I’m Radhika. Let’s get the labels out of the way, shall we?

• I’m Indian and a California girl since ’93.
• Homeschooled from K-12th.
• Raised a Hare Krishna, navigating that extremely complicated side of myself and my faith constantly.
• Proud daughter, bossy/loving/annoying/smotheringwithcare sister and present friend.
• Berkeley ’13.
• Literature/South Asian Studies major and in my heart, a bookworm.
• Working in the Bay Area tech scene. Techie but not a techie.
• Writer of largely prose but also Hindi and English poetry.
• Feminist.

In late 2015, I found myself employed, generally happy with many loving relationships but beginning the rut of constantly comparing myself to anyone and everyone. It started driving me crazy.

After trying a number of things,  I began  keeping a daily gratitude journal for over 6 months and I cannot emphasize how much of a difference it made in my life. Every day, before I slept, I took inventory of three things/people/points/realizations that I was grateful for that day. Sometimes more would come up and I began to explore the silver lining in the shitty parts of the day. 

Shrila Prabhupada once wrote that “faith is unflinching trust in something sublime”. I’ve always loved that quote but it wasn’t until I was scrolling though Facebook one morning that it clicked. I saw this wonderful viral video that talked about how important it is to give thanks for all of the blessings we have if we want to continue deserving what we desire because how can we expect reciprocation when there is no acknowledgement or satiation? And it just made sense. Regardless of religious denomination or lack thereof,  we cultivate faith (even in just ourselves) by continually showing gratitude for the blessings that have come and trusting in the mysterious ways the master plan works. Gratitude reaffirms how faith works.

The genesis for this blog was a social media #100daysofgratitude project that I took up in early 2017. The first 100 posts are from that project. I hope to regularly update this space with realizations, musings and pictures; above all, to keep my writing practice alive.