Sidewalks

Category: Life

  • HAS EVERYTHING BECOME MORE PERFORMATIVE?

    HAS EVERYTHING BECOME MORE PERFORMATIVE?

    Is it just me or does nothing feel good or fun anymore?

    Not to sound pessimistic or depressing but I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Everything feels like an algorithm now. Numbers, stats, likes, comments. More than living, we are performing.

    Nothing feels original anymore. Everything is being reproduced or recycled. The world has lost its colour and originality. We are all just puppets being controlled by money, greed, and endless consumption. We are creating but the joy has been taken out of it. We are creating to be seen, to sell, to be famous.

    Has everything become more performative, or is it just me?

    Even our hobbies don’t feel like hobbies anymore.

    I remember when Instagram was just an app. I used to post for my love of taking pictures. I didn’t care about likes and comments. But now when I post a picture and it doesn’t get engagement, I start to doubt it. My mind spirals into overthinking.

    Is the picture not good enough?

     Do I not look pretty enough?

     Hot enough?

    And I honestly hate it.

    I hate that we are such slaves to this thing that’s not even real.

    As much as social media has done good for artists and small businesses, I fear we have paid a heavy price for it.

    We are constantly performing instead of living.

    Everything is a performance.

     Every picture, perfectly curated, not for the memories or fun of it but to show it to people who honestly don’t give a fuck about us. Complete strangers.

    I felt this with my writing.

    When I initially started my blog, I remember it was fun. I wrote to have fun. But then slowly it became about stats, numbers, SEO, algorithm and I was told by my marketing lead to create content that gets more clicks and I refused. It didn’t feel right to me because that’s not why I started writing. I was sent a list of highly ranked articles on Google and asked to create content. I was told there’s no niche for my blog because I was posting whatever I felt like based on what I was going through, what was on my mind.

    To be honest, this is one of the main reasons I started being inconsistent. When I started thinking about it as a hobby that needed to be monetized, the stats, the numbers, the growth, it took the fun away from the writing. I started to dread it and put it off. I stepped away for months and sometimes a year at a time without posting because it started to drain me.

    To this day I have not created a content calendar for my blog. The growth has been slow because I didn’t market it. I wanted something to be fun and not just broken down into a side hustle, making an income. Something to feed the soul.

    Now that summer is officially here, I cannot look away from it.

    I remember as a kid when summer was about having genuine fun. Looking back on old pictures, I see messy hair, breezy outfits, silly poses, unplanned days. We were just having fun.

    Somewhere along the way, summer became performative.

    There seems to be an unspoken pressure to “summer” correctly.

    The itineraries and plans revolve around photographic value and aesthetics for Instagram over having genuine fun. I’m sure the fun is part of it, but the highly curated perfect version definitely seems to take priority now.

    It’s more about proving that “my life is great” than actually living it.

    Where you dine, where you stay, your outfits…everything is judged by how well it translates online.There’s this unwritten rule about how well we need to document our lives to prove we are doing great.

    Under the guise of “Euro Summer” everyone is spotted at the same places, doing the same activities, wearing the same outfits, and posting the same version of summer.

    The pressure starts before the trip.

    The nails. The hair. The lashes. The perfect outfits. The not-so-candid suitcase photos.

    It’s become a running joke that people cannot enjoy their vacation until they have the perfect photos and the worst part?

    We know exactly what they mean.

    Because we are the people.

    We do it.

    We perform endlessly and now I think we don’t even realize we are putting on a performance because it’s become part of who we are.

    Even being real feels staged.

    Even the candid shots we take are staged and performative.

    It’s exhausting to feel like you’re on this stage with an invisible audience watching all the time.

    Everything needs to be documented. Everything needs to be turned into proof.

    Everything is content now.

    I remember when vacation meant careless fun, unplanned moments, pure fun and relaxation. Now it’s about fit-check pictures, the perfect angle, the perfect lighting.

    Just writing about it gives me anxiety.

    Summer isn’t about summer anymore.

    It’s about proving how well you live.

    And honestly, I think the real luxury anymore isn’t going on a Euro Summer. It’s having a fun holiday even when nobody sees it.

    We live in a strange world where we exist to create perfectly curated versions of ourselves online.

    I am so grateful that I at least experienced a childhood with disposable cameras and taking pictures to look back on the memories that still make my heart nostalgic.

    Now I know it doesn’t have to be performative if you don’t want it to be. I choose not to post all my pictures online, only the things and parts of life that I want people to see.

    And you know the best part? I think we are all starting to wake up to it.

    I see more and more conversations happening around this. People are choosing to share less. People are becoming more protective of their lives. More aware of how much of themselves they’ve been giving away to strangers online.

    At the end of the day, we all have to protect our sanity from this nonsense.

    I definitely don’t have it all figured out. I still struggle with my screen time. I still catch myself thinking about the perfect photo, the perfect caption, whether something is worth posting.

    But at least now I notice it.

    And maybe that’s the point.

    Because once you start noticing how much of life has become a performance, it’s hard to unsee it.

    I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.

    But sometimes I think we live in a sad and pathetic world where so many people are experiencing things through a screen before they’ve even experienced them for themselves.

    And that’s the part that makes me sad.

    Not social media itself.

    Just how much of our lives we’ve handed over to it.

  • I Spent So Long Longing, I Forgot to Live

    I Spent So Long Longing, I Forgot to Live

    I found this sitting in my notes app, dated over a year ago. I was in a very different place when I wrote this: burnout, debt, comparison spiraling, the whole thing. I’m sharing it exactly as I wrote it, because I think someone needs to read it today. Maybe that someone is me.

    There are days where everything just feels off.

    Not in a dramatic, crying-on-the-floor kind of way. Just in that quiet, slow-burning way where you wake up and think: this isn’t it. This isn’t what I imagined.

    You go through the motions. Pay the bills. Smile at work. But inside, it’s like a slow scream that nobody can hear but you.

    I want a break. Not a sleep-in-on-Saturday break. A real break. Lakeside naps. Sun on my skin. Reading a murder mystery in a pretty dress, my hair the way I love it: soft, effortless curls that make me feel pretty. I want to feel like I’m finally living in the soft girl dream I’ve been curating on Pinterest boards at 2am.

    Instead I’m here. Knee-deep in credit card debt and mounting stress, trying to remember what it felt like to look forward to something.

    It’s 6pm on a random Thursday and I’m scrolling through people’s lives feeling this weird mix of envy and sadness. Beautiful girls with perfectly toned, suntanned bodies spending their afternoons in a villa in France, swimming, laughing, just existing beautifully…while I’m here, working through a life I didn’t quite sign up for, doing a job I’m not passionate about, tired from overworking and undereating and going through the same dull, monotonous motions over and over again.

    And it stings.

    Not because I hate them, I genuinely don’t. But because I’ve somehow forgotten how to love where I am.

    I think that’s what longing does to you after a while. It convinces you that your real life is somewhere else. That it starts when the money comes, or when the relationship works out, or when you finally book that flight. You keep waiting for the conditions to be right and meanwhile your actual life is just… happening without you in it.

    The jealousy isn’t just envy.

    It’s grief.

    It’s this deep, quiet ache for a version of my life that feels aligned and abundant. And when you’re sitting in that feeling, the illusion that it’s better over there gets so loud. You start believing your life will begin when things finally fall into place.

    And then I was lying in bed, phone in my face at whatever time, mid-spiral, and I read this:

    “When you see your desire as separate, as distant, as something you must earn or chase, you’re reinforcing lack. And God doesn’t operate in lack. Don’t pedestal your desire. Be the version of you who already has it. Because here’s the truth: the desire is not the source. You are. The desire was born because you exist.”

    I had to stop and read it again.

    My longing isn’t proof that I’m missing something. It’s proof that I know what I want. And there’s a difference.

    I’m not going to pretend I have it all figured out. I don’t. But I’m tired of treating my life like a waiting room. I’m done sitting in the corner of my own story, waiting for permission to actually show up in it.

    So I made a decision that day. Not a grand, life-changing declaration. Just a quiet promise to myself. That I was going to start showing up for the life I actually have. Not the one I’m waiting for. Not the one on someone else’s screen. This one. I was going to intentionally find beauty in what I’d been given, instead of only keeping score of what was missing.

    Nobody is coming to save you. That’s the truth nobody tells you nicely.

    You can cry. Be angry. Be frustrated. Complain, whine, spiral. Do all of it. Feel every bit of it. But then you have to wipe your face, straighten up, and take the wheel. Nobody else is the anchor of you ship but you.

    They say the grass is greener on the other side. But I truly believe it’s greener where you water it. And I hadn’t been watering anything. I’d been so busy staring at someone else’s garden that I let mine dry out. So I’m weeding. Slowly. Pulling out what no longer serves me, making room for things that actually help me grow. It’s not glamorous. But it’s mine.

    You only get one life. One. So the question is: do you want to be a visitor in it, watching it pass by from the window? Or do you want to actually be in it?

    It’s been over a year since I wrote this. I found it a few days ago and it stopped me completely. I had to just sit with it for a minute.

    When I wrote this, I was working at a car dealership. I loved the high of that job. But I knew, somewhere deep down, it wasn’t it. I was in debt. I was tired. I was that girl at 6pm on a Thursday, scrolling and aching.

    A year later…

    I paid off my debt. I moved back to India. I started my own social club for women, and by the time this goes up, we will have hosted two fully sold out events.

    Am I proud of myself? Honestly? Not in the way people expect you to say yes. Because I still have so far to go. So much to learn. But compared to where I was — I feel the growth. I feel the progress. And right now, that’s enough.

    I won’t lie. The comparison thing is still there. I still scroll past girls living what feels like my dream life. But I’m learning to detach. Because slowly, quietly — the life I’m building is starting to feel like mine. And I know, I just know, that I too will sit in St. Tropez one day, reading a murder mystery on a lazy Thursday afternoon with the sun on my face.

    Until then… I work. I write. I show up. And I’m building a life I wake up to with joy, not dread.

    That’s enough for now.

    xo,

    Yachna

  • The Cake I Kept Waiting For

    The Cake I Kept Waiting For

    This year, I finally bought my own birthday cake.

    That probably sounds like a very ordinary thing to do. Adults buy themselves things all the time. But for me, it felt strangely significant.

    Every birthday before this one, the cake came from someone else. A partner, a friend, or a family member. And while I was always grateful, they were never quite the cakes I secretly wanted.

    Not because they weren’t good. They were.

    But we all have our own little desires.

    And if there’s one day of the year that’s supposed to feel entirely yours, shouldn’t the cake be too?

    For years, I kept a Pinterest folder filled with beautiful cakes. Vintage cakes. Over-the-top cakes. Cakes that looked like they belonged in old photographs and fairytales. I would save them absentmindedly, never really imagining I would one day order one for myself.

    This year, I finally chose one.

    Originally, I wanted a swan cake. But after much deliberation, I settled on a vintage red cake with the words “Witches Don’t Age” written across the top in icing.

    Chocolate cake with creamy vanilla filling.

    Exactly what I wanted.

    Yet when I placed the order, I felt unexpectedly sad.

    I’d spent years imagining someone surprising me with exactly the cake I wanted.

    What never occurred to me was that I could simply order it.

    I think what saddened me wasn’t paying for the cake.

    It was letting go of the fantasy that someone else would know exactly what I wanted without me ever having to ask.

    Ordering the cake felt strangely final.

    Not because I was spending money on dessert, but because I was giving up a story I’d been carrying for years.

    The story where somebody would surprise me with exactly the right cake. The exact colour. The exact flavour. The exact words piped across the icing.

    Buying it myself felt like admitting that story wasn’t going to happen.

    At least not this year.

    For a few hours, that realization sat heavily with me.

    It felt lonelier than I expected.

    After all, birthdays have a way of stirring up our expectations. They invite us to take stock of our lives, our relationships, and all the little ways we hope to be seen and celebrated. Somewhere along the way, I had attached a surprising amount of meaning to a cake.

    Not the cake itself, but what it represented.

    Being known.

    Being thought of.

    Being chosen.

    But then my birthday arrived.

    And something surprising happened.

    When I saw the cake, I wasn’t sad at all.

    I was delighted.

    It looked exactly the way I’d imagined it would. The red was perfect. The lettering was delightfully dramatic. It looked like it had stepped straight out of my Pinterest folder I had been curating for years.

    And in that moment, none of my earlier sadness mattered.

    Because the thing I wanted was right there in front of me.

    Exactly as I’d imagined it.

    That’s when I realized how often we confuse the source of our happiness with the thing itself.

    I thought I wanted someone to buy me the perfect cake.

    What I actually wanted was the perfect cake.

    I had spent years believing that the gesture was what would make me happy. That somehow the joy depended on who brought it to me.

    But standing there on my birthday, staring at that ridiculous, beautiful cake, I discovered something else.

    The happiness was still there.

    The excitement was still there.

    The only thing that had changed was who made it happen.

    There’s a strange kind of freedom in realizing that.

    Not because we stop wanting love or thoughtfulness from other people. We do. And those gestures will always matter.

    But some of the things we’re waiting for don’t actually require permission, luck, or someone else’s initiative.

    Sometimes the thing we’re waiting for is already within reach.

    Maybe growing older isn’t learning how to need less.

    Maybe it’s realizing that some of the things you’ve been waiting for someone else to give you were never out of reach in the first place.

    The cake sat on the table exactly as I’d imagined it years before, when it lived only in a Pinterest folder.

    And for the first time, that felt like enough.

    Xo,

    Yachna

  • Where the Fuck Is the Romance I Was Promised When I Was a Little Girl?

    Where the Fuck Is the Romance I Was Promised When I Was a Little Girl?

    When I was a little girl, I was promised romance.

    Not grand gestures or fairy tales necessarily, but something simpler: a man who desired you and wasn’t afraid to show it. Someone emotionally present. Someone who called because he wanted to hear your voice. Someone who made you feel chosen.

    Instead, somewhere along the way, many of us seem to have been handed a very different reality.

    You would think that a man who has been introduced to you for the purpose of marriage would be emotionally available or at least willing to invest time in getting to know you.

    Well, you would be wrong.

    It usually starts with butterflies, roses, and rainbows. He reaches out consistently, compliments you, and gives you hope for the future. Slowly, you begin to let your guard down and entertain the possibility that maybe, finally, you’ve met the one.

    Then, just as you settle into the idea of a happily ever after, things start to shift.

    He pulls back.

    He becomes emotionally distant.

    The compliments disappear.

    The warmth fades.

    Suddenly, you’re left confused, and the emotional labor of guessing begins.

    You try to communicate. You ask whether something is wrong, and he reassures you that everything is fine.

    So, you convince yourself of the same.

    “Maybe I’m just overthinking,” you tell yourself.

    But, the distance remains. And, no amount of reassurance changes the reality of how you feel.

    And sadly, this isn’t just my story.

    When I started talking to other women…the serial daters. The happily married women. The unhappily married women. The divorced women. The single women.

    The details changed, but the stories felt remarkably similar.

    There was a common theme in all these conversations: there seems to be a growing absence of emotional availability.

    A reluctance to go deeper.

    To be vulnerable.

    To talk honestly about fears, family history, past wounds, or emotional needs.

    A friend recently told me how frustrated and exhausted she was because her husband barely called or texted her for weeks at a time. Weeks?!

    I used to think dating was rough, but when married women are struggling to receive basic communication from their own spouses, we’ve completely lost the plot.

    There’s a pattern I can no longer ignore: men who won’t fully choose you, but won’t fully let you go either. They give you just enough attention to keep you around and just enough distance to keep you confused. They breadcrumb you into lingering, hoping, and waiting.

    Maybe this sounds familiar.

    Maybe right now you’re thinking about someone who’s just not that into you. You’re waiting on that person to choose you.

    Or you’re teaching someone how to love you. How to talk to you. You tell yourself, “Maybe they’re just not good at expressing their emotions.” They disappear anytime things start to get real and deep.

    You wait for them to come back.

    To choose you.

    To want you.

    You are convinced that this is the real deal. You convince yourself that he’s just busy at work. But in reality, that’s just bullshit. We all know men who really love and want you will go through the depths of the earth to get to you if that’s what it takes. If he wanted to, he would.

    The truth is, when someone genuinely wants to be in your life, you rarely have to spend this much time dissecting their intentions. We all know people make time for what matters to them. We all know what effort looks like when it’s freely given.

    They say they are into you. But then act like talking to you is another chore to be checked off their to-do list. And some can’t even be bothered. They won’t fully commit or leave, but leave you in this limbo state to do the emotional guesswork.

    It’s exhausting.

    And, I am here thinking: Is he into me?

    He must be, or else he wouldn’t be calling, wouldn’t be investing time. But as it turns out, I am wrong.

    And that’s the trap, isn’t it?

    We take crumbs of effort and build entire castles out of them. We fill in the silence with our own hope and then blame ourselves when the foundation collapses.

    So how did we get here?

    How did we collectively accept the idea that modern men are incapable of emotional depth?

    Particularly because men historically have been really great poets, writers, philosophers, authors, painters, and composers. They wrote about love, longing, heartbreak, beauty, grief, and devotion with extraordinary depth.

    Clearly, the capacity exists.

    The older I get, the more I think the problem begins in childhood.

    I remember watching a little boy cry while his father immediately told him, “Stop crying like a girl. Strong men don’t cry.”

    Excuse me?

    How did we decide this was normal?

    We teach boys from an early age to suppress vulnerability, disconnect from their emotions, and equate emotional expression with weakness.

    Then, years later, we wonder why so many grown men struggle to communicate their feelings, navigate intimacy, or sustain emotional closeness.

    Meanwhile, women are often conditioned to interpret this emotional absence as compatibility. We’re told he’s mysterious. Stoic. Independent. Hard to read.

     Emotional unavailability isn’t a romantic mystery — it’s conditioning.

    I’m sorry, but if someone is incapable of showing genuine interest, communicating consistently, or investing effort into getting to know me, I refuse to call that compatibility. I refuse to romanticize emotional unavailability or mistake confusion for chemistry.

    Patriarchy doesn’t just harm women; it stunts men’s emotional growth as well. It teaches them that vulnerability is weakness, emotional expression is embarrassing, and detachment is somehow attractive.

    Then, it rewards them for performing indifference while women are left doing the emotional heavy lifting.

    And yet women are constantly expected to accommodate it.

    Why are women responsible for managing everyone’s emotions?

    Why is emotional maturity treated as our responsibility while emotional avoidance is excused as masculine nature?

    Most women aren’t asking for the moon and the stars. We aren’t demanding perfection. We simply want emotionally intelligent and emotionally available partners.

    When I got back into dating after almost six years, I thought I was the problem. My softness, my “easy-to-talk-to” personality, could be the reason why men (singular, him) didn’t want to invest in me as much.

    What I’ve observed is this: most men want attention without any real intention of committing. They want emotional support without emotional responsibility. They want access without accountability.

    Looking back, even with boundaries as strong as mine, I found myself “teaching” an emotionally unavailable man how to treat me. I was chasing clarity, knowing full well that when it’s not given freely, I already have my answer.

    I explained my feelings to someone who had repeatedly shown me he wasn’t interested in understanding them.

    I spent far too much time waiting for effort that never arrived.

    I wasn’t asking for anything extraordinary.

    I wanted to feel adored.

    I wanted thoughtful communication, genuine interest, and affection that wasn’t dragged out of someone.

    I wanted someone who was excited to hear from me, not someone who treated texting me like another task on a never-ending to-do list.

    Women, meanwhile, are labelled needy for wanting more.

    Too emotional.

    Too demanding.

    Asking for too much.

    But wanting communication isn’t asking for too much.

    Wanting affection isn’t asking for too much.

    Wanting emotional availability isn’t asking for too much.

    Wanting to be loved without constantly questioning where you stand isn’t asking for too much.

    Perhaps the most uncomfortable realization wasn’t that emotionally unavailable men exist. It was recognizing how many women, including myself, are willing to wait for love that is clearly not being offered.

    Why do we stay?

    Why do we cling to potential instead of reality?

    Why do we continue hoping that someone will eventually become the person they’ve shown us they are not?

    Women are taught to hope.

    To nurture.

    To be patient.

    To see the best in people.

    Sometimes we become so attached to the possibility of who someone could be that we ignore who they actually are.

    It’s depressing.

    But hope cannot create intimacy where willingness does not exist.

    Real intimacy doesn’t require endless waiting, fixing, teaching, convincing, or proving your worth.

    It requires presence.

    It requires two people who are both willing to show up emotionally and meet each other halfway.

    When you finally step outside the cult of the unavailable man, something shifts.

    You realize your worth was never dependent on someone else’s capacity to love you.

    Their inability to meet you where you are is not evidence that you are difficult to love. It is evidence that they are unwilling or unable to show up.

    And that is not your burden to carry.

    Ladies, we have to stop accepting breadcrumbs and calling them romance. We have to stop celebrating bare-minimum effort as though it deserves a standing ovation.

    We have to stop waiting for emotionally unavailable people to become emotionally available.

    We deserve consistency.

    We deserve reciprocity.

    We deserve partners who communicate, who care, who are willing to grow, and who aren’t afraid to show us that we matter.

    Most importantly, we deserve to stop confusing potential with love.

    Because I don’t know about you, but I’m still wondering:

    Where the fuck is the romance I was promised when I was a little girl?

    If this resonated with you, share it with a woman who needs to hear it. And subscribe for more.

    xo,

    Yachna

  • The Burden of Being Too Beautiful

    The Burden of Being Too Beautiful

    Malena has been on my watch list for the longest time, and I finally got around to watching it recently. Within minutes, I knew I had to write about it. Not as a typical review, but as an exploration of women’s relationship with the male gaze and female jealousy, both seen through the haunting figure of Malena.

    The opening scene sets the tone for everything that follows. Teenage boys are gathered across the street from her home, restless, waiting for her to step outside. And when she finally does, the world stands still.

    Her beauty is undeniable, magnetic, almost unreal. We watch her through the eyes of these boys, mainly Renato, whose fascination with her defines the story. From the start, Malena depicts how the female body is consumed through the eyes of men.

    Renato follows her, spies on her through windows, fantasizes about her. And here’s the brilliant cruelty of the film: we barely hear Malena speak. We don’t know her thoughts, her emotions, or her fears. She exists in silence. Always seen, never truly known. As an audience, we too become voyeurs, uninvited yet unable to look away.

    After finishing the movie, I couldn’t stop thinking about her silence. That absence of voice is the point. It’s what makes the movie so powerful  and so painfully real.

    Her silence isn’t just personal; it becomes the town’s obsession. Because when a woman doesn’t explain herself, people will write her story for her. And that’s exactly what happens in Malena.

    In this small Sicilian town, everyone is captivated by her. Men — married, old, young — want her, fantasize about her, project their desires onto her. They create stories, spin rumors, rewrite her life through their fantasies.

    And then there are the women. The jealous ones. The cruel ones. The ones who hate her not for what she’s done, but for what she is. They resent her beauty because it reminds them of their own lack of the power they don’t have, the attention they’ll never receive.

    The result is a town intoxicated by one woman’s existence. The men lust and the women loathe. And Malena, caught between both, becomes a symbol of everything fragile and vicious about human nature.

    There’s a scene that still makes me flinch. The public beating and shaming of Malena. I had to pause and skip parts of it. It’s one of those scenes that stays with you, not because of shock value, but because of what it reveals: how far people will go when driven by envy and repression. The horror of seeing a woman stripped, humiliated, and degraded in front of a crowd. It’s not just a movie scene. It’s history. It’s reality. It’s every time beauty becomes a threat.

    Beauty can be both a gift and a burden. It opens doors but also isolates you. For Malena, her beauty became her prison. It separated her from the world, making her both worshipped and despised.

    As the film progresses, her beauty, once her silent power becomes her downfall. The same face that enchanted the town becomes the reason she’s cast out of it. The movie critiques not just sexism, but the way envy and desire coexist in the same glance. Malena was seen, but never known.

    I can’t talk about Malena without diving into the horror of the male gaze. We watch the entire movie through it and that in itself is deeply uncomfortable. From the first scene, we’re forced to look at her the way men do.

    There were moments when I caught myself watching her like they did and it disgusted me. I paused the movie several times just to sit with that realization. The female gaze doesn’t really exist. We as women, are programmed from childhood to perform for the male gaze. From the way we dress, how we walk, how we smile is shaped by this invisible audience. And it fucking sickens me.

    In the movie, the men want to own her beauty. They don’t care about her pain or loneliness; she’s an object to be had, a prize to be won. Never a person. Never someone with a heartbeat and a soul.

    After the credits rolled, I sat for a long time thinking about how impossible it feels to escape the male gaze. Women are spectacles: constantly watched, constantly judged. And, it’s so internalized that even we start to see ourselves through it.

    For the past few months, I’ve been living in India and I feel this every single day. Here, I don’t dress to express myself; I dress to avoid being looked at. My goal when I leave the house isn’t to feel beautiful. It’s to not be stared at, followed, or made uncomfortable.

    India is a male-gaze-centric society. Things have progressed in some ways, but more or less they remain the same. Men still feel entitled to comment on women’s bodies, to claim ownership of our existence, the same way the men in Malena did. That silent entitlement is what makes the male gaze so insidious, it hides in everyday interactions, in how women learn to shrink, cover, and disappear.

    The male gaze isn’t just cinematic. It’s everyday life. It’s the little things women do to be acceptable, desirable, and safe. It’s the checklist we grow up learning:

    Be sexy, but not too much.
    Be kind, but not naive.
    Be confident, but never intimidating.
    Be smart, but not smarter than your man.
    Have curves, but not a belly.
    Show skin, but not too much of it.

    Women are always performing even when they don’t realize it. And I keep asking myself: why do we always have to perform? Why can’t we just exist?

    The more I thought about it, the more I realized: maybe the female gaze doesn’t exist at all. Maybe it’s just women trying to reclaim something that was never really ours to begin with.

    There’s a quote by John Berger in Ways of Seeing that captures it perfectly:

    “A woman must continually watch herself… Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at… Thus she turns herself into an object — and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”

    And that, to me, is Malena.
    A woman who is only ever seen.
    A woman whose silence echoes louder than any words.
    A woman whose beauty became both her weapon and her wound.

    xo

    Yachna

    I’d love to know what you think. Have you watched Malena? Did it hit you the same way? Do you ever think about how the male gaze quietly shapes the way we exist even when we think we’re being ourselves? Comment your thoughts below.

  • Begin Again (and again!)

    Begin Again (and again!)

    Happy New Year

    I know it’s been quiet here. Really quiet. So quiet that you might’ve forgotten you ever subscribed to this blog. Honestly? I wouldn’t blame you. I would’ve forgotten too.

    Sometimes, you have to step away from something to remember why you started in the first place. And that’s exactly what this past year has been for me — a long pause, a reckoning, and a lesson in the hardest thing I had to learn:

    How to begin again.
    And again.

    This past year was a rollercoaster — professionally and personally. Big changes. Relocations. Uncertainty about which direction to take. It was overwhelming in ways I didn’t always know how to name. But beneath all of it, one truth stayed consistent: I’ve always known I want to build something of my own.

    When I started this blog back in 2020, I knew — deep in my bones — that I had found my calling. Writing felt like coming home. And for a while, I showed up fully. Until self-doubt crept in, quietly at first, then louder.

    Is anyone even reading this?
    Does anyone care what I have to say?
    What’s the point?

    Those questions consumed me. And so I stopped. Again and again.

    It didn’t help that I wasn’t — and still am not — making money from this blog. I started asking myself the practical, adult questions: I’ve poured so much time and energy into this… what am I getting back? Is this even worth it?

    Discouraged, I did what many of us do. I chased stability. I threw myself into “real” jobs that paid the bills. On paper, they were perfect: secure, respectable, reliable. And yes — they paid the rent. Which we’re told is what really matters.

    And yet… no matter how stable things looked, there was always a soft whisper pulling me back to this space. To writing. To creating.

    It reminded me that I wanted more than survival. I wanted authorship over my life. I wanted to create something that belonged to me — something the little version of me would be proud of.

    I kept coming back here. Opening a blank page. Hearing the same thoughts loop in my head:


    This isn’t what you’re meant to be doing.
    You’re meant for more.

    After months of making excuses, procrastination, and delayed action I decided: I will begin again. I will start my blog (again). I will be consistent (again). It was around that time; I read something that cracked open something inside me—a piece on Carl Jung and his theory on the “unlived life.”

    He talked about how most people never live their true life. They wear masks. They follow societal expectations. They hide their gifts. And they die before ever becoming who they were meant to be.

    I felt that. Deeply.

    I didn’t want to just romanticize my potential. I wanted to live it. To feel it. To own it.

    Even though I try to be bold and carve my own path, I won’t lie—fear and self-doubt often hold me back. Fear of failure. And maybe, more quietly, a fear of what it would mean if I actually succeeded. That strange, subconscious hesitation, the one where you stall not because you can’t do it, but because deep down you’re unsure you’re ready for the life on the other side of achieving it. Fear of wondering why anyone would want to read what I have to say. Fear that this blog might never become the full-time dream I once dreamed of.

    And honestly, the exhaustion of adulting and a full-time job made it even harder. Just the thought of juggling all the hats this blog requires—writer, editor, designer, marketer—was, and still is, exhausting.

    It made me realize that as kids we are so bold and unafraid to just do things no matter who’s looking or not. Irrespective of the outcome, we just dove right into whatever was in front of us. For the fun of it.  As we grow up things get complicated, we have more responsibilities, bills to pay. We cannot just be that carefree kid when the rent is due beginning of every month. But, what if the secret to our success is in reconnecting what that little child again?

    The more I thought about this, it made me realize that most people spend their lives waiting to live. Waiting for permission. Waiting to be qualified. Waiting to feel ready. And that’s how entire lives pass by… unlived.

    Reading this exactly at the time when I was internally struggling with these thoughts felt like a message from the divine. It felt as though universe wanted me to read it and push me towards starting again.

    So, this post is for all of you reading right now:

     If you’re overthinking or doubting yourself, remember this: we are more powerful than we realize. The most valuable gift we can give the world is our authenticity. As Martin Scorsese said, “The more personal, the more creative.” You don’t need to know exactly who you are before you begin, you just need to start walking toward it. And every step toward becoming more you… gives others permission to do the same.

    Xo

    Yachna Atthi

  • Things I Still Struggle With At 31

    Things I Still Struggle With At 31

     

    1. Comparing myself to other people

    Getting into the comparing game serves us nothing. I know that. And yet, I struggle with it often.   I have this terrible habit of comparing my life to those perfect Instagram posts of people my age partying in Switzerland with their picture-perfect outfits and accessories.  It’s not healthy to compare ourselves to people’s perfect Instagram shots. It’s like measuring our lives with someone’s perfectly edited and glittery shot—deceptive and unrealistic. No matter where we are in life, comparing ourselves to others is just not fair. We are doing ourselves a huge disservice. The only comparison we should have is with ourselves.

     

    2. Being content with how my body looks

    Society conditions women from birth to constantly focus on their appearance, which can be exhausting. Even at 31, I often get caught up in obsessing over my appearance. Whenever I look in the mirror, all I see is my big nose, acne-prone skin, crooked teeth, and skinny body, and the list keeps getting longer. Being a woman is so exhausting. This reminds me of a quote by Susan Sontag: “ Society’s scrutiny of the body often works to undermine women’s sense of self-worth and autonomy, making them prisoners of appearance.”

     

    3. Accepting my imperfect, oily, acne-prone skin.

    I constantly struggle with this, especially when I see the “how to have a glass skin” monologues everywhere.  I am sick and tired of it. Even though I know glass skin is fake, unrealistic and unattainable, I still find myself giving into the genius marketing tactics of buying more skincare in the hopes that one day my skin will be glass-looking. But the main question remains: why do we want to look like glass?  Glass skin reminds me of the creepy porcelain doll that may have a beautiful finish but is kept on a shelf to collect dust for years. No, thanks!!!

     

    4. Placing my self-worth on goals met.

    Ladies! Hear me out. This can be problematic. I have realized that goals are like moving targets, fleeting, and once we achieve them, we move on to the next. That way, I constantly rely on something outside me to fulfill me, which is problematic. Tying my self-worth to things like having 100k followers or making XYZ amount of money from my blog can turn the experience of pursuing my goals into a source of stress rather than a fulfilling part of my life.

     

    5.  Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and accepting that life is one big grey area.

    You’ll never have all the answers, and your life will never be sorted out. Nobody has all the answers to this life. There are no rules to this thing. Life is unpredictable and rarely goes as planned, no matter how perfectly we plan out all the details.

     

    6. Both learning and struggling with how to heal from past stuff

    One of the biggest struggles of my life has been figuring out how to deal with the past trauma in my life in the healthiest way.  It takes a lot of courage and discipline to bridge this awkward and challenging gap of letting go of bad habits and working to build good habits that boost you up. 

     

    7. Struggling with life not turning out how I hoped it would

    Every now and then, I find myself grappling with the reality that my life hasn’t unfolded as I once imagined. The goals and timelines I set for myself were so ridiculous.  The best advice I ever received was that. Life isn’t about getting to the destination but about enjoying the journey. It’s about savouring each moment and embracing the magic that comes with unexpected twists and turns.

     

    8. Not taking things personally.

    “Everything is not about you” is a truth that can be as liberating as it is humbling. It’s like realizing that you’re not the star of every drama, and the world doesn’t revolve around your every move—surprising, I know!

    I struggle with this, but now I am slowly learning to embrace that I am not the main character in every story, and that’s fine. So, when things don’t go as I had planned, or someone’s projecting their shit on me, I remember: it’s not all about me. I am NOT the center of the universe, and that’s a good thing!

     

    9.  Responding instead of reacting.

    I am blessed with little patience. I have this terrible habit of losing my cool, which often leaves me feeling frustrated and drained, especially when I look back and think, “Why did I let that get to me so much?”

    It’s not just about losing my cool; it’s about its deeper impact on my relationships and my peace of mind. I constantly remind myself that reacting impulsively only adds to the chaos. What I really want is to pause, take a breath, and respond thoughtfully. But, as they say, old habits die hard; I am trying really really really hard to be more mindful of my interactions with people. 

     

    10. Jealousy

    I’m on a mission to ditch jealousy. I read somewhere that jealousy is the art of counting the other person’s blessings instead of your own. It’s just my insecurities projected onto others, and that’s seriously bad energy. I’m committed to flipping the script and focusing on my own growth.

     

    11.  Lastly, I’m struggling to learn that my 30s are still YOUNG.

    It really is!!

    We’re all conditioned into thinking that if we haven’t done XYZ by 25 or 30 at the latest, it’s worthless, or we’ve missed out on something, and it can’t be done. That’s simply not true. I never believed in this perspective.

    When I was 28, I left a career I had invested in for a decade with a very comfortable salary. I took a chance on myself, took the year off, and dared to build something new from scratch because I trusted my gut that “this just isn’t it.”

     

    ………………………………………………….

     

    Remember, what is for you will always find its way, and what is not, just smile and let it go. Best of luck to you! We got this 🙂

     

     

    If you’re comfortable, I want you to treat the comments section as your safe space. tell me what you struggle with. rant. Vent. and hopefully, just getting it out or seeing other people say they know exactly what you’re going through makes things a bit easier to deal with.

     

    Sending you all so much love.

     

    xo

    Yachna

     

     

    Featured Image –Pinterest.