Daring, Trying and Bootstrapped

I am a daughter who still grieves her mother after 13 years. An anxiety survivor. A reluctant extrovert. A mother improvising her way through each day. A founder building a business not on networking or funding, but on research, conviction and stubborn verve.

I am sitting at this café with its tall French windows letting in sheets of afternoon light. Soft blues plays in the background. A pendant lamp hangs above me, casing me mummy-like in its warmth. Perched on a high bar stool, sipping an almond milk cappuccino, I watch the world outside pass by, sometimes unhurried and sometimes like pages from an open book caught in a sudden gust of wind.

Cars glide past in a loose flotilla, like an unplanned parade.

Today is an exceptionally difficult day for me. It is my mother's birthday. She has been gone 13 years, and still, I miss her with a quiet ache that never quite leaves.

My mother was a free spirit. Ahead of her time in ways I only understand more deeply now. Progressive and curious. She would have said yes instantly to this coffee date and mindless people-watching ritual. We may not even have spoken much. She understood that silence, too, could be companionship, a way of holding space without having to say it out loud.

So I let my mind wander. And wander it did, through the many streams of thought crisscrossing into each other.

In fragments, I remember her face. Sometimes vivid. Sometimes faint as a cosmos flower pressed between the pages of an old book.

Then Khalid comes on.

Young, Dumb and Broke.

I laugh to myself.

Replace young with daring. Replace dumb with trying. Replace broke with bootstrapped.

Daring, trying and bootstrapped.

That's me.

That's enough.

Outside, a luxury car eases out of the parking spot in front of the café. A man in a crumpled shirt walks past slowly, shoulders heavy with the day. The distance between those two worlds feels immense until I remember how deceptive windows can be.

To him, perhaps, I am the woman seated behind glass with an Apple laptop and expensive coffee in an air-conditioned café.

And I am.

But I am also a daughter who still grieves her mother after 13 years. An anxiety survivor. A reluctant extrovert. A mother improvising her way through each day. A founder building a business not on networking or funding, but on research, conviction and stubborn verve. Bootstrapped enough that every rupee carries the weight of opportunity cost.

Every life, seen up close, carries its own colour, weather and rhythm.

The music hums softly behind me.

Traffic thickens outside.

My coffee has gone cold.

There is work waiting for me. A business to build. Miles to travel.

But for now, I sit here awhile longer.

Musing. Missing. Still here.