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THE DILEMMA OF FOREIGN EDUCATION

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For many Indian families, choosing an undergraduate destination is no longer merely an academic decision. It involves questions of opportunity, affordability, employability, identity, culture and belonging. For our family, this question is deeply personal. Both my daughters studied at Shri Ram School, Moulsari Avenue. Their ICSE and IB years encouraged curiosity, independent thinking and original expression rather than rote learning. The school taught them to ask questions, form opinions and look at problems from different perspectives. Tanisha is deeply creative and expresses herself through art. Kaavya is fiercely independent-minded; she began writing about feminine issues and is now pursuing a high level of poetry writing. For children like them, the attraction of a liberal education is obvious. The difficulty is deciding where that education can best prepare them for life and work. Liberal Arts in India Liberal arts allows students to study across disciplines. A student may...
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CAN YOUR MOTHER IN LAW EVER BE YOUR MOTHER?

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Every Indian wedding comes with two marriages. One is between the bride and the groom. The other, far more complicated, is between a woman and another woman who never chose each other. We grow up believing that mothers love unconditionally and mothers-in-law judge unconditionally. Films reinforce it. Television serials celebrate it. Family WhatsApp groups discuss it. Every newly married woman receives the same unsolicited advice. "Remember, she's not your mother." Curiously, no one tells the mother-in-law, "Remember, she's someone's daughter." And somewhere between these two warnings begins a relationship built not on trust, but on caution.   It had been ten years since Aditi married Neeraj. They lived in Gurgaon with Neeraj's mother, Rekha, a retired schoolteacher in her sixties. Their eight-year-old son Aarav filled the house with noise, cricket bats, forgotten school shoes and impossible questions. From the outside, they look...
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FROM FLOOR PLANS TO FLOW PLANS: HOW I'VE USED SYSTEMS THINKING TO DESIGN SPACES

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There’s a quiet joy I find in designing spaces. Not the extravagant kind that needs mood boards or Pinterest pegs—but something far more structural, almost therapeutic. I like starting with a blank canvas, sketching wireframe-style layouts, and visualizing how people, energy, and ideas will flow through a space. This isn’t just a hobby. It’s a way of thinking that goes back to my engineering days at BITS Pilani. My favorite subject was Systems Engineering—a field that taught me to see every functioning entity as a system with interlinked parts. Over time, I’ve applied that thinking far beyond machines or business processes. I’ve come to see physical spaces—especially workspaces—as systems too. And that shift has been powerful. Let me show you what I mean. The Blank Canvas: A Raw Space Waiting to be Structured Take a look at these photos:                         ...
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