Actions Speak Louder

What do people really want?

Are they looking for a genuine human connection, or just another phone number to add to an already overflowing contact list? It’s a question that has perplexed me for close to three years now.

It’s funny how people assume you can’t see through their intentions by their actions and words. Especially someone like me, who has lived two parallel lives — all before turning 40.

I’ve simply stopped expecting and started accepting.

Actions > words.

If the actions don’t match the sweet words, it’s a no-go.

Where and why have some of the most basic human traits suddenly disappeared — stability, consistency and reliability? Is it really too much to hope for these things?

My answer, for the moment, is: I guess so.

All I know is this: if you put bad karma out into the world, it has a funny way of coming back to haunt you — and when it does, it rarely knocks gently.

So, good luck with all those sweet words backed by zero action.

They’ll only get you so far.

Every Tattoo Tells a Story — Find an Artist Who Understands Yours

Every tattoo tells a story, and it’s important to find an artist who understands yours.

I’ve been going to Rinchen from Iruzemi Tattoo Studios since 2023. He studies you as a person, asks you why you want to get the tattoo, and then goes ahead and does complete justice to the design. He interprets your ideas beyond your wildest imagination and elevates a basic concept into a masterpiece.

My Tree of Life idea was no different.

He added a bird to represent freedom and change, moon phases to represent change, cycles and new beginnings, and even incorporated mandala elements in the form of the circular, symmetrical patterns around the tree and trunk. The repeated geometric and floral detailing gives the tattoo its beautiful radial symmetry. He also added a piece of the tree falling away to represent broken pieces.

It took him just 1.5 hours to complete the entire tattoo on me — a record-breaking speed for both him and me! He told me I took it pretty well. Apparently, third time’s the charm. 

I highly recommend Rinchen and Iruzemi Tattoo Studios for all your tattoo dreams. The studio is clean and neat, with a warm, cosy ambience and lovely music playing in the background at all times.

Here’s to finding artists who don’t just ink your ideas, but understand the stories behind them. 

Vishwanath and Sons Review

How many times is Suriya going to play the billionaire philanthropist playboy? Sanjay Vishwanathan — was that his name in Ghajini too? 

Radhika's portrayal of Sanjay's anxious mother is top-notch, while Mamitha Baiju's performance felt a little over the top — although perhaps that was intentional, given that she plays the unrequited, one-sided lover.

All in all, Vishwanath and Sons is a sweet, one-time watch — light, breezy and quite forgettable. The movie showed a lot of promise in exploring the whole single-father angle. Instead, us grown-up 90s girls are treated to a still-handsome Suriya, who has clearly aged like fine wine. 

The three kheer kodoms I ate while watching the movie are definitely giving me acidity now. No wonder I'll always remain a kheer kodom, despite all the backbreaking cardio and weight training I do all week long. 

A family drama with a lot of drama and a good amount of comedy — at least as long as Radhika is alive and kicking in the movie — is how I'd sum up Vishwanath and Sons.

Image sourced from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35836025/mediaindex/

All Heart First, Work Closely Behind

A moment of appreciation for us agency boys and girls who rolled up our sleeves, did a lot of dirty work across clients and verticals, and somehow managed to make friends for life along the way.

We didn't look at colleagues as competitors or as people we had to "one-up". We looked at them as people in the same boat as us.

Perhaps I'm biased because the first ten years of my career were spent in agencies before I moved to corporates for the last five. Perhaps I'm not a true-blue corporate employee after all. I'm still that agency girl who likes building interpersonal connections across the entire organisation, from the office boy to the agency head.

I've carried these same ideologies into the big, bad world of corporates over the last five years. Perhaps people wonder why I talk endlessly without shutting up, and perhaps the canteen boy is surprised when I ask him what he has studied.

I owe this eccentric personality to my agency upbringing. Or perhaps it's just my family. Or perhaps it's a mixture of both.

All heart first, followed closely by work.

Work is never-ending, but what's important is knowing the people behind each of those documents. Putting a name to every face, finding out their stories and understanding the person behind the designation.

I suddenly recall an introductory call my team and I had with a senior leader who was based in the U.S. He asked each person to introduce themselves. When he came to me, I said:

"My grandmother told my mother to make me a lawyer because I talk too much. By that logic, I'm in the right business of people. I still talk too much, and perhaps that's why I chose Corporate Communications and Public Relations as my calling."

Every human has a story, and every story needs to be written about at some point.

And I think this is why I do what I do, despite the hard days.

When the Baywatch Theme Song Woke Grandpa Up

I just stumbled across the remastered version of the *Baywatch* theme song and, for the entire two minutes, I was transported back to my grandparents' house in Trivandrum, next to my sleeping grandfather, whose eyes would pop wide open the moment the *Baywatch* theme played on TV.

Suddenly, all his grandchildren were sitting alongside him in the TV room, staring at the washboard abs and curvaceous bodies of David Hasselhoff, Pamela Anderson, Yasmin Bleeth and David Charvet.

Perhaps my love for the ocean and water began here — staring at these gorgeous men and women saving lives one evening at a time and making it all look so, so dreamy.

I wanted to wear that red one-piece. I still haven't found it, by the way. I own a swimsuit in every other colour, though. And I definitely don't look like Pamela Anderson or Yasmin Bleeth because I grew up on a steady diet of ghee-laden meat and carbs. So that's that.

I would not dare say "better late than never" because there is only one Pamela Anderson and one Yasmin Bleeth. I'll let them have ocean supremacy for life.

Coming back to my grandfather now — a retired sailor who was enjoying raising one grandchild after another and who thoroughly enjoyed his all-day siestas because he was a poor sleeper at night.

It was hilarious how the *Baywatch* theme song would slap him wide awake and make him super attentive. I wonder who he was looking at — Pamela Anderson or Yasmin Bleeth. I guess I'll never know now.

All I'm left with are crazy-happy memories of a quirky old man who never left my heart. Such a pity he couldn't be around to meet any of his great-grandchildren.

The Guilt of Not Being There

I saw a Filipino advertisement this morning while scrolling through Instagram about a single mum who is a nurse and her son, Mikey. The little boy is left to his own devices to get ready for school, do a school project and even rehearse his lines for a fancy-dress competition, without his mother because she keeps getting called in for ad hoc duties due to the nature of her job.

Other mums who actually pick up and accompany their children to school keep passing remarks at him, calling him "poor boy", "Where is your mother?", "Your shirt buttons aren't done properly. How can you go to school like this?" and so on.

By the end of his fancy-dress competition, his overworked mother actually makes it to school to pick him up, and they are seen embracing each other in a tight hug after an entire day of absence, starting from his breakfast onwards.

It hit me so hard because I realised that when my boy was just a little over three years old, I had to rejoin work, and he had to fend for himself emotionally, without a mother who was truly present.

Of course, my parents really stepped in during that time to raise him, while I was just a corporate slave drowning myself in work, simply to distract myself from the grief of losing my husband.

I wasn't there for my boy emotionally when he needed me the most because I wasn't there for myself. I wallowed in so much self-pity that I couldn't see beyond my own nose. I couldn't even function as a whole human being. How could I possibly be a mother?

I was pretty useless for a good year. Maybe two.

The guilt of being emotionally absent from my three-year-old is something that kills me even now. Which is probably why I go out of my way today to entertain him, because I see the years I lost with him.

I hope he forgives me.

Or, better yet, I hope he doesn't remember those mad, grief-filled days of mine when I would wake up screaming from an afternoon nap.

To Staying Young and Wild, With or Without a Partner

Everyone and their grandmothers advised me to try dating apps the moment my husband passed away. And guess what? Everyone and their grandmothers are exactly who and what I found.

There are the scammers who claim they'll come and visit you in a week. Then there are the enthu cutlets who actually do fly down to see you in a week. There are the endless texters who "want to go with the flow" at 40+, and there's everything in between as well.

I'm sure there are wonderful, honest-to-God lovely people out there too, whom I've met and with whom I've either remained friends or mostly lost touch. Because, let's face it, this is a dating app, not "let's build a collection of random friends" like a Barbie doll set where the entire collection is complete.

A job, a man, a house and a baby will all find you when you're ready and when it's absolutely the right time. Until then, I'm off the apps for good. Swiping right and left is just not for me.

For those who have found love using these impossible apps, good for you. I'm genuinely happy for you. As for the rest of us, let us also remain happy, because the skies and the oceans are still a lovely blue and the whole world remains within our reach to explore.

All we have to do is pack our bags and get out.

On that note, such lovely gyaan I give day in and day out while I hardly practise any of it myself. But it's on my bucket list, starting this year, to go back to doing wild and youthful things — such as standing in the middle of a 1,000-person concert and singing along with the band on stage, maybe getting on a bike again and hopefully not needing pinhole surgery for a busted shoulder, and many more demented things such as these.

Here's to staying young and wild forever, with or without a partner!

The Great Tutor Hunt: Raising a Seven-Year-Old in the Age of Academic Anxiety

It's so heartwarming and an absolute delight to listen to my half-Bengali, fully-fraud Mallu child speak almost fluent Tamil. “Ay, chinna paiyya, unakku Tamil pesa theriyuma?”, “Podum”, “Venda” and so on.

However, the flip side of this language knowledge is a never-ending flow of tuition masters and ma'ams who just keep quitting as he settles into learning with them. Home tutors are a dying trade, unlike when I was in school and college.

My life's greatest dilemma is no longer weight loss, perimenopause, going to the office and so on. It is finding the right tutors for my son.

Schools are aggressively competitive now, at such a tender age of six and upwards. Children compare marks, teachers pass remarks and, altogether, it's a daily circus that both parent and child have to deal with every single day for the next decade. It's a nightmare beyond the worst nightmares.

At this point, I'm half willing to listen to him and pull him out of school, or let him be an electronics teacher, as he says he wants to be. Plumbers and electricians in the US are paid as much as corporate workers in India. I'm tempted to let him drop out of school, but the good little Indian mommy in me disagrees. Sigh!

In the battle of brain versus heart, the brain wins this round hands down. So, while I'm filled with joy listening to my boy sing “Thalapathi Kacheri”, I'm also anxious that he continues to learn languages with the same energy and gusto, regardless of the cacophony of tutors who walk in and out of his life.

Each time a good one quits, his little heart breaks, and mine breaks along with his. 

Life indeed is hard for a seven-year-old today.

Things You Should—and Shouldn’t—Say to a Widow

Things not to say to a 34-year-old widow with a two-year-old:

“Be strong.”

“No choice now but to move forward bravely.”

“Get re-married ASAP!”

“He’s your angel in heaven, watching over you for life.”

Things you can actually say:

“Find a good therapist. You need it.”

“Take all the time in the world to mourn this loss.”

“I don’t understand what you’re going through, but you will come out of this. I promise.”

“You’re a singha ponnu — you can raise a child, you can step out to work, you can move mountains. Go ahead and do whatever you want. We’re with you every step of the way.”

Now, coming to the idiotic things that you must not say to a young widow, an old widow, a middle-aged widow — or a widower, for that matter.

The strength came from the partner they just lost. So please don’t ever ask them to “be strong”.

Not in that moment.

And definitely not ten years later.

Remarriage is a deeply personal choice. Please proceed with your matchmaking with people whose hearts didn’t break into a zillion tiny pieces.

And then there is grief.

Grief is not linear.

You’ll find yourself crying in the middle of eating a baked New York cheesecake from a Starbucks takeaway box, on a sunny Sunday, sitting at your kitchen counter.

You’ll also burst into tears when you see a band setting up a stage in the middle of a busy mall.

There will be days when you think you are doing absolutely fine, only to be blindsided by something completely ordinary.

A song.

A smell.

A place.

A random conversation.

A photograph.

And suddenly, you are right back there.

But the good news is that, with the passage of time, these triggers become less violent.

They become calmer, almost as though they have always existed somewhere inside your brain.

You feel the sadness and choose to flow with it.

Sometimes it feels like a heaviness in your chest.

Sometimes it comes as silent tears.

Sometimes you don't even know why you're crying.

And that's okay.

Simply accept those feelings of unforgotten love, and eventually, you find your own version of healing.

Maybe you'll wake up one day feeling absolutely calm about the tsunami of destruction that is your love life.

Or maybe you won't.

Guess what, though?

Both feelings are completely acceptable.

There is no correct timeline for grief.

There is no rulebook for how a widow or widower is supposed to feel, behave, heal, date, remarry, work, parent, laugh, cry or move on.

All you have to do is accept what comes.

And go with the flow.

The Clarity of Grief: What Losing My Partner Taught Me About Friendship

The people who leave you or misunderstand you when you need them the most—when you are in absolute turmoil—belong to a special category of vermin (oops, people) whom you never forget for the rest of your life. It is strange how people you have grown up with and known for decades can suddenly just flip off your radar.

For me, it all happened exactly five years ago. That terrible moment in my life brought immense clarity about who my real friends were, and who never truly were to begin with. Death, especially at a morbidly young age, is distressing enough on its own. It becomes even more overwhelming when accompanied by the sudden, lifelong responsibility of fending for another human being.

It is funny how people choose to come and speak utter rubbish to you at such a heartbreaking time. The comments thrown my way ranged from, "Oh, you shouldn't have kept rubbing the fluids that came out of the body while it was placed in the crematorium." To this, I promptly replied, "That was not a dead body or a piece of meat. That was my partner and the father of my child, and he looked like he was in discomfort." This absolute "gem" came from someone my late husband deeply adored.

His death brought to the fore the terrible decisions we had both made as a couple when it came to befriending people. He definitely had a few select, lousy characters around him, and apparently, so did I. Those relationships and friendships ended the moment he passed, and I haven't looked back since.As a good friend of over two decades always tells me: "You're an empath, Gayatri. That means people will always come to you with their life issues and drain you; they are called energy vampires. Pick your circles very carefully and stick to them. You can't solve everybody's life problems, and you shouldn't—it's not your job. You have plenty on your plate."

Perhaps he is right. I have always felt for people more than they have ever felt for me. I have had girlfriends cry on my shoulder over one-night stands that didn't turn out well, yet none of them were anywhere in sight when I lost my partner of 13 years. They were clearly questionable friendship choices. I never reached out to those folks after my husband passed, because I see their personalities with so much more understanding and clarity now.

Terrible life experiences are important for character building, but ultimately, it is your battle to fight alone. Dumping it on friends and family is not the solution—not now, not ever. In my late husband's words: "Figure it out." That is exactly what I have been doing ever since my life changed five years ago.

Coming back to the main point of this piece: always remember the ones who chose to leave when you needed them the most, and make wiser decisions when it comes to your social circles.

The Ball Pit Chronicles: Welcome to the Next Level

Riaan dragged me to one of his favourite playzones bright and early this morning. As usual, we were the first customers, meaning he got to sweep the entire play area with his socks alongside the cleaning staff. The thing is, it was much more crowded than usual this morning because another Riaan was celebrating his birthday in the same area.

Bunches of mothers stood together, discussing baby milestones. Hearing snippets of their conversation, I was super tempted to butt in. The place was flooded with nannies, mothers, fathers, and an assortment of fluffy-looking children—honestly, fluffier than the balls in the ball pit. I definitely wanted to kidnap one or two of them... okay, three, not going to lie.

Going back to the group of mommies, they were clearly all first-time mothers. Their chatter went something like, "They're no longer babies; they've entered their toddler phases. It's so exhausting." I had to stifle many chuckles at that point and resist the urge to interrupt with, "Welcome to motherhood, sisters, where every level gets more exhausting than the last and you never get to sleep for the rest of your lives."

I had walked into the mall very grumpily this morning after a poor night's sleep, complaining heavily to my own mother: "I haven't shopped in a mall for months now. Suddenly, malls only mean playzones and a child who keeps screaming for me. I didn't sign up for this for the rest of my life. When will this end?" And lo and behold, I immediately bumped into toddler moms talking about exhaustion. Cue so many more giggles.

Sigh. Children—those necessary evils we voluntarily signed up to care for, for the rest of our lives (or hopefully less, I'll let you know).

Vietnamese Cheesecake Insomnia

A gigantic Vietnamese cheesecake has been had,

While in the moment I felt glad,

The insomnia that has kicked in is mad.

Gigantic desserts, bigger than your face,

That can't keep up with your metabolic pace,

Must be avoided at best,

So that you can rest.

The caramel ice cream that accompanied it,

Was also a hit.

I'm still dreaming of those creamy textures,

The perfect symphony of biscuit, cream cheese, and butter mixtures.

A gigantic Vietnamese cheesecake has been had,

While in the moment I felt glad,

The insomnia that has kicked in is mad.