When Love Learns to Divide

 

When Love Learns to Divide

Sometimes, the most damaging family conversations happen in the softest voices.

A mother speaks lovingly to her son about his sibling.
A son shares something about his wife.
A daughter mentions something about her brother.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing that sounds like a family crisis.

Just little conversations held in private—about the person who isn't in the room.

Perhaps they begin with concern. Perhaps with affection. Perhaps with the innocent thought, “I am only telling my own child.” But words travel.

A passing remark becomes an impression. An impression quietly becomes a belief. And before anyone notices, siblings who once shared a childhood begin carrying different versions of one another.

Sometimes even a son and his wife begin seeing each other through conversations that happened outside their marriage.

And the cycle can be strangely universal—today the conversation is about someone else; tomorrow, it may be about you.

Even grandchildren can become accidental witnesses to these invisible alliances, learning that some things are said freely when one person is absent and denied just as quickly when they return.

The saddest part is that nobody may have intended the eventual hurt.

“I didn't say it like that.”
“You misunderstood.”
“It was nothing.”

Maybe it was nothing when it was spoken. But once words leave us, we no longer control where they go or what they become. A small conversation can create a distance that grows quietly for years—until even the original reason is forgotten.

Perhaps families don't need perfect harmony. They simply need enough trust for every relationship to breathe without being constantly interpreted through someone else's words.

Because children grow up. Marriages change. Generations move on. And one day, when all the conversations have faded, what remains is the family we managed to preserve—or the distance we unknowingly created.

I hope our children inherit our love, not our versions of one another.

And perhaps that is the gentlest way to leave a family richer than we found it.

Lets pledge to love our children unconditionally.

Love Juju. 

Maybe This Time, Things Are Different

 

Maybe This Time, Things Are Different

For more than two decades, I have been falling for the same little magic.

A sudden, “Beta, you look tired.”Cooked meals appearing beside me. “Leave it, I’ll do it.” “Have you eaten?” “Don’t work so much.”

And every single time, despite twenty-seven years of experience, something inside me quietly says— “Maybe this time… things are finally falling into place.” Maybe the years have softened us. Maybe the distance has disappeared. Maybe this is the beginning of that easy, affectionate relationship I had secretly hoped for. I enjoy the moment. I smile more. I feel a little closer.

And then, somewhere between the second and the third expression of concern, comes the innocent revelation: “Beta, actually, I have a club trip next week…”

Ah.

The missing piece of the puzzle finally arrives.

Someone needs to look after the house. Papa needs his routine. The son needs his meals and his familiar comforts. The son is my husband (amusing!) 

And suddenly, the shower of affection makes perfect logistical sense. I laugh—not with irritation, but with the kind of fond amusement that more than two decades of knowing someone gives you.

Perhaps this isn't manipulation. Perhaps it is simply family management with a very affectionate preface. After all, even love sometimes needs a little delegation. And I have learnt not to question the timing too much. Because the next time I hear,

“Beta, take care…”

I shall still smile as I am apparently still an incurable optimist.

Maybe this time, things really are different. Or perhaps… someone has another club trip coming up.

Let me soak in the moment and enjoy the attention.  

Love Juju. 

Sometimes, You Have to Stop Running

 

Sometimes, You Have to Stop Running

For years, I thought travel healed me.

Whenever life felt too heavy, I packed a bag.

A new place.
A different sky.
Long drives. Airports. Hotel rooms. Strange streets.
A few days where nobody knew what was going on inside my head.

And for those few days, I felt lighter.

But perhaps lighter is not the same as healed.

Because eventually, every trip ends.

The suitcase comes home.
The photographs become memories.
The clothes go back into the cupboard.

And there you are.

Back to the same home.
The same routines.
The same relationships.
The same questions you had quietly carried away with you.

Only now, you know something you didn't want to admit:

You cannot keep travelling away from yourself.

Some problems don't need another destination.

They need attention.

Some wounds don't need a change of scenery.

They need to be acknowledged.

And some chapters don't need to be escaped from.

They need to be lived through.

Perhaps this is what growing older has taught me.

There comes a point when you stop looking for healing outside yourself and begin sitting with the uncomfortable things inside.

The grief.
The disappointments.
The changes.
The things you cannot control.
The versions of yourself you have outgrown.

It isn't always pretty.

But it is honest.

I still love travelling. I probably always will.

But I no longer want every journey to be an escape from something.

I want to travel because I am curious.
Because I want to experience life.
Because somewhere, something beautiful is waiting to be seen.

And then I want to come home.

Not because my problems have disappeared.

But because I am learning not to abandon myself while facing them.

Travel should add to your life.

It should not become a way of postponing it.

Sometimes the journey you desperately need isn't to another country.

It's inward.

And honestly, that journey has been the longest one of my life.

— Juju

The Woman Who Lives in the House, But Not in the Conversations

Does Marriage Really Settle Us—or Shake Us Awake?

Does Marriage Really Settle Us—or Shake Us Awake?

We grew up hearing that marriage settles a person.

As if somewhere between the wedding pheras, the new surname, the shared home and the first few family photographs, life would finally fall into place.

But does it?

Perhaps marriage does both. 

It settles some parts of us—and unsettles others.

It gives us companionship, a person to come home to, someone who knows our history and witnesses our becoming. It can teach us patience, compromise, intimacy and the beautiful art of building something together.

But marriage can also quietly unsettle the person we once were.

Suddenly, I becomes we.

My time becomes our time.

My choices sometimes need negotiation.

My silences acquire meanings.

And somewhere between responsibilities, expectations and routines, we may occasionally wonder, Where did I go?

Yet perhaps that isn't always a bad thing.

Maybe marriage is not meant to preserve the person we were at twenty-five. Maybe it is meant to give two imperfect human beings enough space to grow, change, disagree, rediscover and still choose each other—without either one disappearing completely.

The real question, perhaps, isn't whether marriage settles or unsettles us. It is whether, through all the settling and unsettling, we remain connected to ourselves while remaining connected to each other.

Because a marriage should ideally be a home for two people—not a place where one person becomes the other's shadow.

We, the older generation, entered marriages with certain beliefs. We adjusted. We endured. We celebrated. We compromised. Sometimes we found ourselves. Sometimes we lost little pieces of ourselves and found them much later.

The next generation is entering marriage with a different vocabulary—boundaries, individuality, emotional well-being, partnership and equality.

Perhaps that is progress.

Perhaps it is simply another way of learning how two lives can coexist.

So I leave them with a question—not an answer:

Should marriage settle you into a life you have built together, or should it keep unsettling you enough to ensure that both of you continue growing?

Maybe the wisdom lies somewhere in between.

Love Juju

 

Dad Never Saw My New Version

Dad never saw my new version.

Perhaps that is one of the quietest aches of losing a parent. We think we grieve the person who is gone. But there is another grief hiding underneath—the grief of all the things they will never witness.

Dad knew me as his daughter in so many stages of my life. The little girl who believed her father could fix almost anything. The young woman finding her way. The doctor who built a life around work, family and responsibility. He knew the woman who could manage things, solve things, keep going. 

But he didn't get to meet the woman I am becoming now.

He wasn't there when I finally closed the centre I had built and nurtured for years. He didn't see me understand that beginning again isn't necessarily about starting from zero.

Sometimes, it is about finally allowing yourself to become someone you had postponed becoming. And somewhere along the way, grief changed me too.

Dad was my safe place. I didn't have to explain everything to him. His presence itself was reassuring. There was something deeply comforting about knowing that, whatever happened, there was still a father somewhere in the background of my life.

Now I have to create that safety within myself. I am learning. I am softer in some places, stronger in others. I question things I once accepted. I am learning to say no without writing an essay to justify it. I am learning that I don't have to keep everyone happy to prove that I am a good person. And perhaps I am finally allowing myself to live a little more honestly.

I often wonder what Dad would have said if he could see me now. Probably nothing dramatic.He might have looked at me for a moment and simply said, “You've changed.”

I would have smiled.“Yes, Dad. Life changed me.” Then perhaps came that familiar look—the one that didn't need many words. The look that said, I see you. That is what I miss.

Not just his voice. Not just his presence. Being seen by someone who had known me long before I became all the things the world now calls me.

Sometimes, when something good happens, I still have the instinct to tell him. For a fleeting second, I forget.Then I remember. And that little space between forgetting and remembering is where grief lives. Dad didn't get to see this chapter. But perhaps he doesn't need to. Because so much of what he gave me travelled forward.

It lives in the courage with which I begin again, in the softness I am learning to protect, and in the stubborn little voice inside me that keeps saying— Go on. You can do this.

So yes, Dad. I have changed. I am still changing. But beneath every new version of me is the same daughter who once felt safest simply because her father was there.

And perhaps that girl will always be a little bit yours. I'm still your girl, Dad. Just a little more of my own now.

Yours Chaand.

And Then, There Was a New Morning

 And Then, There Was a New Morning

Today, I closed my second ultrasound centre. And for a moment, I just stood there. Looking around. Twenty-seven years of my life seemed to be stitched into those walls.Twenty-seven years of patients, scans, reports, laughter, exhaustion, cups of tea, celebrations, disappointments—and a younger me who had once believed that this was how life would always be. But life, I have learnt, has its own way of turning pages.

Last September, I closed my first centre. And then, something rather beautiful happened. I joined a medical college as Faculty in Radiology. Not because I had no choice. Not because life had cornered me. But because I had always wanted to teach in a medical college. Twenty-seven years ago, when I was beginning my journey, there was no medical college in my city. Today, there are…

And suddenly, a dream I had carried quietly for almost three decades was standing right in front of me. So I chose it. Consciously. Happily. Perhaps that is what makes this journey so strange. While I was busy building my practice, raising a family, writing books, living a thousand lives within one life—and later saying goodbye to my Momsie 11 years ago and my Popsie 10 months ago—I had forgotten that some dreams don't disappear. They simply wait.

And life has been so busy that I haven't really had the luxury to grieve properly. Momsie left, Popsie left. I kept going. I closed my first centre.  I kept going. A new professional chapter began. I kept going. And today, I closed my second centre too. And somewhere amidst all these endings, I realise I have been learning something I never consciously set out to learn—detachment. Not the cold kind. Not the I don't care anymore kind. The kind that says: I loved this deeply. It mattered enormously. And I can still let it go.

Because letting go does not erase what we lived. The machines may stop humming. The familiar rooms may no longer be mine. The keys may change hands. But the woman who stood behind those machines for 27 years?

She comes with me. Her experience comes with her. Her stories come with her. Her patients' blessings come with her. Her laughter, her mistakes, her exhaustion, her courage—all of it. Nothing is really lost. It has simply become part of who I am.

And perhaps that is what Popsie's departure began teaching me.

Life is not about holding everything forever. It is about loving what comes, living it fully, and when its time comes, having the courage to release it.

Today, I am sad. But I am also strangely excited. Because this is not the end of my story. It feels more like a morning. A new morning. A new classroom. New students. New conversations. New dreams. And perhaps, finally, a little more time to discover the woman behind all the roles I have played. 

I spent 27 years building a professional life. Now, I think I am learning to build a life around myself. And the most beautiful part? I am not walking into an unknown future. I am walking into a dream I had once thought might never happen. A medical college. Teaching. Mentoring. Living the dream I carried for 27 years.

So yes, today I closed a door. But perhaps every once in a while, a closed door is simply life's way of saying— "Look up, Juju. The morning has already begun." And I think I am ready.

Love Juju. 

The Weight Nobody Can Weigh

 

The Weight Nobody Can Weigh

There are some weights that a weighing scale cannot measure.

The weight of stress.
The weight of expectations.
The weight of constantly being there for everyone.
The weight of life quietly changing you.

For six or seven years, my body has been collecting some of that weight.

Once, I was fit. Healthy. Comfortable in my own skin.

Then life happened. Menopause happened. There were personal losses and change in few relationship and professional dynamics. 

And somewhere between surviving, adapting, caring, losing, rebuilding and simply putting one foot before the other, my body changed.

Now, sometimes, someone calls me fat.

My spouse.

My siblings.

Perhaps they say it casually. Perhaps they don't realise how deeply the word travels.

But it does.

It lands somewhere much deeper than the body.

I know I have gained weight.

I know I need to take better care of myself.

But I also know that motivation isn't always waiting around the corner.

Sometimes a woman isn't lacking discipline.

Sometimes she is exhausted.

Sometimes she doesn't need another lecture about calories.

Sometimes she needs a little kindness.

Because the woman you see today is not merely the body that became heavier.

She is the girl who once dreamed.

The woman who worked.

The daughter who cared.

The wife who gave.

The mother who nurtured.

The doctor who healed.

The writer who created worlds.

The human being who survived chapters nobody else completely read.

So yes, perhaps one day I will lose this weight.

But until then, please don't lose sight of me.

Because my body may have changed with the seasons of my life.

My soul is still mine.

And I am still so much more than the number on a weighing scale.

Love Juju ❤️ 

 

From Tom & Jerry to Pippa & Pogo

Perhaps every long marriage has its own cartoon phase.

Ours began somewhere between Tom & Jerry.

One chased.
The other escaped.
One got irritated.
The other irritated back.
There were arguments, misunderstandings, dramatic exits—and, somehow, the next morning, breakfast still happened.

That is marriage.

Not always romance.

Sometimes it is two people occupying the same kitchen while silently negotiating who is going to surrender first.

Over the years, though, something changes.

The fights may not disappear, but their meaning does.

You begin to realise that the person irritating you today is also the person who has witnessed your worst days, your strangest moods, your unfinished dreams and your ridiculous habits.

You have accumulated history.

And history has a strange way of turning irritation into familiarity.

Perhaps that is when Tom & Jerry slowly become Pippa & Pogo.

Pippa and Pogo are two slightly eccentric creatures who have stopped trying to win every argument.

They still annoy each other.

They still have different operating systems.

They still occasionally wonder, “How on earth did I end up living with this person?”

But there is affection underneath the irritation.

There is space for imperfection.

There is a quiet understanding that not every disagreement needs a winner.

After decades together, perhaps marriage is less about finding someone who never irritates you and more about finding a way to remain kind while being irritated.

The early years ask:

“Do you love me?”

The middle years ask:

“Can you please stop doing that?”

And the later years perhaps ask:

“Okay… this is who we are. Shall we have tea?”

Maybe that is growing old together.

From Tom & Jerry—

to Pippa & Pogo.

Still chasing.

Still teasing.

Still occasionally driving each other crazy.

But somehow…

still sitting on the same sofa.

May all marital relationships find their inspiration from cartoon world, like we did. 

Love Juju ❤️ 

“Small Holes in My Marital Ship”

 

The Small Holes in my Marital Ship

Living with your spouse for decades can sometimes feel like playing a video game.

Just when you think you have understood the rules, Level 7 suddenly appears.

And you realise—you never received the manual.

For years, I have lived with unpredictability.

Not necessarily the dramatic kind that makes for a movie. Something much quieter.

Meal timings that are never quite predictable.
A simple need that suddenly becomes an urgent need.
A small thing missed—a salad, perhaps—and an unexpectedly large reaction.

To someone watching from outside, these may sound ridiculously small.

“So what if the salad wasn't there?”

Exactly.

The salad isn't the problem.

The problem is the hundred little adjustments surrounding the salad.

Waiting because someone else's timing is more important.

Putting your own plans on hold.

Remembering things that perhaps shouldn't require remembering.

Learning to read moods.

Trying to prevent the next irritation.

And slowly, without realising it, becoming a person who is always on standby.

For years, I wondered whether I was making too much of these things.

After all, there was no single catastrophic event.

Just little things.

But recently I found a metaphor that made sense to me:

They are small holes in my marital ship.

One small hole doesn't sink a ship.

But keep making small holes for years, and the person inside the ship eventually gets tired of bailing out water.

Perhaps this is what many women experience but don't know how to articulate.

It isn't always about cruelty.
It isn't always about a “bad marriage.”
Sometimes it is simply about an unequal distribution of emotional adjustment.

One person's timetable becomes the household timetable.

One person's mood becomes everyone's weather.

One person's preferences quietly become everybody else's responsibility.

And the other person keeps saying:

“It's okay. It's a small thing.”

Until one day she realises that her life has been made up of thousands of small things.

I am learning something rather late in life:

Small does not mean insignificant.

And accommodating does not have to mean disappearing.

Perhaps the answer isn't to abandon the ship.

Perhaps it is to stop pretending that the holes aren't there.

Some need repairing.

Some need boundaries.

Some need a conversation.

And some simply need us to stop taking responsibility for every leak ourselves.

Because marriage should not require one person to spend her entire life standing with a bucket.

She deserves to sit on the deck too.

And perhaps, after all these years, I am learning to do exactly that.

Love Juju. 

Mumbai Times article

Article in Mumbai Times 

Do click on link, read and share. 

https://mumbaitimes.online/dreamboat-publishings-national-bestselling-author-dr-reemanshu-bansal-radiologist-by-day-author-by-night-storyteller-always/