By Suvir Saran

New Delhi [India], March 8 (ANI): There are poems that live in books, and there are poems that live in the bloodstream. For me, one such poem has always been the searing nazm by Sahir Ludhianvi -- a poem that arrives like a mirror held up to civilisation.

Aurat ne janam diya mardon ko, Mardon ne use bazaar diya, Jab jee chaha masla-kuchla, Jab jee chaha dhutkaar diya.

A woman gave birth to men, and men returned the favour by turning her into a marketplace. When they wished, they crushed her; when they wished, they cast her aside.

Sahir wrote those lines in anger. In ache. In accusation.

But whenever they surface in my mind, they stir something softer and stronger: gratitude. Because the women who shaped my life did not merely give birth to men. They gave birth to meaning. They moulded my mind, steadied my spirit, sculpted my sense of self.

My story is less a biography than a bouquet of women.

And when I think of them, the poem begins to sound different. Aurat sansaar ki taqdeer hai...A woman is the destiny of the world.

The first face in that destiny is my mother, Sunita. Her strength has never needed a spotlight. It radiates quietly, like dawn slipping through curtains. Her face carries a kind of luminous reassurance -- positivity without pretence, hope without hesitation.

Life has tested her with tempests, the usual whirlwinds and worries that whirl through every human story, but she has never folded into fear. Instead she grows broader, braver, brighter. Where others might retreat, she rises -- resilient, resolute, radiant. From her I learned that courage need not roar; sometimes it simply refuses to retreat.

Another formidable feminine force is Shobhaa De, whose words have long rippled through Mumbai's cultural consciousness. Through fearless prose and piercing perspective she has become an icon of modern India. Yes, she has mothered six children, but she has also nurtured countless minds.

Her sentences are both scalpel and sanctuary -- slicing through hypocrisy while sheltering sincerity. Many of us have found ourselves gathered beneath the generous glow of her intellect, adopted by her affection. Her motherhood extends far beyond biology; it is a mentorship of minds.

Then comes my closest companion in courage, Anandita De, whose story is written in willpower. Sixty kilograms -- that is what she shed from her body. But the real weight she lifted was doubt. Through discipline, determination, grit, and grace she reclaimed her life. Her transformation is not vanity but victory -- proof that devotion to oneself can be the bravest rebellion of all.

At work, harmony often arrives in the form of Natasha Kilachand, a woman who embodies elegance and empathy in equal measure. Part Indian, part American, raised in San Diego and now rooted in India, she has the rare ability to guide without grandstanding. In a professional ecosystem full of ambitions and anxieties, she gently nudges each of us toward better versions of ourselves. Her presence steadies the room, like a conductor calming an orchestra before the crescendo.

But courage takes many shapes. Sometimes it wears the quiet persistence of my sister Seema Saran, whom I often call my tigress -- my tiger mom, though she is my sibling. Seema has always been there for me, even when I have been absent for myself. That is her love: constant, calculated, compassionate. She thinks ahead for me when I cannot see forward.

In the Bronx school district of New York she works among children whose lives have been shadowed by poverty, addiction, incarceration, violence. The harshest cycles of human hardship repeat themselves there with brutal regularity. Many social workers arrive with idealism and depart with exhaustion. But Seema remains. Day after day she returns to those classrooms carrying courage and compassion like twin lanterns. In one of the poorest parts of America she plants seeds of possibility, hoping to reverse outcomes that seem relentlessly predetermined. That is Seema for you: fierce, faithful, forward-thinking.

My father's only sibling, Deepa Bua, was beauty personified. When she dressed up -- a sari draped with effortless elegance, bangles whispering at her wrists -- she looked like India at its most exquisite best. She embodied the classic grace of Indian femininity. But beyond that beauty was brilliance. She gave me language -- Urdu and Hindi -- and through language she gave me the mystic voice of Kabir. When she recited his couplets the air itself seemed to pause.

Bura jo dekhan main chala, bura na milya koi, Jo dil khoja apna, mujhse bura na koi. Her voice made poetry pulse with life.

Another teacher of the spirit was Krishna Chaudhry, mother of Kavita Chaudhry, a physician and a dear friend of my grandmother. She taught me the Bhagavad Gita -- not as dry doctrine but as devotional music. She showed me how to sing its verses and feel their rhythm, how Krishna consciousness could be lived rather than merely learned.

My Nani, Shanti Bharadwaj, was resilience wrapped in radiance. She could roll parathas with a wok balanced between board and blade, turning the kitchen into a stage of ingenuity. She spent years in San Francisco living with her children, moving from one household to another yet never allowing herself to feel displaced. Instead she transformed every space into home.

She loved every grandchild fiercely. When I was twenty, she did something extraordinary: she made me come out. Not cruelly, not coercively, but courageously. She insisted on truth. And then she stood beside me with unwavering support.

She was willing to be a friend to her grandchildren if they wished it -- to meet them not only as elders but as equals in honesty. She was beautiful beyond words: a woman whose love lingered like fragrance long after the flowers had fallen.

My grandmother Kamla Bhatnagar, my Dadi, was a singer -- a soulful student of Hindustani classical music. She held my hand from the time I was ten, leaning on me as her walking stick. But in truth she carried me. Through ragas and scriptures she gave me something priceless: a voice. I suspect she knew things about me before I could say them aloud.

Perhaps she sensed my difference, my queerness, the quiet questions I carried. She never forced confession; she simply created a world where expression was possible. She taught me the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Gita -- and then, with astonishing intellectual courage, confessed that she had once believed deeply in ritual and dogma until one day she let them go. 'That,' she said gently, 'is life. Evolution.' From her I learned that faith and freedom can coexist.

Across continents stands Marina Ahmad, who began as my music teacher when I first arrived in America. Teacher became confidante, confidante became companion of the soul. People sometimes joke that we might as well be husband and wife, but our bond is something rarer: a friendship forged through fearless honesty. We have told each other secrets others may never hear, survived storms others might never see, and remained standing side by side.

And then there is Sabiha Hashmi, my art teacher at Modern School. Though she taught senior students, she saw something in me when I was only in the fifth grade. At a time when bullying bruised my confidence and despair shadowed my days, she saw strength where I saw sorrow. She taught me silkscreening, etching, painting -- taught me how to pour pain onto paper until colour converted darkness into possibility. She turned art into therapy, despair into design.

As I remember these women, Sahir's words echo again -- but they feel transformed.

Aurat ne janam diya mardon ko...Yes. Women give birth to men.

But they also give birth to hope. They raise resilience from ruin. They coax courage from chaos. They compose compassion from conflict.

The women in my life -- Sunita, Shobhaa, Anandita, Natasha, Seema, Deepa, Krishna, Shanti, Kamla, Marina, Sabiha -- are not merely characters in my story. They are its composers. Each of them has contributed a melody to the music of my becoming.

If Sahir's poem mourns the injustice women endure, my life celebrates the miracle women perform daily: they take the fragile clay of human potential and mould it into something meaningful.

And in that quiet creation lies a truth as enduring as any verse: Aurat sansaar ki taqdeer hai. A woman is the destiny of the world. (ANI)

(Disclaimer: Suvir Saran is a Masterchef, Author, Hospitality Consultant And Educator. The views expressed in this article are his own.)