shivani is from India.
adina is from Pakistan.
aalisha is from Nepal.
we met in MedellĂn, Colombia — last year, on the week of my 32nd birthday.
three chicas in their 30s, each navigating her Saturn return,
drawn from lands carved apart by history, partitioned by pain —
yet finding refuge in a place far from where our ancestors ever stepped.
a land still bleeding from battles over whose life matters more,
whose god is the “right” one,
whose body is allowed to stay.
aalisha knows me from instagram and was joining my girls trip from london. i met adina and shivani both in medellin, at two separate occasions. and somehow, the universe wove us into one story, a story of healing.
For one week, in December,
we chose each other.
we held space for each other.
we were sisters to each other.
for a week, last year in December, we all held spaces for each other. we choose to be each other’s safe spaces.
for a week, we choose to be each other sisters. our whatsapp group since then is called saheliya in medellin.
of all the chicas who could have ended up at my girls trip, universe bought 4 of us together. and i often think about it. those days with my saheliya was a pivotal moment in my healing journey and for me to recognize the power of what we were co-creating, without even knowing it.
how in providing a safe space for each other to express ourselves freely and to scream and shout and dance and cry and run naked in the woods and cook delicious pasta and eat that delicious pasta together while opening our hearts to each other.
for those few weeks, we were reunited by our love for biryani, chai, shahrukh khan and desi thumkas. some nights we dressed each other up, some nights we danced to dil hai mera deewana kya, some nights we oiled and braided each other’s hair, some nights we cooked meals together ( mostly aalisha and shivani) and some nights we shared stories as we held each other. and almost every night, we danced and danced and danced in the living room.
there were laughs, there were cries. these were the melodies of saheliya finding themselves in each other.
and once in a while, when you look to the side, you would find aalisha sleeping on the couch or in the uber.
i have been forever changed since that trip. right after the trip was over, i knew i had to kill random movements and empty the space for something else was calling my name.
my desire to create safe spaces for my chicas was stronger. i could see the result of what such spaces could do for us, what it had done for me. what this unconditional love can do for one. i knew it was something powerful and i had found my calling. my saheliya, my og chicas, chicas from the lands that are divided by borders, yet, we found each other in videsh among 1000s and 1000s of other people. maybe there’s something else binding us together, something that is stronger than the rules of the game, the laws of the empires, something that withstands the politics of dividing nations. maybe in the midst of all the hate surrounding us, there is hope for love.