Always protecting the ones who belong to you.

You make your feelings known, never hiding your care.

Especially when someone you love is there.

You greet me as though I have been gone for years,

With excitement that could melt the hardest of fears.

You may never understand what that moment means to me,

To come home to a love so uncomplicated and free.

When I am unwell and the world feels slow,

You stay right beside me, as if you somehow know.

You cannot take the sickness or make the aches depart,

Yet your presence alone brings a comfort words cannot explain.

You have your little ways that make you who you are.

Nap time is your favourite part of the day, by far.

Tucked between the pillows where you feel safe and snug.

Curled up in your own little space

You never quite like being left on your own.

You are happiest when you are close.

For all the little things that make you who you are,

Life would never feel the same without you.

In the simplest moments, you remind me what matters most,

A love that asks for nothing, yet gives me the most.

My little Luna,

Happy 10th Birthday.

Humiliated before those who should have protected her,
she burned with anger and wanted to curse them all.
Her pain demanded justice,
her wounded heart could not understand
how those responsible could sit in silence.

Gandhari, the mother of a hundred sons,
urged Draupadi to restrain her anger,
to choose forgiveness over rage,
to rise above the cruelty she had endured.

Perhaps Gandhari believed that wisdom
meant mastering the fire within,
that peace was worth choosing
even when the world had been unkind.

Fate, however, would bring her own wisdom to its knees.

Years later, after the devastating war of Kurukshetra,
Gandhari stood among the ruins of her world.
Not one of her hundred sons remained.
Her heart shattered beneath the weight of a hundred losses.
A mother left hollow by the loss of every son she bore.

She turned towards Krishna,
the divine guide who had witnessed the war,
and held him responsible for not preventing the destruction.
In her anguish, she cursed him,
foretelling the downfall of his own Yadava clan.

The woman who had once preached forgiveness

now stood captive to a grief so profound,

no wisdom could quiet her sorrow,

no words could ease the anguish within her soul.

Was she a hypocrite,
or was she simply human?

The truth is: we are all wise when the wound belongs to someone else.

They were meant to wake up to sunlight,

not to the sound of bombs shaking the ground.

They were meant to run through school corridors,

laugh with their friends,

and fall asleep safely at home.

Instead, they watch their homes disappear around them.

They watch everything familiar

turn into dust and rubble.

Some carry wounds

that will change their lives forever.

Some have lost limbs

they should have grown up learning to use,

not learning how to live without.

Hunger replaces the comfort of a warm meal,

thirst replaces the comfort of clean water,

and fear replaces the peace of night.

There are children with no safe place to go,

no roof above them,

no bed to sleep in,

and no certainty about what tomorrow will bring.

Their nights are filled with explosions, when they should be filled with lullabies

They wake each morning

with no certainty of what lies ahead,

never knowing what the day may take

from them,

or whether tomorrow will come.

Imagine being a child in Gaza,

closing your eyes each night,

wondering if you will ever open them again.

Named after Luna Lovegood, with a charm all her own,

A little personality that has truly grown.

With ShivYog playing softly, finding peace in her way,

Indian snacks on the menu to brighten her day.

A wardrobe of outfits, all pressed and aligned,

Not a wrinkle in sight, every detail refined.

With her own little rituals and habits so true,

There is simply no other Luna quite like you.

Once so small, with tiny paws and curious eyes,

Now growing older beneath the same skies.

The years have brought changes that time cannot hide,

Yet the little companion from those early days remains by our side.

Perhaps the world grew kinder the day you came along,

Is proof that the tiniest paws can leave the biggest footprints.

Watching time carry you forward brings emotions difficult to explain,

For no matter how many years may pass, some things will always remain.

A familiar constellation quietly moved on.

The sky remains, the stars still shine,

Yet something feels different in the design.

An old melody drifts through the air,

Carrying echoes of something once there.

No names are spoken, no truths unfold,

Some stories grow quiet without growing old.

The ocean still reaches for the shore,

Returning each time, yet keeping something more.

Perhaps certain tides were never meant to stay,

Perhaps even the moon must learn to look away.

There are letters the wind will never read,

And flowers that bloom without anyone to see.

Somewhere, a season has come to an end,

Leaving behind what time cannot mend.

No farewell written, no final word,

Just a silence where a thousand things were heard.

The world carries on beneath the same blue hue,

Unaware that the sky once looked different to two

Her name comes first.

Why?

Their story was never about possession.

Krishna left Vrindavan.
Radha remained.

Their paths separated.
Their love did not.

They did not share a life
in the way we understand love.

Yet their names remained inseparable.

Radha became the embodiment of prema.

Love without expectation.
Love without possession.
Love that survives separation.

Perhaps that is their greatest legacy.

They could not share a life together,
yet their love became timeless.

Maybe that is why,
after centuries have passed,
after kingdoms have fallen,
after generations have come and gone,

we still say her name first.

Radha-Krishna.

Perhaps some loves
are not meant to be lived together.

Some are meant to outlive the people who lived them.

of colour, movement and celebration.

The music fills the air,

the circle comes alive,

and through Garbo,

we express Garba.

Each movement carrying

a meaning beyond the dance.

These nine nights

are more than celebration.

There is beauty in the circle.

We move,

we turn,

we return.

Reminded that life is always changing,

yet something within us

always brings us back to centre.

At the heart of Navaratri

lives Ma Shakti.

The divine feminine,

the force that creates,

nurtures, protects

and rises.

She is the courage in a woman’s voice,

the grace in her compassion,

the strength in her resilience,

and the freedom to rise

as exactly who she is.

Nine nights.

Nine forms.

One Ma Shakti.

For when we celebrate the power of the feminine,

we celebrate the strength of every woman

and the Shakti that lives within us all.

I learnt that love can be real
and still not be forever,
that some relationships
are meant to shape you,
not stay beside you.

I learnt that my body
was never a measurement of my worth.
A number could never tell the story
of everything I have survived,
everything I have become.

I learnt to laugh louder,
to make memories,
to dance without wondering
who was watching,
but also to choose carefully,
because not every moment
is worth the consequence.

I learnt that growing
doesn’t always look like winning.
Sometimes it looks like losing,
letting go,
starting again,
and finding wisdom
in places I once called pain.

Some lessons came disguised
as heartbreak.
Some as disappointment.
Some as endings
I never wanted.

But they were lessons nonetheless.

And if my twenties
have taught me anything,
it is this:

Protect your peace.
Choose your people.
Live while you can.

And above everything else,
your health is your wealth.

Because at the end of the day,
nothing you achieve,
nothing you own,
nothing you become
means more than
being here to experience it.

Someone who knows
how to sit with silence
without mistaking it
for abandonment.

Someone who knows
when to stay,
when to leave,
and when to simply
hold my own hand.

I am learning
not to be ashamed
of the girl I was.
The one who gave too much,
felt too deeply,
and stayed too long
hoping someone would notice.

She was only trying
to find the love
she didn’t know
how to give herself.

So I am learning
to give it to her now.

In the quiet,
in the uncertainty,
in all the places
I once felt forgotten.

I used to believe
healing meant
becoming someone stronger.

Maybe it means
becoming someone softer
with the parts of yourself
that never knew
how to ask for help.

And perhaps
that is who I am becoming,

Not someone new,

but someone
who finally knows
how to come home
to herself.

Or perhaps
I only imagined it.

I turn the words over,
one by one,
searching for a crack
I might have missed.

The silence feels different now,
but I cannot tell
if it belongs to the room
or to me.

People change.
Seasons do too.

And sometimes
nothing breaks loudly.

It simply becomes
something
you no longer recognise.

And somehow,
you are left with the quiet,
wondering what changed first?

The distance between us,
or something
inside me.

The man who lived without sight,

His white stick traced the walls,
searching for a way through the darkness,
while his hand found mine.

And I held it.

I became his eyes
when the world disappeared from his own.

Now the world is still here,
the walls are still white,
the white cane still leans against the walls,

but his hand is gone.

And how cruel?
that the man who could not see,
taught me how to see everything.

So come back, I cried.
Come back to me.
Because some part of me
still believes that if I reach out my hand,

You will find me.

Years had passed,
yet something in me
remembered you
before I understood why.

The day you left this earth,
a knowing came over me,
quiet, certain,
unspoken.

I never told a soul.
I never gave the knowing a name.
I simply carried it.

And years later,
you came back to me,
not as I once knew you,
but through the unseen.

And I wondered…

Why me?

In life,
you spoke of my beauty.

Perhaps that was all
the eye could see then.

But maybe beauty
was only the surface.

Maybe beneath it
was something you could sense
but neither of us had words for.

Something deeper.
Something unseen.
Something waiting to be understood.

And then you crossed the veil.

You experienced
what lies beyond this world.

And somehow,
you found your way back to me.

Perhaps what you discovered there
gave meaning to what you sensed here.

Perhaps you now see
what neither of us could see then.

That the beauty you noticed
was never the whole story.

It was only the beginning.

And perhaps,
in returning to me,
you are revealing
the part of me
that life had not yet revealed.

Not because I stand on a battlefield,

Rather, the battlefield lives within me.

One side of me reaches for the Divine,

for that feeling that there is something greater,

something beyond what the eyes can see

and the mind can comprehend.

Reality calls.

Responsibilities.

People.

Expectations.

Pain.

The weight of simply being human.

How do you live in this world

when your soul feels connected to another?

How do you hold onto God

when life keeps demanding that you hold onto everything else?

Perhaps that was Arjuna’s greatest battle.

Not defeating an enemy,

but finding clarity while standing in the middle of chaos.

Krishna did not take Arjuna away from the battlefield.

He gave him the wisdom to stand in it.

Maybe that is the lesson,

Spirituality is not escaping reality.

It is finding the Divine

while reality is falling apart around you.

So I keep walking.

With one foot in this world,

and my soul reaching beyond it.

Still questioning.

Still struggling.

Still believing.

Because perhaps faith is not the absence of confusion.

Perhaps faith is continuing to walk

when you cannot see the path.

-Sandhya