Finding myself in small bits of life. Travel writings and Musings of a Millennial navigating life one bit at a time.

I grew up in Ambattur, Chennai — a neighbourhood of old houses, narrow lanes, and the kind of mothers who knew everyone’s exam results before the school did. My mother is from an orthodox Hindu family and her father was Ganapadigal. He used to teach kids to recite vedas and slokas. My father came from a very big family, with four or five uncles and seven siblings.

I split the difference: I learned French in college, then dropped it to chase Chartered Accountancy because I felt that was the only pathway for a ‘respectable job’ — as my father used to quote.

I stepped out of the house thinking I was simply guarding my mother’s respect. Without knowing that I would be hurt later, and that it would show me a different kind of pain in the world. I began my life with ₹15,000 in hand. I began my life as a French teacher at a few schools, for about three years.

I met him at the French Institute and felt an instant connection — this was in 2010. We got married in February 2013.

My son was born in December 2013 and I made the bold decision to pursue CA after he was born. Later, I also completed my MBA in Finance. A year into this process, I joined an audit firm while studying CA Inter. Once CA Inter classes were over, I saw the real work at the auditor’s office and what life as a CA would actually look like. Honestly, between different attempts and the CA-life scenes, somewhere I lost it. I decided to give up on the whole route as it felt like a never-ending process.

The first decade of being an adult passed in a blur of new roles. Wife. Mother. CA dropout. Marketing agency owner. Freelancer. A wife again, more tired. A marketer at a company, finally. I changed careers three times in ten years. I realised how resilient I was in starting from scratch all over again.

Sometimes a marriage ends like a chair breaking — one loud crack — and sometimes it ends like a chair that has been creaking for so long that nobody hears the difference between this Tuesday and last Tuesday. Ours was the second kind.

I do not write the full story of it here, because it is not only mine to tell. What I will say is this: there is a particular kind of tiredness that no holiday fixes. I felt that tired for years before I gave myself permission to name it. I named it the year I turned 33. Not in some big therapy session. I named it while figuring out my finances for the month and looking up to see my mom and my son sharing some random joke and laughing like crazy — realising that the only two people in the house I felt fully myself with were the two of them.

The filing has begun recently. The decree will come later. In between, I am building a life that has more of me in it than the previous one did.

I am, primarily, a marketer. I love the work. I run growth at a fintech company where my colleagues are smart, the problems are real, and the company actually ships. I have no plans to leave this career. I plan to grow it, sharpen it, add business analytics to it over this year and next, and let it be the steady ground on which everything else stands.

But the marketer is not all I am. Alongside, in the early mornings and on the weekends and during the small hours that I used to give to a marriage:

I travel. Mostly solo. Mostly India. I have written from temples in Mangalore, Tamil Nadu, the Ghats in Karnataka, the back-streets of Mangalore. I am not collecting destinations. I am collecting moments that the rest of my life cannot give me.

I write. This site is most of it. Sometimes a piece elsewhere. The marketer in me writes funnels. The traveller in me writes letters.

I photograph. Badly at first. Better with time. A 35mm prime and a small backpack and a habit of asking before I shoot. The camera is teaching me to slow down for long enough to actually look.

I am beginning yoga teacher training in September, my birthday month. I have always known I would teach something one day. I think this is that something.

I am my mother’s daughter. She lives with me. She will live with me as long as she wants to, and that is the only fact about my home life I am completely certain about.

I am my son’s mother. He is 12, brilliant, quiet, watching everything. I owe him a mother who is whole. I am trying.