I would say I want to learn the guitar, I want to learn a new language, I want to dance, I want to run, I want to work out, I want to do theatre, I want to sing, I want to write, I want to debate.

Every year, I would come up to her and say, “This is my hobby for the year. This is what I will learn.” With no pressure to excel and champion it, I wholeheartedly attended every class.

But slowly it started to occur to me that the rest of the world perceived it as indecisiveness.

These classes I went for, I was good; in fact, I would say better than good. I was a very disciplined, quiet learner, and I don’t know if I ever understood what the gap between mediocre and the best actually was, because I always optimised for fun.

A few years later in university, I declared that I would become a Notion creator. This was around the time tech journalism and editorial work covering AI was starting to get more visibility on socials, and I just wanted to write about this tool because I was such a crazy Notion user.

So I told everyone around me that I would become a Notion creator, go on to become a journalist, and that this was what I was going to be good at.

Then I moved back home to Chennai and quickly realised I had a use case to solve for: to build a skin-safe beauty brand. So for almost a year, I ran my own cosmetics brand called Butter Beauty. It was the most exhilarating, challenging, hard, and tiring period of my life after college. It was also a very small window of time in which I learned so much about myself and how little I knew of the world. I think, in some ways, this is what people call the “quarter-life crisis,” because I was yearning for experience and direction.

And then I hit pause. I decided I would come back, but with more experience, more maturity, and build something real.

Almost two and a half years later, here I am, marketing for tech, where I work with startups to scale their brand and socials. I love my job. It challenges me for now. I’m a self-starter, and my curiosity pushes me to do exciting things, even if a career in AI and SaaS might sound boring to a lot of people.

But every career transition, every shift in interest, really makes me think about why I never pursued any one vertical for a long time. Some may say laziness, that I didn’t want to do the hard things. Some may say, maybe I was just finding my feet and didn’t know what to do.

I think there’s very little truth in these observations.

Because when I look back at my behaviour and pivots during each of these specific phases, I actually knew exactly what to pursue to quantum-leap through my learning path and prepare myself for the person I wanted to become.

So I asked myself: am I a quitter? Am I a serial quitter?

Among the smartest people I’ve met, what I’ve observed is the ability to find high-outcome, high-impact experiences that push you to learn a lot in a short period of time.

I think that’s where ambition thrives, and that’s where curiosity thrives.

I don’t know if it should be labelled as boring or confusing.

I think it should be called an intuition, the ability to evaluate whether something is going to benefit you now and in the next few years. Because why would I stick to only one experience if my intuition, my gut, tells me it’s not going to accelerate my path to seeking a purpose?

So my conclusion is this: sure, some may call this behaviour quitting or a half-baked, confused, indecisive kid. But I would translate that into someone pursuing high-agency, fast-moving, curiosity-driven projects.

I think that’s what helps people survive this world. I wish I could say this to the child I once was in school.

I wish I could tell her that the reason I was everywhere,

on the playground, in debates, in economics classes, business classes, and the reason I was performing really well in all, is because I just wanted to be a curious kid and have fun.

So to all the curious kids out there: pick something and keep going at it until you feel it in your bones to learn something new.

You’ll build an intuition for what you want, slowly, over time.

It’s a layered, frustrating process, of course. You won’t know what the end goal is, but there is a voice that drives you to what’s next.

You’ve got this. Let it rip.

But halfway through the conversation, I’m thinking, how full of ourselves are we to assume everyone has the time or energy to be thinking of us?

And then we concluded that challenging this feeling is uncomfortable, but it does point us to a vulnerable truth -

Envy, most times, is just momentary, awkward friction and a projection of their own internal anxieties, not a grand plot against ours.

It made us wonder about two things:

1. Why do we perceive certain people as a psychological threat?

2. Why do we occasionally trigger that same threat response in others?

If you look at someone’s success and feel a sting instead of a desire to celebrate, what is that feeling? Does it make you a terrible person?

Short answer: Girl, chill out. You’re fine.

I always associated this feeling with shame. I thought it would mean I lacked grace or generosity. But reading made me realise that it is human, of course, and it’s rarely actually about that person; it is a spotlight on me, my self-esteem, and how I perceive myself.

I tried an exercise: I built a Word Funnel.

I started at the top with my immediate reactions when someone’s win made me uncomfortable: Threatened. Reminded of failed projects.

Then I asked myself “Why?” like a relentless toddler until I hit the second layer: Recognition. Trajectory. Stagnation.

I kept digging down through the “whys” until I reached the bottom of the funnel: A gap between my current self and my standards.

In typical Anjali style, I decided this was a prompt to show myself some grace, shift my focus, and actually get to work on myself.

And a little bit of digging led me to this,

In evolutionary psychology, envy and jealousy aren’t glitzy moral flaws; they are primitive adaptive signals. In the paper The Evolutionary Psychology of Envy and Jealousy, researchers explain that envy acts as a gut-level evaluative system. It kicks in long before your rational, conscious mind can rationalise what’s happening.

Here are a few pointers from the paper that completely reframed how I view this feeling:

We always envy our peers

Evolutionary logic dictates that you envy the person in your exact demographic, with your similar background, who is just one step ahead of you. Envy evolved specifically to motivate action within your relevant social circle. It targets people where you actually have a realistic chance of closing the gap.

On effort and potential, not blind luck

The paper shows we feel the sharpest envy toward people who are on par with us in baseline talent but outwork us to get rewarded. Why? Because your brain realises that their success was attainable for you too, if you had put in the work. The sting is simply the friction between your potential and your current effort.

It’s a better GPS for your values than your own conscious mind

When you ask yourself, “What do I value in life?” your answer is usually directed through your superego - what society, your parents, or your culture expect you to want.

Envy, however, doesn’t care about what you should want. It’s a visceral reaction. Asking yourself who you are thinking of exposes what you actually desire far more accurately than your conscious mind ever will.

Envy is an uncomfortable emotion, but it doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s simply information.

The next time you feel that sudden, uncomfortable twinge, try building your own word funnel. Strip away the guilt, look at the triggers, and ask what that emotion is trying to tell you about your own path.

Listen to the signal, adjust your standards, and get back to building what’s yours.

Living this way has its pros.

You move along this template of life that everyone around you is living, it’s beautiful, it’s satisfying, and even the anxiety is predictable.

I’m in no way diminishing this life, nor am I complaining. In fact, I sometimes catch myself wondering how different things would be if I had grown up in an even tighter-knit bubble of sorts.

I took a trip a couple of weeks ago, and it got me thinking about how vastly different lives are, and how differently we perceive them.

When you’re confined to a small circle, your threshold is remarkably low whether it’s your capacity for empathy, kindness, grasping the weight of what's happening globally, or tolerating change.

But with more exposure, you realize just how deeply interconnected all lives are. Every issue quietly becomes your own to think about ; and everything is a human issue.

What I mean to say is that we absorb a much wider, richer kind of empathy simply by meeting more people.

There is nothing inherently wrong with living a safe, sheltered life. But I think you have more to give the world once you step into a bigger picture, once you realize the world isn't just for you to perform to,

and that exposure is what ultimately persuades you to give something back to the world .

And that is the privilege of exposure.

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it’s warm and honest vs awkward and long forgotten

it comes in different fonts,

and you only recognise the typeface

once the moment has passed:

a hockey team in their jerseys,

the cracked asphalt of a friend’s parking lot,

a voice that you hear across a crowded room.

and think about the version of you, you’ve outgrown

you feel familiar when someone sees you past

a version that you despised

but you’ve been better since,

and they see that, but you don’t talk;

your eyes meet, but you don’t stop.

talking at night,

to someone you now know

you wonder,

if this is what feels familiar now

familiar is what i deeply felt reading talking at night. a book on grief, love and second chances.

some images that reminded me of this book 💗

I would rush back from school, grab my mother’s phone and jump into bed to watch a Japanese YouTuber’s productivity vlogs. I was an over-planner, organised to the point that I didn’t really need that productivity inspo, but I loved this vlogger’s life to bits. I’d sit there, thinking about being a student in Japan. On other days, I’d finish my homework and lie on my bed staring at the ceiling, wondering when it would finally be my turn to be the girl in those videos.

I could feel potential in my bones, but I didn’t know exactly what that potential meant.

Did it mean I could be academically brilliant? I was a fairly good student with straight A’s.

Did it mean I just wanted to be free from the rigour of my books and schedule?

I had no clue what I wanted, but I knew I would explode in that little room.

I feel the same now. But there is an intimate, innocent version of me in that first room whom I deeply miss, and I wonder if I’ll ever recapture that exact brand of hope and curiosity. I’m optimistic in a way today that feels so different.

The second room of my own is my university hostel. It was the size of a matchbox - barely big enough for two beds, but we managed to make it a beautiful home. With our matching bedsheets, little tabletop organisers, and the way my roommate and best friend, Sirisha, and I would lay out the outfits we’d pre-planned for a party, we built a slow, daily ritual of mutual understanding and love that I deeply miss. Three years later, when we moved to different cities, I had a hard time accepting that I wouldn’t be seeing her and all my beautiful girls every day.

I think the experience of being surrounded by so many dreamers instilled in us a level of confidence and delusion that we carried so boldly into our first jobs, homes, and flights. There was a rush that cannot be described - finishing up assignments and project submissions at 1:00 AM, looking out at the hostel gardens, and talking about all the things we wanted to do and the people we wanted to become. Inside those projects, and inside that hustle, no ambition ever felt too far away to reach. We’d sneak back into our room late at night, switch off the lights, play some music, and just chitchat until we fell asleep.

There was a partnership in every feeling. We felt no emotion in isolation because there was always someone going through it right there with you.

Then there is the room I’m sitting in right now.

I’ve been working for three and a half years in a city I’ve called home for a long time - a city that feels more familiar every year, yet somehow stays brand new. Just as I feel like I’m outgrowing it, a new experience pulls me back in. It feels like a new city all over again. But whatever I do, wherever I am, and whoever I meet, I always want to come back to these four walls. The same girl who once idolised the rush of a city like Bombay, New York, or London now just wants to be back in her room, perfectly made to feel like her own space.

Suddenly, a home so far away, a job so rushed, a mind so angsty - none of that excites me anymore. If it’s rituals that I seek, I can build them anywhere. They are rooted in the people and the moments you share with them. I don’t know if I need to live through a city for it.

The feeling of the first room is so strange to me now. Some might call it growing up, or just turning 25. But the truth is, I’ve realised that there’s never a solitary dream you’ll achieve that’ll fulfil you if that’s what you hope. Life seems to be a series of ifs and buts, and most of these are decisions you’ll take in a room you call your own.

In every room I’ve lived in and every room I’ve called my own, I see a different version of who I am.

So far, in this room, I have been thinking about

becoming a better writer,

rushing to my 9-to-5,

reading my unending novels,

shared giggles with my mother,

occasionally crying because I like to be dramatic and I feel like it’s the end of the world,

being held by my gorgeous, kind, loving boyfriend and

meeting my sweet, incredible friends who never cease to remind me who I am.

I remember the exact moment I realized the world was trying to put me on a clock. I was a kid, forced to choose between two hobbies I absolutely loved: hockey or dancing. I couldn’t fathom why a choice was even necessary. I had a whole day ahead of me; why couldn’t I just do both? At that age, I didn’t understand the finite, unforgiving weight of the future.

The second time that urgency fractured my world was during COVID. The entire world had ground to a halt, yet inside my bedroom, my brain was running a frantic marathon. I felt like I was falling behind. Looking back, I don’t even remember who or what I was comparing myself to, but I distinctly remember the panic: Am I going to be stuck between these four walls forever?

It’s an insane, almost embarrassing thing to realize in hindsight. I should have been worried about a global virus, about literal survival, about the people dying outside. Instead, my brain was spiraling over an invisible leaderboard. Am I falling behind?

When you’re younger, timelines look like a long, linear road where you have all the time in the world. Or, at worst, they look like a steep staircase you’re terrified of falling down face-first.

But as you grow, it’s funny how your mind visualizes time to reflect your exact state of anxiety.

Right now, time doesn’t look like a stairway or a road to me. It’s not even a chaotic, Maze Runner-style labyrinth.

Time feels like a massive, well-cushioned mansion. It has endless, beautifully curated rooms. It is comfortable, quiet, and exactly what I thought I wanted. But as I walk through its hallways, I get sudden, violent bouts of claustrophobia. It’s a pretty cage.

Because every time this urgency visits, it forces me to confront my ambition and the realization that my version of a successful life might be a luxury society isn’t designed to give me.

The hustle or whatever it is

I’ve always known I’m an ambitious person.

When I envisioned my ultimate ambition, I dreamt of a sacred, earned leisure.

I wanted the freedom of time and space. I wanted to breathe, to write, to gaze out a window, to do things that spiritually aligned with my body and soul. I couldn’t fathom hustling to the point where I lost track of my sanity and the relationships around me.

I idolized this version of freedom during university. While my friends were aggressively stacking their resumes and prepping for intense placement interviews, I was watching from the sidelines, utterly bewildered. Why was everyone fighting so hard for jobs that paid terribly and offered zero peace of mind?

I respect the hustle, truly. But the hustle means nothing if you are misaligned with what your soul actually needs. You have to pour into your mind as much as you pour into your career, and that only happens with balance.

(And yes, I am deeply aware of the privilege it takes to even hold these thoughts in the first place, so please don’t come for me in the comments about why I get to dream of leisure while many have to just try and survive. I know.)

The Illusion of Choice

For the past two years, I went after exactly what I wanted. I got myself into the rooms I wanted to be in. I joined the conversations I wanted to have. I am still actively building the foundation of my life. But suddenly, I am looking around at the reality of the life I envisioned, wondering if I’m just too whimsical to ever make it sustainable.

Social media constantly sells us the narrative of an easy, aesthetic, luxurious lifestyle claiming there are twenty different ways to achieve absolute freedom by twenty-five. But it comes with pre-written fates and uncontrollable biases - whether you have a safety net, a trust fund, supportive parents, or a loving partner.

Which brings me to the questions in my mind every single day as I sit at this transition point:

• Are we all living under the beautiful illusion that life is short and we should radically pursue our whims? Or are we eventually forced to capitulate to the capitalist race, settle down, and archive our dreams in exchange for security?

• Can you build a life of sacred leisure without a trust fund, or is the mansion always going to feel a little claustrophobic?

I’m in my 20s, trying to figure out what I really want from this life.

If you’re older than me and have a few years of wisdom on this, or if you’re exactly where I am, navigating the same brain loops, leave a comment below. I want to know your thought process.

Like most children between the ages of five and six, I lived entirely within my own world. I built pillow castles, fought over toy cars, and watched my father with wide, curious eyes, hanging onto every word he said. To me, the universe consisted of the four of us in our small home. My only responsibilities were begging my brother to let me play with him, doing my homework with my mother, and recognizing the days my father was “very serious” - which meant it was time to listen patiently.

The Shift in the Room

It wasn’t until early middle school that I began to develop an internal barometer for the “feeling of a room.” I started noticing when dinners grew cold and quiet, when my brother and I would cocoon into our rooms, and when my mother would sit still, enduring a silent loneliness we had never truly known.

From that point on, I began to stick to my mother and her routines.

I realized then that all the times I had proudly “taken my father’s side” as a toddler, it had come at the cost of my mother. My participation in the jokes about her habits, her hobbies, or her cooking wasn’t as innocent as I had thought. I didn’t understand then that what was meant to be a silly family dynamic was actually a table of three, leaving one woman to eat alone.

2 Versions

I am twenty-four now. In an ideal world, I imagine my solitude clearly: a rosewood writing table positioned beneath a large window, an ink pen, my journal, and a book so gripping. Outside, there is a garden and a canopy of trees. I want to gaze at the branches, watch the sunshine across my desk, and simply forget to write.

I want to be alone in my writing and my reading as often as possible.

I am sharing this because this is my dream of “alone time”. A version of solitude where it is just you and your mind, buffered by patience and the perfect setting. But when I think about what “alone” means to my mother, I hate how it makes me feel.

In a world where I seek out time alone, my mother craves the presence of others. She craves “busyness” the ability to perform daily chores alongside someone, to rest her racing mind in the company of another, and to step away from the deafening silence of an empty house.

I find this to be a common theme among mothers and older women. For their entire lives, they are invested so deeply in their children and husbands that their very routines are built around others. How can they be expected to rebuild themselves after that structure is gone? Why are they often unable to find fulfillment in their own growth as intensely as they did for their children?

The answers lie in the way we accept the world as it is sold to women; the way we convince ourselves it is acceptable for mothers to “shrink” to hold a household together.

I understand the value of partnership, but not when it isolates a woman from the experience of building her own life and values.

It is easy to see why this happens - society can easily impose its whims on women once it has convinced them to occupy less space.

I wish more women understood why companionship outside of the family, hobbies independent of the household, and a rested, aligned mind matter so much. Loneliness is inevitable, and it can even be cherished when you aren’t accustomed to it, but it is a curse when it is the only thing you know.

We should crave silence, but not this kind of silence. Not an isolation that leaves you yearning to be someone or something else.

I hope my mother finds peace in her loneliness today.

She is all too familiar with it now, and there is no going back to the way things were. I have so many questions for her and I will ask them someday.

Just not today.

<3

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Some weeks if he can’t make it, I invite another friend, colleague or an acquaintance and have them pledge their allegiance to the hard shell Chipotle taco because if you’re a soft shell taco lover that’s just disgraceful.

The other day I called him up and asked him not to come. I had an intervention with a different friend and it was finally time to settle things. A spot that’s grown on me so much witnessed, for the first time - a friendship breakup, and an untouched basket of tacos turning soggy and sad.

So on a random Tuesday in November, here I was, just processing the grief of outgrowing a relationship and the wisdom of learning when to let go.

The week after, my Taco Tuesday with Rishabhaa continued. I described in detail the breakup he missed last week.

Loving your friends is one of the greatest privileges of life

You meet them in recess, you share a book to read and two weeks later you’ve signed the holy pact of middle school friendship.Some of them survive horrid puberty, exam seasons, first boyfriends and relentless high school drama together. Others simply can’t stand tall through it all. And when you’re 16, a few horrible friendship breakups happen, you will go on to believe (very dramatically) that finding your people is very hard.

I was lucky to find my soul tribe but I always wondered how we’d endure adulthood.

University is different.

You’re all learning to be adults together in a new city and a new crowd. You find your home in the hostel and nauseous hostel food. You force each other to wake up for first lectures and you’re drunk laughing every weekend at 2 am and nobody wants to go to bed. I discovered layered definitions of girlhood, support and love in university. And I carried them into my first job and a new life I was trying to build.

But now I am more anxious than ever. How am I supposed to hold my circles together?

The school, the university, the city, all of them had given me relationships that I wanted to tie so close to my heart. For over a year I lived in nostalgia and an unending number of I miss you texts.

But it took another year to realise that this was the test. Some will go the extra mile while others will quietly drift away.

A close friend of mine from school unintentionally made it clear to me that there was only one of us in that relationship. I always endured its crumbs because I’d just known her for so long. It felt absurd to address the discomfort.

We did first sleepovers, sneaking out, drinking together and somewhere along the way, we just couldn’t show up for each other in ways we intended to. There were so many factors leading up to it - moving cities, hectic work, family upheavals and just too many unmet promises to show up.

It seemed like the disappointing finale of an unending sitcom happening at California Burrito.

Make no mistake, this isn’t my first breakup. Early high school I’d experienced bitter girl gang wars. But this was more daunting because we’d learnt to build something and just couldn’t quite endure it. It was proof that longevity doesn’t guarantee permanence in relationships.

It hurt like a bitch but it’d also teach me to love with and without expectations. A dance I’d perfect slowly and a performance I’d approach more cautiously but never too seriously. 2025 would be the year I made peace with the fact that I can’t be everyone’s friend and I can’t expect everyone to show up for me.

Call it pre-frontal lobe development or just the beginning of adulting but it was a card from the year I’ll always carry with me.

As for Rishabhaa, Taco Tuesdays are our way of saying we’re still here. Life gets busy, pulls us in different directions, but we keep showing up. Because what’s the point of any of it if you can’t sit across from your best friend over tacos?

There are places, tastes, smells and sounds that can trigger bitter sentiments but words have always been the tightest knots and most triggering for me.

It’s when someone calls me “modern”. But it’s not that simple because it’s never just “modern”.

It’s always -

you’re too modern,

so open minded

very forward

The tone, sometimes sarcasm, a slight smirk or the absolute dread in the eyes when describing someone modern infuriates me.

I think when someone calls you too modern and too fast, what their emotions are, are actually fear and an unwillingness to understand where you’re coming from.

There’s always the fear of the edge. The edge is when someone decides to do anything remotely different from the rule book of the world they’ve been handed, the fear is also a wrapper where there is no effort to understand what you mean.

A lot of people have called me modern and forward but it never occurred to me that it always carried a negative undertone until one summer afternoon, my father, very passionately angry, called me too modern.

I didn’t understand the weight of this label until someone I loved threw it at me

I’d very excitedly proposed moving out in the same city as them and as most Indian parents, they didn’t understand what this meant for me.

I was so confused

Because to me, moving out had nothing to do with sabotaging a relationship at home and had everything to do with pushing myself out of a rut, a weird comfort zone that I’d sneaked myself into.

I needed to move out so my hyper-independent brain can rest in knowing I can take care of myself perfectly well.

I grew up with extremely high standards for myself that sometimes I met and most times realized could not match up to. Living at home would go on to feed that critical worm in me.

Moving out would heal that part of me and I know this would make me really happy.

Overall a hard pill for the family to swallow. Overall a very stereotypical world for women.

But I realised that there are versions of this exact dynamic that women hear everyday.

So if you’re me and this word absolutely infuriates you,

I’ll tell you exactly why you must go on with your life with a delusional level of confidence and belief in yourself.

Modernity used as derogation is always to imply that your values, ideas and behaviour is not accepted in that realm. It means that they don’t understand why you choose to support an idea or believe in something or worse - absolutely refuse to understand.

Of course we’re entitled to our own opinions and value systems. There’s no denying that.

But to think that modernity is stripping away a traditional value system is bizarre. If anything it makes your roots stronger because you decide to make space for a new conversation and experience and there’s nothing more supportive than an empathetic arm.

I see modernity not as abandonment of tradition but an expansion of it. I think there’s a lens of empathy that all adults should develop but in an Indian context, it’s a muscle to be trained.

Without it, love becomes conditional - contingent on staying within invisible boundaries.

Without it, every conversation becomes a negotiation where one side must lose. I’ve watched this play out when parents can’t understand why their children grow distant, children who stop sharing their lives because honesty feels like a huge deviation from life’s pre-written expectations.

The muscle of empathy prevents this fracture. It keeps relationships alive.

In every society, across every demographic and social stratum, there are unsaid boundaries and edges.

Moving out is too modern of me, following your dreams is too new of you.

Moving out is too fast of me, wearing what you want is too forward of you.

Moving out is too open minded of me, And for men and women at their own homes, something else is too modern and just too much.

Your world is made of the whimsy and love you choose to bring and everything you decide to empathise with.

The unfortunate hard truth is not everyone will understand that and the label that slaps you is too often modern.

Modernity will always be an easy derogatory word for the world. How else can they say - I don’t understand you, I won’t try to or this doesn’t fit in my world.

I’ll never understand using the word modern as derogation, but what I do understand is this: the refusal to try and see someone clearly is conditional love. We find ways to live with it, but the wound runs deeper than most can tell.

Until then, leave me to my own too-forward world.