"Breaking the Glass Ceiling: How Women Are Finding Their Voice in a 'Lost in Translation' World"

I used to think life was about balance: work and rest, ambition and relationships, giving and receiving. I tried so hard to keep everything in perfect measure, like some invisible scale I could never quite get right. And yet, the more I tried, the more I realized: balance, at least the kind we imagine, is a myth. Life is messy. Some days demand everything from work, leaving no space for rest. Other days, family, friends, or even our own thoughts insist on attention. Trying to divide ourselves evenly across all these parts feels less like harmony and more like a performance — a performance I used to feel I had to nail perfectly. Balance Feels Different for Everyone And it’s not just me. Men, too, carry pressures — to succeed professionally, be emotionally present, and show strength without shutting down. Women often juggle careers, relationships, care work, and the quiet expectation to be endlessly accommodating. I’ve noticed that, no matter who you are, the myth of balance can make ...

 The Unfamiliar Country of Stillness For the first time in four years, I pressed pause. Not a holiday, not an escape, but a deliberate month of stillness — time to read, to sit quietly with myself, to relearn the rhythms of being rather than doing. The act felt both radical and unfamiliar. I had been so used to moving without interruption that stillness seemed like a foreign country, one whose language I did not yet speak. The First Pause It was in this silence that I returned to books, not as tools for research or productivity but as companions. Khalil Gibran’s words felt like rediscovered echoes: “Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.” For years, I had read this as poetry. In the pause, I read it as instruction. There was something almost startling about remembering that life, at its core, is not about performance or efficiency, but about presence. To walk barefoot on the earth, to let the wind touch you: these a...

Longing is no new word in society. It has existed for ages and yugas - in Urmila as she waited for her husband to return from exile with his older brother; in Pandavas to be accepted as rightful heirs of Hastinapur; in Ahalya to be forgiven for an adultery of which she was the victim; in Mirabai to get a glimpse of her beloved, to whom she betrothed herself as a child bride while everyone thought it was just a phase; in bhaktas who have been penancing for don’t know how many years just to get a glimpse of their God. Longing is also not an obsolete emotion. It is still there today - in the eldest child longing from freedom responsibilities they never asked for; in a child who wants to tell their parents that they were molested by the bad uncle in the family without any judgement; in a woman who longs for emotional attachment of any form, even it comes with more pain; in a man who wants to be free from debts and lead a peaceful life; in a mentally exhausted human who has seen it all an...