Aditi Sharma

I hate arguments and go to extreme lengths to avoid a confrontation. But life is life and things are thus not always agreeable and sometimes I do end up having disagreements with people.

Life after Dashain and Tihar is hard. First, I have to say goodbye to my family members and come home to an empty, often dusty, apartment. Though I live with my husband in a one-bedroom apartment with plenty of plants and a cat, our home feels a little strange after the chaos (aka my beloved extende...

Coming home for Dashain and Tihar is always equal parts amazing and awful. Amazing because obviously I get to meet my grandparents and dad and mom and also catch up with my cousins who keep meeting without me throughout the year. Not to mention all the glorious home-cooked delicacies I get to enjoy,...

We all want to grow up and then we do. It’s not a really great feeling, is it, if you think about it? Suddenly everything that was once taken care of for you, you have to do by yourself. It sometimes feels like you are all you have. Growing up and ‘becoming an adult’ can be so disturbing, though we...

My day, like yours I’m going to assume here, starts in bed scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. For half an hour (on a good day, that is) before I get out of bed to go to the kitchen to make a strong cup of coffee, I consume endless posts on food, travel, love, and rituals that sometimes make me...

Anxiety aside, family members and friends commenting on my looks also didn’t help. I knew many of them were really concerned when they told me to lose weight but the concern also masked their disgust, or so I often felt. There was a relative who stopped speaking to me and would just turn away every...

The need to live sustainably and not use earth’s resources unnecessarily and cut down pollution of all kinds has never been so great. Given the rate at which garbage is pilling up in the landfills and we are using up natural resources (like there’s an endless supply), the future generations might no...

Every day in the evening a group of children come out to play in my colony. They scream, they laugh, they jump, and are all really, really happy. I often sit in my balcony, sipping tea, and look at them. I find myself smiling and there’s a sense of calm that takes over.

I’m not someone who likes to create a fuss. I don’t complain at restaurants when I’m served bad food. I don’t tell people off when they are late for a meeting and I’m the one who almost always says sorry just to diffuse a petty argument. Ideally, I prefer to keep confrontations at bay.

When there are a zillion things that need to be done and just so many hours in a day, looking painlessly put-together and fashionable all the time can seem next to impossible. I often find myself wondering how some people I know are able to do it. But chic women aren’t superhuman – they are just wel...