The Ammazing Life
Amma to Dhruthi (5), our indie dog Veera, and twins arriving any day now. Based in Bangalore. Married to my best friend of 12 years. This blog is where I document the travel that shaped us, the activities that stretched us, and the real, unglamorous, deeply beautiful chaos of raising a family intentionally.
Our story
The family
We are a Bangalore family that genuinely likes spending time together — which took work, intention, and a lot of badly timed road trips to get to. My husband Vishvanath and I have been friends since before we were anything else, and that friendship is honestly the best thing we've modelled for Dhruthi.
Dhruthi is five, wildly curious, and currently convinced that she invented the concept of asking "why". Veera is our one-year-old indie dog who has opinions about everything. And the twins — our next chapter — are due in July 2026.
This is not a perfect family blog. It is a real one.
Travel
Dhruthi arrived in 2020 — the year of lockdowns, closed borders, and four walls that started to feel very small. Her first year was our home, our terrace, and us, figuring out parenthood without a roadmap.
Then 2021 came. The world cracked open just enough. And we made a decision that changed everything: we packed up a 1.5-year-old and headed to Rajasthan for two weeks.
"The moment her eyes lit up at the pink city — that was it. We were never not going to travel with her again."
But here is what surprised us most: travel changed us as parents, not just her. No screens, no work calls bleeding into evenings, no half-presence. On the road, we were just us — and Dhruthi noticed. A child always notices.
We now travel locally every month and internationally every six months. She may not remember every place we took her. But she will remember how we made her feel in those places. That is what we are building — a library of feelings, not a stamps-in-a-passport.
And along the way, she is learning things no classroom could teach at this pace: that people speak differently and that is beautiful, that nature looks completely different 2,000 kilometres away, that history lives in buildings you can touch, that managing a delayed flight is just another kind of problem-solving.
Read our travel stories →
Activities for Kids
From the moment Dhruthi was born, I went deep. Montessori mobiles for newborns. Sensory play progressions. Age-appropriate independence milestones. I have spent more hours reading research papers about child development than I care to admit — and I would do it all again.
The problem is that most of that research stays in academic journals or expensive parenting courses. I wanted it to be accessible. A parent opening their phone at 10pm looking for something to do with their five-year-old tomorrow deserves better than a generic Pinterest pin.
"Every activity here is curated, not collected. There is a reason behind each one — a milestone it supports, a skill it builds, a moment it creates."
As Dhruthi moves toward age six, our activities are increasingly focused on independence — the Montessori principle that a child's drive to do things herself is not stubbornness, it is development. We lean into that. Most activities use things you already have at home. All of them prioritise the process over the outcome.
A craft that looks nothing like the reference photo? That is a win. A game that ran for one to one-and-a-half hours of uninterrupted, self-directed play — with zero prompting from us? That is a very big win.
Browse the activities →
Life of Amma
We are in the middle of transitioning our home — a 4BHK in Bangalore — for a family that is about to become five. That means rooms getting rethought, routines getting rebuilt, and a five-year-old navigating the very real feelings that come with two new siblings arriving at once.
This is where I document that — the room-by-room changes, the emotional conversations, the days that went sideways and what I learned from them.
"I read so that I can parent with a little more clarity on hard days. I share what I learn because someone else might be having that same hard day."
A lot of what grounds me comes from books — frameworks that translate well to real life even when real life refuses to be tidy. A few that live on my nightstand:
I am not a parenting expert. I am a parent who researches obsessively, implements imperfectly, and writes about both. If that sounds like you, this section is for you.
Read Life of Amma →New here?
One post from each pillar — picked for first-time visitors.
Travel
What worked, what didn't, and why we'd do it again without hesitation.
Read this first →Activities
The Challenge Quest system — and how it got us to 45 minutes of solo play.
Read this first →Life of Amma
The philosophy behind everything we do — told through one real morning.
Read this first →