Growing up, birthdays were a very big deal to me. Especially my mother's. She has always been my favourite person. She still is. And from the time I was about five, I would make sure I did something for her birthday. I couldn't really make much back then, so it was usually something handmade and slightly terrible. A messy little flower. A card. Once, I woke up at 4 a.m. to make her favourite food; half-cooked, half-burnt aloo parathas. I've done some pretty silly things for her birthdays. Once, I even got her a piece of the moon. You can actually do that now. Another time, I surprised her by organising her birthday at her Guruji's. I remember her crying because she was so completely caught off guard. I've never missed one of her birthdays. Or at least, I never thought I would.
Until a year ago.
It was around midnight. I was in a rickshaw on my way home after a meeting and a networking event when I suddenly realised it was my mother's birthday. And I had forgotten. I remember feeling so guilty that I couldn't even bring myself to call her. It wasn't that I didn't love her. It wasn't that her birthday had suddenly become less important to me. If anything, that was what made it hurt so much more. I had simply become so consumed by everything I was trying to build that I had run out of room for the things that had once felt non-negotiable.
I had become a one-woman team, working my ass off, and somewhere along the way, I had started treating everything outside of work as something I could get to later.
My parents' anniversary was another example. For years, I had told them that when I turned 25, I would take them to Japan for their anniversary. As a child, I had this very clear idea that by 25, I would be successful enough to give them that trip. I turned 25. I couldn't. Roology actually started when I turned 26. Life happened. Health happened. Business happened. There were a hundred things I was trying to figure out. And because I hadn't been able to do the thing I had promised myself I would do, I somehow couldn't bring myself to celebrate their anniversary in a smaller way either.
It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. But I think that's because, somewhere along the way, I had started attaching celebration to achievement. I didn't just want to celebrate. I wanted to have earned the celebration.
The same thing happened with my own birthday. There was a point when I didn't really feel like I deserved to be celebrated. I hadn't hit the timelines I had set for myself. I hadn't figured out everything I thought I would have figured out by then. Some of the plans I had made for my life had failed me. And there I was, alone with my thoughts, feeling like I hadn't done enough to deserve a birthday.
My best friend didn't agree. She made sure I was celebrated anyway. She got friends from school and my parents to record videos for me. Another friend even made me an outfit. Looking back, I think that birthday taught me something I hadn't understood before: love doesn't work on a performance review. Neither should life.
For years, I kept telling myself that I would have time once I had some clarity. Once I had a plan. Once I figured out what I wanted to do. Once I got a job. Once I figured out my career. And then, when I did figure out what I wanted, there were new things to chase. Once my dad believed in the business. Once I hit a certain number. Once a certain publication wrote about us. Once a certain person wore us. There was always another milestone. Another condition. Another version of "I'll slow down when..."
The truth I've learnt in hindsight is that there is no magical point at which life suddenly becomes less busy. You don't arrive at some final milestone and discover that you've been handed an empty calendar. Life just gets fuller. There are more responsibilities, more people you love, more things you care about, more things that can go wrong and more things you want to build. If you don't consciously make time for your life, there will always be something more urgent to fill it with.
And maybe some of this started much earlier than I realised.
Growing up, I learnt that rest was something that came after work. I watched my mother work through the morning - getting us ready for school, packing our tiffins, serving lunch to the family - and then finally rest in the afternoon. I saw the men in my family return from work after a long day of calls, negotiations and meetings and then rest. Even at school, we were taught the same idea in tiny ways. Finish your work first, and then you can put your head down. Whoever finishes the chapter fastest gets to rest. At home, weekdays were for being serious. School. Homework. Work. Weekends were for play.
Every little thing reinforced the same idea: first you work, then you earn your rest.
So I grew up seeing rest as something that needed to be earned. It wasn’t something you were simply allowed to have, it was something you got after you had done enough, proven enough, pushed enough. Rest was what came at the end of effort, almost like a reward you had to qualify for. I didn’t really see it as something that had value in itself.
And sometimes I wasn't even genuinely busy. Sometimes I was just too guilty to not be busy. So I would give myself more work. Things that didn't necessarily need to be done that day. Things that gave my brain something to obsess over. Things that temporarily quietened the fears and uncertainty in my head. I thought if I stayed busy enough, eventually everything would make sense.
Then last year, my life fell apart in ways I hadn't expected. Family. Personal life. Business. You name it. And somehow, my instinct was still to keep going. I thought if I just worked through it, if I didn't stop, if I didn't take a break, maybe by the end of the year it would all pay off.
Instead, I made some of the worst decisions I could have made. It affected my physical and mental health. I ended up in debt. I had to restart the entire ecosystem of my business. I lost relationships. I burnt myself out in almost every way possible.
And eventually, I had to admit something that was very difficult for me: working harder wasn't fixing the problem. In fact, sometimes it was making it worse.
I had been so afraid of stopping that I hadn't given myself enough space to actually see what was happening. I didn't need another push. I needed a pause. I needed to step back far enough to understand what wasn't working, what needed to change and what I actually wanted to carry forward.
Today, I think about rest very differently.
There's a line from The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse that I come back to often: "If at first you don't succeed, have some cake." I love how simple that idea is. Maybe you failed. Maybe the plan didn't work. Maybe you made the wrong decision. Maybe you need to start again. And maybe the answer isn't to immediately punish yourself by working twice as hard. Maybe you take a breath. You eat the cake. You let yourself feel disappointed. You figure out what went wrong. And then you try again.
Because sometimes rest is not about escaping your life. It's about creating enough space to actually live it consciously.
I used to think rest was something I had to earn after I had done enough. Now I think rest is part of how I figure out what enough actually is. It is how I come back to myself. It is how I make better decisions. It is how I make room for the people I love. It is how I remember that my mother's birthday matters. It is how I let myself celebrate a birthday even when I haven't achieved everything I thought I would.
And maybe most importantly, it is how I keep building a life I actually want, instead of spending my entire life trying to earn permission to live it.
I thought rest was something I had to earn. I now think rest is something that helps me earn a life I actually want.
