the best thing would be to just close them: my eyes, i mean - but they are too dry, so even blinking hurts. it would be nice to close them. i don’t remember the last time i did. i know it has been over 24 hours. they feel like two little pieces of sandpaper someone has forgotten inside my head.

i want to sleep so i can dream.

dreams have been weird lately. it’s that fairy again. she looks dimmer every time i see her. i guess the sun is getting in her eyes too and she can’t sleep.

the last time i asked her, she said it was the well. she had read that if you go there consistently and whisper a secret into its depths, the water would eventually open up and sing to you: a beautiful song, a symphony so perfectly plotted that it would make her dance and rejoice. apparently, she would become one of us after hearing it.

a human.

she swears she would be my best friend then.

we would make each other bracelets and zines. we would watch hamilton together and talk about girls. the ones i am interested in, the ones she is insecure about. we would sit somewhere warm and make fun of people who take themselves too seriously. she’d steal my clothes and i’d steal hers. we’d have matching necklaces and rings that turn our fingers green because neither of us would take them off.

i tell her i will wait.

she has given up 80 secrets so far, in exchange for the warm enclosure of that song that would change her life forever. i don’t know what kind of secrets they are anymore. probably some are small. things she saw on the way to the well. a bird with one broken wing. the colour of someone’s dress. the fact that she once ate an entire cake because she didn’t know how to tell anyone she was sad.

maybe some are bigger. the kind you have to hold inside your mouth for a long time before they become words.

she told me every day she wakes up and walks to the well. she sits on the edge and whispers something into it. the well listens with great earnestness before going silent. it never interrupts her. it never tells her to stop. it simply takes everything she gives it and holds it somewhere deep inside.

she waits a few minutes. sometimes longer. then her shoulders slump and her glow dims. just a little. never enough for her to notice.

i have been meaning to tell her that humans don’t glow.

but i haven’t seen her in my dreams for a while. i haven’t slept in two days either, so maybe she is still there and i just can’t reach her.

i hope she is alive. i hope she realises the well is deep because it holds her stories.

i want to tell her. i really do. that she can keep the next one for herself. that she can leave before the light inside her becomes too small to find her way home.

but i too have spent myself far too much last night to let her know now.

so maybe tomorrow. if i sleep. if the sun stops hurting my eyes. if the curtains finally close properly.

god, what a pretentious sentence.

maybe that’s my first problem. i have a tendency to make everything sound prettier than it really is. maybe i’m a liar. maybe i’m a hypocrite. i spend so much of my time writing about love as though i’ve studied it, dissected it, arrived at some profound understanding of it. i write about strangers brushing hands in grocery stores and quiet drives home and the intimacy hidden inside ordinary afternoons. people send those pieces to each other as though i’ve uncovered some secret language. the truth is, i don’t know if i’ve ever understood love at all. maybe all i’ve ever understood is memory.

there are people i haven’t spoken to in years who still live with me. not really them, of course. not the versions that wake up with headaches or forget birthdays or interrupt people halfway through a sentence. not the versions that became cruel or indifferent or simply different. those people have gone on to become strangers. i don’t know them anymore.

only the good ones survived.

somewhere in my head there is a dollhouse. every person i have ever loved occupies a room. i have become incredibly particular about what enters those rooms. a perfect tuesday afternoon. a conversation that lasted until sunrise. the way someone instinctively reached for my hand while crossing the road. the first time they laughed so hard they snorted and immediately looked embarrassed. a grocery run that somehow became a date. a car ride where we missed three exits because neither of us noticed we were still talking.

those moments are admitted.

everything else is left outside.

i don’t think i preserve people anymore. i preserve weather. the exact warmth of that afternoon. the way the sunlight hit their cheek when they smiled. the version of me that still believed we would know each other forever. i pour glycerin over those moments and convince myself they can never decay. the strange thing about preservation is that it only works once something has already died.

maybe that should have been my first clue.

the remarkable thing about museums is that nothing inside them dies. nothing grows either.

a relationship of mine lasted four years. four years is an absurd amount of material for an archivist.

sometimes i imagine future historians excavating my memories the way archaeologists brush sand off ancient pottery. they’d find tiny fragments of us preserved perfectly. a receipt from a grocery store. a photograph where neither of us knew we were being photographed. the afternoon we got lost on purpose. the morning sunlight spilling through cheap curtains. they would hold these fragments under sterile laboratory lights and marvel at how warm they still feel.

“This,” they would write in their papers, “is what humans were capable of when they loved each other.”

they would never know that i edited the exhibition.

they would never know i removed every slammed door, every conversation where we couldn’t stand each other, every silence that stretched just a little too long, every apology that came too late, every version of us that wasn’t beautiful enough to survive.

history has always belonged to whoever curated the archive. i made sure mine looked holy.

i am a hypocrite.

i tell people to love each other fully while only allowing myself to remember the edited version of what that love looked like. i preach honesty while quietly cropping reality until it fits inside a prettier frame. i tell myself i’m remembering people kindly. maybe i’m just remembering them selectively. maybe that’s the same thing. maybe it isn’t.

lately i’ve realised something that unsettles me even more. i don’t think i wait for beautiful moments anymore, i think i engineer them.

not maliciously. at least i don’t think so. that would make me sound manipulative. i hope i’m not manipulative. god, i hope i’m not.

but i know exactly which questions make people forget themselves. i know how to make someone feel like they’re the only person in the room. i know how to create just enough safety that they loosen their grip on themselves for a second. it’s frightening how often it works. someone sings. someone laughs with their whole body. someone confesses something they’ve never told another soul. someone starts looking at me like they’ve known me much longer than they actually have. and before they’ve even finished becoming that version of themselves, i’ve already built them a room.

sometimes i wonder if i enjoy collecting the moment more than i enjoy knowing the person.

there.

i said it.

i hate that sentence.

because i don’t know whether it makes me deeply sentimental or deeply narcissistic. i don’t know whether i love people or whether i love collecting evidence that, for one fleeting moment, they loved me. those feel like two entirely different things.

the older i get, the less real life resembles my dollhouse.

adult relationships are remarkably... reasonable. people have calendars. they need alone time. they don’t abandon meetings because they suddenly want to see you.

nobody drives across the city at two in the morning because you said you missed them. nobody climbs onto tables because it would make you laugh. nobody dances in the rain because they’ll catch a cold and have work tomorrow. people communicate. they establish boundaries. they tell you they’ll see you next thursday, and they actually mean next thursday.

all of this is probably healthy. so why does healthy feel so unbearably small?

sometimes i wonder if i’m simply waiting for something that only exists when you’re a teenager. maybe youth manufactures intensity because nobody has anything to lose yet. maybe adulthood isn’t less romantic. maybe it’s simply less dramatic.

maybe i’ve mistaken chaos for chemistry for so long that stability now feels emotionally flat.

or maybe, and this possibility terrifies me just as much: i’m looking in the wrong direction. maybe i simply haven’t met the people who make ordinary feel extraordinary. because i know they exist.

i’ve watched old couples argue over tomatoes in a grocery store as though they were flirting. i’ve seen someone absentmindedly straighten another person’s collar without interrupting their conversation. i’ve seen one person quietly carry the other’s shopping bags without either of them acknowledging it.

i’ve seen marriages built from tiny gestures so ordinary they almost disappear.

surely that is love too. so why doesn’t it stir something inside me the way my museum does?

is it because i’ve spent too long standing inside temperature-controlled rooms, looking at preserved warmth behind glass? have i become so accustomed to perfect memories that i no longer recognise imperfect love when it’s standing right in front of me?

or am I doing myself a terrible disservice? maybe the problem isn’t the dollhouse. maybe the problem is that i’ve been trying to build rooms for people who were never meant to become homes.

i wish i knew which answer was true.

because if it’s the first, then i have spent years ruining perfectly good people by comparing them to ghosts i’ve embalmed myself. i’ve been asking living, breathing humans to compete with memories that are no longer allowed to age. how could anyone win against that?

but if it’s the second, then maybe i’m abandoning something beautiful before it ever has the chance to become beautiful. maybe I’ve convinced myself adulthood is supposed to feel ordinary because i’ve simply been surrounding myself with people who make ordinary feel empty instead of safe.

i fucking don’t know.

i wish i did.

this is the part where essays are supposed to arrive somewhere. they’re supposed to tie themselves into a neat little bow and offer the reader a lesson, some reassuring conclusion that makes all the uncertainty worth it.

i don’t have one.

all i know is that every night i find myself wandering through this little dollhouse in my head, dusting shelves that don’t need dusting, visiting rooms whose occupants have long since moved out, wondering whether i should finally lock the front door and let the whole thing collapse.

or whether i’m still waiting for someone who doesn’t belong in a museum at all.

someone who might finally convince me that a real home with all its creaking floors, unfinished conversations, ordinary tuesdays and inevitable disappointments is far more beautiful than anything i’ve ever managed to preserve behind glass.

and frankly, the latter scares the living crap out of me.

the system sees it as a breakthrough. aha. finally got them. finally extracted the truth.

because why else would an innocent person give up if they were innocent? why would they stop fighting if they were right? no ordinary person would, right?

right?

i wonder what that moment looks like:

is it in a courtroom?

being asked the same questions over and over again by trained professionals who know exactly how to twist words, pull apart timelines, and poke holes in stories that once felt simple. stories that happened to you. stories you lived.

why can’t things just be straightforward? why do my words need to be dissected until they no longer resemble what i said? why are my memories treated like evidence but everyone else’s assumptions treated like fact?

why is there always some hidden agenda waiting to be uncovered?

why must a person’s entire character be dragged into the room before their story is allowed to enter?

why must there always be an ulterior motive?

the lawyer is human. the witness is human. the accused is human. yet somehow only one of them is expected to prove it.

or maybe it happens later.

after the conviction.

after the verdict has been spoken aloud and turned into something permanent. when they are thrown into a place that smells of bleach, rust, and hopelessness. but not before the strip search. not before every last ounce of dignity is peeled away. their clothes pooled at their feet. their belongings taken. their name reduced to a number.

standing under fluorescent lights while strangers inspect every fold of skin as if humanity itself could be hidden there.

is that when they break?

when they realise that innocence offers no protection from humiliation? do they think this is the consequence of not fighting hard enough? do they replay every conversation in their head, wondering where they could have spoken louder, explained better, cried less?

do they close their eyes to stop the panic from swallowing them whole? do they think about happier things?

a sunny afternoon in a park. grass warm beneath their back. a loved one lying beside them. the kind of laughter that leaves your stomach hurting. the kind of happiness you never think to appreciate because you assume it will always be there.

i wonder if they stare at the floor. i wonder if they try not to cry. i wonder if they tell themselves this is temporary. that someone will realise a mistake has been made.

that this will all be fixed. because surely it has to be. surely.

but then the clothes are gone. the dignity is gone. and the only thing left is waiting.

maybe the breaking happens afterwards.

when they are led into a cell for the first time. the door closes. not loudly. just mechanically. a sound that means nothing to the guard making rounds. a sound that means everything to the person hearing it from the inside.

i wonder if they sit immediately or remain standing. i wonder if they touch the walls. if they look at the bed.

if they calculate how many steps it takes to cross the room because there is suddenly nothing else to do.

do they imagine their loved ones going about their day?

their mother making tea. their friends sending messages into a phone that won’t be answered. their cat waiting by the door. do they replay ordinary memories because they don’t know when they’ll get another one?

or maybe the breaking happens when the media arrives.

when twelve microphones are shoved into your face. when every breath, every pause, every stammer becomes evidence. when cameras zoom in close enough to catch your blinking. when entire panels of strangers spend hours discussing who you are without ever having met you. when your worst day becomes somebody else’s evening entertainment.

an anchor points at your photograph. a red banner screams accusations beneath your name. hundreds of thousands of people begin forming opinions before you’ve even finished your sentence. and suddenly there are more people talking about your life than there are people actually living it. your name stops belonging to you.

when it becomes a story. a debate. a hashtag. a verdict.

maybe that’s when it happens.

not in the courtroom. not during the strip search. not when the cell door closes.

maybe it happens the moment they realise that the truth no longer belongs to them. that it has been repeated and rewritten so many times that even they struggle to recognise it. because there has to be a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from screaming into a room full of people who have already decided what they heard.

and i think that’s the part that scares me most. not prison. not punishment. not even the sentence itself.

but the possibility that a person can be doubted for so long, questioned so relentlessly, and forced to justify their own humanity so many times that one day they stop asking to be believed.

they simply lower their head and say yes. not because it’s true. not because they are guilty.

but because they are tired.

because there is only so many times a person can repeat the truth before it begins to sound foreign even to them. and maybe that is what breaking really looks like.

not a confession.

just exhaustion wearing the mask of one.

not in a loud, cinematic way. no violins swelling, no perfectly timed confessions. just quietly. like something that would settle into my life and stay there. like fog in the mountains that doesn’t ask for permission before it arrives.

i had it all figured out, or at least, i thought i did.

a house in the mountains. small, a little uneven. wooden floors that creak under soft steps. a balcony that opens into green and nothingness. a remote job that lets me exist more than it demands. mornings that begin slow. always slow. the kind where the cold air brushes against your face like it knows you. coffee? sure. i’ll brew a pot. i imagine waiting for it. not scrolling, not rushing. just standing there while something warms up.

three cats. always three. i don’t know why. one would sleep near my head, one at my feet, one pretending it doesn’t need me at all. they’d shed everywhere. i’d complain, but gently. like it’s part of the ritual. fuzzy socks. just enough warmth. never too much.

an open jeep. old, slightly unreliable. the kind that hums before it starts. i’d drive it down to the small city center. people would know me, not too well, just enough.

“banana bread again?” i’d laugh. a little embarrassed. “yeah. forgot to eat the bananas again.” they’d shake their heads. hand me my groceries. i’d let them keep the change.

wait. you were supposed to be there too.

it’s strange how the dream shifts when i say that. like it pauses. like something inside it resists. i remember you correcting my i’s to we.so casually. like it was obvious.

“we could do this.”

“our house.”

“our mornings.”

i didn’t think much of it then. i remember agreeing. smiling even. it felt small. harmless. i thought, what’s the difference? i didn’t realise how heavy “we” can become. how it settles into places that were built for something softer.

“our cats.” you didn’t like cats.

“our kids.” kids. i didn’t want children. i knew that. quietly, but firmly. but i didn’t say it out loud. i let it pass, like an awkward silence you pretend didn’t happen. i think i let him walk into a life i had built for myself. slowly. gently. like he wasn’t rearranging anything. but he was. and i let him. i’ve always done that: made space. softened myself. turned my wants into something easier to hold.

but this time, it scared me. because it could have actually happened. it wasn’t just a thought anymore. it was becoming something real. something that might’ve stayed. and on paper, it was perfect.

coffee mugs. cats. mountains. a shoulder to lean on.

a shoulder.

it’s funny. not partner. not person. just a shoulder. something to rest on. something that exists for comfort. something that doesn’t interrupt.

a hand to hold at parties. a torso to hug at night. a presence. a shape. a warmth. not a life.

—

he had nice biceps.

that’s what i noticed first. the way his sleeves fit. the way he carried himself like he knew he was being looked at. i slipped into that version of me again: the giggly one. the one with soft eyes and half-meanings.

he called them peacock eyes. said they were rare. beautiful. i let him believe that version of me.

he wanted dinners. real ones. tables, conversations, being seen together.

i realised i didn’t want that. he was kind. he was good.

i ghosted him. quietly.

—

he had nice shoulders.

broad, easy to lean into. the kind you imagine fitting into photographs. there was something stable about them. something dependable.

and abs. of course. he was an athlete. it made sense. tall, too. too tall. six-six. the kind that makes you feel small without trying.

i told him stories about my life, but only the ones that sounded neat. i stayed a little shy. a little distant. didn’t make eye contact. always had my hair open so he could tuck those few hair strands behind my ear. i would let him.

he leaned closer. bingo.

one week in, he wanted me to see his hometown. one week in, he wanted me in his clothes. in his spaces. in his life. one week in, he had already built a we.

i couldn’t breathe inside it. i blocked him.

—

there was someone with nice hands.

long fingers. steady. the kind that hold things carefully. like they understand weight. like they’ve practiced not breaking things.

he traced patterns on my wrist once, absentmindedly. like it didn’t mean anything. like it was just something his body did when it liked being near someone. i felt it for hours after.

i got my nails done the next day. not for him. i told myself that. but i chose a color i knew he knew would look good wrapped around his fingers. something soft. something that would make him look longer when i held his hand.

he invited me to his friend’s place for poker. i said yes too quickly. i am absurdly good at reading people. it’s a skill i pretend is intuition. it’s not. it’s practice. it’s years of watching, adjusting, becoming what’s needed in the moment.

i looked him right in the eye before calling out his cards. i was right. again. and again. i led the table without trying to. or maybe i was trying. i can never tell the difference anymore.

he watched me differently after that.

i held his gaze longer than necessary. let my voice settle into something firmer. slower. more certain. strong eye contact. stronger opinions.an air of authority i know how to wear like it belongs to me. i could be just that.

whatever that needed to be.

that night, he talked. about plans. timelines. where he saw himself in five years. the kind of future that sounds neat when you say it out loud. stable. predictable. safe.and then, where he saw me. fitting into that. that didn’t land, it lodged. like something small and sharp under the skin.

i smiled anyway. nodded in the right places. let him think i was listening the way he wanted me to. he held my hand.i let him. a little longer than i wanted to. a little longer than i should have. just enough for it to mean something to him.

i left in the middle of the night. no note. no message. no explanation.

i remember looking at my nails under the streetlight. the color looked different outside. duller. almost unnecessary.

i wondered if he noticed i was gone immediately.i hope it confused him.

—

i don’t think i’m heartless. i think i feel things very deeply, just not for very long. or maybe not in the direction they’re supposed to go.i don’t fall in love with people. i fall in love with moments. with the way someone looks at me before they know me. with the version of myself that exists in that exact window of time: untouched, undefined, still entirely mine.

i keep thinking there’s a version of me that stays. that sits through the dinner. that says the hard thing out loud. that corrects the “we” before it settles into something permanent. that doesn’t leave in the middle of the night like she’s escaping a fire she started herself. but every time i get close to her, i hesitate. because staying means being seen past the parts i curate.

and i don’t know what happens after that.

hello old friend,

it’s been a year. a whole year of not writing here. i keep staring at this empty space like it’s going to judge me for how easily i let the habit slip. i used to come here so naturally like muscle memory. now it feels unfamiliar. like trying to write with my non-dominant hand.

fuck, i’m a little scared i can’t do this anymore. but i guess that’s not new either the fear right before starting something that once felt like home.

anyway.

here’s the recap. or at least the version of it i’m ready to admit.

i moved cities. packed my life into boxes. i started a job: a real one, the kind i used to romanticize when i was still in college, imagining glass buildings and coffee breaks that felt important.

i broke up with my boyfriend. four years. it feels strange writing that so plainly. like it should take up more space. like there should be a pause after it. but there isn’t. just a quiet kind of ending that i’m still learning how to sit with.

i lived my great american dream. the one i used to talk about like it was inevitable. if you’ve been here long enough, you know. it happened. and it was everything and nothing all at once. i grew out my hair. which feels insignificant until you realise how long it takes. how patient you have to be with something that doesn’t change overnight.

i installed hinge.
i uninstalled hinge.

i went on a one week long trip with my now ex. which sounds more poetic than it actually was. or maybe it was poetic in the wrong way. like revisiting a place that used to feel like home and realising it doesn’t anymore.

i made a lot of yogurt bowls. too many, probably. they all looked perfect. they all tasted the same.

so here it is. the yap. after two whole months of silence.

i told myself this would be a weekly ritual. something grounding. like watering a plant or lighting a candle. but clearly i abandoned that plan the way i abandon most things: gently, unintentionally, with full belief that i’d return soon. i didn’t. now the guilt has crusted over, and i don’t know where to begin so maybe i’ll just start with the loudest thing.

i finished university.

last month, actually. the kind of milestone that should’ve felt thunderous like a door closing, or maybe opening but instead, it felt quiet. anticlimactic. the results aren’t out yet, so technically i’m still hanging in limbo. i know i’ll pass. that’s not the concern. the concern is how unreal it all feels. like i’m floating above the end credits of a movie i wasn’t ready to stop watching.

we threw one last big party. all of us together for maybe the last time. there was music and hugs and tears and drama. people hugging too tight or not at all. someone stormed out. someone cried in the bathroom. someone kissed someone they shouldn't have. it felt holy. like grief dressed up as celebration.

and then the hangover hit: not the alcohol kind, but the kind that stays long after the music fades. the kind where you pack up your room and your life and drive back home with your entire personality stuffed into duffel bags. and now here i am, back in my old room, sleeping under a ceiling fan that sounds exactly the same as it did when i was fifteen. except now, i’ve lived an entire lifetime in four years. fallen in love. failed classes. grown into someone i liked. and suddenly i’m expected to go back to being the version of me that used to ask for permission to go downstairs after 9pm.

it’s disorienting. like i travelled time, but backwards.

and in the middle of that emotional soup, something else happened. one of my pieces blew up. you’ve probably read it. it’s why most of you are here. i’m still not sure how to feel about it. for the longest time i craved validation. i told myself that if enough people liked my work, i’d feel better. more secure. more sure. and then it happened: likes, shares, DMs from strangers saying kind things and suddenly i was terrified. what if the next thing i write doesn’t live up to it? what if they all leave? what if i’ve already peaked and i’m just spiraling now?

and just three days ago, it happened again. a tweet i posted got picked up by some meme pages. turned into reels. reposted by strangers. suddenly i had this boom of followers. the old me would’ve been ecstatic. finally, some form of recognition. a small internet voice. but instead, i panicked. what if my family sees it? what if someone from school does? what if i’m seen too much? it’s funny how visibility was once the dream, and now it’s the thing i’m hiding from. maybe fame was never the fantasy maybe freedom was.

but i didn’t stop creating. i couldn’t. i picked up a camera: well, borrowed one. my brother’s old go pro. i wanted to buy my own, but i’m in that weird space where i have a job offer but no actual income yet. august is when it starts. the real job. big city. big firm. big pay (for a fresher, at least). everyone around me is proud.

i’m proud too somewhere deep beneath the nerves and spreadsheets.

but the logistics? terrifying. budgeting for the first time. figuring out rent, furniture, groceries, wi-fi, water filters, cutlery. googling things like “how many watts does a fridge use” and “what does semi-furnished actually mean.” every broker i’ve spoken to so far feels a little too slick, a little too eager. i don’t think i can finalise anything from here which means i’ll probably need to take a solo trip to hyderabad just to house-hunt. maybe book a hotel. maybe cry in it. the adulting feels endless. like a long list i wasn’t prepared to write, let alone cross off.

but the camera? that’s something i do want to do. i want to vlog. i don’t know about what yet. just... life, i guess. where i walk, what i eat, what books i carry in my tote bag. i want to record the in-betweens. the silence before laughter. the messy closets. the rain on windows. maybe it’s not about being seen. maybe it’s about seeing. about remembering. maybe i just want to become the girl who captures everything for no reason other than it makes her feel more alive.

and somewhere between all this, my boyfriend and i are building an app. i know, random. but not really. we’ve been working quietly on it, researching, designing, sending out google forms for market research. we’ve spoken to a few founders, asked questions like “how do you start?” and “how do you not mess it all up?” we’re just two computer science students. no business background. no MBAs. just an idea and the foolish courage to follow it.

if you’re someone who’s built something in the fintech space(especially from scratch),please reach out. we’d love to learn from you.

and while all this has been happening, the weather has turned strange. bangalore, in june, is supposed to be warm. sticky. unforgiving. instead, it’s been raining every evening. mist and grey clouds and the kind of breeze that makes you want to stay in bed longer than you should. all our winter clothes are out again. i think i’m catching a cold. probably from the smoothie bowls. frozen fruit is romantic until it ruins your throat. but they’re just so pretty. and i keep eating them like i don’t know better.

anyway, this is me now.
post-university. pre-job. mid-transition.
somewhere between relief and restlessness.

thank you for reading this far.
i don’t know what next week holds.
but if it’s interesting, or confusing, or a little tender
i’ll write about it.

just to remember that i was here.
and i was trying.

really, truly, trying.

and i really liked this idea. not just because i love a good theme, but because this one felt... bigger. like something inside me needed this. a safe space for women and the queers to express their sexuality wholly, completely, and freely. like the dance floor could be a little altar and this party could be a tiny revolution.

i imagined it down to the scent: jasmine, sweat, spilled rum, cigarette smoke clinging to chiffon. red bindis stuck to foreheads and forearms. maroon lipstick kissed onto cigarette butts. someone in a saree with their blouse purposely missing. someone in a blouse with no saree to be found. fake sindoor dripped across collarbones like blood. kajal messily re-applied in the bathroom mirror while talking about their ex who still calls them when he’s drunk. someone wearing alta as eyeshadow. bangles jingling to the beat of kajra re played at half speed.

no uncles allowed, obviously. only aunties. and not the neighborhood gossiping kind, but the ones we became when we unlearned politeness. the friend who’s finally thriving post-divorce. the one who dated a married man and doesn’t feel sorry about it. the virgo rising bestie who came in with a glass casserole dish. your favourite DJ who moonlights as a tarot reader and always shows up with payal(anklets) and rage. girls who used to whisper about their desires now talking loudly into the mic, requesting tip tip barsa paani and meaning every word of it.

it is not a party anymore. it is a fantasy. a reclamation. because “savitri”, as every moral science textbook taught me, was the ideal wife. she outwitted death to save her husband. what they don’t say is that she never even got a thank you. “slutty savitri”, on the other hand, is tired. she’s not in the mood to save anyone anymore, least of all a man. she’s tired of the good girl narrative, of suffering quietly, of sacrificing first and crying later. she just wants to be held by herself, by another girl, by the bass of the music vibrating under her feet. she wants to take shots in a lehenga and kiss a girl named tara(star in hindi) on the balcony. maybe she wants to talk about how her sexuality isn't a shameful secret to tuck inside a sindoor box. maybe she wants to moan loudly during sex without hearing the word sanskaar echo in her head.

and look, i know it sounds silly. slutty savitri. it’s just a tweet. just a party idea. but something about it feels heavier. like all the women i’ve grown from and the ones i’ve yet to become are all sitting in a circle passing a chillum and taking turns telling stories. about that one boy they were told to marry. about that one girl they were told to forget. about the bruises, the compromises, the roles they played, the performances they perfected.

and maybe that’s what this party is about. not just reclaiming sexuality, but rewriting the rituals. not rejecting culture, but remixing it. imagine aarti plates next to ashtrays. gajra tucked behind ears and tucked into bras. imagine slow dancing in the kitchen while someone fries pakoras and hums baahon mein chale aao.

imagine a room where everyone looks like sin and divinity rolled into one. with the red lights and masala fries and 90s AR Rahman playing from someone’s cracked bluetooth speaker. and they unhook their shame like a blouse that’s too tight. they eat, drink, dance. they tell each other: “you look hot.” they mean it. imagine the freedom of it. to be too much. too loud. too flirty. too sad. too queer. too single. too drunk. too heartbroken. too in love. imagine the tenderness in that excess.

i WANT people to show up in sarees and mini skirts. i WANT to hear poems being read in the balcony and bad karaoke in the hall. i WANT mango pickle stains on velvet cushions. i WANT someone to cry in the bathroom, and another to hold their hand without asking for the full story. i WANT a playlist that oscillates between choli ke peeche and lana del rey. i WANT girls kissing girls in front of a photo of goddess kali.

i want chaos. but curated.

and for one night, slutty savitri lives. not in spite of culture, but in full dialogue with it. not running from the weight of tradition, but grinding on it in six-inch heels. and maybe that’s what healing looks like: a room full of women and queers dancing in whatever is left after the guilt has been rinsed out.

i still haven’t picked the date yet. but i know i want it to be near a full moon. i want her to watch us - tipsy, glittering, completely unafraid. i want her to know we’re okay now. we’re finally okay.

everything i had ever learned about america growing up was entirely against my will. it seeped into my consciousness like sunlight through the cracks, through its games, its shows, its music, and its movies. i never asked to be taught any of it. but it was everywhere.

my elder brother would switch the channel from takeshi’s castle to disney shows, and i would groan as the suite life of zack and cody or hannah montana took over the screen. but eventually, i gave in. lizzie mcguire with her awkward charm. alex russo casting sarcastic spells. everything was bright, neat, and emotionally solved by the twenty-minute mark.

back then, i didn’t even know that san andreas was a real place; i just knew my brother played it endlessly on his PC, and i’d hear the low, gritty sound of early 2000s hip-hop bleed into the hallway. i couldn’t pronounce the name, but it was already becoming a part of me. i remember when baby by justin bieber had just come out; another sudden inheritance from the american dream. it didn’t feel like a choice. it felt like osmosis.

those early years planted something i didn’t understand. it wasn’t until the golden age of youtube somewhere between 2012 and 2016 that this idea started to grow roots. the era of back-to-school hauls, DIY room decor, PewDiePie, Marzia, Bethany Mota, and the ice bucket challenge. i was at the perfect age for influence. it was all so impossibly shiny. and somehow, in that whirlpool of vlog cameras and locker organization videos, i stumbled across wattpad.

wattpad stories were their own kind of seduction. they were almost all set in america. american teens with american high schools. proms and cheerleaders. football games. slow dances. red plastic cups. confessions under bleachers. and god, lockers. those magical little rectangles of metal that somehow held dreams, secrets, spare clothes, makeup kits, and enough snacks to feed a small village.

i wanted one so badly. a locker to decorate, a best friend who waited by it, a crush who’d lean on it and ask if i was coming to the game.

meanwhile, i was attending a conservative private school where uniforms were stitched to regulation, where the girls sat on one side and the boys on another. no one danced. if anyone had asked me to prom, it would’ve required a letter of permission from the principal. our classes were all in the same room. there was no walking from locker to locker, only different teachers walking into the same space. and i followed the rules because that’s what you do when you’re a kid trying to be good in the wrong story.

but america? it looked like the right story.

as i grew older and some say wiser, my dream evolved. i discovered gilmore girls. pitch perfect. euphoria. now my vision of america wasn’t just about school dances and lockers. it was uni clubs and study groups. it was working a shift at the bookstore on campus, or laying on the grass between lectures, highlighters in hand, coffee in thermos, laughter in the background. it was huge libraries during finals week, soft jazz in headphones, a five-dollar coffee and a twenty-five page essay due at midnight. it was sitting in lecture halls with giant screens and professors who wore tweed and told stories.

it was community, independence, and rhythm.

it’s strange to admit how much of my imagined coming-of-age was shaped by a world i was never a part of. a geography i could point to on a map but never call home. it was always somewhere else, happening to someone else but i felt it. i held it in my chest as though it belonged to me. and maybe, for a while, it did.

i finished university last week. my campus didn’t look like the ones in my dreams, but i loved it anyway. we had our own little patches of grass. we had chai instead of coffee, stairwells instead of libraries, cheap apartments instead of dorms. and yet i mourn the girl i never got to be. the one in denim jackets and combat boots, skateboarding to class with a hotdog in hand, writing essays in cafés that offered student discounts, drinking redbull and wearing pajama pants to the library. i mourn not for what i lacked, but for what i imagined so vividly that it almost feels like memory.

i know now that the american dream has its own ghosts. tuition debts. job scarcity. healthcare nightmares. and i’m not sure i would’ve fared any better there. in fact, i may have struggled more: drowned in a system that looks glossy only from the outside. but logic and longing don’t always live in the same room. because even now, when i scroll through old youtube videos, or hear the word “prom,” or see a row of gray lockers in a tv show it tugs at me. not painfully, but persistently. like a version of myself waving from a different timeline. like a photograph of someone i never was but still grieve for.

sometimes it hits me in the smallest ways. a scene in a movie. a locker slamming shut. a character getting ready for senior prom while her friends gather in a bedroom full of string lights and polaroids. that life still feels close enough to touch, but never close enough to hold. i never lived it, and yet i miss it. i mourn it. not because i needed it to survive, but because it shaped the outlines of what i thought growing up would look like.

i’ve made peace with it, though. with this quiet ache that visits sometimes. i’ve learned that the dreams we outgrow don’t disappear. they just shed their skins, slip into other forms. they linger in old notebooks, in songs we once played on loop, in half-finished drafts of stories we thought we’d complete someday. they sit at the back of our minds, like extras in a play we never got to audition for, watching gently, waiting for a nod. and though i won’t be dancing at homecoming or decorating a parking spot with glitter paint and inside jokes, i still carry those stories with me. they remind me of who i wanted to be, and how deeply i wanted. and that wanting, earnest, wide-eyed, and a little naive, was never useless.

because the truth is, even if i didn’t live that dream, it gave me one. it gave me a version of freedom, of rebellion, of selfhood. it taught me to imagine beyond the walls i was raised in. it taught me that wanting something, even if you never get it, still counts. it stretches your mind. it opens your heart. and in the end, that’s where every dream begins in the quiet miracle of imagining something different, something more, something yours.

so no, i won’t hang fairy lights in a dorm room. i won’t scribble my name on a locker door. but i will still believe in the magic of starting over, of moving forward with pieces of dreams that once were.

and if that dream begins in imagination, then maybe it never really ends.

vol 1

i mourn you
not the stranger i pass in daylight,
but the boy i once loved in the quiet.

the one who stammered over syllables,
who laughed with the corners of his eyes,
who didn't always know what to say,
but said it anyway—just to reach me.

i mourn the boy
who taught me what lyrics meant
not just in words,
but in the way he looked at me
when the chorus hit.

i mourn the hands that reached for mine
across chipped bakery tables,
the frosting on our lips,
the warmth of two forks,
the shared sweetness
of something so small, yet sacred.

i mourn the boy
who drank from the same glass,
fought the world with me and for me,
as if love was a rebellion
and we were in it together.

i mourn what you’ve taken
not gifts or promises,
but something more brutal:
my belief in soulmates.

i mourn what you’ve become.
the armor. the silence.
the shadow of the person i once knew.

and most of all,
i mourn what i’ve lost
not just you,
but the version of me
that existed
when you still loved me back.

and maybe the cruelest thing of all is knowing
that we can never go back
not because of pride
or the miles between us,
but because you are no longer him
and i am no longer her.

time changes people.
life shapes us in ways
we don’t always notice until
it’s too late to go back.

sometimes it makes us better.
sometimes it leaves us bitter.
and sometimes it just builds walls
so high that neither of us
can see who we were
on the other side of them.

i mourn that too
the quiet, unchangeable truth
that even if we found each other again,
we wouldn’t know how to hold
what once felt effortless.

and so i mourn, every day,
that this is what it has come to.

vol 2

i mourn you.
not the you i see now
buttoned-up, sharp-tongued, distant.
i mourn the boy who once got awkward when our knees touched under the table,
who fumbled over his words but meant every one of them.

i mourn the boy who made me listen to songs twice,
once with him,
and once with his meaning stitched into every lyric.
the boy who sat across from me at a tiny bakery table
and grinned with frosting on his lip,
who believed a shared dessert could heal a long week.

i mourn the boy who looked at me like i was a planet,
the only one in his sky,
and not like i was furniture in a room he’s lived in too long.

you’re still here
but god, you’re not the same.
your silence cuts deeper now,
not because you don’t speak,
but because when you do,
your voice doesn’t sound like home anymore.

and maybe it's not your fault.
maybe life really does do this.
it pulls at people like tides,
reshapes them with hands you never see coming.
it turns softness into armor.
tenderness into strategy.

i know.
i know we all change.
and maybe some people are meant to outgrow the version of themselves you once loved.
but still—i mourn.

i mourn not just the boy you were,
but the us we only got to be in that small pocket of time.
because no matter how long i sit beside you now,
i know we can’t go back.
not really.

and every day,
i carry the weight of that quiet funeral
of what never truly ended,
but will never truly return.

Subscribe now

i couldn’t decide which version i liked more, and i didn’t have the heart to scrap either. so here they are, side by side. these pieces have been sitting with me for a long time now, quietly waiting for a moment to breathe again.

tonight, at 4am, while mana ke hum yaar nahi played softly in the background, something in me stirred that familiar ache, the kind that only old memories or older drafts can bring. it made me want to revisit these, give them shape again, and store them somewhere they won’t get lost.

so this is me doing just that. preserving little fragments of a feeling i once held so close.

this fear, like most that take root so deeply, started early. i was only six years old when my school, with the kind of breezy enthusiasm that only adults can muster when making decisions for children, introduced swimming as a mandatory subject. every saturday morning, over a hundred students would pile into a large bus, our swim bags slung over our shoulders, and we would be driven to the local community pool for two hour lessons. participation was not optional, and to my six-year-old self, it would soon feel less like an opportunity and more like a sentence.

the community pool is etched into my memory with surprising clarity even now. there were three pools lined up: two long adult pools positioned one after the other and a small baby pool to the side. changing rooms and showers flanked one end of the space, and a few sun-worn chairs with a lone lifeguard occupied the other. the facility was humble; for just five rupees, anyone could swim for an hour. i imagine the school must have been a prized customer, bringing in a hundred children every week, probably securing instructors at no extra cost.

but this story is not about the economics of a local pool house. it is about my first swimming lesson and it is just about to begin.

on our very first day, we were each given a white floating belt and asked to write our names and class on it with thick black markers. i can still see us sitting cross-legged on the cement floor, small heads bent over big letters, scribbling out our identity in smudged ink. afterward, we were herded into the baby pool, instructed to clutch the edge tightly and practice kicking. it was a simple enough task, but to a child, the water was already a foreign world.

i was surprisingly good at it followed with another girl from a different grade and twenty minutes later, the two of us were deemed “ready” and moved to the adult pool. i remember feeling proud as we crossed over, floaty belts strapped tightly to our waists, bobbing like oversized marshmallows.

the instructor was kind in the way you hope strangers in charge of your safety would be. he held my hands and pulled me gently through the water, encouraging me to kick, to move, to trust the water. he chatted with me casually to distract me from the task, though the words of our conversation have long since faded from memory. what remains is the feeling: how i filled the space between us with endless, nervous chatter, too busy speaking to notice when he slowly let go of my hands.

for a brief, glorious moment, i swam on my own. floating, moving forward without realizing that I was doing it without assistance. it was exhilarating.

the instructor asked me to swim two laps across the pool, back and forth. i remember finishing half of it before stopping at the edge, breathless, chest heaving. i took a big gulp of air and started again. somewhere along the way, my arms and legs started cramping up. they weren’t used to this sort of exercise.

i remember thinking, maybe I should stop. just for a second. let them rest.

so i did.
i stopped swimming.
smack in the middle of the pool.
my body went limp from exhaustion.
my head, which had been bobbing above the surface, tilted under the water.

suddenly, the world became blue and blurry and cruel. i still remember the overwhelming rush of chlorine burning my eyes and flooding my nose. panic seized me immediately. i must have been under for less than ten seconds, but it felt like a lifetime—like i had been transported to a dimension where breathing wasn’t allowed, and i wasn’t welcome.

the instructor, thankfully vigilant, pulled me out. in a dizzy blur, i found myself sitting at the edge of the pool, coughing, crying, terrified. i was confused—one moment confident, the next completely helpless—and that confusion cemented itself in my mind in a way that no adult reassurances could undo.

after that experience, fear became my closest companion every saturday morning. i would fake illnesses, forget swim gear, invent stomach aches, all just to avoid returning to that pool. eventually, the teachers tired of the excuses and let me sit out.

it was a silent surrender on both sides.

years later, my complicated relationship with water found a strange new dimension when i discovered the television show River Monsters. hosted by Jeremy Wade, the show documented the search for giant, predatory freshwater fish. it was horrifying and fascinating all at once. i became obsessed, waking up early during summer vacations just to watch episodes, each more terrifying than the last.

the fear of drowning merged with a new fear: being dragged under not just by the water, but by something alive lurking within it. i would spend hours on my brother’s computer, looking up images of sharks—some thrashing through bloodied waters, others gliding silently and ominously through the deep blue. sometimes i would stare so long and hard at the screen that i would spook myself, certain that if i turned around, a giant shark would be waiting in the shadows behind me, grinning.

it is strange to think about it now, how that initial fear evolved but never truly left. today, i live near the coast. every time i walk past the beach and watch surfers conquer wave after wave, meeting the sea not with fear but with joyous defiance. they do not cower; they dance. they trust the sea not to betray them, or perhaps they accept that betrayal is possible but choose to leap anyway.

and me? i still hesitate at the water’s edge. sometimes i dip my feet in, feeling the cold saltwater tug at my ankles, before quickly retreating. it is not even conscious anymore; it is muscle memory, a cautiousness that years have not erased.

there is an old saying that if you stare at the sea long enough, it will pull you in. i believe it. but perhaps the sea does not call everyone with promises of adventure. perhaps it also calls those who have unfinished conversations with it, unresolved fears that linger like mist above the waves.

i do not know if i will ever learn to trust the water again. i do not know if i will ever meet the ocean eye to eye the way the surfers do. but i do know that fear and respect are not so different. i may never master the sea, but i can still honor it, its vastness, its power, its reminder of how small and fragile we all are.

for now, i will keep walking alongside the sea, a cautious friend instead of a reckless foe. i will let it whisper its ancient stories to me, and perhaps, one day, when the fear has softened enough, i will finally answer its call—not to conquer it, but simply to be part of it.

i think all of us, at some point or another, test the people we love. sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes it’s not. sometimes it’s conscious, sometimes it happens in the way we reach out a little less to see if they’ll still reach back.

but movies? movies know how to dramatize this in ways that feel both absurd and real. like in Barfi, where he subtly cuts into the base of a lamp post and stands a few steps away from it with the girl he loves. he doesn’t say a word. he just waits, knowing it’s going to fall any second, wanting to see: will she run away and save herself? or will she stay close to him and take the hit together? and when she stays, when she doesn’t move, it’s like something clicks for him. proof. a moment of quiet reassurance that he is truly loved.

now, is that healthy? probably not. is it manipulative? debatably. but is it human? fuck yeah.

i think it’s in our nature to look for proof. not because we don’t believe love exists, but because sometimes we’re just so desperate to be sure. sure that we’re not the only ones feeling this deeply. sure that we’re safe. sure that someone would choose us even in chaos.

my version of the lamp post test doesn’t involve something quite as cinematic. it disguises itself in the form of a car. let me explain.

two people. a car. 1000 km. 12 hours on the road.

if you can survive that kind of journey with someone. just the two of you, no distractions, no screens, no third parties keeping the conversation alive, then maybe, just maybe, that’s your kind of love.

because let’s be honest. a 12-hour drive with the wrong person? it can feel like punishment. the wrong music. the wrong conversations. the wrong energy. every minute feels like ten. you start counting exits. you get irritable about things that normally wouldn’t matter: the way they chew, how they drive, how they don’t offer to switch seats. small silences become uncomfortable. topics run dry. even sleeping feels like an escape rather than rest.

you realize you’re not tired from the road, you’re tired from the company.

if you can drive for hours and talk about nothing and everything, if you can make up ridiculous games about the billboards you pass, or point out weird-shaped clouds and give them names, if you can pull over on a whim for ice cream or cheap burgers, if one of you can nap while the other drives with a hand rested lightly on their leg, music humming softly through the speakers then you’ve passed the test. not because it was set up, but because you made something mundane feel sacred.

i remember once we were on a trip, just the two of us. our playlists were all over the place, we’d go from arijit to arctic monkeys to punjabi folk without a care in the world. he’d randomly quiz me on the capitals of obscure countries and i’d pretend not to know, just so he could show off that he did. we’d roll down the windows and scream lyrics we didn’t(scratch that - i didn’t) even know properly. at one point, we drove in silence for nearly an hour, not out of awkwardness but comfort.

i think that’s what the lamp post theory is really about, not the falling post, not the danger, but the way we want to be seen. the way we long for that one small moment where the other person shows you that they see you, they choose you, and they’re not going anywhere.

so maybe yours isn’t a lamp post or a long drive. maybe it’s how they react when you cry. or how they speak about you in a room full of strangers. or if they remember how you like your coffee. or whether they notice when you start dimming your light and gently bring you back.

we’re all looking for proof. not grand gestures, just the quiet confirmations. the little things that scream “i love you” without ever needing to say it out loud.

and when you find someone who passes your lamp post test hold onto them gently. not like a prize, not like proof. but like home. <3

every step away from that room feels heavier, like you're dragging something invisible but deeply personal. and in that single glance, it all comes rushing back: lying on your bed watching a movie you didn’t even like, the chair that was bought for studying but only ever held piles of clothes, the book cart always overflowing with snacks, candy wrappers from a year ago buried at the bottom. the small lamp you kept on day and night, not because you needed light, but because you liked how the warm glow made the room feel safe. cleaning your room before every exam, shifting clothes from the chair to the bed, pretending that counts as productivity. the old AC that never really cooled the room, but you convinced yourself it worked if you cranked the fan high enough. having friends over - for a drink, a movie, a group study that turned into gossip. it all feels like a blur now. but at that final glance, it plays in your head so fast and so full it almost brings you to tears.

i think most people feel this when they leave their childhood home and go to university for the first time. but here's the thing: growing up, we moved a lot. no place stuck. none of those childhood homes ever felt like home. they still don’t. i was never sentimental about them. but then i entered uni. and i knew right from the start that i wanted to live off-campus. have my own place. my own routine. my own version of freedom. and that’s what i did - or mostly did. i ended up sharing a room with my boyfriend in a three-bedroom apartment. and somehow, it became ours. for three years, that small room held my whole world. it was my haven. my constant. the one place i hated leaving during breaks because going “home” no longer felt like going home. it sounds absolutely insane now, but it was real. painfully real.

if an eighteen-year-old walked up to me today and said, “i’m planning to move in with my boyfriend for uni,” i’d probably panic and give them a long speech about how it’s too soon, too risky, too everything. but back then? i just jumped in. it was a crazy decision. maybe even reckless. but god, it was also beautiful.

the lease ends this may. we’ve already started packing. slowly. quietly. without really talking about what it all means. we returned our rented bed frame last week, so now it’s just a mattress on the floor, exactly like it was when we first moved in. just a closet, a mattress, and a whole lot of hope. it took three years to fill that room with furniture, laughter, heartbreaks, routines, and rituals. two desks. one chair. one lamp. one book cart. one laundry bag. just six things. but they saw everything. they saw me grow. they saw skipped classes because morning cuddles felt more important than attendance. they saw surprise birthdays and quiet anniversaries. they saw our first fight, our messy breakdowns, the ugly crying, the soft “i’m sorry”s, the tighter “i love you”s. they watched us study face-to-face all night with red bull and McD fries, and they watched us come home after exams, crash into bed without a word, and just sleep in each other’s arms.

this room has held so much of us that every carton packed feels like i’m disassembling my heart. like i’m destroying something sacred. something that was just ours. i wish time could stop here. i wish i could be a uni student forever. i wish my biggest worry could still be 75% attendance. i wish we could live in that room forever—me and him. with the leaky ancient AC and the noisy fan. with our little lamp always on.

but we have to grow up. and we did. and now, the room is quiet. half-empty. stripped of the life it once held. and every day, i try not to cry over something that was so real, so good, and is now slipping into memory. i just hope life lets me build something even 1% as warm as this. i hope whoever rents this place next can preserve our once home. i hope they keep it all warm and happy. like we did.

because this wasn’t just a room. it was a love story. a home. a coming-of-age film we accidentally lived. and no matter how grown-up i become, a part of me will always live inside those four walls, wrapped in warm lamp light, eating stale snacks with my boyfriend from the book cart, pretending forever was something we could actually touch.

so here’s the yap.

i finally got my driving license this week. i’ve been driving around the city since high school, but somehow, it took me finishing uni to finally go and get it done. turns out, the process is way longer if you don’t bribe the officer. i mean, i’m glad he didn’t outright cancel it, just made sure to take his time. on the test day, he realized i was north indian and immediately started pushing me to speak kannada. you know, i’d read about these things before-how some people get extra worked up when you don’t speak the local language and go out of their way to make things difficult. but i’ve lived here for over a decade now. i know enough to get by, enough to smile and throw in a few words, enough to make him think i wasn’t completely out of place. so i answered his questions, nodded at his comments, and walked out of there , it felt like winning. my parents got me a car this year, my name on the rc and everything, but i couldn’t drive it legally. so i’ve been sneaking around the city, past midnight, no license, no papers. but now? now i get to do it in broad daylight. things are finally in order.

last weekend, i met my school friends after five years. it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long until you sit at a table together and realize you barely recognize each other's lives anymore. but it took us less than ten minutes to fall back into rhythm. we picked a pub and sat there for hours, talking about everything and nothing at the same time. at one point, i swear we were the loudest group on the floor. we talked about our jobs, our families, the internships we left, the jobs we took, the things we had once dreamed of and the things we had settled for. for a while, i felt like high school aditi again. no pressure to sit right, to speak carefully, to present myself a certain way. just me, loud and laughing, drinking like we were seventeen and invincible. we cracked jokes like we used to, ordered way more food than we needed, made fun of the same things we did years ago. it felt like no time had passed. but it had. and i don’t think i’ll ever have friends like this again. the kind you can meet after years and pick up right where you left off, updating each other on your lives for ten minutes before slipping back into old memories, reliving moments that still feel as fresh as the day they happened.

this week, i’m traveling. heading to chennai tomorrow to see my boyfriend. long distance has never been easy, but somehow, we’ve made it work for over a year now. we were together for two years before life happened and put exactly 333 km between us. i don’t know why, but that number feels significant. poetic, even. i’ll be with him for the next week, and i’m excited for the simplest things: driving around the city, grabbing mcdonald’s, blasting music, letting the ac fog up the windows, just driving until we reach the beach. i think that’s the best part about growing up. about having your own money. about being with someone. just… going. without asking, without worrying, without needing permission. we’re 21, young, reckless, and in love. living a dual-income life like we own the world. and maybe, in our own tiny way, we do.

also, i visited this really cute cafe called got tea. i first tried them in delhi and absolutely loved their branding. their packaging, their aesthetic, everything about it felt intentional. i had actually discovered them through a graphic designer, shantanu kumar, who worked with them. he makes youtube videos about design, about all the places he gets to travel to because of his job. he’s also, like, the only indian i know who uses a fuji camera. you know they are always sold out on their website but i’ve never actually seen someone use them in real life. where do they all go? i love his work.

anyway, back to the cafe, while leaving, we asked if they had stickers, because obviously, i needed something for my junk journal. the cashier was so sweet; she gave me two sets of stickers and flowers. apparently, they have an in-house florist who made me a tiny purple bouquet and tied it to a card that said thanks for being here with their logo. insane marketing. insane packaging. obsessed. tell me why i was skipping around for the rest of the day. i love flowers. i love them so much. you have no idea. i love sunflowers though.

oh, something from the last vol, my drawing is getting better. i sketched this terrible café last week (if you’re subbed, you’ve seen it. i apologize). it was so bad it made me put my pencils down for a while. but i picked them up again, and honestly? i think i’m doing great.

one of these days i am going to go back to got tea and draw the place and everything i eat and drink there.

also some more music for y’all <33

wondering why | the red clay strays

aint no rest for the wicked | cage the elephant

gone, gone, gone | philip philips

i have never met you, but i know you exist in the spaces between conversations about kashmir. always in the shadows, always an afterthought. when people speak of your land, it is either in relation to the conflict or forgotten entirely. never given its own weight. its own story.

i have not walked your streets or breathed in your air, but i have heard of you. in passing mentions. in hurried corrections "jammu and kashmir" like you are one and the same. but i know that you are not.

they only remember you when they have to. when headlines need to fit a larger narrative. when there is something tragic enough to warrant a name drop. but no one asks how you are doing on the quiet days.

no one wonders what your people whisper about in the evenings when they sit on rooftops, looking out over a city that loves them but does not fight for them. no one asks if you feel overlooked. if you are tired of always standing in the wings while kashmir takes center stage. i wonder if you ever try to remind them that you exist. if you ever scream into the silence only to realize that no one is listening. i wonder if it hurts.

they say there is no snow here. no picture-perfect valleys. no reason to romanticize. but i think there is something devastatingly beautiful in the things that are not loved loudly. in the streets where the dust settles before anyone can brush it away. in the homes where the walls are lined with old photographs of people who left and never looked back. in the voices of grandmothers who sit in plastic chairs, telling stories of a time when things were different, when people still stayed.

maybe you are more beautiful than kashmir. quieter. softer. untouched by the greed that comes with tourism, by the hunger of people who see beauty only as something to be sold. here, shopkeepers do not yet hike prices at the sight of an outsider. instead, they might pull out a wooden stool, pour you a cup of tea, and sit with you: not as a transaction, but as a story. because here, visitors are still guests first, not customers. because here, people still believe in conversations, even if no one is listening.

i do not know you, jammu. but i see you.

people ask why i did it, and i never know which answer to give them. the easiest is that it was the peak of covid. that should be enough explanation. but it wouldn’t be the truth. i mean, yes, i was at home, unable to go outside, spending more time with my family than i had in years. i was a senior in high school, supposed to be preparing for my board exams, the equivalent of the sats, except unlike the sats, you couldn’t just take them again. if you screwed up, that was it. and at that point, the exams still weren’t canceled. so i was in a constant state of stress - if i would even pass, if i would ever leave this house, if anything would ever go back to normal. on top of that, my body was going through a lot: medicines, hormones, tests, more tests, even more tests, and then some more medicines. i wasn’t exactly sick, just... weak. i remember losing so much hair during that time. i would wake up to find strands on my pillow, in my sink, between my fingers when i ran my hands through my hair. it added to the stress. and then one day, i just snapped and got rid of all of it.

my dad loved it. my mom cried. my brother laughed. it didn’t faze me because it was exactly what i expected. the minute i took the trimmer, i knew that for the next year i would be subjected to a lot of questions, taunts, anger, laughter, and whatnot. so i tried my best not to let my parents’ reaction faze me. besides, i had the safety net of lockdown. nobody could see me unless i wanted them to. i had months to get comfortable in my skin, months to exist without the option of hiding behind my hair. and it wasn’t easy. it took so much patience, so much restraint to not immediately regret it.

then, in october, lockdown lifted. i was called back to school. i also had a very hearty invitation to a cousin’s wedding, followed by another function in my grandmother’s village. this was it. this was god testing me. all those instagram posts i made from the comfort of my room about how liberating it was to shave your head were coming back to bite me.

school was easy. my chemistry professor, who absolutely despised me before, started treating me kindly. either i had earned his respect, or he thought i was terminally ill. it worked out either way. everyone was partly impressed and partly shocked that i, of all people, would do something like this. of course, i got some looks here and there, but nothing that really affected me.

shopping for the wedding, however, was hilarious. every salesman had a different pitch for me, as if a girl with a buzz cut wearing a lehenga was either revolutionary or outright blasphemous. “beta, maybe you’d like something simpler?” “this color would look better on someone with long hair.” “are you sure you want this style?” at the end of the day, i had laughed so much that my stomach hurt.

the real test came when i went to my grandmother’s village. the women there had always looked at me like i was some foreign creature. they could never quite wrap their heads around me: how i could be so outspoken, how i would say no to chores, how i would argue with men in conversations. they would gather around me as i attended online classes, watching in awe as i spoke in english, even if it was something as simple as “sir, could you repeat that? my internet is bad.” and then i walked in with a buzz cut, and i think my grandmother nearly had a heart attack. her first question was, of course, if this was a one-time thing or if i planned to keep it because, after all, who would marry a girl with no hair? that evening, when all the village women sat together to talk, i was the first thing they addressed - how my height and build made me look like a boy, how i should start looking for a wife instead. they giggled when they said it, but even in humor, there was truth. i still wonder what would have happened if i had said, “that’s exactly what i’m looking for.” but i didn’t. i just laughed and ran my hands over the short, rough strands of hair on my head.

i remember going to a trampoline park with my cousins once, and the guy working there asked if i was a boxer. he took one look at me: my height, my build, my buzzed head, and thought i was an athlete. when i told him i wasn’t, he was genuinely confused. “then why did you cut your hair?” i tried explaining, but he couldn’t wrap his head around it. he needed a reason. women, in his mind, didn’t just cut their hair without one.

and maybe that’s why, despite everything, despite the laughter and the stares and the constant justifications, i never really regretted it. because society didn’t treat me differently. if anything, they treated me with more respect. suddenly, people listened when i spoke. men, who once brushed off my opinions, now looked at me directly. shopkeepers, teachers, strangers: they all spoke to me differently. i wasn’t told to “smile more.” i wasn’t dismissed as easily. it was subtle, but it was undeniable. my presence carried a weight it never had before, like i had unknowingly stepped into a version of myself that people had no choice but to take seriously. and maybe that’s what unsettled them, not the lack of hair, but the fact that i had stripped away something they thought defined me, and i was still standing, still myself, still whole. maybe they weren’t used to a woman who didn’t need permission to take up space. maybe they didn’t know what to do with a girl who had nothing to hide behind.

years have passed now. my hair is longer. i know that i don’t command the same kind of respect i did back then, not in the same way. but i’ve learned how to take up space, how to hold my ground. if they let a woman with a shaved head do it, then they should damn well let a woman with long hair do it too.

this one feels important.

i wish you knew me when i was eighteen. maybe then, all of this would make more sense.

it was my first time away from home. i had just entered university, still bright-eyed, still carrying the softness of familiarity, unaware that time would chip away at me. i was loud. not just in voice, but in presence. i knew people, i knew so many people, and somehow, they knew me too. i would scream across campus, grinning, waving, “HIII BESTIE,” like every day was a sitcom episode with a laugh track following my every move.

i was always out. always surrounded. i was so social that i was failing a course in my first semester, but it didn’t matter then. it didn’t feel real. i wasn’t reckless; I didn’t do drugs, didn’t smoke, barely drank. i was back in my dorm by 6 p.m., yet my world felt endless. people came to me like moths to a flame, and i didn’t stop to think about why.

there was this one night, it must have been past 2 a.m. when we found ourselves on the beach, the tide kissing our feet, the wind howling secrets we were too scared to say out loud. it wasn’t planned, but that never stopped us. someone had the idea, and the rest of us followed, piling into cars, racing down empty roads, the streetlights flickering like they were winking at us. we laughed so loud the ocean must have heard us coming.

we didn’t have much, just a stolen hour, a half-empty bottle of soda, and each other. we let the fizz burn our throats and carved nonsense into the sand with our toes. the sky stretched wide above us, endless, and someone, i don’t remember who, sighed and asked, “do you think we’ll still be friends five years from now?”

we swore we would be. we swore we would dance at each other’s weddings

i meant it. i think we all did.

but time moves like the tide, pulling people away before you even notice they’re gone. some of them found their own little islands, places i couldn’t reach. some just disappeared, like footprints washed away before dawn.

and yet, i never really felt alone. because i still had my people.

the ones who sent me meds when i was sick. the ones who showed up with food when i couldn’t get out of bed. the ones who sat on call with me during finals, their voices a lull in the chaos. the ones who helped me burn a polaroid of my ex, laughing as the flames curled the edges. the ones who shared my mother’s home-cooked food like it was a ritual, something sacred.

i miss them. i miss them like a phantom limb.

you might ask what happened. honestly? i don’t know. maybe i did something. maybe they outgrew me. maybe i outgrew them. maybe one day i’ll look back and see it clearly, but right now, i have no clue.

i still saw them, though. we walked the same roads, sat at the same coffee shops, same subway, same ice-cream parlour, breathed in the same salty air. but we weren’t us anymore. we weren’t sneaking out at midnight just to sit by the shore. we weren’t laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. we weren’t promising forever like we knew what it meant.

sometimes, when i was with other people, i’d think of them. oh, you would have loved this song. you would have made a joke about this. you would have rolled your eyes at me right now.

do they ever do the same?

probably not. their lives look whole without me in them. their instagrams are full of new places, new people, new memories. we still talk. when we see each other, we hug. not the kind that says i’ve missed you, the kind that says i remember you. it’s polite. it’s practiced. it’s the kind that makes you feel lonelier than not hugging at all.

we text each other on birthdays, though. just a happy birthday! hope you have a great one.
two years ago, they would have dragged me to the beach at midnight, danced in the waves, and screamed my name into the sky. now, it’s a three-word text.

sometimes, we end up in the same places: house parties, familiar bonfires, scattered across the same room but never really crossing paths. and i wonder: if we met today, would we even be friends?

the answer is always no.

i wouldn’t like who they’ve become. they wouldn’t like who i am now. if we met today, i would have nothing to say to them.

but i don’t hate them.

i want to. i ask god to let me. but i can’t. i still hold onto the versions of them that i loved. the ones who made me laugh until i couldn’t breathe. the ones who swore we’d never let this happen.

those versions are gone. i know that. but they are not gone from me.

i still keep the pictures. the texts. the remnants of something that was real once. not for them. for the memories. maybe one day, i’ll tell my grandkids about them. just the memories, not the people. i wish i could say the people. the ones i used to scream for at the top of my lungs, the ones i would have set the world on fire for.

maybe one day, one of us will break and try to fix things. maybe the rest of us will laugh about it later. maybe we’ll cry and say how much we missed each other and pretend, just for a second, that things could go back to the way they were.

i wish for the latter, but in real life, it’s always the former.

that’s why i want to hate you. it would be easier. but even now, i catch myself smiling when i talk about you. i hope you do too. even now, i tell our stories, and when someone asks what happened, i exhale softly, shrug, and say,

“i don’t know. i guess things changed.”

i hate summer. i want nothing to do with it. i want it gone, so far away that winter finds its way back. i never watched game of thrones, but would seeing winter come while i sit here, sweating, make me enjoy it more?

back in college, my roommate loved the summer. they would sit in the chennai heat, refusing to switch on the ac, as if 43-degree humidity was something to be embraced. we never got along. i hated the sweat, the stickiness, the way heat makes tempers shorter, words sharper.

matcha helps, literally and figuratively. i had my first sip of matcha in uji, kyoto. the matcha capital of the world. maybe that’s why i love it. i did it right. i bought bags of it to take home, and every time the heat feels unbearable, i whisk some up. does it help? not really. but it takes me back to the cool streets of tokyo, where i stood in a puffer jacket, sipping a stupid little 7/11 matcha latte, holding a fruit sando in my other hand. god, i miss those fruit sandos. i wish i had brought them back too.

my dad loves matcha too, but at the end of the day, he loves anything that’s brought straight to his bed- tea, coffee, fruit, even a plain glass of water if it means he doesn’t have to get up. he drinks it without much thought, without complaint, without preference. my mom, on the other hand, hates it. the matcha, the food in bed, the crumbs on the sheets. she still takes a sip to humor me, scrunches her nose, hands the cup back like she’s doing me a favor.

she doesn’t mind the heat. or maybe she just doesn’t notice it anymore. she moves through the house like it doesn’t exist, two cups of chai marking the rhythm of her day; one in the morning, one in the evening, always hot, always the same. she doesn’t flinch when the air gets thick, doesn’t sigh when the sweat pools at the base of her neck, doesn’t step away from the gas stove when the kitchen turns into a furnace. she just keeps going, sipping her chai, waiting for the breeze that never comes. maybe she’s used to it. maybe she’s learned that some things aren’t worth resisting.

i take a long sip of my matcha, letting the cold settle on my tongue, waiting for it to spread through me like a quiet rebellion. the ice clinks against the tumbler, shrinking, disappearing, losing the fight against the heat—but at least it tries. i think about my mom’s chai, the way she drinks it without hesitation, without question, as if the warmth is just another part of the day she has made peace with. i wonder if i’ll ever get there, if i’ll ever stop trying to outrun the heat, if i’ll ever stop needing something cold between my fingers to keep the walls from pressing in. i don’t know if i should accept it too. the thick, unshifting heat. the stillness. the way the air presses in. i don’t think i ever will. maybe that’s why i always say no to her chai, why i whisk up my own matcha instead, why i dump ten ice cubes into my tumbler and watch them melt before i’ve even taken a sip. maybe that’s my resistance.

i have always been a city girl. delhi. pune. bangalore. four walls of apartments, balconies with drying clothes, roads lined with auto-rickshaws and the occasional metro rail slicing through the skyline. i think the cities raised me just as much as my parents did. maybe even more. but if there is one thing i know for certain, it’s that high rises have shaped me more than anything else; those towering structures with endless windows, each one holding a life, a story, a moment i would never be able to see but would always wonder about.

the first time i became aware of these buildings in a way that felt important, in a way that made my brain itch with new thoughts, was in pune, sometime before third grade, because by then i had already moved to bangalore. i must have been no older than eight, sitting in the backseat of our car on a full moon night, staring out of the window as the world rushed past. i remember being convinced that the moon was following me, that no matter where we turned, it stayed right there, floating just above, keeping pace with us like an old friend. and then, in an instant, it was gone, swallowed up by the thousands of windows that filled the night sky, their tiny yellow lights flickering against the dark.

i remember asking my dad what those buildings were, and he told me they were IT firms: massive offices where engineers spent their days earning their bread and butter, places where thousands of people sat behind computers, working under artificial lights before returning home late into the night. my dad was one of them. my brother would grow up to be one of them. and in a few months, come august this year, i would be stepping into that world too.

alongside these office towers, new apartment complexes were rising just as quickly, built to house the endless stream of employees who had come to these cities chasing something bigger, something better, something more than what they had before.

that night, mini aditi, with her eight-year-old mind, stopped thinking about the moon and started focusing on the buildings instead. i remember trying to count the floors, wondering just how many people could fit inside one of those structures, how many lives were stacked on top of each other like neatly arranged furniture in a dollhouse. i remember asking my dad if families lived there, if everyone got their own space, if all families were like ours? four people under one roof, sharing the same life. and then, i remember asking him the question that changed everything for me: was there another little girl, just like me, living behind one of those windows?

he said yes.

and that was all it took. i remember whipping my head around, staring back at those glowing windows, searching for some sign of her, some proof that she existed. did she go to school like i did? was her favorite subject skating too? did she beg for a mcdonald’s happy meal the same way i did every weekend? was she looking out of her own window at that very moment, wondering about me the way i was wondering about her?

and then, just like that, something shifted inside me.

for the first time, i truly understood that behind every single window, in every single building, there were people living entire lives i would never know, people with their own joys and heartbreaks, their own problems that felt like the end of the world, their own families waiting for them to come home. and in that realization, i felt something i couldn’t quite name—something that made my heart feel both too full and too small at the same time, something that made my chest ache in a way i didn’t yet have the words for.

it made me feel insignificant, but not in a way that scared me. it was more like understanding that i was just one small piece of something much bigger, that my existence was just a drop in an ocean of other lives, and somehow, that realization made everything feel strangely comforting, as if nothing i ever did would be big enough to shake the world.

of course, eight-year-old aditi didn’t have the words for any of this. she only knew that it made her feel weird, that it made her chest feel tight and her thoughts feel too big for her head. so she did what any kid would do-she turned back toward the sky, searching for the moon again, hoping it would still be there, waiting for her.

fifteen years have passed since that night, and now i live in a city that is even wilder than before, where the buildings stretch higher and the windows shine even brighter, where the streets are louder and the people seem to move faster than i can keep up with. but sometimes, when i am sitting in a car, driving past rows of endless high rises, the memory slips back into my mind, bringing with it the same quiet wonder that once overwhelmed an eight-year-old girl staring at a skyline she didn’t yet understand.

i have thought about that moment in every way possible, turned it over in my mind, tried to make sense of it, but no matter how much time passes, i always come to the same conclusion.

i still feel like a drop in the sea. and somehow, that still makes me feel safe.

so here’s the yap. have you seen those beautifully illustrated travel journals? the kind where people actually sketch what they ate at that tiny ramen shop tucked away in osaka, or capture the silhouette of a temple in tamil nadu while sitting under the shade of a tree? yeah, those artists. those geniuses. i want to be one of them. i am done taking half-hearted pictures, pasting them into my journal like afterthoughts, printing them on flimsy paper that won’t even last a year. not happening anymore.

it feels strange because i used to be a creative child. i would fill notebooks with doodles, scribbles, and half-finished drawings, but somewhere along the way, i stopped. but i dug through some old boxes today and found things that might help me find my way back.

1. a koi watercolor set, slightly crusty but still good

2. an old black a6 sketchbook with thick pages—perfect for watercolors

3. an ink pen that still flows smoothly, surprisingly

i can already see myself in varkala next summer, sitting by the beach, sketching surfers catching waves. dipping my brush into seawater, letting the salt mix into the pigments, the black book growing soft and sandy from all the real-life sketches it holds. i like the idea of that. i like the idea of creating something that feels lived-in, something touched by the places i’ve been.

for now, i’m trying to draw every day. even if it’s just quick lines, a messy watercolor blotch, something. i think it’s like muscle memory—you have to keep at it, let your hands relearn how to move without hesitation. some days, it feels frustrating. other days, it feels like breathing.

my brother is deep into manga, and since i’m in a reading slump, i caved. i was reading underground by murakami, but this one just isn’t hitting. i usually love his work, but this? this feels like walking through a long, dimly lit hallway and never quite finding the door out. so now i’m on chainsaw man, volume 6. they go by fast—i can finish one in 20-30 minutes. no wonder these series have hundreds of volumes. i like the storyline. except for the weird amount of booby talk from an underage kid. that part’s questionable. but the rest? solid. maybe i’ll turn into a manga reader after this. maybe this is how it starts.

there’s this thing in bangalore every saturday morning called cubbon reads. people from all over the city gather in cubbon park, find a tree, and just read. no small talk. no distractions. just silence and stories. i love the thought of being part of something without having to perform for it. just existing in a space where everyone showed up for the same quiet reason. i’ve gone four times now. thinking of going this saturday too. maybe i’ll bring my family—not that they’ll read, but it could be a nice summer picnic. maybe i’ll sit under a tree and practice drawing live.

this week feels like creativity creeping back into my bones. i like it. i want to hold onto it before it fades again.

i was driving last night to this café for some tres leches, and the radio started playing songs that revived memories i didn’t even know i had tucked away. they made me smile without thinking-one of those small, quiet joys that creep up on you when you least expect it. i hope they do the same for you.

1. meri ada bhi | rahat fateh ali khan

2. sun re sajaniya | ali zafar

3. o meri laila radio version | joi barua

we have changed since then. changed in ways we never expected, never planned. she is in goa now, living by the beach, basking in sunsets. i am in bangalore, surrounded by traffic and deadlines. still, we meet. we make time. to reminisce about the past, to laugh about the things that once made us cry, to bond over new wounds that life so generously hands out.

everyone in her university knows me. aditi – s’s best friend. a title she’s given me so often that it’s almost become an identity. because s is the kind of person who sees people, really sees them, and when she loves someone, she does it loudly. she probably sat you down too, told you stories about me. how i almost killed her when we stole her brother’s two-wheeler and took off on an adventure. we barely made it a kilometer before we almost crashed into - well, nothing. she swears it was a near-death experience. she is dramatic like that. i love that about her. with her, everything is life and death, do or die, all or nothing. it makes things feel more important than they are.

maybe that’s why you think she can’t live without me. you’re not wrong. she calls me every other day. we talk about everything. my life, my boyfriend, my long nights, her fleeting crushes, her existential crises. sometimes, her friends call me for advice. after all, i am s’s oldest friend. i must know best.

but it’s strange, isn’t it? how all my friends know her, yet they don’t really know her. to them, she is just a name, a label – my best friend. no further context. no anecdotes. no stories. just a fact. my boyfriend knows better, of course. he understands. he has seen the chaos we have left behind, the adventures that turned into nightmares, the moments that turned into inside jokes that no one else will ever fully grasp. he knows she matters.

but for everyone else, she exists only in passing mentions, if at all. none of them follow her on instagram. while hers have me on their close friends.

maybe it started when i was a kid who never let anyone borrow my favorite books. i would let them sit on my shelf, their spines unbroken, their pages crisp, too afraid that if i handed them to someone else, they’d come back bent, creased, or worse—never come back at all. maybe s is my favorite book. one i’ve read a hundred times, know by heart, but keep close, just for myself. not because i don’t want to share her, but because some stories are too precious to be passed around.

i hope one day, when life slows down and we are not running in different directions, i will talk about her more. maybe i will tell the stories, the real ones, not just the half-truths i offer in passing. maybe i will stop guarding her like a secret and let the world see her the way i do.

or maybe, it will happen naturally, like all the best things do. like the way she first sat down next to me and stole my lunch, like the way we built a decade of memories out of stolen time. maybe one day, someone will mention her name, and instead of holding back, i will smile and say, oh, you have to hear this one. and just like that, she will no longer be a secret—just a part of the story, as she was always meant to be.

i should start smoking. let it curl into my lungs, eat away my time, maybe even me. it would make the days pass easier at home. house. it’s just a house now. hostel more than a home—three roommates, all good people. i’m the spoiled one, the ruined one. like a cigarette already burnt down to the filter. it would be fitting if i smoked. imagine standing by the window, watching the city smear itself in neon and dust, exhaling something heavier than air. would it make my voice rougher, my thoughts quieter? would it carve out space between my ribs, or would it just fill what’s already hollow?

my mother used to say prayers are like incense: drifting upwards, fading into the sky, leaving behind the faintest trace of something holy. i wonder if mine ever made it past the ceiling. she also used to say bad habits settle into the body like guests overstaying their welcome. that once something lingers long enough, it becomes a part of you. i wonder if grief works the same way. if you let it stay too long, does it become something you can’t live without?

it’s thursday. the house smells like gujiya, thick and sweet, clinging to the air. better than the sharp sting of floor cleaner. i wonder how long the smell will last. will it slip into the fabric of my hoodie, hide in my hair? will i carry it with me when i step out the day after tomorrow? or will it fade by morning, replaced by something colder, something sharp?

outside, the sky is an exhausted shade of blue. the kind that fades too easily, slipping into night without a fight. i used to think about running away at this hour, just walking until i didn’t recognize the streets anymore. now, i just sit by the window, counting the headlights, inhaling deep like i already smoke.