LAMHE

  I often wonder when healing became something we needed to display. There was a time when emotional repair was quiet. People worked through grief, confusion, betrayal, and identity shifts in private spaces — sometimes with support, sometimes alone. Today, healing is visible. It is documented. It is captioned. It is shared in real time. On many days, I see this as progress. Silence around mental health caused enormous harm. When people speak openly about therapy, trauma, anxiety, or boundaries, stigma reduces. Others feel less alone. Language creates connection. But alongside this openness, I notice something else. Healing has acquired aesthetics. There are carefully framed journal pages, softly lit “self-work Sundays,” tearful confession reels, curated vulnerability posts, and affirmations written in perfect typography. Pain is narrated with clarity and often with applause. The market has learned to package recovery. Emotional disclosure now circulates as content. This is not inhe...

  Somewhere between wedding photographs and WhatsApp forwards, marriages have started feeling fragile. I don’t mean fragile in the dramatic sense—shouting, breaking, collapsing overnight. I mean fragile in quieter ways. In the way people withdraw faster. In the way patience runs out sooner. In the way “this is not working” is said more confidently than “let’s sit with this.” Divorce is no longer shocking. Among Indians—both in India and abroad—it has become familiar. Not always common, but close enough to home that almost everyone knows someone. A colleague. A cousin. A neighbour. Sometimes a friend we never imagined would struggle. People ask, “Why is this happening so much now?” The answers come easily: late marriages, independence, phones, parents, ambition, lack of tolerance. All true. And yet incomplete. What I see, again and again, is something deeper— we are entering marriages with fully formed lives but very little training in how to live together. By the time many people m...

I work with people every week who speak a lot. They talk about their families, their regrets, their sleep, their anger, their plans for what comes next. Different stories, different languages, different accents — and yet, after a while, the emotional rhythm feels familiar. At some point, almost everyone pauses, looks at me, and asks something without words. Are you really listening? That moment has taught me more about human connection than any textbook ever could. Over time, I have noticed how easily we make assumptions about people. We assume that those who speak confidently are emotionally strong, that those who stay busy are coping well, that those who smile often are at peace. In my experience, these assumptions rarely hold true. Some of the most articulate people I meet are carrying unspoken grief. Some of the most successful are quietly exhausted. Some of the most cheerful are carefully avoiding silence. This is not a mental-health issue alone. It is a deeply human one. Age does...

I was reading an article the other day, a BBC Future piece, about how some people say psychedelic experiences changed the way they see their gender and sexuality. I remember reading it late in the evening, phone in one hand, tea getting cold on the table, and thinking — this sounds dramatic, but something about it feels familiar too. Not because of psychedelics, but because of people. Because long before research papers and headlines, I have been sitting across from human beings who are trying to make sense of themselves, often in spaces where they were never really allowed to ask certain questions out loud. What stayed with me from that article was the word changed . And instinctively, I felt a little resistance to it. In our culture, we already live with enough fear around “badlav” — as if change itself is dangerous, suspicious, something that must be explained or justified. But identity, at least in my experience, doesn’t usually announce itself like a sudden revolution. It arrives...

 I stayed back in India after the wedding and my book launch for one reason — to attend the 25th Silver Jubilee of the Indian Television Academy Awards . I have attended ITA Awards earlier as well, but this time the experience felt very different. Maybe because this time I wasn’t just watching the event — I was seeing what goes on behind it. A day before the awards, I was present at stage rehearsals and pre-event dance shoots that will be part of the New Year’s telecast on Star Plus . I saw the scale of the preparation — hundreds of cameras capturing every movement, multiple screens in the media control room, teams coordinating every second with absolute focus. What finally looks effortless on television is actually the result of intense planning, discipline and hard work. The venue — Jio World Convention Centre — added to the sense of occasion. Grand, elegant, and fitting for a milestone like this. Standing there, watching everything come together, I truly understood what it mea...

In my counselling practice, I often meet women who confide their pain to me — stories of marital discord, loneliness, and emotional isolation. Again and again, I notice a familiar pattern: when the partner is absent, either emotionally or physically, the mother turns to her daughter. Slowly, the daughter becomes her confidant, her comforter, sometimes even her mediator. I cannot deny that I have lived this truth in my own home. I am a mother of two daughters, and there were times when they quietly slipped into that role between me and my husband. Whenever there was tension, he would sometimes ask them to step in, to mediate. And while I tried to avoid placing that weight on their shoulders, I could not always protect them from it. As a mother, I saw their maturity and wisdom; as a counsellor, I saw the danger. They were never meant to be our therapists. Psychologists have a name for this: parentification . It happens when children take on responsibilities that belong to adults. Sometim...

The Writer’s Reflection: Stories of the Mind Every story begins with a turn—एक करवट. Sometimes life turns towards joy, sometimes towards restlessness, sometimes towards silence. As a writer, I often find that the deepest stories don’t come from imagination, but from those unspoken turns of the mind. On this World Mental Health Day, I don’t want to give advice; I want to share a reminder: every emotion we carry is a story waiting to be honoured. Whether it is anxiety, grief, or hope—each deserves its space in our diary of life. The Artist’s Reflection: Healing Through Rhythm When I dance, I notice something strange—the same step feels different on different days. One day it releases anger, another day it releases tears. The taal, the raga, the brush of rhythm across the heart—they all remind me that art has always been humanity’s first therapy. Long before psychology found its language, we were already healing through music, colour, gesture, and movement. Perhaps that’s why mental healt...