Beauty is reality. It's being who you truly are. It's being positive after every breaking point you have. It’s getting over your past. Beauty is free. It's empty of any dull materialistic routines. Beauty is how someone holds himself. The way a faint smile leaves the mouth. It's the way your mother hugs you after a very long day or even the way back home when you’ve been too long away. Beauty is gold qualities of heart. It's the lack of hatred and jealousy. Beauty, my dear is everything, and anything, and you.

I always wanted to be a mother. The thought of someone hugging on to me, someone calling me ‘mama’ always excited me. My husband and I had to wait for 4 years until the arrival of our little bundle of joy. When I got pregnant, I never thought of all the sacrifices I would have to make. My pregnancy was not as smooth as I thought it would be.

We fear what our neighbours will think. We fear about our standards. We fear about our clothes, hairstyles, looks etc. We fear about our jobs. We fear about careers. We fear about our results. Even, we have fear for our lives. We fear about our favourite things. We fear that our comfort zone would be away from us one day.

It took me some time to start getting over the past and to re-build myself, but through introspection, prayer, and affirmation, the process of healing is in effect. Don’t let someone’s impaired vision of you affect the love you have for yourself. Don’t let your own self-imposed doubts get in your way.

When I was a child, all I aspired to do was hang a college degree on my wall, get a sustainable job, and make my parents proud. Well, not only me, probably almost all of us, the 90’s kids, shared a similar outlook towards our future. And while some of us still do, for me, things changed!

Not one bad or good experience can define the true meaning of Love. Some people fall for the wrong ones and falling in love isn't something that we can control. But even if you fell for the wrong person and you got pretty damaged, never give up on love. Love is beautiful with the right person.

So, on days when it feels like you can eat up anyone who comes in front of you or tries to communicate with you, know that it is momentary. You must know the feeling, when in angst you spurt out on someone not realizing the damage it can cause. The very next moment you know you did wrong.

I'll even tell them I agree with them because I no longer feel the need to defend myself in the face of people who aren't even willing to listen to what I have to say. If they can't trust me and accept me and acknowledge me for who and what I am and for what I give to them selflessly, I'm not going to force them to. I'll step away, back off, and they won't even realize I've done so.

Cultures vary in what they regard as right and wrong, standards vary from place to place. Over time, there is no universal standard, and consequently, it is mistaken to criticize the practices of another culture. I get that. But…

You are awake. You are staring at the wall, listening to my heaving. From a distance you are watching me break down in tiny pieces. It breaks your heart. But what can you do? You can walk away. You can run from so this madness and never look back. You can walk away from this darkness that you never have a chance of understanding.

As we all know, this era is fast and modern, and we should be smart like our cell phones and perform well on every manifesto of work, as mother, as a daughter, as a co-worker, as a wife, and as a reliable woman of society, but in all these processes, we’ve lost ourselves. We need to pause everything (like everything) to get that young, free spirited, beautiful, strong girl back in form.

You see, the thing with being raped, or just generally being abused at such a young age, is that you find it hard to open up to people about it. I would know because for me, it started when I was about four years old. I really don't remember much about that time of my life but I can never forget what she did to me. Yes, "she".

Why do people change their minds and priorities in no time? Maybe, in this era of modernisation, emotions have lost their charm, and exist as a word only. No one has time to scrutinize their bonds and give enough time to their beloveds.

Competitions were passing and I never got a chance to win them. I was getting so upset and I started to think "If i can't win even a single competition, is there any talent in me?" After questioning my talent, I took a break from writing and decided to never attend a competition. It was the stupidest thing to do.

I live in a country where people do talk about feminism and girl's rights but only in ideas, because they fail to apply their ideas in reality. For them, women are the idol of greatness, the idol of purity, and perfectness. But that's what the problem is!

Even before I could tell them what I really wanted to become in my life, I was already sitting in the classroom flipping the pages of a book which I don't even remember now. The girl who was topping her higher secondary had to miserably fail in the first week unit tests. The little hope I had within me was slowly vanishing as I attended test after test after test. And all I could do was to helplessly endure.

Sleep dawned unto like the bright morning star glooming in the east

What I was expecting from sleep was a few hours to relax

But the dusk by my pillows had altered the plans way before I knew

Did you know? Rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India, and over 26,000 cases of rape have been reported in India. Also, another interesting piece of trivia, almost 98% of these were committed by a person known to the victim. I wonder who are worse, the 98% to do such a thing to someone who trusts you, or the other 2% to do it to a stranger in the bus.

At first we thought we found a mole,
Something had given our plan away.
We had a goal in mind to close the hole;
In the heart of these mortal men each day,
With our soft curves and swaying hips,…

Maybe you’re supposed to be studying right now but you’re reading this, maybe a lot of your work is unresolved but you’re watching re-runs of your favorite show, maybe you have errands to complete but you just can’t find the will to get work done. We spend so much time believing we’re feeling nothing, doing nothing when we’re doing so many little things together. We’ve trained our minds into believing that we have to be productive at every single waking moment.

Here I am on a plane miles away from home, relocating! What exactly had I thought taking a job that I am not even sure I can keep? Who was I trying to prove something to? Was it myself? Or family? Or Saleem? It'd sure be pleasant to show that good for nothing fool who I turned out to be. I mean I'm no longer the, "I'm sorry" type, whether I had made the mistake or not. I'm more of the "why doth my God try me with imbeciles" type!