When emotions are engaged, when imagination is exercised, words flow, not just intellectually but viscerally.
Mai Bhago has held my thoughts for many years, though I cannot say when she first entered them. I have often wondered about her. Maybe it began as I listened to accounts of her life, or while looking at photographs of the weapons she once carried. I only know that, […]
It was ten in the morning. I was sitting at my desk. The window was beside me. The Zoom call opened, and her face appeared on the screen. Sad.LovelyStill. I did not know her well. Our paths had crossed in meetings, but never in a way where I could say […]
Source Note Diary Entry: #1Date: 1–2 April 1944Source: Diary of Sardar Surjit Singh Khera (1911–2008), Gurmukhi manuscript, 1944–1945. The following excerpt comes from the first entry in the diary of Sardar Surjit Singh Khera, preserved in Gurmukhi and written between 1944 and 1945. The diary records conversations, reflections, and personal […]
Becoming was not a word I understood easily. Becoming what? Toward what? Into what? For a long time, the word felt foreign to my system, as if it belonged to another language pattern. I understood doing. I understood learning. I understood creating. But becoming felt different. It seemed to suggest […]
There are moments when something within begins to feel different, not in a dramatic way, but in how I move through life. The mind does not react as quickly. There is space to pause, to observe, and what once stayed with me begins to pass more easily. A quiet steadiness […]
The air shifts this time of year. Even before anything fully blooms, there is a quiet sense that something is changing. Branches that looked dry begin to regain life. Guru Nanak Sahib speaks of Vaisakh as a time when vegetation takes form. I find myself returning to that image of […]
The platinum in my hair has settled now. When I look back at the girl I was, I remember the way things were. I grew up in a traditional family. The women were loved and cared for. Nothing they needed was denied. But decisions were made elsewhere. I watched my […]
Holi is not a festival I grew up celebrating.And yet, the language of color has always stayed with me. In Rag Basant, Guru Arjan Sahib says, Aaj hamarai ghar basant. Today, in my home, it is spring. Full sabad and meaning That line has followed me for years. Not because […]
I was listening to a discourse the other day. Most of it moved along as expected.We work for food, clothing, shelter.Roti. Kapra. Makan. We call it dhanda, our business, because it brings dhan, wealth. There is nothing unusual in that. It is how we build a life. But then came […]
As a child, I first encountered the Ramayana through illustrated pages. One scene, in particular, has remained with me. It is the moment when Ram and Sita return to Ayodhya after fourteen years. A washerman questions Sita’s purity, suggesting that after her time in Ravana’s captivity, how could anyone be certain she […]
