Anuradha Sridharan

  The year-end ritual of reflecting continues this year as well. When 2022 started, I had taken up a job in a startup and was looking for some stability in my personal life, after the series of challenges in 2020 and 2021. Little did I know, that in a couple of weeks, things would turn even more challenging. Covid wave 3 struck in Jan. K had a severe cough and fever for a week. While he isolated himself and was recovering, my MIL (in Chennai) had a similar episode of persistent cough and fever. The test results came out positive one evening and the very next morning, we received a call from FIL that she passed away. This was just too shocking and too sudden for all of us. K rushed to Chennai and within a few days, FIL also tested positive. After a couple of weeks, he recovered and we shifted him to Bangalore. The challenges of elderly care and coping with grief took a toll on all of us. My workload both at the office and at home was too overwhelming and so I decided to quit and t...

  Wrapping up 2022 with this powerful, hard-hitting book that talks about modern medicine's approach toward mortality, sickness, aging and terminal illness. Last year, when my dad's health was in a critical state, I was talking to a neighbor. He recommended that I should read this book. After almost 1.5 years, I picked it up on a casual visit to a bookstore. This book is NOT for everyone. However, it will resonate strongly if you are a caregiver, if you have parents or family members with multiple ailments, if you have been running around for treatments and medical procedures for loved ones with critical stages of life-threatening diseases like cancer I was pleasantly surprised to read such a different perspective coming from a doctor/surgeon. I could relate so much to the many conundrums that the author has brought up. Each of us is forced to deal with the realities of decline and mortality of ourselves and our family members. It is painstakingly hard, takes a toll on our emot...

  A couple of months back, I went on a shopping spree at Blossoms bookstore. Most of the titles I picked up were from the Yoga/philosophy/spirituality genre. Having read a few of Om Swami's books earlier, I picked up " When all is not well " with the intent to hear his thoughts on depression. Mental well-being is a topic that I'm interested to go deeper into, both for personal and professional reasons. Depression is not a word imported from the West. Ayurveda and Yogic scriptures call depression " Vishada ", a toxic state of the mind. Through this book, the author shares a Yogic perspective on the different states of depression and healing across various levels - physical, mental, and emotional. He helps the reader in understanding what depression is and how it is different from momentary feelings of sadness. "Depression is disconnection. You have lost all strength to react, fight or resist.....It is not absence of happiness. It is absence of life and o...

  Every experience is significant. It happens for a reason.  We may not understand the reason at the exact moment a particular experience happens in our lives. But it always makes sense when you connect the dots backward. An experience that happened in 2021 helped me manage a situation in 2022. I don't know why a certain series of events happened this year, but am sure it will reveal itself at the right time. Earlier, my over-analyzing nature would ponder, "Why? Why now? Why me?" and keep thinking about all the possibilities. But now, I just quietly accept without overthinking and believe that the understanding will dawn naturally one fine day. Every experience teaches us something new: something about ourselves something about others something about the society we live in The experiences of the past two weeks taught me something about myself. It made me question something deeper about my personality: "I'm a flexible and accommodating person by nature, but someti...

Disclaimer:  The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this post are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased) is intended or should be inferred.   A mother can fulfill her dreams, support her children in their formative years and spend time with her grandchildren in her later years ONLY IF the father (her husband) grows up to be an adult. In many families, especially in the previous generations, the husband continues to be a man-child, expecting that his wife hands him every little thing that he needs - be it his morning cup of coffee, stapler, electricity bill file, dinner plate, a glass of Horlicks, etc. Initially, out of love, the wife might be happy to play this role, but over time, as her responsibilities increase, the sense of resentment and anger creeps in when she notices an unequal labor divide at home. The husband comes home after work at 5 PM, plonks himself in front of the TV, and orders coffee and snacks. The husban...