Few thoughts

  I was never married to ambition. What I carried instead was something quieter and more demanding: the need to prove my worth in a world that had already decided my limits. I grew up in a society where women were valued less, and I learned early that excellence was my only socially acceptable defense. In India, the phrase “be a man” is spoken casually, without shame, as if it were advice rather than a verdict—an assertion that strength, competence, and authority naturally belong to men. I absorbed that lesson deeply. If power was masculine, then I would meet it on its own terms. I studied relentlessly, not because I loved competition, but because independence required it. In college and university, my rivals were always my male friends. Beating them brought a particular satisfaction—not pride, but relief. Toward my female friends, I was gentler, more patient, quick to help when they struggled. Only much later did I recognize the contradiction in myself: I was both resisting and r...

  Writing about my father " Baba"  feels like touching something sacred. Yet I take this bold first step to offer homage to the man who quietly shaped every part of who I am.  My earliest memory exists from before I was born—carried to me through my mother’s retelling, repeated so often it became my own. When he learned that his second child would be a girl—a child he had dreamed of for months—he chose a name for me: Sangita , meaning music in Bengali, my mother tongue. He loved music deeply, though he claimed no musical gift of his own, and he hoped his daughter would carry what he could not. But when I arrived and he first looked at me, he called me Ami . Why, he never knew—or perhaps never said. And Ami is what I remained to him, even as his mind slowly began to lose its long fight against dementia. Our bond was quiet and natural, something that existed without effort. Like all close relationships, it had its moments of strain, yet it never loosened its hold on u...