Confessions of a Social Worker

  A feminist, rights-based, clarity-oriented guide for honest conversations to navigate arranged marriage chats! Inspired by lived experience. For women seeking clarity, not conformity. Hi! I’m Spurthi. I’m 35, happily married to Prashanth - whom I met through an arranged marriage set-up. Though, I prefer calling it an assisted marriage (you’ll soon see why). I'm from the town of Venkatapuram, Hyderabad. I studied engineering, transitioned into social work through my education in Mumbai, and worked for several years in Delhi. At the time, my radical feminist views made me hyper-aware/ woke, but also left me heartbroken and lonely - especially while trying to date in a city-bro/ macho world. 😅 Thanks to my mother’s relentless and loving efforts to find someone who could match my gullible-feisty-sweet-enthu personality, I found Prashanth - a genuinely kind human, who is now my best friend and forever partner. This post isn’t about selling arranged marriage. If it’s not for you,...

 “I was admitted to the hospital because of my toe’s inspection” Sudha Bai said, just the day before yesterday, while sitting at my parents’ house. Sudha Bai—my father’s younger sister, my chinnattha—has always been a powerful presence in my life. Her son, Ramu (technically, Ram Bava), chuckled and corrected her, “ Oh mother! It’s infection, not inspection. ” “ Right. That. Inspection. They would have amputated my leg if it was from inside. But since it was outside, I escaped ,” she replied, brushing it off like she always did—with that casual, matter-of-fact tone she reserved for everything intense in her life. That was her way. That was her. No drama, no fuss, just clarity. Even when it came to pain. Especially when it came to pain. That was true of most people on my dad’s side, but Sudha Bai embodied it. (Tx Chat GPT for helping recreate some memories. Unfortunate that I dont have any pictures of us) Her signature expression was "maaari".  It rolled off her tongue in coun...

Like many, I love watching K-dramas. I first discovered them in 2012, accidentally, after watching a J-drama, back in the pre-Netflix days! K-dramas felt so different from Telugu/Hindi dramas and films: deeper characters, daily life themes, exploration of diverse professions, and a poetic way of expressing love and pain. Yet, they shared the familiar hero complex and extreme slow pace (grateful to 1.5x speed on Netflix now, IYKYK!). What truly pulled me in, though, was the stronger female characters, a refreshing change. Even though I’ve been a K-drama fan for years, it never translated into reading webtoons or Korean books, until now. Welcome to Hyunam-dong Bookshop was my first Korean translated read, and it was a happy accident. I found it at my favorite bookshop in Leeds, a small, independent store run from a cozy boat at the Leeds Docks. The owners are warm, often leaving little handwritten notes near books. This was one of their recommendations. I happily spent my poster prize m...

Netflix Documentary Cynthia Adams, a photographer had captured pictures of women during second-wave feminism (1970s) and published a book named 'emergence'. 40 years later, this documentary explores what were they thinking back then and what do they think now . Source: Screenshots You can't help but notice how free, bold, confident they all look. Poised and elegant with their own identity. The rational thinker in us would say, But, aren't all poses for any magazine the same? Just a pose? Aren't you over reading? Well, these pictures could as well be another act, expressing how freedom might be rather than how it was for them. But, that is the thing, I wonder what would my magazine picture pose be? how do I think freedom looks like on me? source: google You'd see that most women opted to be nude in their emergence shot. But, they have consciously chosen it. And No, they weren't in the entertainment industry and were not pornstars. T...