. I was hooked on

…and learning from her. A meditation on love, loss and healing Minu Tai and I were given two vastly different lives to live. I’m not adding a photograph of Minu Tai to this essay — so here’s a description — an agile

“My marriage crumbled. My health crumbled. I crumbled,” writes Sana Ally. A cat she had rejected shows her how to accept it all. Sticker is 3 years, 3 month-ish old. She’s half blind. There’s good reason to believe that vision in her

“My breasts are, literally, the softer parts of me. As flaunt-worthy as the more culturally-celebrated stronger parts of me,” asserts writer and Odissi dancer Swaati Chattopadhyay “Swaati, are your breasts in front of your waist?” “No.” “Then keep your hand where your

‘I wish I could do it. It needs so much strength and courage. I don’t have it’, stated a random stranger, admirably pointing at my shaved head. ‘Well, you just need a barber to do this, not really courage’, I responded.

Our husband and father, Brendon Gooneratne, passed away in 2021. He had had a fall on June 12th and was recovering in a hospital close to home, with excellent care and medical attention. We had been upcountry for 18 months, due

The sofa smelled like toast. My head had been forced into its corner. The upholstery was frayed in this part, and I could see a tiny brown piece of bread tucked into a crevice in the cushion. This would be the