Capturing the Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life....

  If marriage is so exhausting for women, why does society push it so hard? A feminist unpacking of love, labour, and the world’s most successful social contract, 'marriage'. Why Does Marriage Still Thrive—Even When It Politely Chains Ambitious Women? This blog began, as many feminist awakenings do, with a “well-meaning” comment from family. My second cousin responded to an earlier piece I wrote on working women and domestic labour—especially cooking, that sacred skill women are expected to retain no matter how many degrees they acquire. Apparently, intellectual ambition is admirable, but only if it does not interfere with dinner. Her message, however, was refreshingly sharp. She wrote that she is constantly warned—by colleagues, friends, and the informal Ministry of Social Wisdom—that marriage traps women in a lifelong loop of care work, emotional management, and unpaid labour. At the same time, she is urged to  finish her PhD quickly  because “it’s time to get married,”...

After forty, something shifts. You stop apologising. You start asking inconvenient questions. This is one such question—about kitchens, care work, and why feminism must begin at home. The Question That Arrives Late—but Necessarily:  Who Decided that Cooking is a Woman’s Destiny? This question dawned on me only recently—and perhaps it had to. There are moments in a woman’s life when clarity arrives late, not because she lacked intelligence, but because social conditioning is remarkably efficient. Even women who proudly see themselves as empowered often wander through a maze—one constructed by marriage, motherhood, and the quiet tyranny of expectations. The forties, interestingly, tend to dismantle that maze. They return to women a question they were never encouraged to ask: Who was I before I became everything everyone needed me to be? Who This Question Is—and Is Not—For Let me be clear. This question is not directed at working mothers who have parental support, domestic help, or...

A math problem. A lunch-table question. A moment that exposed how deeply gender stereotypes survive—even in higher education. This reflection examines how gender blindness, institutional power, and misplaced ideas of “strength” quietly undermine feminist ethics. When Gender Sensitisation Meets Gender Blindness This reflection emerges from my engagement with the academic community—not as an abstract theorist, but as the Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies, working at the uneasy intersection of policy, pedagogy, and lived experience. I was asked to curate a short-term Gender Sensitisation Programme for faculty members from Arts and Science colleges. What unfolded during that week was both revealing and unsettling. During one session, a resource person cited a seemingly innocuous example from a school mathematics textbook: Ravi buys five spinning tops; Maya buys eight bangles . The point was straightforward—how early educational materials naturalise gender roles by quietly align...

Institutions are comfortable with feminism as long as it remains polite, predictable, and procedural. The moment it questions power, it is re-coded as hostility. Drawing from encounters in gender sensitisation programmes and Internal Complaints Committees, this reflection examines how feminism is repeatedly misheard—not because it is unclear, but because it is inconvenient. When Feminism Is Misheard as Hostility There are moments when society makes a deliberate mishearing of feminism. Instead of recognising it as an ethical and political framework concerned with dignity, justice, and quality of life, feminism is reduced—conveniently—to male-bashing . This reduction is not innocent. It is a refusal masquerading as misunderstanding. For decades, women have tried to correct this caricature. Yet some ears remain closed—not because the explanation is unclear, but because acknowledging feminism as a holistic critique of social arrangements would demand discomfort, self-reflection, and accoun...