LAMHE

A few days ago, someone asked me for my opinion. I gave it. They looked disappointed. Not angry. Not offended. Just disappointed. It took me a while to understand why. They had not come looking for an opinion at all. They had come looking for agreement. I have begun to notice this everywhere. In families. In friendships. On television debates. On social media. Even in counselling rooms. People ask questions that sound like invitations to think, but what they are really offering is a small examination paper. There is only one correct answer, and they already know what it is. The old saying was that truth hurts. I think the new truth is that disagreement hurts even more. When I was growing up, conversations were often noisy. Uncles argued about politics, aunts debated family matters, grandparents interrupted everyone because they believed experience deserved a hearing. Nobody unfriended anybody. Nobody announced that the family dinner was a toxic environment because two people voted diff...

I am a mother of two daughters. I also come from a large family filled with women—I had three sisters, and before us, there were six buas . I grew up in a household where girls were deeply loved, well-educated, and encouraged to speak their minds. Yet, even in such an empowering environment, we were constantly reminded that relationships require patience, grace, and adjustment. But my father also taught us something else, very clearly: “अन्याय मत सहना” —Do not tolerate injustice. It is this specific balance that has been weighing heavily on my mind as I watch the ongoing media storm surrounding the recent Bhopal tragedy. Like many, I am deeply disturbed by the loss of life, but I am also unsettled by the speed with which society has delivered its verdict. Investigations are still underway and evidence is incomplete, yet television debates, social media experts, and emotionally charged narratives have already decided who the villain is. Perhaps the husband is guilty. Perhaps the in-laws...

  There are some news stories you read, and they pass. And then there are some that do not leave you. They sit in your chest, heavy and unmoving, like grief that refuses to settle. The recent incident of a schoolgirl being brutally bullied in Sydney is one of those stories that stays. As a mother of two daughters, I did not just read this incident. I felt it. I could hear that girl’s fear in those messages. I could imagine her looking around, hoping someone would come, someone would notice, someone would stop it. And what disturbs me most is not just what happened to her, but what it reveals about us. Because this is not just bullying. This is dehumanisation. What Kind of Mind Does This? We are very quick to use words like “psycho”, “evil”, or “criminal”. These words give us temporary relief because they create distance between “us” and “them”. But as a counsellor, I cannot stop there. Behaviour like this does not appear suddenly at thirteen. Research in adolescent psychology consi...

  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...