u/Inevitable_Bug_6253

I have a daughter. Every single beat of my heart is for her. That is the only lens through which I know how to tell this story.

My nani came from a good family. Her husband, my nanaji, was well-to-do and genuinely devoted to her. Ambassadors, TVs, gold, house help, the best clothes of the time. He kept her first in everything. By the standards of that era, she had a full life.

They had five daughters.

And she spent the rest of her life getting each one of them married off like it was the only task she had been put on earth to complete. I studied Victorian literature. I understand why women were bartered, why the system worked the way it did, why daughters were seen as liabilities in societies where they had no rights of their own. I understand the history of it. What I cannot understand, what I will never make peace with, is that the women who suffered most under that system were often the ones who carried it forward the hardest.

My mother is her second daughter. She got married at 24. Within months she was pregnant. Within that same stretch of time, her relationship with her in-laws had already fallen apart so badly that she attempted suicide. Twice.

And my nani never brought her home.

There was a point where my mother was staying with her parents. I asked her once, why did you go back? She never had an answer. I think the answer is that nobody encouraged her to stay. There was a brother, there was a sister-in-law, there would have been trouble. So she went back. And my nani let her.

I only learned the next part of this story when I had just given birth to my own daughter. I was 32. My mother would have been around 28 when it happened. She already had two daughters. When she got pregnant a third time, her mother-in-law decided the child would be aborted. My mother remembers lying on a bed, crying, knowing what was going to happen, unable to stop it.

Her mother-in-law went to my nani. Asked her to make it happen. My nani said she would not commit that sin. She had five daughters of her own. She would not be part of it.

And then she left it entirely in their hands and walked away.

She drew a line. And then did nothing with it.

I think about the blessing she used to give us when we visited. She would press money into our hands, five hundred rupees, and when we tried to refuse she would say, no, take it, bless us, you are daughters of this house, pray that we get more so we can give you more.

I used to find it strange. Now I find it devastating. What she should have been saying, what she never said, was: I bless you that you never have to depend on anyone the way your mothers did. But she never encouraged any of her daughters toward independence. She let them stay dependent on their husbands and in-laws no matter what those households looked like from the inside.

My mother raised two daughters on her own terms anyway. Made them independent anyway. Survived things I genuinely do not think I could have survived. I had my daughter at 32 in a stable home and I still felt the full weight of it. I cannot begin to imagine what my mother carried at 28, alone, in a house that did not want her children.

I don't have tidy feelings about my nani. She was not a cruel woman. But she was a woman who had every reason to know better and chose, every single time, the path of least disruption. Her daughters paid for that. Some of them are still paying.

This is the part that stays with me. Patriarchy does not only live in the men who enforce it. Sometimes it lives quietly in the mothers who never taught their daughters they were allowed to leave.

My grandfather is 93 years old as I write this. And I genuinely don't know how to feel about him anymore.

The stories we grew up hearing were the kind you don't forget. He came from royalty, in a village sense. His parents were landlords. There was land, there was money, there were elephants. The kind of life that sounds almost made up when you say it out loud now.

He was living in a hostel in a nearby city when someone called to say his father was unwell. He went back home and within three or four days, both his parents were gone. Some kind of plague, diarrhea, whatever it was that moved through the village at that time. Just like that, everything his family had built was now his to either keep or walk away from.

He walked away. He could have stayed, claimed the land, lived off what was already there. Instead he moved to Delhi, got married to a woman several years younger than him, sat for railway examinations, saved whatever he could, and slowly, quietly, built an entirely new life from scratch. He made a house. He put four sons through Delhi College of Engineering, one by one. He did all of this on a government salary, through sheer stubbornness and discipline.

I have spent years being inspired by that version of him.

Then there is the version I have watched for the past two decades.

Somewhere along the way he stopped being the person who made decisions and became the person decisions are made through. The house runs entirely according to his wife, who runs entirely according to their eldest daughter and one son who never married and never really left. These two or three people run everything. He just signs off on it. Or doesn't even do that. He just exists in the middle of it, nodding.

Nobody actually cares for him. That is the honest thing to say and it took me a while to be able to say it plainly. He is so lonely that he would rather be used than be alone. So he lets it happen. He lets himself be managed, positioned, pointed in whatever direction serves whoever is pulling the strings that week.

My family, my parents, my sister and I, we genuinely wanted good for him. We still do, somewhere underneath the exhaustion of it all. But he bought the narrative they sold him, that we were the problem, that we were not worth his time or resources. Once I reached out to him for help with something. He told his wife and daughter about it. They used it against us. Made things harder, not easier.

After that I stopped expecting anything.

What gets me is not the politics of it. What gets me is the waste. This man survived losing both his parents within four days. He rebuilt from nothing in a city he had no roots in. He educated four children on discipline alone. He had the spine for all of that. And now he is a pawn. Willing, even. A soldier who stopped asking which side he was fighting for.

I think about what he will feel, if he ever lets himself feel it, when he realises that half the people around him are just waiting out his last years for whatever comes after. And the other half, the ones who actually cared at some point, have just gone quiet. Not out of cruelty. Out of something more tired than that.

I don't know what to do with a person like that. You can't save someone who has decided, at 93, that this is just how it is. You can only watch and feel the particular sadness of seeing a genuinely remarkable life end like this. Used up. Surrounded. Alone in every way that matters.

He is going to go one day and meet his parents, maybe. I wonder what he tells them. That he had everything and handed the keys to the wrong people. That he built a legacy and let it be hollowed out while he was still alive to see it.

I really don't know what else to say about him. I just know that I think about him more than I probably should.

I spent almost eight or nine hours around school every day if I include the travelling. And still, very little of it actually stayed with me.

A teacher would begin an interesting chapter in English and just when my mind would finally settle into the story, the bell would ring and suddenly it was math. Then math would remind me that I hadn't completed yesterday's homework, so now I was already anxious before the lecture had even started. Then came another subject. Then another. Everything moved so quickly that I rarely had enough time to fully understand anything.

I still remember hot summer afternoons after lunch when the classroom fans barely worked and half the class looked sleepy. Hindi lectures would continue in the background while some of us struggled to stay awake. Many classes felt mechanical. Especially subjects like social science where chapters were often just read aloud because finishing the syllabus mattered more than whether we were actually understanding anything.

Of course, there were students who scored very well. Some probably understood things genuinely. Some had strong academic support at home. Some had tuition teachers helping them revise everything again after school. But when I came home, I mostly remember feeling mentally exhausted.

The best part of my day used to be lunch under a ceiling fan during summer, eating mangoes and finally feeling relaxed after spending the entire day trying to keep up. After that, most days just drifted. We didn't really have phones back then, so evenings were television, random boredom, waiting for dinner, and then getting ready for school all over again the next morning.

And somewhere in all of this, I slowly started believing I just wasn't smart enough.

Because school has a strange way of making children attach their confidence to marks very early in life.

I also remember sports periods sounding far more exciting in my head than they actually felt once we reached the ground. The confident children somehow already knew where to stand. Some rushed toward basketball courts, some toward volleyball, some already had their groups and inside jokes and energy. I mostly remember standing there trying to look occupied while quietly hoping nobody asked me to participate too much because I was scared of embarrassing myself.

It's strange how early schools begin assigning identities to children without saying it out loud. These are the smart kids. These are the funny kids. These are the athletic kids. These are the children teachers already expect good things from. And then there are children who slowly begin placing themselves outside all those categories.

I think I became one of those children very early.

Marks had a lot to do with it. Lower marks slowly started showing up everywhere in my personality. In the way I spoke. In how often I raised my hand. In how comfortable I felt around students who performed well academically. I remember seeing other children participate in competitions and extracurricular activities and automatically assuming they belonged there more than I did. Looking back, I gave school marks far more importance than they deserved.

What's funny is that I actually loved learning whenever I understood something properly. I still remember getting deeply invested in certain stories and chapters. Sometimes a teacher would explain one small concept with context and suddenly everything would click into place. Those are the things I still remember even today.

But there were also subjects where I never understood the basics properly, and after a point the gap just became bigger every year. Once that happens, classrooms start feeling noisy in a very lonely way. Everyone around you seems to be moving ahead while you're still trying to understand the previous chapter. And because schools move at the same pace for everyone, there isn't always space for children who need a little more time.

I carried that feeling for years without realising it.

Even later in work, people casually asked about school marks and percentages as if those numbers permanently defined intelligence or capability. And every time, a small part of me returned to that same classroom version of myself who thought she simply wasn't good enough.

Over time I also started realising that many children who score well are not necessarily more intelligent than others. Sometimes they simply have better support systems, more guidance, more academic help at home, or learning styles that fit traditional classrooms more easily. And then there are children who are curious, thoughtful, creative, observant, emotionally intelligent, but they quietly start doubting themselves because those qualities are much harder to measure inside report cards.

What stayed with me the longest was not even the marks themselves, but the feeling attached to them. Somewhere very early in school, I had started believing that good marks meant you were intelligent, confident, capable, and probably more likely to succeed. And if your marks were average, you quietly carried that feeling into everything else too. Into friendships, competitions, conversations, and even the way you saw yourself while sitting in a room full of people.

Now when I look back at it, especially as a parent, I realise how deeply children internalise these things without anybody explicitly teaching them to. A child can slowly begin doubting their own intelligence simply because they need more context, more time, or a different way of learning than what a traditional classroom allows for.

I don't think my school life was entirely bad. There are still memories I look back at fondly. There are teachers I respect deeply. There are lessons I carry even today.

But there are also many things I wish had been different.

And I genuinely wonder how many adults still carry insecurities that actually began inside classrooms, years ago, quietly, without anyone naming it.

I saw this influencer talking recently about how she expected certain people in her life to cheer for her when something big happened for her career.

Like the kind of cheering she knows she would’ve done for them if the roles were reversed.

But it never came.

And she said something about how sometimes people around you are intimidated, or uncomfortable, or maybe even envious when you’re doing something different or doing well. And honestly it hit me harder than I expected because I’ve kind of lived that story too, except things haven’t exactly “worked out” for me yet.

I remember in college I was one of those people who was into everything. Not the topper, but always doing something. Academics, events, projects, extracurriculars, all at once. I even got some achiever-type award once and literally nobody from my class showed up.

At that time I genuinely thought maybe something was wrong with me.

It was a girls college and most girls were always in groups, very socially polished, very put together. I was kind of aloof. I didn’t try too hard socially, didn’t dress up much, didn’t create this super curated image around myself. I just quietly did my thing.

And I always felt people kept a distance from me for reasons I never fully understood.

Then during COVID I started a travel page. I told people about it. Barely anyone followed.

Later I started a food page. This time I didn’t even tell friends, only family and cousins. Same thing. No excitement. No “send me the link.” No encouragement. Nothing.

And after enough of these experiences, I think I just stopped wanting people around me to know what I’m building.

Now I quietly make pages without telling anyone. Which sounds peaceful in theory, but practically it’s hard because strangers are supposed to become your audience eventually right? Except I haven’t really managed to find enough of those strangers either.

And somewhere in between all this, I also developed this weird discomfort around showing my face online. So now all my content is faceless too, which I know probably slows growth even more.

I don’t even know what I’m asking honestly.

I think I’m just trying to understand whether some people genuinely trigger envy in others without doing anything wrong, or whether this is just me coping badly with rejection.

Because after a point repeated silence starts changing you.

You stop sharing. You stop announcing things. You stop feeling excited publicly. You almost start hiding your own ambition before anyone else can ignore it.

And I don’t know if that’s maturity or damage.

Did anyone else go through this?

Like feeling unsupported not because you failed, but weirdly when you were actually trying to do something good with your life?

And if you did, how did you still keep going without becoming bitter or invisible?

So I had this very funny thought recently.

My baby is 11 months old and I realized I’m such a confusing mix of a mother.

Like on one hand, I’m very fussy. I boil her bottles, sanitize things around her, check labels before buying clothes, touch the fabric twice before getting anything for her because I want her to feel comfortable all the time.

But then on the other hand, once I’ve bought the clothes, I really don’t care that much after that. Some days she’s just roaming around in a diaper and a ganji the whole day and I’m completely okay with it.

Sometimes her milk is not perfectly heated. Sometimes it’s just room temperature because I got busy. Sometimes I’ve given her food that wasn’t “freshly hot” because honestly, even I’ve survived on cold lunches while rushing to work.

Meanwhile my parents would never allow that. They still iron her tiny frocks every day. They bathe her daily, clean her up constantly, make sure everything is proper all the time.

And somewhere I used to feel guilty about this. Like maybe I’m not giving her “proper care” the way they did for me.

But then I started realizing that maybe I’m just focusing on different things.

Like yes, I may not obsess over perfectly ironed clothes or whether the milk is exactly the right warmth every single time. But I obsess over other things.

I think about what kind of education she’ll get. What kind of childhood she’ll have. Whether she’ll feel free. Whether she’ll get experiences. Whether she’ll travel. Whether she’ll explore enough. Whether she’ll grow up confident and emotionally secure.

I spend time researching schools. Not elite schools, just schools that actually make sense for her. I think about nutrition a lot. I save up for her future. I buy interactive things for her. I think deeply about what kind of person she’ll become.

And I think a lot of this comes from my own childhood too.

My parents wanted me to study and do well, of course. They gave me a good school. But they never really thought beyond that. There was no conversation around exposure or experiences or finding the right resources or tutors or learning styles. The assumption was just that school itself would handle everything.

So now I think I’m parenting from the gaps I personally felt growing up.

And maybe every generation does that a little.

One generation shows love through hot food and ironed clothes.

Another shows love through experiences, emotional awareness, and long-term thinking.

Neither is wrong.

Just different kinds of care, I guess.

Does anyone else have a similar story?

I can do long-form. That’s where I do my best work. Deep dives, real thought, structure, storytelling, strategy. Basically the nuanced kind of writing that actually means something.

But I can handle short-form too. Hooks, captions, scripts, punchy social copy, all of that’s on my radar as well.

I charge anywhere between ₹1/word (brief-based work with minimal revisions) to ₹5/word (highly researched, technical, strategy-heavy writing).

If you’re looking for someone who can think as well as write, message me.

I can do long-form. That’s where I do my best work. Deep dives, real thought, structure, storytelling, strategy. Basically the nuanced kind of writing that actually means something.

But I can handle short-form too. Hooks, captions, scripts, punchy social copy, all of that’s on my radar as well.

I charge anywhere between ₹1/word (brief-based work with minimal revisions) to ₹5/word (highly researched, technical, strategy-heavy writing).

If you’re looking for someone who can think as well as write, message me.

Okay so this is just something I’ve been thinking about.

Growing up, I had this cousin, and from the very beginning there was this clear narrative around her. Her mom and her nani would always say she was very beautiful. And by beautiful, it basically meant fair. That was the whole thing. She was fair, so she was pretty, and that somehow made her… better.

Along with that, there was this other layer that they were more “polished” because they could speak English better. They had lived abroad for a bit, so it became this personality trait. Like they were just more advanced than us in some way.

And I’m her mother’s brother's daughter, so same family, but completely different positioning.

For me, it was always like, “you have good features.” But there was always something missing after that sentence. My skin tone was a little reddish, a little darker, so it never fully counted. And then it also became about how we didn’t speak English like them, so it was like in every way, they were slightly above and we were just… there.

I remember this one thing very clearly, and it stayed with me.

She would hold a mirror in front of both of us and say, “I really like your eyes.” My eyes are slightly brown, so it sounded like a compliment, but I always knew what she was doing. It was like she was giving me one small thing while still keeping the bigger comparison intact. Her fairness against my skin.

And you don’t forget that kind of stuff.

Then as we grew up, the focus just shifted.

It became about weight.

She was always crash dieting, always trying to stay a certain way, because for her everything was about getting a good guy. And by good, it meant rich. That was always the goal.

And for me, it became, “you’ve gained weight,” “you’re a little fat,” things like that. Even though I was never extremely overweight, just a little on the heavier side at times. But once that label is given, it kind of sticks.

At the same time, she had constant skin issues. Pimples, redness, bumps. My skin was always clear.

But that didn’t matter back then because the system we were in didn’t count that as much.

Anyway, we both got married, had kids, life moved on.

She did marry into money, not exactly what she always imagined, but still better off.

And now after having her baby, she’s gained a lot of weight. Like significantly. And I, on the other hand, lost weight postpartum and became quite petite. Not even intentionally, it just happened.

And now she avoids me.

We don’t really talk anyway, that’s a separate thing, but even otherwise she doesn’t come around me, doesn’t show up when I’m there.

And I’ve been thinking about it.

Maybe she feels uncomfortable. Maybe somewhere she’s aware of the same standards she grew up believing in. The same ones that were used on me all these years.

And now they’re kind of… facing her.

But at the same time, I had to check myself also.

Because there is a part of you that wants to feel like okay, now things are equal. Now she gets it.

But if I stay in that space, then I’m still playing the same game, just from the other side.

Still comparing, still measuring who looks better, who turned out better.

And I’ve already lived that, I know how unstable it is. It keeps changing with time, with body, with life.

So I don’t even know if this is some kind of karma situation or just two people who grew up in the same environment and are now dealing with it differently.

I just know that she’s probably still inside that system.

And I have stepped out of it.

We were planning a vacation with my daughter for a few weeks. It was going to be the longest stretch I’d ever spent traveling with her since she was born.

The destination was a remote part of the North-East. Beautiful, quiet, and honestly, a little intimidating. Because the moment you step into a place like that, one thought quietly follows you around—what if something goes wrong?

Medical access wasn’t going to be immediate. In some cases, it might not even be available.

So we did what most careful parents would do. We went to our doctor and asked for a full list of medicines. Everything. Fever, cough, cold, allergies, stomach issues, dehydration, vomiting, loose motions—just a complete emergency kit.

We took that list to the pharmacist. He started handing over medicines one by one. Routine stuff. Then he gave us a few vials meant for stomach-related issues.

I paused.

I asked him a simple question: How would I know when to give this to her?

And he said something that stayed with me.

“Who would know that better than you? You are the mother.”

I didn’t respond immediately.

Because the truth is, I had never thought of myself that way. Not really. This is my first child. I’ve always second-guessed myself, always assumed that someone else would know better. A doctor. A book. An expert.

But when I thought about it… he wasn’t entirely wrong.

It’s not some mystical instinct people romanticize. It’s not magic in the way it’s often described.

It’s pattern recognition.

If I feed her something slightly off, I remember it. If she reacts a certain way to a certain food, my mind stores that. If her mood shifts before she falls sick, I’ve started noticing it.

It’s quiet learning. Constant observation. Small data points adding up over time.

And maybe that is what people call instinct.

For a moment, I’ll admit, it felt like pressure. Like, why is this always put on mothers? Why is the expectation so high?

But then another thought came in.

It is a miracle to bring a child into this world. And maybe there is something powerful about the role that comes with it. Not perfect. Not all-knowing. But deeply aware.

And that led me somewhere unexpected.

I started thinking about education.

There’s this quote I came across once—something along the lines of:
If an engineer is bad, they might impact a few hundred lives.
If a doctor is bad, they might harm many more.
But a bad teacher can affect generations.

And that stayed with me.

Because I come from a system where, honestly, teacher after teacher failed us. Not always intentionally. But the system itself lacked care, curiosity, and encouragement.

There were opportunities. So many of them.

But no one really pushed us toward them. No one helped us see what we could become.

And I keep thinking—

If I wouldn’t accept a careless doctor for my child…
If I wouldn’t trust an unskilled professional with her health…

Then why would I be okay handing over her education to a system I don’t fully believe in?

That’s where this began.

If I can learn, without a medical degree, when my child might need a certain medicine…
If I can observe, adapt, and respond to her needs daily…

Then as someone who has spent nearly a decade around education—both as a participant and an observer—why can’t I take ownership of that too?

Why can’t we?

And that’s why I’m starting this community.

I don’t want it to be limited. I don’t want it to feel exclusive.

I want people from everywhere. Different backgrounds, different experiences.

Mothers, yes. Fathers, absolutely. But more than anything—nurturers.

People who genuinely care about how children learn.
People who are willing to question the traditional definition of education.
People who don’t just want to follow a system, but understand it… maybe even rebuild parts of it.

This isn’t about rejecting schools entirely.
It’s about rethinking what learning looks like.

I want this to grow into a global space.

But I’ll say this honestly—I would love to see more Indian women step into this conversation. Because we carry so much lived experience, so much silent understanding, and it’s time we bring that into the way we raise and educate our children.

So if this resonates with you in any way—
Come in.

Help me build this.
Help me shape it.

Not just for our children, but for the generations that come after them.

I am an English teacher from India, with a double major in Literature and over a decade of teaching experience. I work with students across CBSE, ICSE, and international boards, helping them build clarity, confidence, and a strong command of language.

My sessions are structured yet personal, shaped around each learner’s pace and needs. I focus on making English feel less like a subject and more like a skill you naturally grow into.

$15/hour | One-on-one classes

I’ve been going back and forth on this for a while now, and I think I’m finally ready to at least explore homeschooling seriously for my daughter.

The thing is… I know nothing about it.

No one in my family or friend circle believes in it. So I’m not getting guidance, support, or even real conversations around it. Which also means if I do this, I’ll have to build everything from the ground up. Including the community.

We’re based in Delhi, so if there’s anyone here who’s doing this locally, that would really help.

Right now, I’m just trying to understand the basics:

How do you even begin homeschooling from scratch?

What does a “roadmap” look like in the first year?

How do you choose a curriculum (especially in India)?

How do kids eventually appear for boards like National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) or others if needed?

How do you make sure they’re not missing out socially?

And honestly, the bigger question for me is community.

Since I don’t have one offline, I’ll have to build or find one online. I’m okay starting from zero.

Has anyone here used Reddit itself to build connections around homeschooling?

Are there specific subs I should be active in?

Does Instagram actually work for building a real, supportive circle (not just content)?

I’m not looking for a perfect system right away. Just something real. Something that works in the Indian context.

If you’ve done this, or are doing it, I’d really appreciate hearing how you started. Not the polished version, but the messy beginning.

What did your first few months look like?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for school recommendations for my daughter in Delhi, and I’d really appreciate some honest, practical suggestions.

My qualifications: I have a double Masters in English Literature and am currently busy being a full-time mom.

For context, I studied at Queen Mary’s School, Tees Hazari. I know it used to have a solid reputation, but from what I’ve heard over the years, it’s not quite the same anymore, so I’m a bit hesitant about sending her there.

I’m open to convent schools and even all-girls schools (actually would prefer that environment), but I’m not looking for the typical “fancy” or elite schools like DPS RK Puram or Modern Barakhamba Road. I know they’re strong academically, but I’m trying to avoid that kind of social environment.

This might sound like a bias, but I want a grounded, middle-class kind of school where:

• kids are relatively simple and not overly flashy
• there’s a strong focus on values + academics
• she won’t feel out of place or “less than” because of background

Ideally:

• Christian / convent setup
• Girls’ school preferred (co-ed is okay if it really fits)
• Within Delhi (open to different areas if worth it)
• Not extremely high fees

I know no school is perfect and environment can vary anywhere, but I’m just trying to find something balanced and healthy.

Would really appreciate real experiences, not just Google lists. Even schools that are slightly underrated but solid would help.

Thanks in advance 🙏