The Work From Home culture has gained a lot of momentum lately. With just a few types of equipment, an internet connection, and a quiet room, you are all set to work from your home. 

The idea of working from the comfort of your home is something that we long for. If we go by the study conducted by Economic Times, Indians spend at least 7% of their day commuting only. Eradicating the need for commuting in public transports or private vehicle, we have established ourself into this culture quite efficiently. But is it the right culture? Let’s see!

1. Boosts Productivity

Several reports show that WFH boosts your productivity. When you are working under low pressure and on your own terms, you are more likely to enjoy the work. A report by Poverty Action Lab mentions that remote workers made 13% more calls than in-house employees, thereby increasing the engagement. 

Besides, you have steady emotional support from your family or closed ones, making it a lot better option than working as an in-house professional. 

2. Supports Good Mental Health

Did I tell you about taking timely breaks to help you increase your working speed and efficiency? Yes, this is indeed the case! Timely breaks go under better mental health. 

When you are scheduling work for the following day, never forget to include mini-breaks. Such breaks are essential to keep you going. You can even resort to applications like TimeOut, Pomodoro, Break Timer, etc which reminds you to take breaks accordingly. Just set a reminder and you are good to go!

3. Better Networking

Not going to the office doesn’t mean you have to stay in the shell. Get yourself a day free and set up an engagement session with your colleagues where you all can e-meet and share your lives. On weekdays, it is equally important to make small talk but make sure you are not invading their privacy. 

Building up a network has always been a part of the corporate world, and WFH culture should not hamper this process. Remote catch-ups always help you take one step forward and build emotional connections. And never underestimate the power of an emotional bond. 

Many Works From Home tools and software are nowadays available to get detailed reports and analysis of your performance. This includes not only the number of hours you worked but also how productive you have been on a particular day. Apart from the regular remote monitoring system incorporated by your firm, you can also send these reports to your boss/manager to making their work easy. 

Work From Home is a suitable option for all those who believe in being organized. Life has always been more than merely working and earning. While money keeps your soul together, it is the art and creativity that keeps you going. Work From Home culture promotes spending some time with yourself and discovering your inner self. If we go by the trend, it is very likely that by 2050s most of the firms would have employees work from home 4 days a week. 

So get yourself ready for the much-awaited healthy culture! Watch this space for more!

I’m reminded again of how it feels to be alone. Even though I consider myself to be fairly introverted, feelings of loneliness can be quite overwhelming for me. I suspect it’s largely a biological behavior. Some kind of a feedback loop to keep me from venturing off too far from loved ones.

I had forgotten what this was like for a few months. It’s a painfully sharp feeling and quite depressing. Contact with friends and family doesn’t seem to quench it for me, it seems only a romantic interest takes it away. And not necessarily intimacy, but having such a person around in close proximity seems to make this feeling go away. More than a few hours of an absense and the feeling comes back.

It’s very strange to me. Even though I know I’m okay alone and not in peril, something in my brain tells me that things are very wrong. Perhaps it’s a loyalty gene in some indirect way.

I thought this was worth writing about in case you felt the same way. I think it can be alienating to feel this way and think no one else goes through quite the same thing. Being alone feels miserable, even though I think it shouldn’t be miserable. 

Lying through sad eyes
Manipulation it’s easy
Smiling through sad eyes
Your surface fades away
The smile doesn’t stay, society runs
Peering through the curtains
Tap, Tap , Tap on the window pane
Emotions cascading through
A storm of deception, description
The rain will come.
Observing the world through tired eyes
Resistance is weakness
The windows open
The rain pours in
Am I drowning?
Gasping for air or simply gasping for attention
Contradiction,the downpour turns to dust
The windows shut.
Closing these eyes that aren’t mine
The rain is now outside
Dripping down my window pain
Yearning for sunshine
The curtains closed
I only hear the Tap, Tap , Tap

Book review-difficult daughters.
“The tradition that refuses to entertain doubt, or remains impervious to new thoughts and ideas, becomes a prison rather than a sustaining life force.”

Some books are friends, others teachers. This one came as a life-changing experience.

The hauntingly beautiful portrayal of women’s anguish and sufferings in the pre-independence period has left my thinking revitalized.
Amritsar born Manju Kapur is an Indian novelist, whose first novel, “Difficult Daughters” had won the 1999 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, best first book, Europe and South Asia. She has studied M.A from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada (in 1972) and an M. Phil from Delhi University. Now, she teaches English at Delhi University under the name Manjul Kapur Dalmia.

Difficult Daughters is about educating daughters, who, after they learn to think for themselves, begin questioning the basic values and hypocrisy of the society. The story moves between the demands of modernity and set traditions. The novel is set in an straight, high-minded, middle-class Punjabi family in the outset of 1930s and ’40s during partition. It throws light on the conservatism prevailing in Amritsar. The climax is centered around Virmati, who seeks something beyond wedlock.

The tale starts with narrator, Ida, traveling back to her hometown to get answers of her mother, Virmati’s past that have been nagging her ever since her mother’s death.  From friends and family she finds that Virmati was the eldest of eleven children,  born to a respectable family in Amritsar.
She had no meaning to her life except taking care of her siblings ,untill a charming , charismatic and respected professor (Harish) moves in as a tenant with wife and a daughter and starts teaching in Virmati’s college.

It was rather beautiful; the way Harish put her insecurities to sleep ,the way he looked into her eyes and starved all the fears and metamorphosed Virmati from a lifeless robot to a visionary and independent woman. Virmati finally married professor against the will of her family.

She soon finds herself abandoned and boycotted by her own family and living as a second isolated wife in Harish’s home. She becomes conscious of the fact that she has wasted all her education and flair.
She realizes that going against her mother was not worth it, and fate soon puts her in her mother’s shoes when Ida marries someone without asking for Virmati’s consent.


The title , ‘Difficult Daughters’ has a hidden question mark in it if you ask me, which makes me apprehend that was it really the daughters that were difficult or was it the society that choked her aspirations everyday and made her the bearer of patriarchal constraints and expectations for coming generation of daughters.

Manju Kapur, truly tries to convey how far we have come as a society and how far we still have to go. She sets up Strum und Drang of events that eventually lead to a bitter-sweet ending.

This story really promises to remain engraved in your memory for a long time!

On the other hand I felt the frustration of being forced to observe siblings, to mother them once you never had the selection.

Choice is something many people take for granted.

Disobedient Daughters could alright be the title, and when our main character Virmati falls crazy with a temptation (married man) you recognize it’s getting to go sour.


For many readers with the liberty to stupidly love where we chose, and blaze a trail anywhere we please it’s often hard to imagine the suppression of the self. I find with this novel, the treasure isn’t so much in love as it is in the struggle to chose your own way.

Tradition are often a gorgeous thing, but it also can murder the soul. It’s not just in Indian culture that ladies were kept from furthering their learning (I will note that today, often Indian families I even have known in America push their daughters to be educated) if you check out history women were often seen because the weaker sex and ‘not clever enough to learn’.

It’s hard to imagine it had been ‘shocking’ when a lady wanted to further her education in comparison today’s standards. Then again, maybe not. Women still have trails to blaze… I could feel the hearth during this novel, the hearth for more.


Virmati’s mother’s life is confining to her, a life where the aim is to please one’s spouse and family. Her mother knew that within the end, it had been only necessary to marry and forget one’s own desires.

Virmati wanted escape and freedom and in fact , her own daughter Ida doesn’t wish to be like her mother either. Her mother who fell prey to a person who was a special kind of trap. Three generations of girls trying to flee the destiny of every other. I enjoyed this novel, it was thought provoking and full of suffering. I think it will be something book clubs can really bite into.