After Three Months… I Finally Got a Table Before that, my work life had one small but very important problem – I didn’t have a table. Yes, a table. Just a normal piece of furniture that most people don’t even think about. But when you don’t have one, you suddenly realize how important it actually […]
From Drought to the Fruit Bowl
For decades, the name Anantapur District in Andhra Pradesh evoked images of drought, struggling farmers, and parched landscapes. With one of the lowest average rainfall levels in India, scorching summer temperatures, and severely over exploited groundwater resources, agriculture here often felt like a gamble against nature. Farming families lived with constant uncertainty, never knowing if […]
The Story of a Rain- filled Night
The words “ have to go to the hospital” always trigger a deep worry. And if that news arrives suddenly at night, there’s no escaping the anxiety. Around 3:30 in the early morning, I too had to head out. On an empty, silent road, just Dheeraj dada and me. Under a relentless downpour, our destination […]
Hide-and-Seek “Omelette”
How do you fry an omelette without letting its smell escape? Seriously, do you know any trick? No matter where you are on planet Earth, making an omelette isn’t exactly rocket science. Still, thanks to my overthinking, I managed to sweat an entire bucket over this simple task.Right after beating the eggs, I landed myself […]
Watching a Company Grow
Art of shaping When I stepped into X chilli Agro Pvt. Ltd., it did not feel like joining an established organization. It felt like walking into possibility. This was not a company with systems perfectly in place or processes running on autopilot. It was new. Fresh. Unshaped. And in many ways, I was too. From […]
Happy Women’s Day?
This morning I was sitting in Makdi Singray village for a discussion on tamarind collection and processing. Normal field day. After the meeting wrapped up, I got talking with Shrimani didi. Just casually, I asked her – “Didi, aapko pata hai aaj kya hai?” She smiled, almost like it was a slightly silly question, and […]
She Wrote Her Name
ON MEHANDI, CHART PAPER, AND A MOMENT THAT STAYED WITH US We go to the villages every week for MHM sessions — talking about menstrual health, hygiene, bodies, care. It is quiet, important work. And at the end of one such session, before we left, we asked the women something simple: “Next week, what would […]
At twenty, I left Delhi. Not because I hated it. Not because I was running away. But because something inside me knew that comfort can sometimes become a cage. Delhi was everything I knew. The cafés where the staff remembered my order. The friends who knew my stories before I finished telling them. The noise, […]
The Market Came Home
Waiting! If the waiting is for a train, it brings irritation. But if, instead of a train, the waiting is for love—then surely hope outweighs irritation. Am I very wrong to say this? Many have written poems while waiting with hope; some have gone to coffee shops, some to rooftops, some have soaked their pillows […]
Feminism is for Everybody
Before joining the Swar Fellowship, I had read bell hooks’ Feminism Is for Everybody and admired its simplicity and clarity. But only after spending months in the field did her ideas start feeling real. Hooks talks about feminism not as a theory, not as something meant for a classroom or an elite group, but as […]
