Success takes on a new meaning when you have a body that doesn’t always listen to you and a mind that’s trying hard not to follow suit.

With Parkinson’s, you learn very quickly that the grand milestones the world celebrates are not always available to you in the same way.

But something else emerges.Something quieter and more deliberate.

Small wins.

Getting out of bed without hesitation.

Buttoning a shirt without frustration.

Typing a sentence without your fingers slowing down mid-thought.

Holding on to an idea long enough to write it down.

These are not small things. They are victories.What makes them even more significant is something we don’t often talk about enough—dopamine.

Dopamine is often called the reward chemical. It is what allows us to feel pleasure, motivation, momentum. It is what helps us say: this mattered, do it again.

And in Parkinson’s, where dopamine is in short supply, celebrating small wins is not just emotional. It is biological

It becomes a way of teaching your brain to keep going. A way of reinforcing effort. A way of creating motivation where it doesn’t come easily.

So when I pause to acknowledge a small win,I am not lowering the bar. I am rebuilding the system.

I am telling my brain:

This counts.

This is worth it.

We’re still moving forward.

And maybe that’s what success looks like now—

not loud, not dramatic, not always visible to the outside world.

But steady.

Intentional.

Hard-earned.

Small wins.

Every single one of them.

If this resonated, tell me—what was your small win today? 💛

(April is Parkinson’s awareness month)

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On days

when the picture refuses to make sense,

when pieces scatter

further away

instead of closer,

when I have no plan

to fall back on

I look at you.

Bent over a puzzle,

unhurried,

certain

that the missing pieces

will turn up.

You don’t rush.

You don’t doubt.

You simply keep going.

Piece by piece,

you show me

what patience looks like.

What belief looks like.

What hope looks like.

And suddenly

this isn’t just a puzzle anymore

it’s a reminder.

That not knowing

isn’t the end.

That slowly

is still progress.

That together

is enough.

So I gather myself

the way you gather pieces

quietly,

carefully,

one by one.

And I know

we’re not lost.

We’re just mid-puzzle.

Some days arrive without a map.

No clarity, no sequence, no sense of what fits where.

And then there are days like this—

where the smallest, most ordinary moment

becomes a way back to myself.

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It means being struck by an idea in the middle of the night
and being unable to type it
because your medication has worn off.

It means typing sloppily
because your fingers refuse to open.

It means trying to hold on to your thoughts
because you are too slow to catch them on paper.

It means facing frustration when editing—
not because you don’t know what needs to be done,
but because doing it takes immense effort.

It means using voice-to-text
and correcting almost every sentence
because your speech will not cooperate.

It means failing to recognise your own handwriting,
watching it grow smaller and smaller
as you complete a single line.

It means constantly adapting
to what your body will not do
as you try to meet your own expectations.

It means living with a quiet disconnect
between body and mind.

It means being grateful
for what you can still do,
because you do not know when it might change.

It means showing up
every single day
and writing—

because you have to.
because you must.

April is Parkinson’s awareness month and this is my reality.

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This morning was chaos.

Shoes missing.

Water bottles half-filled.

Someone insisting they absolutely had to wear red.

And then, we saw him.

A cat.

Sitting quietly on the garden wall.

Still.

Unbothered.

Watching.

For a moment, everything slowed down.

The boys stopped mid-motion.

I stopped mid-instruction.

Even the morning seemed to pause, just slightly, as if it too had noticed.

And all I could think was—

This feels familiar.

Because not very long ago, I had written a story about a cat who sat on a garden wall, watching two boys.

In the story, the boys wonder about him.

They try to call him.

They try to understand him.

And slowly, gently, the cat comes closer.

Not because he is called.

But because he chooses.

Standing there this morning, watching this very real cat in this very ordinary moment, I had the strangest feeling.

That perhaps the story was never entirely imagined.

That maybe these small, quiet scenes live around us all the time ,waiting to be noticed or lived.

The boys didn’t say much.

They just stood there, looking up at him.

And he looked back.

As if he already knew them.

As if he had always been part of the story.

---

And then, just as the morning settled back into itself,

we returned to something familiar.

A book.

A story.

A voice reading aloud.

---

And later, when things had quietened down, I looked at something else.

A book.

Printed. Held. Real.

A story about a cat on a garden wall.

About two boys.

About being watched.

And chosen.

And I couldn’t help but smile.

Because sometimes, without even realising it,

we are already living the stories we are trying to write.

---

Working on a series of picture books rooted in everyday moments and quiet magic. 🐾

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It’s true what they say, isn’t it? That your life up until now is preparing you for what is to come?

I think about that sometimes.

Perhaps that is why I travelled as much as I did. Different countries, different cities, different ways of being. At the time, it just felt like movement. Now it feels like preparation.

And reading, my constant, quiet love because through books, I have always been able to travel anywhere without leaving my home. I never questioned that ability before. It was simply something I loved. Something I did.

But now, it feels like something I have.

Parkinson’s has changed the way I move through the world. Crowds feel overwhelming. The ease with which I once travelled feels uncertain now. I don’t know if I will confidently board flights and wander through unfamiliar streets in the same way again.

And that thought sits somewhere heavy.

But then I remind myself that I have other ways of arriving.

Through stories. Through pages. Through lives that are not mine, but that I can step into, briefly, gently.

And somehow, that still counts as travel.

I remember, as a child, watching My World. Each episode was barely ten minutes long. A child, somewhere in the world, showing you their life — their home, their streets, their ordinary, extraordinary days.

I was fascinated.

I wanted it to go on longer. I wanted more. More places, more lives, more windows.

I didn’t realise then that I was already learning how to travel without moving.

Maybe that is what I am doing even now.

Finding ways to keep going.

Just… differently.

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Medication Melodrama #1
A Very Inconvenient Staff Meeting

Some mornings begin with intention.

A plan.
A schedule.
A quiet, hopeful belief that today, everything might just… work.

And then, somewhere inside my body, a staff meeting begins.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Medication — overworked, underappreciated, trying its best
Protein — smug, muscular, always in the way
Estrogen — dramatic, unpredictable, emotionally well-dressed
Weather — moody, inconsistent, deeply British
Energy — enthusiastic intern with no follow-through
Brain HQ — me, attempting management

SCENE: INTERNAL OFFICE — MORNING

Medication: (pacing) I had a plan today. Not casually. Not optimistically.
But: Clinically. Structured. Time-bound. Approved.

(And then Protein walks in. Uninvited. Of course.)

Protein: (not in the least bit in the mood for argument, cool and composed as always)

I am nutrition (Throws a smug look at Medication, Medication stares).

Medication: (appropriately provoked) : You are traffic.

(Just as this is unfolding, Estrogen makes an entrance.

Not enters. Arrives.)

Estrogen : Well, (adjusting something invisible), you shouldn’t expect stability during fluctuation week.

(Medication briefly considers resignation.)

(Weather pops in next).

Weather: We’re doing cold, then warm, then slightly humid confusion today.

Medication : Of course we are (in an almost whisper)

(Just then, Energy bursts in with a clipboard.)

Energy : I’ve signed us up for laundry, dishes, and reorganising a cupboard!

(Brain HQ nods, impressed.)

(Medication panics.)

(Energy sits down five minutes later)

Energy: I might just… rest.

And this? This is the part no one sees.

The coordination.
The negotiation.
The quiet recalibration happening beneath ordinary life.

Medication: (exhales loudly)

“Protein blocks me.
Hormones confuse me.
Weather destabilises me.
Energy overcommits and disappears.

And somehow… I’m the problem?

Brain HQ: (assumes a gentle tone)

You’re not failing. You’re working in impossible conditions.

END

So, with Parkinson’s Disease whereby a lot of “normal” function is dictated by medication, a lot of times it may fail to work due to different reasons - hormones, weather, diet and so on.

The truth remains that there is no dramatic resolution. No sudden fix.

Just a small, familiar understanding that:

We are not built for consistency.
We are built for adjustment.

Some days, everything works.
Some days, nothing does.
And most days…

we improvise like absolute legends.

(If you’ve ever wondered why something that “should work” doesn’t — this is why.)

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Reading to someone is a deeply intimate act.

To read your words aloud to another person, especially when they are still in their first raw form, is to offer something unusually tender. These are not the edited words, not the sharpened or protected ones. These are the first words, the ones that arrive with all their immediacy, vulnerability and pulse still intact.

To share them with someone you love is to hold them in a special place. It is to say: you matter enough for me to let you hear this before the world does. Before I have polished the sentences into certainty. Before I have hidden the seams.

And the people who listen to first drafts are offering a rare kind of kindness. They are giving their time and attention to something still becoming. They are sitting beside a writer in that fragile, in-between space where a thought is just beginning to find its shape. There is generosity in that. A quiet and beautiful generosity.

There is also something extraordinary in the act of reading aloud itself. The voice reveals what the page cannot. It softens around sorrow. It brightens with wonder. It lingers differently over memory, affection, longing, awe. The tonal quality shifts almost instinctively depending on what is being said and who is being held inside the words.

And if you are sitting close enough, the intimacy deepens even further. A hand may rest over yours. Someone may pat your shoulder after a line that lands just right. A silence may gather between you that feels full rather than empty. In those moments, the reading is no longer only about the writing. It becomes about presence. Trust. Care.

Reading to someone is beautiful for this reason. It is not simply an act of sharing words. It is an act of letting yourself be witnessed while the words are still alive and unguarded. It is one of the most significant and quietly stunning expressions of intimacy I know. It is beautiful because you trust another person enough with your vulnerability.

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This is my first Gudi Padwa without Papama. Even writing that feels strange.
Like I’ve misplaced something essential, something that was never meant to be missing. I don’t know a Gudi Padwa without her. And so today feels unfamiliar in a way I cannot fully name.

At times like this, I find myself going back into memory, into rooms that still exist somewhere inside me and gathering what I can.

Gudi Padwa at home was never quiet.

There was kallae phou, (yogurt mixed with flattened rice), godda phou (jaggery mixed with flattened rice), neem leaves mixed with sugar, chana upkari (boiled chickpeas tempered with mustard seeds, cumin seeds, hing and garnished with fresh grated coconut) , and paanak (a drink) made with kairi (raw mango) and just a hint of soonthi that lingered on the tongue.

That neem and sugar, Papama always reminded us, was not just tradition.

It was truth.

A small, deliberate reminder that the year would hold both bitterness and sweetness, good days and difficult ones and that we were to accept both with grace.

A reality check, served gently at the start of the year. Grounding us, before anything else began.

We celebrated it properly.

The panchang (horoscope) would be read aloud, always by one of the elders.

In Kannada.

A language I didn’t fully understand, but somehow, I never felt excluded from it.Because Papama would sit beside us, patiently translating the important bits.

“There may be a flood.”
“There will be good fortune for some.”
“This time of the year will bring change.”

She would pause, explain, soften it for us.

As a child, I found it fascinating, this idea that our future could be spoken aloud in the middle of a living room filled with people who loved us.

But what stays with me now is not what was said.

It is how we listened.

Everyone listened.

Even when they didn’t understand the language.

Even when the words were not fully theirs.

There was a kind of respect in that.
For the moment.
For the ritual.
For each other.

And perhaps that is what I miss the most today.

Not just Papama, though that absence sits everywhere, but the togetherness she held together so effortlessly.

Today, the rituals feel quieter.
The food feels like memory.
The words, unanchored.

But somewhere, I know this:

If I close my eyes,
I can still hear her voice
translating, explaining,
making space for all of us to belong.

And maybe that is how I will celebrate today.

By remembering.
By holding on.
By accepting
both the neem and the sugar
as she taught us.

(Papama reading the Panchang, March 2018, Ronak’s first Gudi Padwa)

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A small moment today.

My niece Mira turned five in Berlin.
I watched the celebrations through a video call.

And suddenly I noticed something that made my heart pause for a moment.

Her birthday cake was the sea. So was mine when I turned five. It felt, for a moment, as if time had folded in on itself.

So I let this realisation settle inside me and wrote this…

Today, through the small glowing window of a phone,
I watched my niece turn five.

Berlin morning light
fell gently across a table
where a cake stood waiting.
Covered in blue icing, tiny sea creatures
and waves frozen in sugar.

Suddenly, something inside me stirred.

Because once, long ago,
in another city
under another sky,
a little girl named Snehal
stood before a cake just like this.

Also the sea.
Also the colours of water and sand.
Also five candles
waiting to be blown into memory.

Time does strange things, doesn’t it?.

It travels continents quietly,
packs itself into suitcases of resemblance,
and arrives years later
in the shape of a child
who has my brother’s eyes
and a laugh that belongs entirely to her own life.

Through the screen
I watched Mira lean forward
to make her birthday wish.

Around her stood my family, the people who mean so much to me,
Their voices carried across cities and time zones,
thin but unmistakably warm.

For a moment
I felt like a ghost at my own childhood party.

A witness to something
that had already happened once before.

Perhaps this is what family truly is.

Not just the people who gather around the table
but the quiet way in which life
repeats its patterns.

A cake.
A child turning five.
The sea piped carefully in icing.

And somewhere,
in the soft folds of memory,
another little girl
still standing there.

Perhaps what makes the moment even more special is this.

I am told Mira is a little like me.

She loves writing.
She loves books.
She loves cats.
And of course, she loves the sea.

Maybe that is how families really work.

Not through grand gestures or dramatic legacies,
but through these quiet inheritances…
a love of stories,
a fondness for animals,
a pull towards the water.

And sometimes, a sea cake on a fifth birthday.

Watching Mira today felt like watching a small wave from my own childhood return to shore. Have you ever noticed a moment where life quietly repeated itself in your family?

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My son is recovering from surgery on a jammed finger.

Nothing dramatic. Just painful enough to wake him in the middle of the night — unsure, unsettled, guarding the small ache that feels enormous in the dark.

When it happened, he came to sleep next to me.

And that brought me to tears.

Because in the middle of the night, I am not always at my best. I am not always medicated. My body doesn’t always respond the way I want it to.

Living with Parkinson’s means my body can sometimes be slow to answer when I call on it. There are moments when I cannot move quickly, cannot soothe efficiently, cannot make pain disappear.

Lying there in the dark, I found myself thinking: I should be doing more.

But he didn’t come to me for fixing.

He came for closeness.

Half-asleep, guarding his sore finger, he settled beside me as if this was obvious. As if my presence alone was enough. As if comfort didn’t require competence.

And that’s when it landed.

Children don’t come to you at night because you are capable.

They come because you are safe.

They don’t measure love in solutions or speed.

They measure it in where they feel held.

I spend a lot of time worrying about slowness. About limitations. About what my body cannot always do.

I forget that usefulness and worth are not the same thing.

My son hasn’t forgotten.

When he was hurting, he didn’t choose efficiency. He chose familiarity.

He chose the place where he knows he will be held.

I may not always be able to help in the way I want to but I am still where he comes when things hurt.

And tonight, that feels like enough.

I realise now that sometimes love is not something we manage to do. It is simply where we are when someone needs us.

If this piece reminded you of someone — a mother, a father, or a child who once came to you in the middle of the night — feel free to share it with them.

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If you look closely at my wrists, you will see my life written in ink.

Eight small tattoos live there now, each one a quiet reminder of something I never want to forget. They are not elaborate or ornate. Most of them are simple — a number, a small symbol, a single line. But together they form a map of a life: the people who shaped me, the places that made me, and the lessons that carried me through difficult seasons.

The first was a number: twenty-nine. I got it in Berlin shortly after my Parkinson’s diagnosis. It is my mother’s birth date. At the time, I chose it because I needed to feel anchored to something steady and familiar.

Years later I realised something quietly beautiful — my sons’ birth dates add up to the same number.

Twenty-seven plus two.

As if the past and the future had always been holding hands.

Then came the tulip, the symbol for Parkinson’s. A simple flower — not a medical emblem but something living and growing. A reminder that illness may enter your life, but it does not get to decide how that life blooms.

Another is an “R” shaped like a heart. I got that one in Goa when I travelled alone for the first time after my diagnosis. I was there for a wedding and found myself missing Rohit, Ronak and Rikhil more than I had expected. So I marked the moment with a symbol that would remind me that even when I travel alone, I carry them with me.

There is also a wave — a small curve of ink that represents Mumbai, the city that shaped me. It is also a reminder that life, like the sea, moves in tides. Some days are calm. Others are rough. But the water always returns.

Two tiny Celtic knots represent joy and strength. I chose them because I realised something simple but profound: the purpose of life is not to wait for extraordinary moments but to find joy in ordinary days, and to gather the strength needed to live them.

And finally, there are two names:

Sharda
Meera

My grandmothers.

The women whose stories, wisdom and quiet resilience shaped the person I became. The name Sharda also carries the echo of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge. Both of them used to say that I was blessed by her — that my love for learning and words came from somewhere divine.

Perhaps they were right.

After all, here I am still writing.

Eight marks on my wrist.

A mother.
A diagnosis.
A husband and two sons.
A city by the sea.
Joy.
Strength.
And the grandmothers who began it all.

When I turn my wrists in the light, I realise these tattoos are not really about ink.

They are about memory.

Eight small reminders of the people and moments that quietly guide my life — and the hand that writes the next chapter.

Do you carry any symbols that remind you who you are or where you come from?

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There was a time when flight meant plastic aeroplanes at crowded fairs in India. I did not know that years later, my mother tongue would be the thing that truly lifted.

The morning of the radio interview, I was at home. The dishwasher had just finished its cycle. One child was asking for a snack. The house was carrying its usual hum ; not silence, but life.

I adjusted my headphones at the dining table and gave the boys what I hoped was a meaningful look — the one that says, please, for the next few minutes, let the world be quiet. I half-expected a shout about missing Lego or a dramatic disagreement about chess pieces to cut through the airwaves.

Konkani sat on my tongue like something ancient and familiar. Not rehearsed. Not performed. Just home,spoken from home.

Years ago, a school friend told me, after listening to one of my voice notes, “You should try radio. You’d fit right in.” I laughed it off. It felt surreal then. It feels surreal now.

Fear, for me, is not microphones or audiences or reviews. Fear is hands that hesitate when serving food at the dining table. Fear is a body that occasionally forgets its rhythm.

But my voice? My voice remains steady.

When I began reading the poem, something inside me settled. The words rose without trembling. The language that cradled my childhood travelled through wires and airwaves into homes I could not see — while I sat at my own table, the same one that holds homework, snacks, and the occasional spill.

Bombay to Surrey to somewhere in between.

I thought of Papama.She always wanted me to send something to our community magazine. I never quite did. Life, hesitation, busyness — excuses dressed as practicality. Being published there recently felt like a quiet nod to her. Reading poetry on radio in Konkani felt like another.

Not an arrival but alignment.

There was no dramatic crescendo. No swelling orchestra. Just a small red light, a steady voice, and a language that held me the way it always has.

When it ended, I removed the headphones and listened carefully, relief washing over me when no small voice had interrupted the broadcast. The ordinary resumed instantly. Someone needed help with something. The kettle boiled.

But something within me had shifted.

It turns out flight is not always about distance. Sometimes it is about return.

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Welcome to Notes on the Go.

I’m so glad you’re here.

This is a space for memory and migration.

For balconies and kitchen islands.

For hospital corridors and school runs.

For Bombay sunsets and Surrey mornings.

I write about the small things that refuse to be small.

The smell of chai that steadies a shaking day.

The silence after a difficult phone call.

The way distance stretches relationships thin and the way love still finds its way through.

Sometimes you’ll find essays here.

Sometimes poems.

Sometimes fragments that feel like they were rescued from an old drawer.

I am interested in what we carry:

Across countries.

Across generations.

Across illness, motherhood, friendship, and becoming.

If you have ever felt in-between ;

between places, between identities, between who you were and who you’re still becoming ,

then you are not alone here.

Pull up a chair.

The light is soft.

There is room for your story too.

With warmth,

Snehal

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Your front door —

a child’s safety gate,

a main door,

a big bar of chocolate.

Your kitchen —

a palette spilling over

with turmeric, chilli, coriander —

colour before caution.

Your living room —

a stage where drama unfolded

long before we knew the word performance.

Your bedrooms —

a mother’s embrace:

warm, soft,

always forgiving.

Your garden —

a miniature forest

in the middle of a city that never stopped building.

Your bookshelves —

broken piano keys

that still knew how to sing.

Your fridge —

a personalised map of the world:

postcards, magnets, ambition.

Your curtains —

a border between hiding

and becoming.

Your smell —

incense, coffee, jasmine —

the scent of unconditional love.

Your every nook and corner

sealed securely

in the architecture of my memory.

Years later, I returned to where Apartment B40–369 once stood.

The building had already been demolished. Redevelopment, they said. More floors. Better light. Efficient use of space.

Where the living room once opened to the street, there was sky.

I could see straight through it — from what had been the front window to the back. A corridor of absence. A home turned transparent.

But the flat had endured before.

There was a year when the monsoon entered without knocking. The rain refused to stop. The drains refused to cooperate. By evening, water had crept across the threshold.

The next morning, the front door resisted us. It took effort to push it open — the weight of water pressing from inside, as though the flat were holding its breath.

Furniture had shifted. Objects had floated. My grandmother’s sewing machine had travelled from one end of the room to the other, as if attempting escape.

And yet, on the cabinet against the wall, the framed photograph of our snake god remained upright and untouched.

Water had entered.

But it had not taken everything.

We dried what we could. We scrubbed the floor. Life resumed its small insistences.

Flat 369 had survived water.

It did not survive progress.

When I stood before the empty plot, grief arrived first — heavy and certain. Anger came later, thinner but sharper, settling into the smallness of the phrase “project completion.”

Where rooms had once held our noise, there was only air.

Now, years after that demolition, my sons drag a paintbrush along our banister, leaving streaks where polish once shone.

For a moment, I see damage.

Then I see B40–369.

The flat that welcomed flood.

The flat that held chalk.

The flat that became sky.

We did not preserve it. We inhabited it.

I could not save those walls.

But I can let my children mark their corners.

A smudge of paint is not vandalism.

It is rehearsal.

A small insistence that we were here.

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“This piece isn’t about denying pain. It’s about restoring proportion and agency.”

We are living in a time when language arrives pre-inflated.

Trauma.

Trigger.

Healing.

Words that once carried gravity are now used lightly, almost casually. And I find myself uneasy about what we are choosing to call trauma and what that looseness costs us.

Recently, I read an interview where a public figure Anusha Dandekar spoke about being “traumatised” by watching her mother be over giving, people pleasing, endlessly accommodating. The behaviour, she said, was internalised and therefore traumatic.

I paused.

Not because I deny that what we grow up watching shapes us.

But because there is a difference between being shaped by something and being harmed by it.

Observation Is Not Oppression

Witnessing a parent’s flawed coping mechanisms is not the same as being violated.

Trauma involves a breach of safety, autonomy, or dignity. It is not simply discomfort or influence. If observation alone were trauma, then every child raised by imperfect adults would qualify.

Which would mean all of us.

We grow up watching parents overwork, overgive, stay silent, avoid conflict, shout, endure. Some of this leaves marks. Some of it needs unlearning. But here’s the question we avoid:

At what point does influence end and responsibility begin?

The Brain and the Genes You Were Given

There is something strangely disempowering about the idea that adulthood comes without agency.

That we can grow, reflect, gain distance and still claim that everything we do is merely something that happened to us.

What’s also striking is how selectively we tell inheritance stories.

If we’re good writers, we credit a parent.

If we can sing, we thank a mother.

If we’re disciplined, resilient, athletic — genetics suddenly become something to celebrate.

But when it comes to flaws, inheritance turns into trauma.

Genes don’t only pass down damage. They pass down talent, temperament, humour, musicality, stamina. We are happy to acknowledge lineage when it flatters us — and eager to disown it when it challenges us.

There has to be balance.

You can’t keep mining the past only for wounds and ignore the gifts. That isn’t honesty. It’s selective storytelling.

Explanation Isn’t Exoneration

The over-giving mother is real. She didn’t give endlessly because she lacked intelligence. She gave because her world rewarded silence, endurance, and duty. Because saying no had consequences.

Understanding this is compassion.

Reducing her life to the source of your trauma without examining your own adult choices turns complexity into blame.

Therapy can explain patterns. It does not absolve us of the responsibility to interrupt them. There is a difference between saying:

“This shaped me.”

and

“This defines me.”

A Harder Question

This isn’t a denial of pain. It’s a call to maturity.

Yes, our parents were flawed.

Yes, we absorbed things unconsciously.

Yes, unlearning is hard.

But adulthood begins where responsibility replaces reflex.

I know this because when genetics come up in my own life even in something as serious as Parkinson’s I don’t reach for blame. I hold complexity instead: gratitude for what I’ve inherited that has sustained me, alongside the realities I now have to navigate.

Perhaps the real work isn’t endlessly tracing every trait back to its origin story, but asking a harder question:

Now that I see it , what will I do differently?

Because healing isn’t only about naming where we came from.

It’s about choosing, again and again, who we’re willing to become.

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Hi, I’m Snehal.

I write notes. Often on the go. Sometimes on the sofa. Frequently in my head while unloading the dishwasher.

Notes On The Go is where I put the things that don’t fit neatly anywhere else—observations, memories, half-thoughts, full feelings, and the occasional rant disguised as reflection. I write about home, family, parenting, grief, belonging, food, faith, and the small, ordinary moments that turn out to be anything but small.

I am a writer, poet, mother, chronic overthinker, enthusiastic list-maker, and someone who believes humour is a survival tool, not a personality flaw. I take my writing seriously, but not myself because honestly, life has done enough of that already.

Some days these notes are tender. Some days they’re funny. Some days they’re both and I don’t apologise for it. I believe in softness, sharp observations, and laughing at the chaos before it laughs at you.

If you like your writing honest, a little messy, quietly political, occasionally sentimental, and always human , welcome, welcome, welcome!!!

Pull up a chair.

I’ll take notes.

Love & Light

Snehal

P.S. Old habits die hard. Yes, I was Human Resources Manager for almost 8 years before I chose differently ;)

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A poetry chapbook

A quiet collection of poems about slowing down, noticing, and sitting with moments that are often overlooked.
Written in the spaces between roles, responsibilities, and days that move too fast.

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I Am

A poetry chapbook

An exploration of identity, voice, and becoming.
These poems move gently through selfhood, womanhood, and the quiet act of naming who we are.

👉 Buy here: If you'd like to read it

In Between Love

A poetry chapbook

Poems about love in its in-between forms—before, after, during, and beyond certainty.
Tender, reflective, and rooted in emotional honesty rather than grand declarations.

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Magical Mundane

A poetry chapbook

A celebration of everyday life—the ordinary rituals, domestic moments, and small observations that quietly hold magic.
This book lingers on the beauty of the familiar.

👉 Buy here: If you'd like to read it

PapaMa’s Portrait

A memoir

A deeply personal portrait of family, memory, and intergenerational love.
This memoir traces the relationship between a granddaughter and her grandmother, exploring grief, legacy, and the stories we carry forward.

👉 Buy here: If you’d like to read it

If you’re curious, I hope you find something here that keeps you company a little longer.

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January didn’t begin.

January arrived.

Uninvited. Loud. Cranky..

It started on a broken note literally and figuratively, with the passing of my grandmother. The kind of loss that quietly rearranges the furniture inside your chest. The kind that doesn’t shout, but lingers. And just when I was still learning how to breathe around that grief, January said, Ah. You’re up. Let’s continue.

Within a couple of weeks, my eldest fractured his little toe. Not dramatically. Not heroically. Just enough to require medical attention, sympathy, and a sudden household-wide awareness of feet. And then because January is like Amrish Puri fromDDLJ who nobody likes but who everyone HAS to somehow tolerate; exactly one week later, the youngest slammed a door shut on his finger. Not a gentle slam. Not a “oopsie” slam. A proper, almost-dislocate-half-your-finger-from-your-hand slam.

So yes. It’s been that January.

Now, you’d think this is where I’d say my brain went into overdrive. That I panicked. That I unravelled. That I lay awake at night catastrophising every possible outcome. But here’s the thing, I live with a brain that already does that. Constantly and proactively being key points to note. 

When you live with a body that sometimes feels unpredictable, your brain becomes an emergency planner by default. What if I fall? What if I can’t walk? What if I lose balance? What if I’m alone when it happens? What if I need help and can’t ask for it? My brain is basically a 24/7 disaster management unit. So when actual chaos shows up, my brain doesn’t panic. It goes, Ah. Finally kuch practical karne milega!

And of course, when it comes to my children, that same brain kicks in, only louder. Faster. With more guilt.

But this essay is not about resilience. Or bravery. Or how wonderfully prepared my brain is for emergencies. This is about the lighter side of January, the bit where tragedy and farce hold hands and skip. Because now I have one child with a broken toe and another with a broken finger, this situation has rendered me completely useless. Every interaction has become a medical pop quiz.

When I serve food, I’m hovering like a confused waiter:

“Don’t use that hand…no wait, use that hand…no sorry, that’s the other one…actually which one is it again?”

My son, exhausted, looks at me and says,

“My hand is fine. The foot is the problem.”

Fair.

This morning, the younger one, finger injury guy is sitting at the table. I go to help him eat and accidentally push the table against his foot.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!”

He looks at me calmly and says,

“It’s okay. But my hand is hurting.”

Of course it is. Because why wouldn’t it be.

At this point, I no longer know which limb belongs to which child. I am mentally mapping injuries like a crime scene investigator who skipped training. Left? Right? Hand? Toe? Whose side? Which week? Was this before or after the door incident?

My hair, by the way, has completely given up. It has accepted defeat. It has entered a state of philosophical resignation.

And somewhere between ice packs, follow-up appointments, and repeatedly saying “careful” into the void, I had this thought: how much is one person supposed to deal with in January?

January is aggressive. It doesn’t ease you in. It doesn’t ask how you’re doing. It shows up with a clipboard and says, Let’s see what you’re made of.

Grief. Injury. More injury. Logistics. Emotional labour. And the constant background hum of “Am I doing this right?”

How many children’s limbs can be temporarily compromised before a parent is allowed to lie down on the floor and whisper, enough?

Today is the 30th.

That’s it.

I’m done.

I would like to formally move on to February now. Something softer. Something with fewer bandages. Valentine’s Day. Love. Chocolate. Mild delusion. I’ll take it all.

January, you’ve had your turn.

Thank you.

Please leave quietly.

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And in the end, you realise this truth that no one quite prepares you for: you are alone with it.

Alone with a condition no one fully understands, not even the ones who love you most.

They don’t know how to help.

You don’t know how to ask.

Sometimes, you don’t even know what you need.

You search for healing, but healing is slippery.

You manage one thing and another unravels.

You steady yourself here, and something else falters there.

That’s when the cruelty of it reveals itself,not loud, not dramatic but relentless.

Quietly mighty. Unforgiving.

And yet, you are young.

You have a whole life stretching ahead of you, whether you asked for it or not.

You cannot sit down and surrender though sometimes you do.

Sometimes you sob because there is nothing left in you to hold yourself upright.

And that, too, is allowed.

But then inevitably, inexplicably, you rise.

Not heroically.

Just enough.

You learn to live with it because you must.

You fight it because there is no one else who can do that part for you.

People can stand beside you, hold your hand, whisper encouragement but the battle itself is yours.

Intimate. Exhausting. Singular.

So carry on.

Keep doing what you’re doing because you are doing it, and that matters more than perfection.

Hope flickers. A cure may come. I believe it will.

Until then, you fight.

Softly on some days. Fiercely on others.

But you fight. 

Because there is no other choice and somehow, you are still here.

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A letter to my (then) three-year-old niece

Dearest M,

I am writing this just after you have turned three, an age that feels less like a number and more like a way of being. I wish I saw you more often, but I hold our meetings like small talismans, returning to them when I forget how to move through the world with ease. You are your own little person now: curious mind, keen eye, heart-melting smile. Simply by being yourself, you remind me to give life my best shot.

You are fiercely independent. You want to brush your own teeth, choose your own clothes, button your coat with fingers still learning their strength. Sometimes we grown-ups intervene: for speed, for efficiency, for reasons that make sense only to us. But hell hath no fury like a toddler whose abilities are underestimated. When that happens, your independence turns swiftly into frustration, and you make your displeasure known without apology. Somewhere along the way, we adults are trained to soften ourselves, to be politically correct, to swallow inconvenience. I’m not suggesting we throw tantrums but surely we could make a little noise instead of smiling politely and bearing it all.

For someone so independent, you are also wonderfully self-aware. You know when to ask for help you do it without embarrassment. In a world that prizes self-sufficiency, asking for help is often mistaken for weakness. It isn’t, my darling. Whenever I hesitate, unsure whether to reach out or retreat inward, I think of you. And suddenly, the answer becomes clear.

You are always doing something. Wandering around the apartment. Talking to your houseplants. Seeking out colouring books and puzzles with quiet determination. I struggle with apathy, a companion to my medical condition and some days even beginning feels monumental. On those days, I speak to you. I ask what you’ve been up to. When you tell me earnestly, proudly, in detail—it nudges me into motion. To do something. Anything.

Fresh air is said to lift even the heaviest spirits, yet we adults are masters of excuse-making. Work. Weather. Mundanity. You, however, never miss your outing. Windy, cloudy, inconvenient—it doesn’t matter. If a three-year-old can brave a blustery afternoon, what exactly is my excuse?

Then there is your ability to say no. Such a small word. Such a powerful one. From a young age, we are socialised into agreement, into politeness, into quiet compliance. When asked why you don’t want to do something, you simply say, because I don’t want to. And just like that, you communicate everything. I picture the stubborn resolve in your eyes when you say no, and it gives me courage to say the most important word of all—not please, not thank you, but no.

Everyone around me seems to be running, towards what, I’m not sure. Some invisible finish line. Some collective urgency that leaves me breathless just watching. And then there’s you. Stopping to admire a flower. Lingering. Noticing. You remind me that beauty doesn’t announce itself, it waits to be seen. That paths don’t need to look the same. That we are allowed our own pace, our own finish line.

We need more empaths, M. The world you are inheriting is heavy with unrest, and I am sorry for that. Too often, people move through their days without noticing the weight others carry. You deserve better. And yet, even now, empathy shines through you—in the way you play with your dolls, in how you respond to your friends at nursery. Sensitivity is often mistaken for fragility, but I see it for what it is: strength.

Somewhere along the road to adulthood, optimism begins to thin out. You, however, expect good things. An extra slice of cheese. A found crayon. A joyful afternoon at the park. You hope,naturally, instinctively. Hold on to that, darling. Life will test you, but optimism is a quiet kind of courage.

And then there is solitude. In a world that celebrates people skills, we forget how to be at ease with ourselves. Solitude unsettles most of us. Yet you show me what it can look like—playing alone with playdough or blocks, humming your current favourite tune. Watching you, I see solitude not as loneliness, but as peace.

So thank you, M. For inspiring me in a life that has recently become unpredictable. I am doing my best to make lemonade with the juicy lemons handed to me—and you remind me to add the fizz, to make it sparkle.

Love Always

Akku

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