Why? Let’s begin with the typical bio. 

I have a BA Hons in English and Creative Writing, and have been a writer for as long as I can remember. My wide-ranging professional background includes mental health practitioner work with young people, domestic abuse work with women and children, hypnotherapy, astrology, and a decade of management in fashion retail.

I’ve had the opportunity to create and deliver mental health training and workshops to students and teachers in schools, colleges and universities, to give talks to solicitors about shame, to walk young people who have harmed themselves to A&E, to manage individuals and teams in high-risk crisis, to speak on the radio about identity and bullying, to collate young people’s work for a book about mental health, to recruit and train staff, and to manage weekly mental health hubs for young people, professionals and parents. I’ve also been sent to Milan to buy for luxury stores and brands, managed teams, merchandised stores and led them successfully through their busiest periods. I’ve answered calls from desperate mothers who wanted to flee their abusive husbands for the sake of their - and their children’s - safety.

I could say more about what I experienced and achieved during my educational and professional life.

But the truth is, I learned a lot more through what was either missing or what was going terribly wrong.

How many people were hurt, mistreated or discriminated against. I witnessed many abuses of power, complete lack of accountability from those responsible and the long-term effects this had on myself and others. 

I kept asking myself, if I’m doing everything I was told to do - keep my head down, be a high academic achiever, be ‘good’, be ‘polite’, don’t rock the boat - then how come I’m still being targeted, monitored and side-lined from higher professional positions that I’m clearly capable of? It eventually occurred to me that being a hardworking, good Indian woman actually got me nowhere in a system rigged against me from its inception and built on the blood, sweat and tears of my ancestors and other colonized people. 

In 2020, immediately after the murder of George Floyd - a stark moment of racial awakening for many of us who had been brought up in denial - the veil was lifted. I finally saw that the root cause of these behaviours were deeply systemic and due to a deliberate ignorance of the history of colonialism and its unholy trifecta of racism, patriarchy and capitalism.

But let’s rewind a bit, because this was all already woven into my journey from the very beginning. 

I am an Indian Gujarati woman, born in London from a mother who was born in Kenya and a father who was born in Uganda. We are a legacy of the movements and decisions of the British Empire. 

After my beloved mother died when I was nine, my father quickly married a school friend’s mum; a white British woman whose father had served in the British Army in India. Already deep in grief, I then experienced years of psychological and emotional abuse from her - bolstered by the abuse and silencing of my father and wider family - and as a result I learned how the subtle energetics of colonialism work on a very intimate level.

Through her influence, I was Christianized for years and had to find my way back to the spiritual roots of my ancestors, in my own way. In my mid-twenties I began the journey from the white patriarchal father God back to the primordial and earthy Dark Goddess; the Divine Mother.

Growing up in the racist, predominantly white town of Barnsley and as the only woman of colour in a house of white women, I developed a severe self-hatred which manifested through racialized body dysmorphia; I literally couldn’t see myself clearly as I wasn’t reflected back in the outside world. This inevitably influenced my relationships with men, due to how little I believed I was worth, as well as the white supremacist, patriarchal beauty standards that these men - and wider society - held. Combined with the many years of systemic racial and gender-based mistreatment through my educational and professional career, this all culminated into a heady cocktail of complex trauma.

I had internalised the painful and limiting confines of the world and people around me, and was living in the shadows of the underworld for many years. It was only by facing them that I was able to start releasing the power they had to define both my internal and external reality. 

And it's in this way that I hope my work can serve as a supportive guide for those who are on a similar journey. 

I’m the author of Half Woman Half Grief; a poetry book about grief, death, and the mystery of loss after my mother died. 

I’m the producer and host of Who We Are | Stories of Colonialism and Cultural Reclamation, a podcast which centres the voices of the global majority - people who have experienced colonial harm and marginalization - and are now reclaiming their connection to their roots.

I also recently produced a podcast series called how we lead | exploring ways to decolonize leadership and decentralize power, inspired by my years as both a leader and one who has been led.

And I love decoding, demystifying and breaking the spell of abuse, from the micro to the macro levels.

I love understanding, unpicking and reverse-engineering abusive power structures.

I love building real bridges between communities by talking about it all - the good, the bad and the ugly - and practising new ways to relate healthily with each other.

I love understanding the contexts within which we exist in order to get the the root of the issues and heal them properly.

And I love having conversations with those who are also doing the work and collaborating with them to create something new and exciting. Something which renders old, abusive dynamics obsolete.