Born a Rough Draft

There’s a certain kind of girlhood that’s passed down in whispers. 

A way of being soft, stylish, sure of yourself. 

Not learned in books, but in bedrooms and borrowed lip gloss.

Through late-night talks with sisters or cousins who’ve done it all before you.

I never grew up with that.

I’m the younger child. The one meant to have a roadmap. The one meant to learn from my brother’s lessons. 

But life never really allowed me to enjoy the privileges of being the youngest. When people see us and assume I’m older, or that we’re twins, I just smile and shake my head. But deep down, I understand why they see it that way. Because somewhere between ages seven and ten, my brother and I left childhood behind. We grew up far too early, together.

But if there’s one thing I’ll never trade, it’s the bond that came from that. We became teammates in ways most siblings never do. Quiet looks across the room when things got tense. Little jokes only we understood. A sense that no matter what the world expected from us, we’d always have each other. 

There was no space for slow, soft girlhood when adulthood arrived at the door so soon. But there was bhaji. And that made navigating the world less scary.

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My parents understood the West long before they came here. They spoke the language, watched the shows, and moved through society with more awareness and grace than they’re often given credit for. 

My father moved with confidence and certainty, always sharp in the ways that mattered.

My mother brought her traditions, stories, humility, and faith. But understanding a culture, and raising your children inside of it — those are two very different things.

They were rooted. 

We, on the other hand, were in-between.

I was born into the hyphen: Punjabi-American. 

I knew how to switch languages mid-sentence, flipping from yes to hanji, from okay to acha. 

But there were other things. Subtle things. Things my parents didn’t teach me. Not because they didn’t care, but because they didn’t know how.

Is this fusion of culture, or confusion of identity?

This photo, to me, exists with so many layers.

The tension of identities layered without permission. One wrist weighed down by vangaan/churiyaan and my kada passed through generations. The other marked with branded metal, a sleek Apple Watch gently announcing how I've learned to play the part.

I stand there layered in an anaarkali, tossing my Kate Spade purse from one and to another, while somewhere in-between it all, my silence says for me: I know how the West works too.

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I had no sister that could show me how to do a French braid, or how to take care of my curls. 

No one to run to when I needed advice on what to wear for a school dance, or where to start when buying new makeup.

I had my mother — loving, soft, and beautiful, inside and out. 

But she grew up in a world where girlhood didn’t look like this; it wasn’t filtered through Western expectations, through brand names, body standards, social codes wrapped in passive aggression. She hadn’t spent her years as a young woman having to deal with the delicate politics of group chats.

But what she did do, was give me everything that truly lasts: 

Her time.

Her values.

Her steadiness.

And these things alone, have carried me through thick and thin.

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There’s a rhythm to girlhood here that neither my mother or I grew up hearing.

So I learned by watching.

Slowly.

Awkwardly.

Sometimes painfully.

I’d explain to her how “it’s done nowadays.” She’d laugh, maybe try it out, like a few things I showed her — then kindly return to her own ways.

I studied how to walk like a girl, how to layer clothes like them, how to laugh while keeping a composed face. Not too loud, or I’d come off as manly. Not too quiet, or I’d seem like a pushover.

No map. Just guesses.

And so many of them wrong.

Guess. Wrong. Guess. Wrong again. 

Guess. Almost right.

Try again. Wrong.

When does it stop?

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And then came the question of beauty.

What does it mean to feel beautiful when you’re raised to be grounded? When you’re told you are more than how you look — but the world around you still weighs you by the physicality of it?

I wasn’t unaware.

I had my long braid — “a tail” the kids at school called it. But I loved my hair. I still do. 

My thick, dark, unthreaded eyebrows — “bushy caterpillars,” they’d say. But I loved them too. I still do. 

I wasn’t taught to center my looks. As my mother always said, “people notice how you treat them, how you speak, how you hold yourself.” And I’m grateful for that. 

But it also meant that I built my sense of beauty differently.

Not as something seen, but something felt.

Still, it was impossible not to notice how the world rewarded a different kind of girl. The one who had mastered the script. The one who had reached her final draft, with no other edits left to make. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t sure it ever could be.

There’s a particular kind of challenge that lives in the body of a Sikh woman taught to honor her hair, her presence, her dignity, while navigating a world that equates visibility with value. When the hair on my head is praised for its length and beauty, the hair on my body receives looks of disgust.

How am I proud and self-conscious in the same breath? 

No one tells you how to hold both. 

You just learn to survive it. 

And eventually, you learn to soften to it.

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Some girls inherit sisterhood. 

Some of us make it from scratch. 

Some days, I get it right. Some days, I feel far from being a woman.

Some days, I’m frustrated not having someone to turn to. But most days, I remember my mother is there for me.

Maybe it’s supposed to feel like this: a little off, a little unfinished.

But if I’ve made it this far without a guide, without a blueprint, then maybe I don’t need one.

And maybe, if I have a daughter someday, she won’t have to start the same way I did.

She’ll inherit the map I never had. And she’ll embrace my mother’s patience, my father’s certainty, my brother’s loyalty. She'll realize that my story doesn't end at a period, but pends at a comma — a story born to never get its final draft, but always be an evolving rough one.

And whatever she chooses to do with it, I’ll make sure she won’t have to watch so carefully from the sidelines.

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**bhaji (ਭਾਜੀ): (older) brother

**hanji (ਹਾਂਜੀ): yes

**acha (ਅੱਛਾ): okay

**vangaan/churiyaan (ਵੰਗਾਂ/ਚੂੜੀਆਂ): bangles

**kada (ਕੜਾ): steel or cast iron bangle worn by Sikhs

**anaarkali (ਅਨਾਰਕਲੀ): traditional Mughal clothing — literal translation "pomegranate bud"

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