An Ode to Chaos, Compassion, and Choosing Your Own Arenas

Identities, careers, relationships, and the messes worth keeping.

“This place could be beautiful, right?
You could make this place beautiful.”
—Maggie Smith

The pan should have caught fire, but it didn't. Instead, cumin seeds spat polite sparks while I wondered how a girl raised in an Indian kitchen could feel like a tourist in one. Cooking, like life, is basically waiting for the smoke alarm to go off. The trick is to plate up before the fire brigade arrives.

Childhood on Parole

In most middle-class Indian homes, daughters inherit the kitchen the way sons inherit the surname: quietly, automatically, without a receipt.

But my mother never sang the chorus of her times. She never forced me to learn how to cook. The occasional meanderings to help her or cook a bowl of Maggi were my only admission slips into the kitchen. Everyone viewed her laxity with judging eyes. How can one not garner this qualification? Given that she ran the household on her own with my father posted away, she must have thought I was not a good student and would eat into her busy schedule.

I was born into a surprisingly liberal and unorthodox family. My parents were working against conformity in their own ways. The upbringing meant there were some non-negotiables—anything that violated the compass of being a good human in their eyes. I had these invisible boundaries that I did not cross. I spent most of my days reading anything I could get my hands on at home. I had a good, carefree life with a few doses of trauma. Till mommy was around, I was always taken care of in life.

After she left, the eldest daughter mantle landed tight. Eldest daughters are born with invisible tool belts: fixer of stuff, keeper of family peace, quiet custodian of ancestral recipes we may never cook.

The job description is one line long: Don't drop anything.

There are no performance reviews. You can't escape whispered audits at weddings and subtle nods at funerals. We are shaped to be competent, but never chaotic.

For years I wore a watch that didn't tell time so much as shout it: Run, woman, run! Your eulogy's due at five! I believed material abundance could buy immortality in EMIs. A flat, a flight upgrade, an identity carved from polished ambition.

Spoiler: The running doesn’t have an end line.

The First Flight

Freedom at nineteen tasted like making biryani in a tiny Hyderabad kitchen. My friend and I cooked the most amazing biryani. We replaced inherited wisdom with low-grade chaos and misplaced confidence. We cooked. We fed our friends. We went on crazy adventures.

Nobody starved. And crucially, nobody insisted we major in domesticity.

It felt radical: two women who could cook, but chose not to minor in it. We were building a new muscle: the right to choose what not to master.

Borrowed Boundaries

But life has a way of testing new muscles. In one of my past lives, I chose an unconventional betrothal. All the independence that my family had given me was suddenly bottled up into constructs of boundaries. These boundaries weren't about what I could wear or whether I should be the subservient person taking care of the household. The boundaries were around who could be my friends, my financial authority, my support structure toward my family, the food I could eat or not eat.

When you have had your share of independence of thought and decisions, such invisible boundaries restrict you. I played the role to the T. I even changed my name for their relatives. I can't help laughing at my poor 20-year-old self. She was naive and stupid.

The past life had to fall off. At that point, everyone handed out declarations to my parents that they had raised a brat who was taking such a huge decision. My poor parents in their 40s, still figuring themselves out. I have so much compassion for parents in their 40s who have adult children. I was on the cusp of my own return to myself. It is said that 27-30 are brewed with proverbial Saturn return changes. So any parent reading this who has a child in this age group—I think what the child needs is you providing a warm space for them without judgments and only loving anchors.

Then came the phase of owning my shit and moving on in life. I was still a stranger to the kitchen. I found loyal cooks who always asked, "Didi, what should I make today?" and my answer would be standard: "See what's available and cook whatever works today." In hindsight, I should have stuck that to the kitchen wall. I never knew.

Continental Drift & Co-Pilots

Years later, K and I had just set up our new home in London. He was as inexperienced as me in the kitchen. Unlike my home where the men knew how to cook to feed themselves and others, K is an atypical Indian male who can't cook but does other household chores with diligence. That still doesn't solve the problem in our current London scenario.

Life's sequel dropped me into a continent where "help" is an app, not a human, and coriander is called cilantro. I have a complaint against absence of the coriander fragrance. Here, I was the resident chef. There was nowhere to escape. I missed my mother dearly during these years. A phone call to her would have given me refreshing new ways to deal with this change. My father and brother obliged with their tips on how to improve my cooking skills.

Kitchen and housekeeping had never been areas I worried about before. I had all the help I needed. My focus was on work most of the time. I was too busy performing significance. I was married, successful, exhausted. The cook fed me. The job defined me. In all of it, I still had not found a minute to sit and reflect on who I was and what I wanted from life.

Sometimes, when you outsource too much, you forget what you like. This is something that I realised after moving here. Sometimes, when the only version of womanhood you know is "holding it all together," you don't notice how quietly you begin to unravel.

In time, I stitched together edible nostalgia: turmeric-stained, oversalted, but sincere dishes. The home keeping duty took over life. I used to always wonder how spouses who moved abroad didn't manage to get back to their main careers. While there are many reasons, I am sure home keeping is one of the things that eats into their life. A recent article about unpaid work by Indian women reminds me of the number of hurdles that exist for a woman to be successful.

My husband isn't a chef but makes a mean dosa. The poor man declares every dish a masterpiece. That kind of generosity is a greenhouse: warm enough for fragile sprouts, never scalding. In his warmth, I learned to salt with confidence and scrape a sauce without shame.

Growth, I've learned, is like photosynthesis. You need light, yes, but you also need someone willing to turn the pot, so even the awkward leaves get their chance to face the sun. In our not-so-perfect partnership, there is no space for performance and ego between us. Not martyrdom. Not rescue. Just a mirror, angled kindly. Both of us have made choices against the societal frame; we both value our independence and values dearly. He has not compromised on his first love, cricket, and I haven't traded my love for reading.

I think women need more co-pilots and cheerleaders rather than sympathetic bystanders.

I far from being a perfect homemaker. I am always in pursuit of organising and making my home meet a self-inflicted standard.

---

The Judging Visitor

Last week, the landlord's surveyor arrived for a remortgage inspection. She moved through the flat with the clinical precision of an auctioneer appraising heirlooms. When we reached my studio that was chaotic with half-finished canvases and rogue tubes of pythalo blue, I could see her eyebrow arch upwards wanting to reach the gavel.

In that moment, I shrank. Aware of every speck of dust, every stray coffee mug, every imperfect line. The verdict, though silent, was loud: Unkempt woman. Inadequate tenant. Failed adult.

Now contrast her clinical stare with my soul sister, Rashi, who wanted me to put up more paintings in the studio. At her behest, I stuck up more paintings. A poster that proclaims that I can do it.

One gaze shrinks you. Another stretches you.

I caught myself yet again trying to fit into the frame. It’s not surprising that we are our worst self-critic. Understanding people is a lovely gift until you become their human shield. You apologise for their stray bullets of misunderstanding, dust off your own singed coat, and notice: they've never inspected their own trigger fingers.

In this case, I wouldn’t expect this stranger to say that it’s okay. Don’t worry. We all have days when the rooms are a bit over the place. She could have her third eye activated and uncover the truth.

I found this on Are.na. I couldn’t find the original link source. It was shared on Twitter. I think this is not only for Twitter but a good practical advise for life.

More often than not empathy has a bad rap. It is not martyrdom. It is the preamble to understanding the constitution of a fellow human. When there is a dearth, step sideways or allow yourself disappear sometimes :)

Selective Excellence

As someone who wants to do right by myself, my work, my relationships, and the world, perfection has started to feel like a tax. And the fewer resources you have, the higher the rate. The world hands women a buffet of roles (daughter, wife, partner, friend, counsellor, artist, manager, chef) and expects Michelin-star-level delivery in each. Or else. I think a portion of men who may have to play caregiving roles will also face this pressure to deliver exact chops every time. Why didn't our society make space for slip-ups?

Why didn't I resign from the roles that were too much to handle? If you don't behave according to someone's set expectation of you, you have the risk of being judged harshly or even treated like a cast away. You are dismissed from the role. These days I have found the courage to resign instead of fighting against the tide. The old me would write essays to soothe misunderstandings, patch up silences with metaphors, try to bridge the distance between cousins for the sake of harmony. Always the peacemaker , always the explainer. But time is collapsing inward now
and I no longer wish to spend it untangling emotionally choking trifles.

Life is too short for secondhand resentment, too sacred to be spent curating peace for people who don’t choose you.

Even omnipotence has a bandwidth issue :D

Selective excellence is not failure but triage. I cook decently now. Not brilliantly, not disastrously. That is enough. I let my studio sway between sacred chaos and surgical calm. That is freedom. I no longer chase every role or loved ones who chose to distance themselves. I no longer get upset when my family doesn't call me as frequently as I call them. I no longer expect more from people. I am sure everyone chooses what's important to them. They are performing selectively in their sphere.

I ask: Does this role feed me? Or does it merely expect to be fed? Will I fit the brief, or will my personality trigger insecurities? I no longer beat myself on the household bit as I know that am blessed with a thousand other gifts to be happy.

At this point, I am in the deep trenches of selectively trying to decide whether to invest in a piano or not. I am not going to be a Rachmaninoff but I think I want to be able to play a few pieces well.

An Epilogue to simmer away in my way

Someday, another inspector or algorithm, or relative will audit my life. They will tally roles. Measure returns. Declare deficits.

I'll hand them a plate: a dish imperfect but entirely mine. Around it, half-dry paint will glisten. Books will sprawl. My calendar will have blank spaces I fought to keep.

The critic may taste. Or not. Either way, dinner goes on. Living goes on.

A thousand years ago, Izumi Shikibu wrote: "Watching the moon at dawn, solitary, mid-sky, I knew myself completely, no part left out." I think of her now. I am amazed that she existed in a different era. The Heian era was more peaceful but I am sure she had her surveyors and prying eyes too. She refused to shrink, who wrote herself into existence against the odds of her time. Like her, I am learning to know myself completely, chaos and all.

I give myself permission to be messy. To fall. To try again badly. To keep the contradictions that make me human. To salt with too heavy a hand and leave paintings half-finished. To choose my arenas and abandon the ones that drain me. To be selectively excellent and beautifully imperfect.

Time will run out, yes. But I'd rather leave behind a small scorch mark of my earnest self than a spotless, unused kitchen nobody remembers. Like this painting, I will need to find the strength to hold every contradicting reality of being me with grace.

The poem for today on my mind is The Journey by Mary Oliver especially the below lines :

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Few things that caught my attention :

1. I am happy to share my private tiny garden of words with you to browse and maybe find comfort.

2. This Aeon essay caught my attention.

PS : I hope you know by now that I love to express when I am mildly perturbed :). I have a lot more serious thoughts on how women cannot have it all. The taxes we pay at different stages of life. More serious stuff. I hope to write a different view on my new serious and businessy substack :D Thank you for making space for me.