Saturdays With Shivani Early this week when the beaches opened in Hong Kong, we packed our stuff and headed there. While my daughter chased the waves and husband gazed at her from a distance, the postprandial haze took over me and I grabbed a snooze on the mat nearby. It was a small nap and a very refreshing one; my first on a crowded beach. Last year before the pandemic, I had done a similar thing in a public park.

Disclaimer – the views expressed are those of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Wonder Women World. This article is not meant to be taken as medical advice – to each, her own. Ultimately, it is a personal choice and up to your discretion. Saturdays with Shivani I am getting my second jab tomorrow and I can’t wait for it. It isn’t like I would be magically set free and I can visit my family

“The toughest challenge for me was finding somewhere to be safe, to be myself,” says Nayana Udupi, my Wonder Transwoman. We take safety, dignity and respect for granted, but not Nayana, a marketing associate at ThoughtWorks, who made her transition, a few years ago. Talking to her made me realize that we’ve come a long way, yes, but have miles to go before our society is more accepting of the choices we make.   Nayana travelled far from home because she

Saturdays With Shivani Recently I read a Facebook post that loosely read- A tightly scheduled day. Meetings till 8:30 pm but I got a call at 4 pm from my son. He wanted home baked pizza for dinner. Late dinner at 9:45 pm. Too short a time to bake from scratch, but I already had the base and toppings ready in my freezer and as he relished his margarita, he said “Dad, I prefer your pizzas any day to Dominos”. Bringing

A friend I recently met, mentioned about a café that she suggested we should try. While that hasn’t happened yet, the café’s name however is stuck in my head. JOMO- joy of missing out; isn’t that a perfect name for a café? In the pre-pandemic era, I fulfilled my dream of sipping coffee on lazy afternoons in Parisian cafés and watch the world go by so I am assuming JOMO would be my kind of place. More on that when

The courts told them to go away. They royally ignored and chose to come in droves. When the country and its administration sermonized that the protest sites were not for them, hordes of them flocked in to lay their claim on the space. Not only did these women claim, they owned that space. As we exchanged the mandatory ‘Happy Women’s Day’ messages and all those WhatsApp forwards that glorify women, these mighty women from our villages led the farmer protests

As children we’ve been in awe of our parents’ skills and sometimes intimidated too. Even if they had the intention of passing on that skill to us, quite a few would remember the pressure we were under. Recently an artist told me how she fears showing her paintings to her father who is an accomplished artist himself. I distinctly remember the mess I was when my father tried to teach me how to play the harmonium. The eight-year-old me fumbled

I often hear men say that this question baffles them. There have been bawdy, irritating jokes that periodically make rounds on WhatsApp groups. The emojis in response are irritating but also an interesting peek into social psyche. Men ‘nudge knowingly’, ‘wink’ or ‘laugh’ openly while women ‘smile’ politely, some squirm and a few ignore. The eternal question however remains unanswered partly because men often don’t ask or if they do, they don’t listen. Contrary to what the commercials show or

My timeline is flooded with two kinds of posts from India- the farmer protests and the vaccination drive. I have been losing sleep over the former and pray that sanity wins eventually and peace prevails. Rab raakha, in God’s hands, as I often say is the only thought that keeps me calm. Posts of the latter kind however bring me hope and joy. While here we wait for the vaccine to arrive, in India, my friends, colleagues and other healthcare

In the frenzied world of food fads and diet plans that we live in, the wisest words that have stayed with me, almost like a talisman, are— Eat local. Eat seasonal. When I moved to Mumbai and explored the traditional foods, I included more millets as a substitute for my staple wheat, ditched my beloved basmati rice for the local variety and such smaller changes. Every winter I crave for the winter veggies like turnip and cauliflower. Even though cauliflower