We settled into our seats, tucked into a table that touched the stage, and I looked, really looked, at who I was with: my mother, older brother, and dear childhood friend, all present and dazzling to celebrate my thirty-second birthday at India’s 1st drag musical: Superqueens.

I don’t mean to sound like a wide-eyed alien when talking about my own city, but in truth, my young, closeted, and terrified teenage self kept tugging on my sleeve asking, is this real? You see, I left at eighteen, crossed oceans, built lives and broke them, and I left a version of myself here in my home city: one that didn’t ever think all her identities would comfortably co-exist in one place. I’ve scrolled by it online, but sitting in its presence, close enough to touch, is profoundly different: Queer. Indian. Art.

My loneliness took a seat next to me and sipped on my passionfruit iced tea, as my mother squinted into her phone and brother took selfies in the shining purple shirt he’d picked out to be part of the excitement. I talked my friend’s ear off about how I couldn’t believe this queer community was right here, seemingly under my nose. Hidden in plain sight, like when you stick your head under water in a lake and find an entire universe that was thriving without you. I prayed to grow gills (rainbow on the right and tri color on the left side, please) then the lights dimmed and it was time for the show to begin.

To know how the show was, you must know that the next day I could not speak. I had hooted and hollered and held back sobs all night long. Even if Superqueens wasn’t the historic and crucial-for-our-times show that it is, it was just, plain simple, a magnificent triumph of the arts.

Paced effortlessly, the show embodied my favorite form of theatre: minimalist razzle dazzle. The production was larger than life without being complicated, the dancers’ energy surged through us all, and the performance from each cast member made us love them and root for them immediately. Down in my seat, I glittered with the mesmerizing costumes, and the prop work plus the queens’ natural comfort with each other and the stage seamlessly moved us between locations with ease. I was there in the dressing room with them. I was there when they had hope and when all felt lost.

I especially adored the multi-media direction, the way the screen was woven into the narrative. What a gift and brilliant directional choice to have us learn more about the cast while watching them perform. I was overcome by the resilience and the incredible joy, humor, and softness I heard from each artist. I found myself wishing that we all could’ve had each other as friends when we were younger, and praying for each of them to be safe and loved always.

Theatre and film across the globe have a long standing history of using queer people, trans people, drag artists, and Indian people, as punch-down comedic relief. While the queens certainly made us laugh (me: guffawing throughout), the writing and performance pushed hard against the centuries-long depictions that plague us, both in subtle and strong ways. There was deep respect present in every word, every joke. The story also educated the audience about drag personas and trans identities without ever being didactic: it was woven into the story in meaningful and impactful ways that I wish the entire world could experience. I truly thank the entire cast and crew for their service in helping our community be better understood with love, art, and laughter.

The cast was the heartbeat of the show, and I mean that from the queens, to the Tandoori Mundas dance crew, to the actor who beautifully and hilariously played all the characters that represent the ways in which the world attempts to exploit the queens. I was lucky to also meet the director, a genuinely warm, welcoming presence whose love for the show was palpable. His vision was executed brilliantly. Please go check out everyone’s work and support them in all they do:

Superqueens (where you can find the entire cast and crew, plus upcoming shows!)

Betta Naan Stop; Hash Brownie; Whacker Cracker; Lush Monsoon; Sickk

Vivek Mansukhani (director); Shohini Dutta and Udisha Uniyal (choreographers)

As I sat there utterly dazzled, I remembered that this was their one year anniversary. A show that has been widely reported to run sold out night after night. In that moment, the young Brea who wondered if anyone would ever care for the voice of an Indian lesbian, met the thirty-two year old Brea who has just left a stable career behind to give herself fully to the arts, and they agreed: yes. People will care. They already do.

Delhi has an unpredictable relationship with performance art. While there is incredible work across the city, audience engagement is never guaranteed. Yet, Superqueens was packed. Another reason I love the queer community we show up. And show up we did! What a joy to see a beautiful queer and trans community, decked up, having a blast! There was safety in the air. I savored it.

What moved me the most, perhaps, was the plentiful presence of older adults in the audience. After the show, I scurried to meet the performers and thank them for their incredible work. Hilariously, I kept telling anyone who would listen: I’M A LESBIAN! with my mom beaming right next to me.

I hugged Betta Naan Stop, then introduced my mother, to which Betta replied “oh, my mom’s here too!” I haven’t been able to let go of that moment: so simple and yet, somehow, the once-unimaginable future. I don’t take it for granted. Most of us still don’t get to have our moms standing by us as we shine in our truth.

While so much of the world is redirecting misplaced aggression and despair on the trans community, a show like Superqueens is medicine. Only those who are struggling to love themselves can truly have anything other than love for our community.

World over, and especially right now in India, the trans community needs us to stand with them. India’s 2026 amendments to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act has introduced drastic and regressive rollbacks that include medical gatekeeping, narrowed legal definitions, and more problems that hurt the people we love.

We must join community protests, push for legal rights especially in employment, housing and healthcare, help the community access healthcare, donate to safe shelters, and do everything we can. The trans community is our beacon of freedom, love, and resilience. Humanity is worse off without their safety and joy.

I’m still learning about the organizations, so please if you’re aware of orgs doing great work, drop them in comments. Check out: Keshav Suri Foundation.

When I was at Delhi Pride earlier this year, my first one ever and the prelude to this night, I was struck by one of the organizers. She was serene in a bright orange vest, talking to the police, handing out pins (one that I still keep at my desk as I write this), watching out for our safety. I felt a rush of gratitude, protected by their presence, but i didn’t get to thank her that day.

On the night of Superqueens, I stepped out of the venue and that very person was there, interviewing us about our experience watching the show. I talked to her, learned her name, and finally got my chance to thank her for her work. Please support her, she does incredible work for our communities: Pranav Grover Boxer.

As I left a sea of hugs and smiles behind me, I held close the evidence of a community that I once didn’t dare to dream could exist. I hope I get to keep connecting with them and begin to belong. Over the years I’ve learned that belonging isn’t only about stepping into a space where your identity is the same. To me, it’s become about discovering the people and places where I can be unmasked and known for the person I am.

I write all of this as an awe-struck fan, a fellow artist, a healing lesbian, an Indian person re-tethering herself to her roots. My very lesbian breakup film is making rounds at film festivals all over the world, but it took me fifteen years to build up the courage to pursue the arts and learn the difference between being out and being publicly known as a queer artist. I’m humbled thinking of the people who have come before, carving paths for us to know that we can shine brightly and be loved for it.

I thank every single queer and trans person on earth, out or not, artist or accountant: your existence matters to me, and I love you.

Right now, we are waterfalls. Rushing water flying off edges, smacking onto rocks, dousing and submerging. We’re loud and powerful and necessary. But true change is a river, and we have much work to do to chart a safe path for it to flow on to a better future.

Who am I to write this? Not a formal expert, no. Just someone who has lived both in the middle and the margins, with privilege and with strife. I’m an Indian lesbian, born and raised in Delhi, moving between my city and New York. I spent a decade working in clean energy tech, where I learned how technology, politics, and people shape one another. Today, I’m a novelist and filmmaker. It’s from the intersection of those experiences that I’m writing to you now, as I watch the youth sound alarms that have long been ringing.

To those who are in the streets for our future, thank you. Please stay safe and continue to share your journey and needs with us. Not just the student protests, but all who are daring to use their voice and bodies to protect each other and all of us.

Each of us have a role to play in a movement / आंदोलन में अपना काम पहचानो।

Showing up looks different for everyone. Some of us will stand in the streets, others will write music and poetry to help us channel grief, rage, and hope. Those with experience will show us ways to solve problems, those with wealth will use it for sustenance and legal protection. Voices with influence will lend their presence to build resonance and legitimacy. Those who aren’t sure yet, will work to learn and change their minds.

I notice an urge in myself to be vocal for every cause all the time all at once, then freezing because I know I can’t sustain that. Instead, I’m learning that it’s fair and strategic to choose and focus. It doesn’t mean I’m not an ally to everyone else, it just means I’m not getting in my own way by trying to do everything all at once. In truth, all justice is intertwined.

Trying, by nature, is imperfect. The overwhelm of doing it right or being a hero can freeze us in place or burn us out quickly. We need everyone’s unique flavor of participation to go forward.

Protests open the gates for lasting change / प्रदर्शन के बाद भी काम बाकी है।

True reform is a tiring, unglamorous process. The protestors do an incredible of bringing attention to a problem. After that comes the most important and tedious aspects of auditing, budgets, rolling out change piece by piece. This part rarely has on-going transparency and accountability, so we’ve got to figure out how to keep up momentum over time.

Politicians, educators, social workers, business strategists, and anyone who is experienced with system-wide reform are in critical positions to roll up their sleeves and help drive sustained change. Artists, influencers, public speakers, can tell authentic stories about change, being careful not to regurgitate propaganda. People from all walks of life can talk to each other with tolerance and openness so we can shift society along with systems.

Recognize the youth and all protestors / युवाओं और प्रदर्शनकारियों के साथ खड़े रहो।

Young people are incredible. Their idealism and courage is the heartbeat of our world, and they deserve to feel safe and excited for their future. To trust the adults in the room. This generation especially knows how to mobilize for justice, I’m inspired by them every day.

Still, they are young, which is why those of us with more time on earth must guide instead of belittling them.

Having been in quite a few protests in different countries myself, there is one loud commonality between all of them: protestors want to protect each other. People share water and snacks, check in on each other, sing and hug, maintaining peace as much as possible. Everyone knows their safety is at stake, and they act with caution.

It doesn’t mean that there aren’t instigators present, but time and time again, mainstream media paints the entirety of protestors as nuisances or violent people. In my experience, this is consistently untrue.

If we look at protestors and don’t understand why it’s necessary, then we have to take the time to study up on why protest is an effective and crucial way to engage with an administration that isn’t acting on behalf of us. The government is in service of the people. If the people are not protected, the authority forfeits their right to govern. I’m not arguing for chaos, only accountability.

Real change lifts everyone up together /अपनी सोच से आगे बढ़ो, असली बदलाव सबको साथ लेकर चलता है।

While there are several on-going protests, the student protest has captured the eyes and heart of our nation and the world around us. What started as a protest against leaked examinations and education reform has become a resounding movement for rooted justice. We have watched community after community turn up to stand with the youth: the farmers marched, Punjab descended to support Delhi, the Trans community sang their way into the crowd.

There is no student movement without queer and trans students, without students from all regions, religions, castes, creeds. A student is a student. Perhaps this universal resonance is why we have witnessed a unity that feels revolutionary. Perhaps it is a call for us to change internally so we can stop being divided when we all want safety, security, and love.

As someone who isn’t a parent and right now doesn’t plan to be one, I long for the youth to feel hope and excitement about their future. As a lesbian, I long for the queer and trans community to have freedom and safety. As a woman, I long for women to walk the streets and their homes without harassment and danger. None of this feels out of reach if we stand together and hold ourselves and each other accountable. Let us work to show each other that it’s all possible.

Though I am afraid as I hit publish, I’m comforted to know that dissent and courage is an ancient act. We are as interconnected as the rivers and oceans. Different in our salt and strength, but not in our truest nature. We can go our own ways and we can meet to become an ocean. All of it exists together in harmony.

Silence as censorship is a favorite tool of rising fascism. I thank those who are loud and outspoken. I hug those who are still afraid. Be your own kind of river, but please, join the current.

More to come. I am educating myself on the details of the reform and the nature of historical revolutions around the world, and will write again when I have something of value to share.

Through all of it, I remind myself that revolution our blood.

इंकलाब जिंदाबाद!

As I grow, I die, and disappear within myself. The years go by in this way. Countless deaths laid to rest, some sweet, some turbulent. Each time, I kiss the hands of who I’ve been and send her inside to be free. But every now and then, I linger, haunting the spaces between my ribs.

This ghost, through my eyes, peers at the outside world, waiting for the day that her past stands in front of her again. When it comes, though it may look different, it pulses a sickly familiar that terrorizes her deep within. She screams and tears at my insides so that I will hear her. I feel her ravenous pounding behind my ribs, in my temples, under my eyes, an ancient bursting. But I do not know her voice. Everything is loud in my mind and body. I cannot truly hear her, or speak words of comfort.

She has, on occasion, thrown me aside, taking over what I do, what I say, what I think. I sob, like her wound is bleeding on my body. When her storm passes, she lets go, and an incongruence shakes my floor. I do not know that I have time traveled.

How can I know? How can I fathom that she is still alive, powerful enough to possess and unravel? She was supposed to become only a story. A chapter closed, one that I survived with the knowledge that I am destined to live a little bit haunted.

But over the years, I seek the quiet. Seep the poison from my blood and bones, drop by drop through stillness and understanding. All in the hope of a breath of peace. I find ghost after ghost. Listen to each story, ask the names of her tethers and untie their knots. It becomes, by all means, an era of serenity, painstakingly ushered in.

But in this unprecedented silence, I am disturbed. I finally sense her presence.

The one who is screaming underground.

I sit until I sink further, back in time and low into the earth—

Until I find the first lost sister.

The Lost Sister of Young Queer Grief

I do not know where I am, somewhere inside the realm of my mind. Only that I am somehow both underground and outside. Light streams in from above, and I shield myself from the dangerous wind. A tornado with a girl at its center.

I can hardly see, sliced and struck with debris. But through it all, I see her. Eyes glazed, frozen in mid air, screaming out wind that swirls and blusters and threatens.

I take slow, heavy steps toward her, weighed down by guilt more than the storm.

All this time, I’d left her here. Alone.

Every word I’d said about her in the decades since she lived come rushing back to me. I cry but my tears don’t have time to fall before they’re swept away. It is time. I scream over her tornado.

“I was wrong.”

Nothing changes, but I know she is listening. I shout.

“You were not crazy. Not delusional for believing the girl who was kissing you in secret could love you back in sunlight. The world is wrong, but you were never wrong.”

The storm quiets, but doesn’t stop. I can feel her hanging on to every word, ready to tear it apart and spit it out. Lies. I still cannot see her eyes as she hangs in mid-air, frozen in time. I don’t stop.

“All the years I spent wondering if I’d made things up; cursing myself—you—for not being able to tell reality from fantasy. The humiliated from not being chosen—I was wrong. I was wrong.” I beg, wretched.

“I didn’t know you were listening. I’m sorry.”

The wind picks up, harsher this time, pushing me back. But this time, I won’t abandon her.

“I should’ve protected you. You deserved to be protected and loved from the very start. I won’t leave your side. Never again.”

All I can do is say it over and over, holding tight as the storm tries to send me back to my realm. I cannot control how the world hurts us. But I can decide how I speak to my ghosts.

“I’m sorry!”

I cannot see anymore. Every sense is only a white hot scream.

Then there is quiet. I open my eyes to a dying storm. And her, with a hanging head and hunched shoulders, floating to the ground.

I run to her, but I hear the echo of twenty more footsteps.

I don’t stop to see. I just scoop her into my arms, still, to this day, unable to see her eyes. Lifeless and quiet, but breathing. I know she heard me, but I still say it all again, this time, a whisper.

We are not alone. I look up, and see—

Me. Everyone I’ve been. Young and radiant; a lost twenty year-old, exuberant, goofy, shattered. The musician, business woman, the confused immigrant, the girlfriend, the dreamer. I see all of us.

I let her go, right into their arms. I step back and watch all of the sisters. They hold the lost sister close, dissolving her into their protection.

She’s okay now. Never ever alone again.

I open my eyes to the outside world. 2:30am in New York, wondering if the city had felt her scream.

The Lost Sister of Grown-up Fear

When a screaming ghost is finally held, there comes a quiet that may not be called peace. A raw, ragged ache threatening to bleed with a too-wide stretch. I don armor to hold myself in place.

But how long does it take for armor to stitch itself into skin? For sunlight to burn too bright? I begin to prefer a grey sky and the safety of solitude. Is stillness not peace? Stoicism, not stability?

It is just the way life is now, and it is just fine with me.

Until the day I cannot behold beauty of a Plumeria without thinking of its impending death. I turn and watch love unfurl between loved ones, and bite back sharp warnings on my tongue. The city smiles at the sun while I beg it to disappear behind rain, for a lightning strike in the right place.

It is why, this time, the lost sister is hard to find.

She does not scream or rage. But when I venture to peel the armor off—her hand reaches out from within to slap it back in place. Don’t. You’ll get hurt again.

If I did not stake my existence on the basis of love; not consume romantic stories at an altar; not know friends who remind me that I build sandcastles on the beach; I might never have known that she was lost.

I want to be free. I had to find her.

I scoured the earth for her hiding place. Cried rivers then sailed in their currents. Dug roots, discovered worlds. Climbed trees for perspective.

When finally, hidden deep in a luscious cave, I see her.

Her cage is equipped with everything she could ever need. Books, and movies, and music. Only, people and love are not on that list. Wanting has wanted poster, desire itself outlawed.

Life is best lived unwanting. Hearts are best protected with sown-in armor.

How can I tell her she is wrong?

She isn’t. So I don’t.

Instead, I extend my hand to her and ask her for one, unimaginable thing.

“Trust me, for a moment?”

She doesn’t want to. But the sisters help, whispering in the wind. We want. We want more.

Obligated, she climbs with me. We make our way to the top of the hill around the bend. The world moves below, tiny and too far to hear, like you could pick up a car or a person and you’d be scared to squish them.

“Things are different for us now.” I tell her, trying not to sound like I’m trying to convince her out of her hard earned conviction.

She listens, disagreeing with her mouth. I smile.

“Now, when we’re hurt, we have somewhere to go. Friends. Real friends. A community. Even when we can’t stand the world, we stay sober, and show ourselves that we can. We are openly, proudly, free lesbians with everyone in our life. Our heart is broken but, we’re still breathing. Telling stories. Laughing.”

I can hardly believe what I’m saying.

“We’re okay.”

She sizes me up, still unsure.

Then a small, radiant girl runs into her lap. A girl from the time before we knew much about the world. She always believed in magic. So, to honor her, we must too.

The lost sister looks down at her little self. Though she doesn’t like it, doesn’t yet trust, she understands that she must try.

Quite suddenly, we are surrounded once more. Sisters, running barefoot in the grass behind, laughing, crying, skipping. Few of them mope and drag, too beaten down to play, but the others just lift their arms onto their shoulders and tickle the melancholy into soft grins.

This time, the lost sister doesn’t disappear with them.

She decides she’ll stay here for a while longer. Sit, and look at the view.

I place a hand on her shoulder. “Take your time.”

Then I blink my way back into today.

The Sister Who Protects the Realm

These days, I close my eyes and fall backward into myself, just to feel the hands of all sizes and decades catch me.

I know they watch as I move through the world, so I am tender and careful with what and who I allow to reach them. For I am the protector of the realm, and in turn, they are my reason for standing tall.

I’m comforted to know they are all in there together. Playing. Grieving. Mending wounds.

I visit. Listen to their stories, let the little ones jump on my shoulders, ruffle the hair of the awe-struck teenagers, hug the heartbroken sisters. We sit together, always in the grass. I learn, again, each of their voices and wounds and dreams, and promise to honor them in the outside world.

At some point, the realm turns to dusk, and I know it’s time to go. I leave them chatting in a pile, and and leave a piece of myself with them.

I wander back into the outside world: alone, now, but always together.

For I am my sisters, and here is how we heal.

I was nine months into a reckoning, pulled apart by what’s going to happen and will it all work out in the end?

I’d just landed in Delhi from New York and, for the first time since I was 18, I didn’t have a return ticket. I’d quit and run from my decade-long tech career, and the glorious salary that came with it, to give everything I had to writing and film. Three days into unemployment, I’d joined a recovery program and worked one day at a time to bring my spirit and body back to each other.

Now I was back in the city where everything began, bursting at the seams in a spa chair. I imagined running away with half-oiled hair, or revisiting tried and true methods of escaping myself. But I didn’t want to relapse, and turning inward wasn’t an option when all I could hear was the sizzle before an explosion.

It was there and then that I found myself talking, out loud in my head, to the Universe.

Hello. Err. If you’re listening…I’m kind of falling apart. Do I live here now, in Delhi? I can’t go back to New York until I’m making money again. But wait, how do I make money writing stories? Will people even care? Please don’t make me go back to tech. I love this too dearly. But maybe I’m being unrealistic. Was this all a mistake? It doesn’t feel like one, but I have no idea what I’m doing. They tell me I’m supposed to trust you, Universe. Turn it over. But haven’t I made it this far only by gripping tight and steering through sheer force of will?

The Universe didn’t speak back, but my nerve endings blew out their fiery matches. The soothing fingers in my hair reached me. Breeze traveled under my skin, a lightness. The way I feel when I call my best friend back after days of avoiding her because I never want people to see my melancholy. What if they don’t come back after? Some don’t. But many do. I float, giddy from the lightness of handing over my rumination, and the knowledge that I am loved even in my mess.

For the first time, I’d experienced that lightness by talking to….the Universe. At the spa, of all places.

Damn. Was this why people were religious?

Through the rest of the oiling, washing, and loud, hot drying, onto the rest of my day and night, I watched a playback of the last decade of my life.

Sitting with my grandmother in Delhi, tiny pre-teen legs dangling off the chair. Her, with chai. Me, with lemonade. I glance at the back of her newspaper to stories of death. Hindu and Muslim strife, severing a community that belongs together. Across from us, her mandir, beautiful with idols of deities. I’d spend hours looking at their intricate carvings, thinking about the artists that create them with their bare hands, and how do you even etch something so tiny into metal? Her God inspired awe and gratitude for our very own breath. But outside her haven, I watched Gods inspire violence more than love, and bitterness poisoned the possibility of beauty.

In college, I sat on the floor in our dorm room hallway as a friend recounted the ways in which the church had told her she was a sinner. It was easy to fan resentment against religion and its Gods, for it is in their name that we are persecuted. Queer friends especially wondered aloud, how can a God exist in a universe with so much suffering? Exactly, so. I’d stick to believing in a little magical realism and stay away from doors to doctrine.

But then I watched the gentle light emanating from my dear friend in Boston after she’d started going to Church. Timidly, she confessed it to me, as if waiting for a scoff from me. There, she belonged. I wanted her to belong with me too, and how could she if I was judgemental? I sat on my stoop long after she’d gone, humbled. I wasn’t all wrong, but maybe I wasn’t all right either. Can I hate something that gives the people I love so much relief?

The scene shifted, the lights dimmed, and I was on the floor of my apartment, staining the wood with salt water. The magic of the universe was fading from my sight, blocked by shrouds of pain. I blamed the Universe for this breakup. I did everything “right”, I was good—but my heart was still broken, soul still empty, health still fading, existing in an cruel world.

The Universe had forsaken me. In turn, I abandoned myself.

A dark, winding yet still beautiful path brought me to New York. To a career, life, and soul overhaul. Into recovery. A death and reinvention, all the way to this spa in Delhi, where my hair was being neatly combed and curled at the bottom.

“Now you are refreshed, ma’am.” The hairdresser beamed at me in the mirror.

As I stood, thanking him, I glimpsed one last scene. In the earliest days of my recovery, I’d been given an exercise to write my story. All those years I’d gritted my teeth at the Universe for abandoning me. But in my own words, I saw a never ending list of alternate paths that were much worse. Suddenly, I witnessed all the ways I’d been saved, protected, diverted. I’d been lucky, when so many others aren’t.

Refreshed, indeed: the world hasn’t looked the same since.

The next morning, I woke up at dawn and a film script poured out of me. I’d been negotiating with the Universe. Demanding. Making elaborate meaning of why good and bad things happen. Furious when the Universe didn’t deliver my dreams on my timeline, like a good old wish-granting ATM.

This relationship we have with life, the universe, God…it isn’t transactional. It’s about presence.

Things are not happening to me: they are just happening, and I am happening within it all. I am not abandoned or royal. I’m part of an everchanging world in which I’m never truly alone: even moonlight is a companion.

In my script, I traced my life across three decades, jumping between young, hopeful innocence, to the questioning twenties, to surrendering in my thirties. My grandmother is a throughline to the story, my North Star for a life built on awe and gratitude to the Universe, where religion doesn’t interfere with trust. In it, I talk directly to one of her idols over the years, questioning, angry, open. I titled the script Talking To God, and left it aside for months, wondering if I’ll ever be courageous enough to make it.

A few months later, a late-night scroll on Instagram showed me a screenwriting competition for south asian short films. A production grant for the winner. I almost scrolled away, but the deadline was in two hours and the application was free, and I had a script that fit the criteria. The problem was, if I somehow became a semi-finalist, then the public would get to vote to decide the next round. Did I really want to blast my most personal story out for the world to read? For once, I decided to first try, then worry about the outcome. I submitted Talking To God with ten minutes to spare.

A month later, I got into the top 26. I couldn’t fully celebrate because the doubt I’d procrastinated worrying about had arrived. God, as a topic, felt taboo. Did I really want to be the Indian lesbian writing about religion and faith? I considered letting it all pass. If I didn’t tell anyone, then the competition would move forward and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. Visibility is my kryptonite. It had taken me over fifteen years to try my hand at any of this.

I turned back to the Universe for its silent opinion. Reaching out and surrendering, over and over, had become a conduit to my inner knowing. Before I could finish stating both sides of the debate, I got my answer.

I invited the people in my life into my inner word. Aunties, old friends, substack pen pals, ex colleagues from tech, all showed up to read and cast their vote. The terror of being judged, and of being truly known, melted into a recognition that I am loved. That’s the win that stays with me through all of this.

Talking To God made it to the top 10. Then judges voted it into the top 3. I stared at my screen, trying to fathom that, out of thousands in the South Asian subcontinent, a queer woman’s struggle with faith and the universe made it to the final round.

Now here we are, 8 days away from the announcement. My fellow finalists are lightyears ahead of me in their creative careers and that’s both humbling and incredibly motivating. I’m terrified at the possibility of winning because then I have one year to actually make this film and put it out into the world. I have a feeling that even if it doesn’t win, I’m not going to let myself off the hook. I made a budget breakdown after all, it doesn’t get more serious than that. I’m planning to produce, direct, and act in it, shooting it across both my homes in two continents.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but finally, the uncertainty doesn’t unravel my sense of self. One foot in front of the other, talking it through with my friend, the Universe.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. You can read my script here:

Talking To God

If my story resonated and you’re reading this before July 12th 2026, here’s how to participate:

• Go to the link: https://www.kinolime.in/screenplays/talking-to-god

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Genesis

A year ago, I sat by the window with my guitar in my tiny New York studio, listening to the sirens, wondering what comes next. I’d quit my tech career just a couple of months earlier to pour everything into building a life around storytelling. For the first time, I had no idea what the future could look like, and the uncertainty unraveled me.

School, college, job. The details changed, but the shape was always reliable. I used to respond to life’s ambiguity by controlling everything I could, and also trying to bend the things that I couldn’t. Then my calling to create refused to let me run away from it anymore. A lovely little existential crisis later, I found myself by that window, unemployed, writing screenplays and music.

I searched for answers on how to survive this “figuring out” phase without crumbling. Everyone’s stories pointed to the same lesson: you have to step without knowing where you’re going. You have to do something, and see what happens, and respond.

I was the woman who made three year roadmaps at work, and ten year ones in life.

Still, I took it in, day after day, surrendering to the not-knowing. But I got stuck on trust. I had no external evidence that this gigantic leap was the right decision. No film school, no credits, no experience. I hadn’t even performed on a stage in over fifteen years. What if I took the steps and I fell flat on my face? What if I finally shared my voice and only heard silence in return?

Will it have been worth it?

I wanted to know the ending, so that I could trust the struggle that got me there.

While I spiraled about the far future, the impending one had a real and wonderful terror for me to respond to: I’d agreed to perform at Salon Sessions NYC in two days, and I still didn’t have my full set ready.

I considered cancelling or leaving the continent entirely. I typed out the “I’m so sorry!” message to the organizer several times. But instead of sending it, I recorded a voice memo and sat with my guitar, plucking the trusty D chord with my capo on fourth. I looked out at my new city, listened to the sirens, and sang what was true.

Salon Sessions’ format is one cover, one finished original, one work in progress original: predict the ending became the last song in my set.

Demo & Lyrics

Live at Salon Sessions NYC, May 30th 2025

I chose to leave the melody flowing and conversational, relying on the rhythm of a long sentence to work together across bars to make up the chorus.

It was meaningful beyond compare to sing this in a room of fellow artists, all in their own versions of leaping into faith. If that’s you too, dear reader, I hope you feel held.

Predict The Ending

And I wish you could predict the ending for me—

So I know that this is worth it.

I’m scared to death
That I’ll fall right through
The path that’s supposed to appear
When I take the first step.

So, I wish you could predict the ending for me…

There’s a siren in my mind,
All the time.
And it’s not just cuz
I live in the city.

I’ve been dreaming
Safely from the ground.
Now suspended in it,
I’m falling through the clouds—

They say to fall love
With my own mystery.
Don’t suffocate under the weight
Of uncertainty.

Of things that might come
Or just aren’t meant for me.

Go where there is no road…
See where there is no hope…
Cry when there’s no shoulder
To lie on…

So I wish you could predict the ending for me—

So I know that this is worth it.

I’m scared to death
That I’ll fall right through
The path that’s supposed to appear
When I take the first step.

And I wish you could predict the ending for me—

I wish you,
I wish you,
I wish you,

I wish you could predict the ending for me…

Check out my other songbites here:

But that night, in the messy middle of claiming my freedom, a message blipped up on my screen. Each word numbed me into a slow panic:

A request for coffee. From another Queer. Indian. Woman. (!!!)

To bring you into my context: I was a just young Indian lesbian with a compulsory boyfriend, ready to escape into the arms of NoHo and the Homos and finally be free. But I wasn’t quite there yet. Paranoia trailed me, just like the whispers when I entered and left classrooms in the days after being outed. My people please-y, need-to-be-universally-loved-to-feel-safe self was crumbling. I found myself silently screaming before every social interaction because what if they brought it up? I’d never met an out queer person in my life, or seen queer Indian people thriving online. I had no evidence, no reason to believe that I would ever be okay.

And this girl, Ms. Possibility, wasn’t just a random queer person asking for a coffee. She is a close family friend of The Girl. The Girl who’d kissed me in secret. Who I’d loved and foolishly dared to confess that too. The Girl, who, in turn, had outed me to the entire school and city beyond.

Possibility had found out about me when The Girl mentioned to her in passing to her that I’m queer. I’d only met her once or twice before, but she always had a warmth and kindness to her. Maybe we can support each other. But also, please don’t tell The Girl about this because no one in our family knows.

All I could think was: The Girl is still gossiping about me? After everything she put me through?

In those days, the thought that someone was talking about me sent me into a spiral. I desperately wanted to know if they were being cruel. How could I go around talking to people, not knowing if they’d called me disgusting to their friend an hour ago? All I could do was grab at whispers, at slivers that others deigned to tekk me, and try to form a picture of where I stood in the only world I knew at the time.

So I typed back to Possibility, quickly, to match my pulse and get it over with. Something along the lines of: I’m so sorry, but I’m just not ready yet.

Shame swirled and lodged itself that box that I’d kicked and shoved under the bed, as if it couldn’t haunt me from there. It wasn’t about being lesbian. I was more upset that I’d caused The Girl discomfort by daring to name our kisses as something that could be real, than I was about wanting to kiss her in the first place. I was ashamed because people were talking about me negatively. It’s the cruelty in judgement that created shame, not my queerness.

When I hit send, though I couldn’t name it then, I knew I’d let myself down. It was another strike against me for not showing up. An exchange student from Bangladesh had recently asked me to follow a page supporting LGBTQ rights (why was it always Facebook?). I remember explaining myself in a long message: you see, there’s a rumor about me, and if I like your page, then everyone will think it’s true. I waited for him to tell me it’s okay. That he understands, and wishes me well. But, he just never replied.

Possibility, however, did reply. She understood. She wished me well.

And I? I left for America.

I broke it off with the compulsory boyfriend within the first few weeks, over Skype and its rather pleasant ringtone. Shortly after, as I huddled with my housemates watching Obama v. Romney in our common room, I promised myself: if Obama wins the election, I’ll come out to all my friends. Oh, how I resent the math we do just to be honest about something so beautiful. My lesbian freedom suddenly was dependent on a U.S. presidential election. Hah!

But thankfully, he won. And so, I came out. All my friends still loved me after. Writing this over a decade later, the math of coming out hasn’t magically disappeared, but I’ve struck “still” from the equation of who gets to love me. If the hinge of “still” is present, it’s not a relationship I really want.

After that, I lived my best-ish lesbian life on campus. Ish, because it still wasn’t easy being a queer international student. And outside the college bubble, with my family and my community, is another story for another time. But racism and homophobia aside, there I was: 19, kissing and loving women, singing a capella (yup), and living free for the first time.

But I never forgot about Possibility. This isn’t a romantic story (sorry, lesbians). I became riddled with guilt as I realized that I had become one of the lucky ones—the Indian lesbians who actually got to be free.

There was also the burden of being an “only” in most spaces. I’d live my freedom on campus, then go back to Delhi become a ghost. I loathed the negotiation, the calculations for my safety. Lie, and be fine. Tell the truth, and be shunned. Or maybe not. You could never really know how someone might react. The dissonance and loneliness just made me desperate to grow into a safe haven for others like me.

Instead fully facing forward, I found myself also looking back, over and over. I’d let Possibility down. Someone like me had needed me to stay, and I had run. The deeper truth, that made me small and wretched, was that I was the one who needed her friendship.

The moment I’d come out to my friends, I’d gone back to our messages to reach her. But her profile was gone, and she was untraceable online. The only person I knew who could reach her was The Girl, the one who’d outed me. But even if I wanted to break our silence to ask for Possibility’s number, I could never risk outing her.

So, year after year, I searched for Possibility. Whenever guilt slapped me to remind me of her, which was about once a year, I would sit and google what I knew about her: nothing more than her first and last name. This woman was unfindable, really. No social media, no website.

Truthfully, I’d given up on actually finding her after the first year or two. The search had become a roulette of what if I find her this time, more than a genuine expedition. I’d grown into someone who countered shame and loneliness by being a present, open, loudly joyful lesbian. I searched for this near-stranger for years because I just wanted to apologize for not being that person yet. For not honoring her courage to reach out in the first place.

Once a year, for eight years, I looked for her.

Until one day, I refreshed my page thrice over to make sure I wasn’t making it up.

There she was. Of all places, on LinkedIn.

I couldn’t believe I found her. But shame gripped my wrists and pulled me away from the keyboard. She wouldn’t want to hear from you. She probably won’t even remember who you are. You’ve been crazy to keep this up.

Who knew what kind of rejection was waiting for me on the other side? I was terrified that she wouldn’t reply, or might decide to block me. The moment was asking me to vulnerable without a guaranteed of being gently received. And I’d learned early that putting yourself out there mostly always ends in being smited.

But with years of regret in my lap and an apology at the tip of my tongue, was I really going to walk away from a queer friendship apology over a LinkedIn DM? Of course not.

I asked shame to lay itself to rest, and then I typed.

I thanked her for reaching out to me back then. Expressed my regret, confessed my searching. I apologized for not being able to meet her in community when we both sorely needed it. I told her how joyful and proud I am to be out and living as myself.

This is the kind of emotional math I don’t mind doing. Could my honesty cost her? Would it be better to let her be? How can I be accountable without berating myself, or inundating her with my perspective. I want to discern well, how to move with people. Then let the rest fall as it may.

I hit send, and quite uncharacteristically, I didn’t spiral. (Okay, I did a little bit).

But I’d been waiting for this chance for a long time. Only, when it arrived, I saw that it wasn’t her forgiveness that I’d waited for. A slow peace had bloomed just moments after sending my message.

That night, I held my fist out to Possibility, then released it into an open palm for Surrender.

I was so young when I ran from Possibility. There was no cruelty in it. I’m not that terrified girl anymore, and I can forgive myself for being her. I traveled back to that 18 year old with shaking hands, and I held them steady for her. It was never a shame you had to carry.

I’d made things right with myself. And then? I was lucky enough to make them right with Possibility too.

Her letter came in, two days later:

Hi Brea, of course I remember you! In fact, you popped up on LinkedIn for me a few weeks back, though I didn’t want to add you in case you still needed your space. I’ve also thought of you over the years and wondered how you are. :) I’m so, so touched to hear from you. This is such a wonderful message to receive. I am so thrilled to hear you are out and that things are going well for you. I would love to stay connected and be friends :)

You were given a box. You nestled inside and made it a fortress, safe within those rigid walls. To you, it is divine order, the logical one.

Men are like this, and Women are like that.

Why are you so sure?

You look at your body, watch your movies, talk to your friends and family. You open your book, written by ancient versions of you, then wave it in the sky and call it divinity. Call it history.

Your world is infinitely reflected in your fun house mirror.

You sweep the truth into your mind’s garage. You know that mirrors with different reflections are shattered, over and over. But you’ve never really seen the shards. They’ve never sliced you open.

So you bob your head to the beat of your echo chamber. The world was made to be this way—Men are like this, and Women are like that.

But these days, people expect you to recognize other reflections. So you bob your head to the beat of their dissent, then go home and take care of your secret. The world was always meant to be this way—Men are like this, and Women are like that.

Because if Men are not like this, and Women are not like that—

Then what are you really like?

You cannot say. It would crumble the walls of the cage you turned into your fortress.

You would be small in the ever expanding world. Mountains would tower over you, threatening you to climb. Flowers would bloom for miles and the beauty might burst a dam in your chest. You would see the stars, and they would make you wonder if there is more to life than what you believe to be true.

And you would stand there, in the middle of divinity itself—desperately reaching for a wall, just because you’ve always followed the blueprint.

So you curse the forces that called you down from your fortress. You panic.

In your desperate scramble to avoid yourself, you glimpse those who are walking freely in their divinity. Discovering and changing in front of your very eyes. The walls never held them in the first place—and you hate them for it.

A bird with clipped wings resents the ones that fly free.

Do you know why they fly?

That which is divine, is that which transcends.

The Divine Blessing: I am not the shape of a box.
The Divine Curse: The system needs boxes to stack into towers.
The Divine Calling: The walls that keep me from myself must fall.

Do you understand, now, what you have really been protecting?

You’d rather be adored just for being born, than break apart and meet the person you could be.

The system that hurts us isn’t a villain pulling strings: it is the shape of countless ordinary people making predictable decisions over and over. It preys on our fear to distract and direct us. What better way than with axis upon which all parts of our lives have been taught to spin—Men are like this and Women are like that.

When you look the other way as trans people suffer, and say, not my problem, just remember this:

Someone sees you in their mirror, then goes out and kills divinity.

They lust and long for freedom but they can’t stand their crumbling walls, then divinity is destroyed in your reflection. You want to know exactly what’s under a person’s clothes at all times because you are living as half-alive, and further every minute, from your own humanity.

Because if Men are like this, and Women are like that, and Trans people are the problem, then you have been successfully stopped from seeing:

People are dying because they can’t pay to see a doctor.
Families go hungry because executives take home more wealth than is needed for a hundred lifetimes.
Children are abused for pleasure because power has become a sickness.
Our oceans and forests are diseased and dying because accountability has lost meaning.
And even ordinary people who have all their needs met, struggle to live the life they want.

And you think trans people have anything to do with that?

Maybe you feel helpless. What can you do for the forests and the children? So you become desperate for agency. You can’t tell an ocean to purge its microplastics, but maybe you can tell a person what to do with their body. Maybe, if Men are like this, and Women are like that, then you are still in control of your life.

But maybe, just maybe, you don’t have to do any of that.

You are not bad, no. You possess infinite good. You just have to choose to walk toward it.

Let the walls fall away and see that you can still be wonderful when trans people are safe, joyous, and free.

For to see trans divinity is to bring you closer to your own.

Why the hell did nobody tell me you have to be entirely naked in an onsen?

In my defense, I didn’t do adequate research because I was picking up the pieces of my shattered (lesbian) heart while dragging myself onto the flight from New York to Tokyo. I truly thought all onsens were just like hot tubs. At the very least, clothes would be optional, not disallowed.

I was there with a lesbian couple, my friends from Boston who’d moved to Tokyo two years ago, and the only two people I knew in the entire country. My friend hadn’t even cracked a smile when she stopped me from rushing to put my swimsuit on before our bubbly little plan.

Out went all maturity I thought I’d accumulated as an almost thirty year old. I spun around and got very busy folding a towel so that she couldn’t witness my foolish grin and abject horror at the suggested intimacy. Sure, I could slip off my robe and dive in there like a speed demon, but water is…transparent, no? Needless to say, I was not chill. But I wanted to be. Nonchalant and naked, just like them.

In the changing room, my lifelong curse of nervous laughter almost ruined me. Without waiting for me to turn around, they threw off their robes. Confronted with the butts of my friends, I had to slink into a corner and hide my laugh with a throaty cough. “See you in there,” they called as they walked into the steamy room.

I looked at myself in the mirror and felt first-hand second-hand embarrassment. What was wrong with me? Everyone has a body. I’m not judging theirs, or my own. So why am I bubbling like the water that was waiting for me inside?

I only really understood this later. My nervous system was sounding the alarms, blowing the war conch, and practically clutching my blood vessels and shaking them into a light-headed panic. My problem wasn’t bodies. It was the secret, unruly baggage of being a lesbian in a locker room.

Naked and boiling in the water, I chatted with my friends as if their breasts weren’t staring directly at me. After a few initial awkward minutes, I started to feel at ease and a little foolish. We had a wonderful time, and soon, they overheated and left. I stayed, mostly to avoid standing up naked together. I relished being the only one in the room. Finally, I could really relax. A few moments later, a woman entered the tub and bid me a polite hello. I smiled over my panic. No, not gay panic. Danger. Like I wasn’t meant to be there. I slipped out and pretended not to run.

But after this onsen experience, I was giddy – officially bodily liberated. The exhilaration of transcending such a vulnerable fear became almost addictive.

And then? I was naked all over Japan.

I traced the route I’d planned for myself, from Tokyo down to Osaka, over the next two and a half weeks. At each stop, you could find me, naked and only slightly afraid, at the various onsens in every town. Each time, I relished that moment when the robe slipped off and I didn’t hunch to hide my body or run away screaming. But as I became a regular in these spaces, I noticed something quieter, and much more sinister, becoming unbearably loud.

I had this feeling that at any moment, someone was going to walk in, point at me, and yell: she’s a lesbian! Their kind faces would furrow with betrayal and disgust, and then they’d throw me out.

Holy shit.

I’ve spent a couple of years of turning this over. But back then, I dissolved into a deep, hollow sadness. But also, to my surprise, a softly growing defiance.

In countless ways, the world paints lesbians as predatory, and I had unknowingly and secretly come to believe it. You hear a rhetoric repeated enough, especially when you’re young, and it becomes a strange kind of truth. I had been out as a proud lesbian for over a decade in all those onsens, and I still carried the instinct to shrink.

The “don’t invite her to the sleepover,” whispered amongst friends at school. The way your overly romantic “best friend” avoids you like a warped mirror when you dare to name the feelings between you two. Or when you’re watching Mean Girls with your friends and Regina George’s big crime against Janis is saying she’s lesbian and framing her interest as creepy. Your friends giggle and gasp at the accusation, and you become talented at laughing out loud while shattering inside.

It feels like the world believes, and makes you believe about yourself, that having queer feelings for women suddenly turns you into a predator. That you will sexualize them in their safe spaces, like sleepovers and locker rooms. That you will always secretly want them, and they will need to protect themselves from you, too.

I name this because the fear and shame that has been so cruelly stitched into us, was never ours to carry. I must tear it out of me and tenderly heal the wounds that it leaves behind.

My gender, my womanhood, is fluid and expansive. For the longest time I felt on the outside of womanhood entirely, and frankly, I often don’t want to belong because of how much it tends to exclude instead of hold. But I don’t actually heal by refusing to belong or contorting myself to fit. I heal by connecting to threads of womanhood that hold meaning for me, and letting go of anyone else having a say in that.

In the last onsen of my trip, there was a group of women across generations—sixties, forties, thirties, teens—all merrily laughing and bathing together. I was relaxing in a different corner, smiling gently to myself. By then, I’d started to realize why I was so afraid, and in seeing it, I began to let go. I said to the girls and women in my head: I am not your predator. I am not sitting here sexualizing you. I love your joy. And I want my peace.

Later, I sat in the changing rooms and rubbed perfumed oils through my hair, lathering my skin with scented lotion, lingering on knees and elbows. The other women did the same. Our womanhood that day was not about bodies; it was about peace. Caring for ourselves while being kind and respectful to one another. Existing, for a moment, without looking over our shoulder.

As I ran the flower-print comb through my wet hair, I realized that this action, to me, is love. My mother and grandmother have spent countless hours oiling and combing my thick, dark waves under the Delhi sun. I grew these strands, decided their shape, shiver when they tickle my shoulders. Perhaps one day, my wife might gently comb my hair and love will travel to me through her fingers and her precious time.

I have since been unraveling the threads of hidden pain, returning shame to its true owners, or better yet, scattered it all out to the wind. I used to curse when I found new ones, but now, I’d like to follow any string that leads me to love being a lesbian even a little more. Thank you, onsens, for the unexpected nakedness that led me here.

I’ll admit, on that hot, lonely Sunday, I wanted to intellectualize instead of feel. In those days, if I peeked inside to ask my pain a simple question, I was met with a screaming girl, incoherent about all the ways that people had hurt us, left us when we had devoted ourselves to them. A cracked door became a floodgate, so I kept it all locked away as best as I could. That’s the thing about pain—it isn’t meant to be caged, but if I tried to feel it all at once, I was sure I’d drown. The ocean waves lapped loudly ahead of me, frothing at the mouth.

I thought about getting in. But I didn’t want to get knocked off my feet like I usually did, even when I saw the wave coming. The feelings demanded to be met, some way, somehow. If I’m in the water, I’m in a world that wasn’t made for me. If I’m on land, well, the problem was the same in a different disguise. I’d tried avoiding people altogether, but I was the one who suffered in isolation. I’d given everything to everyone else so that I might be cherished, but I found myself still alone, still hollow, still never fully loved. So I stayed in my beach chair and pulled out my overheating phone.

I decided to sidestep my vulnerability by leaning into the “anyone can be a philosopher” idea I’d just seen on TV. Dragging my sandy chair from sun to shade, I typed with tired hands slick from sunscreen and sweat: what is the definition of owe?

Now, I’m an economics major turned filmmaker and novelist, so I’m trained to start with capitalism but I always end up running to the heart. Ancient languages told me that owing came from owning—from having something to give. So possession becomes service, which then becomes debt. Banks have made billions off of this equation. But I found myself thinking of an entirely different currency. One that is intangible, unpredictable, and very nearly priceless—

Love.

Love is a power deficit, isn’t it? When I love you, you possess a piece of me. In that case, do you owe me something in return? And if you do, what is it? I don’t think it can work like money does—what, I lend my love to you, and so your love for me must be returned (with compound interest?). No. Owing is not simple in love. I know this to be especially true because I have loved, unrequited but still deep and honest, a few times now.

Up till that point in my life, I thought the ultimate goal was to find someone who would love you, partner with you, and then would owe you everything. Safety, affirmation, a future. There, on the beach, I was not whole—so I believed the world owed me the pieces that would complete me. But it had not delivered, no matter how much I gave. I resented the piles of unpaid cosmic debt.

The people near me started playing loud music and yelling joyfully, and I was immediately frustrated. I huffed, turning around with a harrumph so they might notice. Didn’t they realize that some people might be trying to enjoy a nice, quiet existential crisis under the sun?

But what did they owe me, really? If I know the person, our connection has its own rules and myths of owing. But strangers? What could we be to each other? Why would I expect someone to play their music softer so I could be peaceful? This was just a trivial moment where I was the beachside grinch, but what I’m really asking about is the relationship between power and care. Why would someone give up their power, their music, to make room for me? Why would anyone on this beach care about what’s happening across the ocean?

What do we owe to each other?

I lowered my sunglasses to glare at my noisy neighbors, but I found myself squinting instead. Sand glittered under the sun’s gaze. Blue water borrowed from the sky, its depths emerging as different shades of itself. Bodies of every color and kind walked, played, swam in shadow and light. Parasailers with bright chutes enjoyed a hundred-foot view above children splashing in the shallows. My neighbors were dancing to their music. I didn’t know I was smiling until my cheeks started to hurt.

Looking back now, I think that most people are sort of like me that day on the beach—depressed and avoidant in an overstimulated world, not-so-secretly wanting the sweet relief of genuine connection. The truth is, if we leave the doors inside us open without tools to shepherd what pours out of them, we are at risk of drowning. We lock them shut to stay afloat, drifting further from each other with every click.

So what do we owe to each other when we’re shutting down pieces of ourselves just to make it through the day?

How do I know? I’m just a blip in the universe. 32 years in a 300,000-year-old species on a 5-billion year-old planet. But my insignificance only intensifies this feeling of not wanting to live disconnected from myself and the world around me just to survive. I want to really be here. So, if you ask this blip, maybe what we owe each other, and ourselves, is the effort to stay.

Stay for your sadness so that you know how to stay for your joy. With your anger, when your first instinct is to slam the screaming door inside yourself. When someone else’s celebration interrupts your private sorrow. For stories that may not make sense to you at first. Stay long enough to remember you are sharing a world, not managing one.

None of this means splitting ourselves raw to witness every horror, to become a hero or a martyr. To me, it’s meant sitting long enough to see myself as I am, not as I want to be. I’m learning to lovingly accept my ever-changing capacity. Figure out what I’m really good at, and surrender that some things are not mine to tackle. I used to just feel it all, then shut down, and run. But that day, wrestling with my armor that was also my cage, I slowly started to stay.

I stay, not because I owe the world anything, no. But perhaps because, even after everything, I love it. It holds all of us, sometimes a little too tight. But when I stay, I get to remember that pulsing within the darkness, there is good. And it’s worth staying for.

The children ahead of me began to scream, pointing excitedly at the water. Their joy beckoned the child within me. I threw my phone down and ran to them, and so did their parents. Sweetly gliding in the shallows was a stingray! We all admired it with glee and awestruck whispers. Strangers, but not so different after all. The ray’s gentle flaps soon faded out of view. Much was exchanged when nothing was owed.

Love,
Brea Sondhi

PS: I finally got in the water.

I’m writing to you from an unimaginable future. I just returned home from Delhi Queer Pride. Yes, really. There’s Pride in our city. And you are not in hiding anymore.

This morning, I almost decided not to go. I was tired, still in my pajamas eating breakfast at the time I told myself I would leave, if I were going. All the way to Connaught Place, more than an hour from home. I sat at the dining table writing a list of reasons it was okay that I don’t go. I’m an introvert, I don’t like crowds, I don’t have to march to be proud, and so on. Then I closed my eyes. Instead of the swirling in my forehead, I let it all sink. It seeped into chest and below, into my place of deepest knowing, until rested enough to reveal its truth.

I wanted to be there. I wanted to know what the air would feel like in the only place on earth that all my identities might stand together as equals.

But I was…afraid.

I looked at our city through your eyes and I saw monsters in every unknown corner—and that’s not untrue, is it? You know better than I do. Growing up in Delhi as a young girl means paranoid hyper-vigilance runs through your blood, keeping you safe, and sometimes, even that is not enough. What if the crowd was attacked by onlookers or police? What if someone snatched me away? I would be breaking the cardinal rule of girlhood survival, after all: going all alone.

(Believe it or not, Mama said she would go with us, but she had a performance booked that afternoon. Yes. Mama knows. She knows, and we’ve worked hard for over a decade to love each other more unconditionally with each passing day. We talk about the women I’ve dated and just finished watching Japan’s first queer reality TV show together. I know, right?).

Once I realized that fear was keeping me in my seat, I knew I had to go. If there’s one thing that’s been true about us all along it’s that once we know the name of our fear, we cannot help but shout it. Face it, trembling hands and all. After all, you’re the girl who wrote a lesbian love letter in the middle of early 2000s homophobic Delhi. You had no one. No point of reference. Not in media, not in real life, not in brown skin.

And today, we are becoming exactly that: a point of reference amongst a growing constellation. We’re not alone anymore—and especially after today, I know that we never alone to begin with.

So I opened my thirty-one year old eyes and went upstairs to get dressed. I didn’t know what to wear. I still cover as much of my skin as I can when I step outside. We learned to do that young, didn’t we? Ward off any reason to exist in front of dangerous eyes. Plus, I had to be at our high school later in the afternoon to support brother and mother an Inter-House competition for alumni and parents–I had to wear Green. So I pulled on the jeans that make me feel like a lesbian, nestled my Pink Pony Club hat between my braids, and fastened my jhumkis in each year. As I looked at myself getting dressed for Delhi Pride, I broke into a deep sob.

Sometimes I act strong because I feel like I have to jut my chin out in defiance of a world that insists I don’t really exist. This morning I was looking in the mirror and I couldn’t see you, but you could see me. Inside, you were there, reminding me: we never had this. We never had the internet full of queer south asian people to look at. Or a pride parade to march in. Or movies and books with sapphic love stories that aren’t tragic or only reserved for women that looked nothing like us. We didn’t meet a single out queer person until we got to Massachusetts in 2012. Since then I’ve been to many pride parades, yes, but never on the soil I was born and raised in. Never shouting slogans in our mother tongue.

Until today.

Papa dropped us to the station. I made it onto the metro after jumping through hoops to get a ticket, still a visitor in my city, no digital wallet to navigate the now cashless machines. My heart raced as I scurried to the women’s compartment, leaving the thick crowd of men behind. Got cat called, of course, though they adhered the term, quite literally yelling “meow” at me as I ran by. Finally, I settled in the seats between women who scooched to make room, and breathed a sigh of relief through my pollution-protecting mask.

I watched our city fly by outside the window as my heartbeat began to walk after its run. Chappell Roan pulsed through my ears, earbuds on transparent mode so I could hear the stations. I looked at the women across from me and noticed someone in a retro leather jacket, black and red. Then, from behind my sunglasses, I had one of my favorite queer experiences on earth: recognition in regular, mundane public. She spotted my rainbow socks and burst into a bright smile. I wanted to say hello. But I was still slow-breathing to calm my nerves and…well, there’s always that fear: what if I’m wrong?

Without speaking to her, I got off at my station, leaving regret and a slim chance of queer friendship behind. I tried to be clever and get off at the station closest to the midpoint of the parade because I was almost an hour late. I sorely misjudged Indian Standard Time—the parade had not even begun. So I speed-walked the unfamiliar streets all the way back to the meeting point.

As I turned onto the road that would lead me to my people, I heard a clatter of clop clop clops behind me. A group of women, draped in stunning cocktail dresses in broad daylight, were walking to the parade too. We came from different worlds in the same city, but they didn’t hesitate to scoop me up into their crew. The person that talked to me the most was just sixteen years old, her eyes sparkling when she learned I live part time in new York. The others were just 21, and the leader of the group, who they lovingly called guru, was in her 40s. As we crossed the street together, men stopped in their tracks to gawk, cars screeched to a halt and honked at us. The women held their heads high and walked on, and I felt just a little bit taller to walk by their side. The trans community in Delhi is sacred and knows that chosen family means survival better than any of us. I was walking alone, then they appeared, and I was walking alongside a family. Safe. Protected. We laughed and shared our stories a little. They couldn’t believe I was going to be 32 this year, and sometimes, neither can I. And then we arrived.

The minute I joined the gathering, I was struck by one thing I didn’t expect: the quiet. I could hear trees in the wind, the flutter of pigeons, soft murmuring conversations. Everyone stood together in such calm joy under the sun and bright blue sky. There wasn’t music, yelling or chanting of any kind—yet. The police were standing around, but not menacing. The organizers were handing out badges, talking to the cops, making sure everyone stayed together. I gratefully accepted a rainbow pin that said Delhi Queer Pride. It’s sitting on my desk, looking up at me as I write this letter back in time to you.

I complimented someone’s makeup and she immediately offered to decorate my face. She placed beautiful, gemstone like stickers around my eyes. I watched her and her friends greet each other. I said hi too, of course. But I have to confess, as I watched everyone have someone to hug and kiss, I was lonely, just in a different way.

Looking around with sparkling eyes I felt neither elation nor despair—I experienced serenity. Indian traditional clothes woven with rainbows, adorning queer bodies. Dresses and suits and dhotis and saris and peacock feathers and turbans and velvet dresses and everything you can imagine. Flags sailing high, banners unfurling. Some wore masks to hide their identity, others openly held hands with the person they love. All of us there because we wanted to lend our voice and taste freedom.

I didn’t cry. Maybe I was in shock. After all this time in isolation, suddenly we were there, in a crowd hundred-strong, not alone. Not mythical. Not a detour.

Indian. Lesbians. Are. Real.

Then the dholaks began to play. They pulsed life into the air and we all knew the parade had begun. A fifty meter long rainbow flag was rolled out, at least a hundred of us clutching its edges to hold it above each other. I held a corner, then ducked my head to look at the people underneath. I wanted to make sure they could breathe easily. They could. They were laughing, smiling, hugging, adjusting each other’s make up and outfits under our magic curtain. I held that piece of flag so tight and high that my hand started to hurt, like it was all I could do to protect each and every one of them, even it was just for a moment.

Quite suddenly, I found myself in middle of the street, cordoned off just for us. For once, our city’s ocean of cars and people parted to let us through. Police lined every corner, and I didn’t know if I should feel safe or not. They just stood and watched, no snarls, no sneers. Many organizers stood next to them, talking calmly, coordinating our safety. Many of the officers were women, and I felt safest when we were walking by their stretch of protection. I looked behind the police and their ropes, and then I saw the men—onlooking, phones up and recording us. My throat constricted, and I felt the weight of how much we needed that protection, and how fragile protection is from those who are most often perpetrators. But not that day. That day we stayed safe.

And I marched in the center of it all. In a sea of people holding signs of every kind. India bearing Palestine’s colors beside its own. Couples walked entwined, friends clustered together cheering, strangers complimented each others outfits, and god, did we dance. It was like a wedding baraat for the whole damn city of queers. It was joy—pure, Indian joy, bursting out of our bodies.

Hundreds of queer people, little Brea, hundreds. I saw them, and I’m sending this feeling back to you for the strength to keep going and make it to this moment with me.

We shouted along with slogans that hardened an already-heavy weight: we do not have a semblance of political freedom or protective rights. There is much work to be done, and people are fighting every day to do right by us.

I finally understood why I needed to go. Yes, to see it for myself. But more than that, to be a body in a crowd that together becomes a mountain to remind the world around us: we will not be erased. Not in the name of tradition, not in the name of culture. We will not be called a symptom of Westernization when queerness predated colonialism. We will not be pushed to the margins of a society that we make better by existing in it. When we are free, everyone is more free. Together, the queer community of Delhi claimed the phrase that India claims for sovereignty and freedom: इन्किलाब ज़िंदाबाद । Long Live The Revolution.

The crowd danced, and cheered, and chanted together. And then it was my time to go. I am, after all, and overstimulated introvert. I extricated myself into the corners, and as I was leaving the parade, I locked eyes with someone whose leather jacket who pointed back at me—it the woman from the train! We hugged and wished each other happy pride, bursting with relief that neither was wrong in our queer spotting. Our mutual witnessing. Don’t worry, I got her contact info, along with a few others I befriended. I walked away from pride with connections to more queer people in Delhi than we’ve had all our lives. I walked away a little less alone, and a whole lot more determined to stay visible, even when it’s terrifying.

I hopped into an auto-rickshaw and went back to high school to watch my mother and brother perform in the alumni event. I went directly from Pride to the place of our trauma. Sometimes life lays out the script too perfectly, don’t you think? I thumbed my Delhi Queer Pride badge, feeling its weight on my cardigan, and wondered if I should take it off. Only, I realized it wasn’t actually heavy—it was just sturdy with a sense of responsibility. I realized that there’s nothing anyone can say to make me feel small. I take that power away from them for good.

The event was wonderful, my family and their dance troupe were adorable and excellent and won a gold medal for it. And I? I wore my queer pride from start to finish. No one said a word about it, but later, they posted a picture on the school website—me, hugging my old music teacher, rainbow badge front and center: Delhi Queer Pride.

There’s only one thing left to say in this letter:

Thank you.

Thank you for being so brave. The truth is that everything I do, at its heart, is to honor your courage. When I’m afraid, I think of your fighting spirit. Even when you were in hiding, you were not ashamed of your feelings. You just knew you had to stay safe. And you still took a chance on yourself. You asked the girl who was kissing you in secret to love you back in the heart of the hetero-partiarchy, with nothing and no one to tell you you were going to be okay.

So let me be the one to tell you—you are going to be magnificently more than just okay. The unimaginable future awaits you.

All my love,
Your Future.

PS: I hope you like the pictures.

Come with me instead. To search for a tiger, and listen to the trees.

~~~

I decide to leave my notebook and pen behind. The writing one does while hurtling through the forest in an open jeep, can only happen in the mind. December keeps the sun at bay until the clock hits seven, so when I dress, it is still dark. I’ve done this before, so this time I know to wear the neck gaiter I brought to protect my skin from whipping wind and sticky, cold dust. Eye goggles too, safely tucked in one of the many pockets of my camo cargo pants. I settle my baseball cap tightly between two braids. Gotham FC keeps a piece of New York with me while I’m oceans away in my first home.

The guard is already outside my door, his flashlight interrogating the bushes that surround my “hut”—a ruggedly glorious suite that the hotel dresses in the language of the wild to make us guests feel like explorers.

A thick, dark mustache lifts into a winged smile when he sees me. “Ready to see a tiger, ma’am?”

“Let’s hope so.” I chuckle back. But I don’t fully mean it.

Hope. I’ve been learning how to feel it again. The literature says: when you really want something, you’re supposed to give all you’ve got and then detach from the outcome altogether. So I suppose, these days, I’m trying to try my best while hoping not to have any lingering hope. It can turn to hurt in just three letters.

I follow the tall protective figure along the dark, dirt path. The sky is moonless, and though plentiful stars twinkle, they do not illuminate. The only light comes in periodic flashes as he dutifully scans the grasslands for surprise visitors—tigers are often seen in our camp. Here, we are their uninvited guests.

Every unidentified crunch makes my skin crawl to the edge, tensing for an attack. It’s overzealous, of course, but human. I have not been here before. But my guard friend? He’s whistling. An old Bollywood tune that I only half recognize. Having walked this darkness a thousand times, he knows he will deal, or die, with whoever steps out of it.

But I am afraid. Almost wanting something to show itself and growl. To relieve me of the questioning, the wait.

Is anyone out there?

Instead, I redirect my tension to the problem I promised myself I’d forget on this trip.

To tell you the truth, I have a tendency to spin until I solve. Only recently did I learn that this practice does not make me invincible—only addicted to suffering and the illusion of control. And now I held a problem that was more like a path. One that only paved itself as I walked on it; whose direction was chosen partly by me, but mostly by the universe’s forest and all of its creatures.

I’d decided to leave behind a life of stability and success to spend my days, forever more, writing.

And writing, for me, had become just like this walk. On a dark, pre-dawn path with a merrily whistling veteran ahead of me. Not knowing what lay waiting in the grasslands, or what the stars thought of my nervous gait. Desperate, for the miracle to step out and greet me. Terrified, that it actually might.

For even if it did, I could be clawed apart into shreds of myself. The world is not often kind to Indian lesbians who try to be tigers, you know?

We arrive at the jeep without incident.

The naturalist opens the door for me and the other hopefuls, holding out his hand to help me up. I suppose I’m drawn to turn even trivial moments into rebellion, choosing to climb up the slim footholds stacked above the back tires.

Instructed by our guides, we hide our phones at the security gate. Phones were recently banned from expeditions because when a tiger was spotted, humans regressed into chaos. Our desperate shouts and photography stances probably embarrassed our langur cousins as they sat picking and eating the fleas in each other’s hair. After all, capturing a photo is what anchors our experiences into existence. We in the jeep complain loudly—nobody warned us about this new rule, and without the lens, how were we to prove that we really lived?

The guides wink back at us. This is India, remember? We’d be allowed to pull them out once we clear the checkpoint.

Rumbling to life with a low mechanic growl, the jeep and its humans become one animal to enter the forest.

Early morning rays softly reveal different shades of the leaves, while mist swirls in shadow and light amongst the bark. I smell petrichor—the meaning of my last name, chosen for a writer. Sondhi. My mother’s family name. A legacy that would end with her generation if I did not claim it, replace my father’s with it, for my writing. For immortality. Oh, to be thinking of matrilineal artistic lineage in a place like a forest. Where male tigers kill the other offspring to win the prize of survival beyond death. Their justification for immortality, I suppose.

Here is the secret of seeking: when you’re looking for a tiger, everything in the forest suddenly takes its shape.

The rock with light painting stripes on it, the leaves bunched together in a heart-shaped head. The rise and fall of disappointment becomes familiar as the jeep rattles your bones.

I wonder, do the deer feel bad when they see our glee deflate? You are not the one we were looking for, but I still think you are beautiful, and really quite adorable. Sambars, standing taller than my father, chandelier antlers turning to watch us in return. Chitals with their Bambi-famous white spots, huddled together, the most nervous of the lot. Nilgai, blue in certain lights; antelopes called cows by conspiratorial locals to dissuade poachers. Without you, the grass wouldn’t know when to stop growing. Too much of you, and it wouldn’t grow at all.

A flash of electric blue—I snap toward it. It’s unnatural, because the forest is painted with green that looks like orange that looks like brown. More unnatural, because most of the blue we see in nature is actually a trick of the light, so our naturalist explains. This most striking color is almost always a twisted truth—not a pigment produced by organic creatures, but the reflection of microscopic prisms built under feather and fur. We see what the light wants to show us when it bounces off of that particular creature. The bright blue bird is not really blue.

Once again, performance is not truth. I snap an illegal picture to add to my nature identification app, quietly glad there is no prism to change how the world sees my skin. I think of those who might wish to bend the light, and those who somehow do.

But here’s another truth—rattling through the forest, I do not take pictures of birds that are not striking in color. The ones that pop against the organic hues enrapture me in their bright novelty. But are they the only ones worth remembering? I might snap my neck to glimpse a sparkle, but I might sit and train my gaze to witness the green parrot nestled amongst the leaves. One is louder—but does that mean it’s more worthy?

My problem returns to the front of my mind. When I send my words into the world, the silence in return creates an internal flurry of noise. Did I not write what the forest was looking for? Am I in the wrong section of the woods? Or perhaps, the trees and their creatures are just busy, and it’s not about me at all. How do you interpret silence in a random, overstimulated world? I am so afraid that the quiet actually just means: the forest does not want to hear you.

Art thrives on connection, but connection is easily masked by validation. I catch myself sorrowfully asking the space between the trees: how can I twist and turn my prisms so that you might see bright blue when you look at me?

And if that is the wrong question to ask of the world—then am I wishing on a tiger, on a miracle, to survive without bending out of shape? I want to be felt like a sun ray, not a spotlight. The question is not: can I write. It is: can I survive as a writer who is unapologetically many things the forest wants to bury?

By now we’ve seen all sorts of creatures—golden jackals, endless deer, even a sloth bear—but not the one. The cold morning has become a hot noon, almost our deadline to leave the park. There’s a quiet urgency in our animal, each person’s hunger to witness so palpable, feeding off of each other. Where is the tiger? We look up at the trees like they can answer us. Though we can’t speak their language, we’ve learned to translate the ways of the forest—we listen for The Call.

Each animal has a single unique sound say: I see a tiger. The langurs growl, low like a big cat themselves. Peacocks caw a heyo, comically unsuitable for the danger ahead. But it is the sambar deer’s call that is most alarming and most accurate. A honk. My blood has learned to still when I hear it. Just once? Probably a false alarm. But then there’s the one that comes over, and over. Steady. I see it. I see it. They warn each other in a foreign language that we’ve learned to eavesdrop and interpret.

There it is—

The Call. Loud. Afraid. Slow, then faster. The langurs join in, forming an eerie chorus to caution the forest. Tiger. Tiger. Tiger. The guides’ trained ears point us in a direction I wouldn’t have picked. Our animal rumbles to life again, and our usual jaunt turns to a high speed chase.

The need is insatiable now—it’s our last chance for a sighting before our deadline, and we know our tiger is here. But her presence is not enough. We cannot leave the path, and she may choose to stay behind the bushes to deny us our miracle. We are at her mercy.

For here in the forest, we’ve come to see a tiger. But does the tiger want to be seen by us?

Dust tornados around us and I clutch my hat as we hurtle down the path, so fast that it does not feel safe. The warning calls grow louder as we approach. For the rest of the creatures it means: stay away. But for us, it means: you’re almost there.

We lurch into an open field and my heart stops before the jeep comes to a sudden halt.

Not twenty feet from me—a tiger.

My body flares into a living contradiction—frozen while my seams burst open; dying to scream, but only able to whisper; desperate to run but also to get closer. I am hypnotized by her stripes, her artistic fingerprint. Every step of her thick, giant paw resonates with royalty as it meets the earth. What must feel like to roam a dangerous jungle knowing you are the apex predator? I wouldn’t know. She roars, a soft guttural rumble—haunting, as it is beautiful.

Then she looks in my direction, and I fall apart.

You might be wondering, aren’t you in an open jeep? Yes. Like I said, we are at her mercy. Should she choose to see us as humans in a jeep, not one animal that rumbles too loud and follows her like an annoying fly, that would be it for us. But we trust her loyalty to the ways of the forest.

I lock eyes with her, but I don’t know if she sees me. My blood turns cold as she walks, out of her path, in my direction. There are several jeeps around, excited whispers, illegal phones recording videos. But she swerves until she’s right in front of our jeep. It feels like being chosen, though for her, she is just walking. I’m suddenly not afraid, though that might be because I’ve gone into shock.

But our tiger? She’s not the least bit interested in us. Every step reveals her power, the way her shoulders dance under muscle and stripe as she snakes by without a care in the world. Wearing a vaguely annoyed expression, she stalks through the grass, cuts across my jeep, and continues on her way.

And just like that, her tail disappears into tall grass. She is gone. And I am left watching the empty space, hoping she reappears.

We rumble back to life, our spirits lifted. Touched by the intangible, marked by the unforgettable; we are tiger-seers now. Jostling over uneven paths as we cruise toward the gate, everyone around me pitches in with their flavor of elation and disbelief. The guides in the front seat glow with pride, having fulfilled a promise they hadn’t known if they would be able to keep.

I smile at the forest as it flies past me, or rather, I past it. Miracles are possible, so it seems. She was beautiful to witness. So why is there a hollowness beneath my joy?

All of that hunger, that wanting. It consumed me. And now? I was crashing. Satiated, but still starving. Isn’t the curse of our time—always wanting more? I orchestrated an entire journey, this trip, in the hope of a miracle. What would I have felt if we did not see the tiger? There are many who return from the forest dejected, I have been in their shoes. You eye the tiger-seers like you want to steal their memory and wear it as your own.

I look up at, suddenly struck by the tall, ancient wisdom that towered thickly above us. It hit me all at once—

All this time, I’d been searching for answers in the miracle of a single tiger, while speeding past the life-giving presence of hundreds of trees.

That is just it. I was taught to aspire to be the tiger, when in truth I want to be the tree. The miracle of millions coming to see you versus the miracle of helping the world breathe. Both are beautiful in their own way. I thought if I were a plant then I should aim be a beautiful flower. But here in the forest, I find myself still wishing to be a tree (and did you know, in known history, there has never been an organically blue flower?).

I want to last through seasons and lightning strikes; to reach others roots and survive together. Did you see yourself in my mirror? Did you feel something? If you did, then I am not alone. Quiet suddenly becomes a meditation. Silence is not a sentence; it is a the sound of traveling to where you must land.

Of course, as much as I might resist it, I still need the sunlight of connection. Humans are wired to connect with their pack or else perish. Tigers, on the other hand, roam alone for most of their lives. I think artists might fall somewhere in between. This past year, I have tried desperately to criss and cross my insides so that I do not need people, who can leave so easily. But I must concede—I am no organic engineer.

We hide our phones as we approach the exit, and I itch to fall into the mystery of poetry’s unique release. When I go home and write, I do not need to say: this world was not structured for my temperament. Instead, I can write of the lone tiger roaming the woods, who belongs—no matter her isolation. Of blue birds that are truly beautiful because they can fly, sing, and architect castles out of twigs. Of the trees, who are powerful both standing alone and with each other.

Dust-caked, salt drying on my skin, I sit outside my hut; changing in a way that I may never fully touch. Nothing is tangibly solved today. And for once, maybe I don’t need it to be.

I click my pen and scratch into handmade paper they left in our room, as if knowing a writer would need it.

Does the tree grow to prove itself?
The eyes of the world don’t play a part in its decision to soar.
It is born to keep rising as it weathers the trials of nature.
Not all saplings live—but those who do?
They shelter, flower, fruit, and breathe.
They offer.
(The only thing is—soil doesn’t demand rent, and photosynthesis is free).

In there,
He thrashes against the current.
Out here,
The current flows for him.

In the ocean, are we equal?

Brother—
Braided in the same DNA,
Yet always untethered,
From my land-locked fate.

Hearth—
He leaves ours to become a line,
And I swim with dazzling fish,
Still miscast as bait.

If we were born to fly,
Would I be the one,
Who is Naturally Lucky?

For in there,
He wins—
A butterfly in water.

And out here,
I float; a butterfly—
To a different world altogether.

Written January 9th 2026, on Radhanagar Beach in the Andaman Islands, India.

I scratched this poem into my notebook while taking a break from the salt water, watching my older brother practice his favorite swimming stroke against the ocean waves: the butterfly.

I love my brother dearly, and yet, being around him makes the weight of gender’s shape on our lives inescapably visible to me. His bodily freedom on the beach, while I hide, exposed and cringing under unwanted stares from strange men. The way he can be out late at night in Delhi, while my heart slips into a slow panic when the sun sets. To show interest in a woman, he has to look at her a certain way; a no is simply a no. While I, the lesbian sister, decode every shred of interaction and still get it wrong; a no often ends in horror.

Gender dynamics are falsely treated as destiny, ingrained in our every breath. The more I imagine different worlds and ways of being, the more I see how circumstantial our social structures are. The more I wonder, in a parallel universe, am I free?

Sitting here at my desk on the last day of the year in which I changed everything in my life. Hair oiled, deep into the roots by my mother’s sixty-three year young fingers. Outside my Delhi window, the black kites and pigeons are getting knocked about by the wind in a grey sky. In my other home, New York, my friends and chosen family are stirring in their early morning beds. My sun will set soon, though, today’s gloom made it feel like it never rose at all.

A perfect day to swirl in my feelings and write.

But, I confess, I’m quite frustrated as I type. I’ve been freely writing all day, unfiltered and joyful when it’s just me. But at the hint of an intention to publish a little excerpt, I’m suddenly conscious and unlike myself. Everything sounds wrong, and distant, and I can’t find a reason as to why I would put this out into the world at all. I’m not vying for platitudes and hollow encouragement. This confession is really a question to myself. A challenge, even.

Which brings me back to coconut oil.

As I sat at our long dining table, not the one I grew up in, but one we’ve made new memories around, my mother worked the warm oil into my scalp. Her fingers, though still strong, were less powerful than all the years before. But still, I could feel her joy radiating, her nerve endings to my beginnings. And I knew we were both remembering the years when it was just us.

Almost two decades ago now, I was a teenager, with secrets and self importance, and she was a powerhouse, raising a daughter and running a business. She was my root while the rest of our family lived across, and on, oceans—my brother was away at college outside of New York, and my father, Captain of the High Seas, was sailing on a merchant naval voyage on water that is unknown to most. And so it was the two of us, my mother and I with our three dogs, left to our own devices in a beautiful home, made for four, in early 2000’s Gurgaon.

Every sunny, winter Sunday, I would slink around the house, avoiding homework, and she would look up at me from her thorough, task-ridden notebooks as if to say: is it time? Then, my mother would rub coconut oil first into my roots, then into her own. Our mutual favorite part was the end, the grand finale, when she massaged my head quickly like I was a scruffy dog that she was enjoying petting. We would grab the dogs and lay blankets in the grass outside, surrounded by greenery and concrete alike. The writing I would do back then was mostly text flurries to recap all the salacious moments that had happened at school that week. The way I remember it was sickening more than exciting, a secret relief coursing through me when my little silver Nokia would overheat an hour into our afternoon.

The sun was intense, and I liked it that way. The North Indian winter sun has it’s own texture. Like when you’re under an overheated blanket but you’ve stuck your feet out to become the perfect temperature, there’s always a lingering chill and you can’t get enough of the heat. Sun and oil. Some of us only know it lathered on vacation skin, while others, like me, know it from the quiet way it seeps into my skull, shrouding me in protection, root by root.

In true human fashion, I appreciated my first-life’s sun only when I could no longer feel it. Three years ago, deep loneliness drove me to rub coconut oil into my own hair and, in the middle of Boston’s fall, and drive out to Mystic River Reservation to soak in the sun. To heal, like I used to.

I’d just broken up with a girlfriend I’d been with for nearly three years, and my people-pleasing nature meant showing sadness to others meant letting them down, so I turned to my journal. It was not yet the daily respite it is for me today. I’d been writing here and there throughout the pandemic, and I had my annual journal entry to update myself on what life had brought me. But until then, I’d mainly written music. Unfinished abstractions, feelings, sounds. I was thinking about the end and the after while I was still at the beginning, so of course, I never reached anything that felt like a stopping point. I had spent so much time running, I’d forgotten how to sit. How to lay like I used to as a teenager in the sun.

The writing that day in Mystic Park, felt completely different. I remember it as a beginning.

I let the North American sun sink into my coconut oiled scalp, deep until it transported me into the girl that I used be. I closed my eyes and saw through hers. Blue pajamas with fish on them. Overheated silver phone. Dog-toys, a little wet from being chewed an fought over.

Then opened I them to my twenty-seven year old world, and I let go. It wasn’t on purpose. I just suddenly felt tired of shaping things instead of letting them emerge. Of urgently analyzing feelings instead of just listening to where they wanted to go.

So that day, I wrote about the sun. The woodpecker. The insects. I wrote to feel free.

October 29th 2022
Lying in the winter sun. Basking and baking, feeling the heat enter my muscles and bones. The cool air swirling around me makes me pull in the warmth even more. I realize that I’ve loved this since I was a young girl. I’m transported back to that moment - lying on the blanket, dogs surrounding me, oil in my hair, my mom joining us then running off to complete a task, but she always came back to hang out. The high walls flourished with bougainvillea flowers on top - white and pink, the grass was bright green and bustling with insect life that I tried not to think too much about as I lay there, on top of their home and daily business. It was an escape from the concrete jungle in all ways but one: our soundtrack to this beautiful haven was the constant stream of car, truck and tractor horns, people yelling at each other (mostly men) and the general hustle and bustle of connecting road.

I haven’t stopped writing since that day. My favorite things I’ve ever written are the journal entries that no one will ever see. Where I am unfiltered and unmasked, where no topic is off limits, where I do not think of how many people will never read this. In there, I am free.

So today, sitting with coconut oil in my hair, as the sun sets on the last day of this year I became brave enough to call myself a writer, I wonder—can I be free outside of myself too.

I’m a lesbian Indian woman with a fluid gender experience, and a fierce friend to the trans community. I’m witnessing a fractured solidarity of trans people. Statements like: “I support trans people, just not in my bathrooms”, as if anyone’s freedom can be delineated on the whim of strangers. Even well-meaning allies shy away from voicing their unequivocal support of the trans community.

I think it’s because we’re secretly reckoning with ourselves, and trans people hold up a mirror from which we cannot hide.

I’ve written a few reflections of the work I’ve done to become a genuine ally to trans people. It’s the kind of allyship that requires looking inward. We’ve got to look at our own discomfort to recognize that trans people are leading us into a brighter future for everyone. It’s up to us to come together stronger than ever to protect them.

And the most meaningful change starts within. So let’s talk about three places where our discomfort shows up most clearly: gender rigidity, the fear of visibility, and perceived protection.

Gender norms keep us safe from one thing only: discovering our truest selves

As a lesbian Indian woman who moved to the U.S. at 18, my life has consistently existed outside rigidly defined boxes. I quickly learned the insidious power of social constructions: these are actually cages we mistake for safe rooms, and they shape our thoughts and actions in more ways than we’ll ever fully know.

As a woman, I was told to love men. Truth be told, I’d rather die. And that’s not me being dramatic: for those of you who haven’t struggled with your sexuality or gender, please know, for many of us it is the difference between breathing and having crushed lungs.

So many of the connection points to womanhood are centered around heterosexuality and white women. So my gay brown self has always felt like I don’t relate or belong to it. When I’m women’s spaces I somehow both feel at home and fraudulent. I float between my masculinity and femininity depending on the day, on the moment of my life. It’s not just about clothes and appearance, it’s about the energy within me.

Have you heard that phrase, wear it like a loose garment? That’s what gender feels like to me. When you try to define it with checklists and requirements, it loses meaning and beauty.

When I think of myself as a parent, I resonate more with the essence of fatherhood. When I’m in nature, I feel like a woman of the earth, a daughter and a mother, a feminine steward. When I’m with partners, sometimes I’m dominant and other times I let the person take the wheel. I don’t ever want to be pregnant, and I also deeply lament that I cannot one day give my future wife a pregnancy. My human experience connects with pieces of humanity across genders.

I write this all to say: let’s loosen our tight grip on gender.

If you’ve never been harshly forced to confront the boxes of gender, it’s easy to think they are the natural, unchangeable order of life. They aren’t. Our humanity is not beholden to our biology.

When people cling to chromosomes and obsess over anatomy, it reveals something simple and sad: we are terrified of discovering ourselves beyond the boxes we were handed. We would rather debate someone else’s existence than question our own conditioning.

You don’t need to have a gender-fluid experience to understand this. You just need to be willing to see that the world is bigger than the categories that shaped you.

Visibility doesn’t put children or anyone at risk: control does

There’s much talk about protecting the kids from the “influence” of trans people, queer people, drag artists. But if your child is inspired by someone they see and wants to emulate them, it just means they’re showing you a part of themselves. A part that you’re squashing out.

Influence is what happens in uneven power dynamics. Inspiration and identification is what happens when you see someone who sparks a truth in you.

If your kid meets a trans person? They’re probably just going to see a person, and maybe even learn that they do not have to fit rigid expectations. They’re going to know that some people are different, and that’s okay. That’s a beautiful thing to learn.

Because visibility is never the problem: control is.

When we react with disgust or confusion to anyone who breaks our rigid view of what gender is, it’s not really about the person we’re reacting to: it’s about ourselves. In a deep seated place, we’re reacting to their freedom because it forces a light onto our limitations.

Imagine: you spend all your time contorting yourself, consciously or not, to fit predefined norms. And then a beautiful butterfly person sails past you doing, saying, wearing, being whoever they want. How dare they?

Freedom tends to be irksome to those who are caged.

If you’re secure in who you are, if you are not defined solely by what the world has told you you are…why would you be offended if someone else is just being themselves?

So if you feel a bubbling sense of anger or confusion, look inward. What do they have that I wish I had? Why am I afraid of a person who has nothing to do with me? We must do this work to confront our discomfort so that we don’t turn our confusion outward as anger against trans people.

Nobody is protecting anything from trans people: they are the ones who need our fierce protection

I will never forget how deeply my heart ached the day my trans friend quietly asked me to accompany them to the train station bathroom, “just in case.” Sit with that. The cis world is busy debating its own safety while actively terrorizing trans people for simply trying to use the bathroom. We’re creating a world in which people feel entitled to size up strangers and harass them. Attackers will find a way to attack, regardless of how they identify (and let’s be honest, most often they are cis-men). Trans people just want to pee in peace.

Everyone debates trans people’s ability to participate in sports. Do you have a passion? Now imagine, you’re incredible at it, I mean, your cells sing when you do it. But you have to choose between being yourself or being able to play. What kind of choice is that?

I don’t have all the answers, but I certainly know that the death threats and public humiliation that trans athletes face is not the answer. I know that committees for each sport, at each level, can work together with trans athletes having a seat at the table, to create evolving guidelines be as inclusive as fair as possible. I know that the rest of us can choose to value the safety and inclusion of a human being more than the preexisting rules of a sport.

I hit on bathrooms and sports because it seems to be the most sensationalized places that trans people are targeted. But the truth is, when we harshly judge trans people in any way, we’re actually detaching from our own humanity.

We see someone who doesn’t fit our familiar scripts, we feel a flicker of confusion (which is really insecurity), and instead of pausing, we shut off empathy and default to harshness. This pattern is common. It’s tragically human.

The good news? Once we see that pattern, we can intercept it. “Oh, I’m being judgmental because this is unfamiliar.”Great. Notice it. Breathe. Move on. (Mind your business).

I see a lot of people worrying, intellectualizing, yelling about a “gender crisis.” Yes, there is one. And it’s not trans people who are having it. It’s everyone else.

To be trans, to move beyond rigid gender definitions, is to be deeply connected to oneself. It is to live in truth. It is not strange or abnormal. It is pure, honest, and fiercely courageous. Every day I am inspired by the trans community’s resilience and spirit. You make me want to stand tall, and I love you, dearly.

Trans people’s fight for freedom is our fight for freedom. When we defend their right to exist, to access healthcare, to be safe in public spaces, to live without fear, we defend those rights for all of us. The forces that seek to control trans bodies will come for the rest of us next. They always do.

So let’s do the internal work. Examine our discomfort. Learn from an support trans leaders and artists. Speak up when it matters. Don’t let transphobic comments slide. And most importantly: trust trans people to know themselves better than any of us ever could.

Trans freedom represents everyone’s freedom. We need to show up with our solidarity, not debate our approval.

And they deserve everything we’ve got <3.

Beautiful cover art:“Trans Pride Butterflies” by Nicholas Balint. You can buy the print here.

Genesis

I hadn’t seen her in nearly four years, hadn’t spoken in over one. My heart skipped a beat, not in a good way, when I saw her name on my phone. Hi, would you be open to getting coffee? Coffee. Such a casual request from my first love. We were together seven years, and it had taken me four to let go of the life I had dreamed of with her. (To recognize that I wanted the dream more than her).

I got the text downstairs on my couch, and the next thing I knew, I’d floated upstairs and settled on the floor with my guitar. I always turn to music when the feelings are too complicated to face—it helps me see myself. Find chords that meet the mood, sing whatever comes up. The song poured out of me, and while I polished it later, it’s still mostly the same as that fateful day. (Thank goodness I hit record while I was “just messing around,” or I don’t think I could have replicated it.)

With You is structured less like a song, and more like a river. No verse/chorus spine, no definitive start and end—I begin mid-thought, and finish with a repetitive question. It’s a bilingual rock ballad about the moment before you see the one you once loved, flowing between English & Hindi, my two languages. I’ve loved merging my two cultures into a universal lament of past love, and I envision it with both a guitar and sitar solo for it’s next demo.

Demo & Lyrics

From my first time performing live original music. I had no idea how it was going to land, and I was so nervous that I almost didn’t sing it. It turned to be the favorite song of my set.

With You

And I don’t wanna see you—
Cuz if I do,
This solid will become,
Liquid in front of you.

It’s strange to
Not know you..
When I, When I’m
With you—
With you..

एक उदास नदी,*
बह के बन गयी—
मेरे आंसुओं,
को धन्यवाद कहो ।

पानी में तुम्हें
डुबा दिया—
और साथ मैं
तुम्हारी सारी याद ।

I was young, I was young—
When I, felt your
Tongue on my lips
For the first time.

Didn’t know, I didn’t know—
That love’s
Heat can soothe,
But burn me like the cold.

I had visions, visions!
Beautiful dreams.
I wanted them to
Come true
Oh, with you.
With you—
With you..

And now—

You want to see me—
I want to hide.

You want to talk to me—
But I want to cry.

You want coffee—
And I want to die.

Because I—
Have drowned you deep inside.

Drowned you deep inside.

पहला प्यार,
तुमको क्या कहूं?

First love,
What should I say to you?

पहला प्यार,
What could I say to you?

What could I say to you?

—

*Hindi Translation

एक उदास नदी,
बह के बन गयी—
मेरे आंसुओं,
को धन्यवाद कहो ।

पानी में तुम्हें
डुबा दिया—
और साथ मैं
तुम्हारी सारी याद ।

A river born from sorrow,
You can thank my tears for it—
In it, I drowned you—
And all of our memories too—

पहला प्यार,
तुमको क्या कहूं?

First love,
What should I say to you?

Catch my other songbites here:

I found myself asking this over and over in certain friendships. The Hot & Cold Lover is heavily discussed, but similarly maddening is the friendship dynamic that changes like the weather between summer and autumn.

I’m writing to you after setting a boundary with a new friend. Long story short: we went from talking or seeing each other every few days, to radio silence in the middle of a vulnerable conversation, to her popping back over a month later like nothing happened (though there’d been tense moments that I won’t spell out here).

I’d harbored hurt feelings, but didn’t know how to go about expressing them—especially when she seemed to convey “everything’s fine”. Was I the problem?

While genuine resolution always comes from kind, non-accusatory communication, the hardest part is what comes before: finding clarity on what to say, and the confidence to say it.

First, I had to recognize the patterns and believe my own experience. I made sense of it all with this idea of emotional thermodynamics.

Imagine hot air is the warmth and spark you feel when you deeply connect with someone. Cold air is then the absence of that closeness. In nature, when hot and cold air move past each other abruptly, it creates turbulence—mirroring that unsettled feeling we get when a friendship dynamic shifts intensely. Suddenly, I didn’t judge myself so harshly for feeling all wound up.

I’m always wary of being “too needy” or expecting a more-than-reasonable bandwidth from my friends. Relationships naturally ebb and flow, and people go through periods of busyness or overwhelm that make them less available or communicative. I myself am a notoriously bad text-returner.

But! There’s a difference between natural flow and whiplash.

Turbulent dynamics are the ones that leave you spinning: Is she being cold or am I being sensitive? I haven’t heard from her in weeks, did something happen? Oh, she’s back texting normally, I guess there was never actually a problem?

Let’s call this questioning The Fog of Ambiguity. Like air, it’s not made to be grasped.

Usually, one person is the emotional airbender, manipulating The Fog through confusing behavior—just enough to create friction, but not enough to be clearly seen. They’re not malicious; they just have baggage with intimacy.

The tricky part? Every Fog is hyper specific, shaped by who each person is, and who they are together. Most often, the unsettling moments feel trivial or self-centered when discussed in isolation.

When my aforementioned friend placed me in The Fog for a few weeks and then didn’t wish me on my birthday, after wanting to plan it months in advance, I was relieved!

Finally: real evidence that something’s wrong between us. (When I’d checked in a few weeks earlier, she’d assured me we were okay, but the vibe remained strange and distant). But, the next day, a birthday wish from her arrived in a very large group chat, lumped in with wishing someone else. The certainty left me, and I sank deeper into The Fog. Moreover, I felt foolish: why do I care about the mechanism of a single birthday wish?

Frankly, it’s embarrassing to share the above. But it’s these small, dissonant moments that tend to pile up with no resolve, and leave us spinning, unsure if our feelings are valid. I’m analytical to a fault, so I attributed anxious feelings to specific moments with this friend. For others, it might be as subtle as a twisting knot in the stomach when you think about the person.

This murkiness feels like a secret universal experience. It’s why I started looking for anchors in The Fog.

I’ve collected them into reflections that may help you, dear reader, make sense of your very own Fog of Ambiguity.

The First Reflection: Listen To Your Tornado

I’ve experienced emotional thermodynamics before, so I was frustrated to once again be trapped in its stormy mess. But I'd learned a valuable lesson this time: I can’t find clarity with someone else unless I’m honest with myself.

I sat in the eye of my tornado, and listened to its whispers and screams, until it quieted enough to speak its deepest truth.

I’m afraid of being alone. Loneliness always leads me to depression and suffering. I desperately want “my people” locked in, growing old together. I want to be loved and known by them to counter a painful belief—born from moments where friends withdrew when I was in darkness, and past hauntings of rejection as a lesbian.

I saw that I wanted to use friendship as a balm against the storming belief that I won’t be truly loved when I am fully myself.

The warmth of the Hot & Cold friend usually latches on to the wounds and hopes closest to our heart. I met this friend in a space meant for healing and connection, so there was an intrinsic trust between us. We bonded over growing up with homophobia, lofty dreams to be in the arts, our child-like humor, and appreciation for life’s little moments. Finally! Someone who just gets me. That resonance was fresh air.

So when she threw me into The Fog, chaos unraveled and I became breathless again.

When I understood the root of my distress, there was a profound shift: no one else is going to heal me for me.

Someone might look like an answer to painful questions, but people are not solutions—they’re just people.

This is the first anchor in The Fog: get to know your own tornado, be honest about which storm you’re trying to calm with this person’s presence or affection, and let go a little. You are your own answer.

(And if you’re up for it, give your pain dialogue, a spotlight, and a microphone. Let it speak without judgement, as if it were a separate entity. A child, even).

The Second Reflection: Redefine Your Equilibrium

Nature seeks balance. When air densities clash, the atmosphere moves to even them out. Cool air, heavy and dense, sinks—retreating, in a sense. Warm air, light and quick, rises to take its place.

Sound familiar?

I used to try and “fix” a Hot & Cold situation. They’re not calling me? I’ll call them. They’re being cold? I’ll perform a fire breathing ritual to warm them up. Surely I can make up the difference, smooth things over. Right?

It’s precisely because the “hot” times feel so good, that the cold times are, in turn, devastating. Who doesn’t want to revel in a friend that makes you feel seen? Who doesn’t want to win it back when it’s gone? The push and pull is addictive: adrenaline makes us feel alive, and we’re wired to solve ambiguity.

But when I look at the friendships I feel most secure in, there is no chaotic questioning, and the richness has usually developed over time and experience together.

I’m intentionally rewiring myself to enjoy taking time, to give space for dynamics to unfold. Turbulence happens when I define and attach expectations too quickly.

I thought I’d found a lifelong friend to call one of “my people”, but it was actually just the sparkly phase of a new connection. Both are okay when we just let it happen, growing with it rather than shoving it into a preconceived notion.

This is the second anchor: catch yourself filling gaps that aren’t all yours to fill, and develop a healthy skepticism of “the spark”, even in friendships.

Can we learn to love the slow burn?

The Third Reflection: Trust Your Air

The truth is, if something feels “off” , we can trust it—we’re not fabricating our experience. But we can’t fully trust the assumptions we make about why.

Only a direct, honest conversation can clear that up. But, people are not always willing to talk, and let’s be honest, sometimes words don’t match the feelings.

The Hot & Cold airbender is not a villain. They have their own universe in which we’re not the center, and a lifetime of experience that shapes their behavior in ways we can’t fully understand. It’s freeing to accept that everyone has their own script to make sense of their actions: it’s less personal and more of a byproduct.

To me, it’s: she’s ignoring me.
To her, it’s: I need space, if she’s my friend, she’ll understand.

Navigating emotional thermodynamics isn’t about deeming someone right and wrong—it’s about naming what works for you, how you want to be treated in friendship.

Can I control another person’s response? No. But I can be honest. I can do the work to trust the reality of my experience, and let go of the fear of being rejected for expressing myself.

I can communicate my needs, not as an accusation or demand, but as my truth:
I’ve felt a shift in our closeness, I can’t be “normal” without acknowledging and discussing it. I felt hurt and rejected when you dropped off in the middle of our vulnerable conversation. It’s okay if you missed my message, but could we agree to close out or follow up on tender conversations in the future?

If your emotional experience and the way you want to be treated is problematic or used against you, then the person is not a friend to you.

And that’s a gift! I used to roll my eyes at “rejection is redirection”, but I’ve come to live by it. Why would I make myself small for someone else? Who deserves that power over me?

Here lies the third and final anchor: own the texture of your air, breathe it out like a gentle breeze—without putting anyone on trial, without infinitely doubting the validity of your feelings.

You’re not too much. You’re just you. We’re allowed to be ourselves. Those meant for us will want to grow together, and make us feel safe and loved.

The next time we’re in The Fog of Ambiguity, let’s lasso these 3 anchors to find our way.

They all point in the same direction: learn yourself, own your part, and let go of the outcome. Trust that your people will not create chaos in your soul, rewire yourself to relish a grounding presence over the adrenaline rush.

PS: How did my boundary go? I sent a voice note (better for tone and emotion than a text) with my emotional experience using specific examples, and a desire not to create hard feelings between us. She never answered, which is the answer I needed. I share this to say: we can’t always expect neat and tidy outcomes, or control the response. It doesn’t mean we were wrong to be honest. It means the person does not have the capacity to engage, and that’s okay.

PPS: For the record, I’m not naturally zen, I spent several weeks in anguish to get here. But now, I just wish her well, and focus on the ones in my life who are here, loving me without question. The fear of being alone may never vanish, but these anchors remind me: the right people don’t create The Fog, they clear it.

This is a story about letting go of a love that never was.

I met her in real life. On our first date, we connected deeply as femme lesbians, though afterward I wasn’t sure I’d call her again. Then a friend convinced me I was being too cautious with my heart. She planned a magnificent second date for us: a museum and a movie. In the dark, she kicked off her shoes, curling into the seat as we watched Love Lies Bleeding—and my heart sank. No, not the bad kind. Everything became warm, my cells were buzzing. I’m embarrassed to admit I was a cheesy, cinematic lesbian, and watched her instead of the screen for a moment too long.

I held her hand in reality, then promptly yanked her into that special place in my mind: the one where my hope of being rescued by love resides. It’s really pretty there, you know? With gardens, waterfalls, and you can always see the galaxy, day or night.

I dusted off the pedestal reserved for “the one”, and invited her on to check out the view.

After our third date ended with us in the backseat of my car to the soundtrack of rain and my wlw playlist, I was convinced this was heading somewhere I’d been dying to go. Two days later, she said she feels a friendly connection instead of a romantic one. (What a gut punch. And did I really just admit that on the internet?)

I suppose a normal person would feel sad for a while, then shrug it off. But I? I let the real her go, and fell for someone mostly-invented.

In my mind, I had the power to write our story: a sense of control over what I couldn’t change in the outside world. It was both a safe haven and a dangerous cage. I reveled in the ritual of thinking of her, comforted and tortured at once. It sparked songs, scenes I’ve written into scripts. But the exhilaration always ended in free fall, when I remembered that she’s out there in the world, walking around, just fine with not wanting me back. The dissonance destroyed me.

Scrolling, of all things, shook me into reality. I was giggling at a comedy sketch, which then hit me with: your abandonment wounds from childhood make you hyper fixated on being chosen. (Ding, ding, ding!). Another, from a TikTok therapist: you are not in love, you are trying to rewrite the story of your own abandonment. Oh, god. Really? I thought I was tapped into some cosmic secret that no one else could see (not even her).

Now you’re telling me I’m desperately trying (and failing) to sew up a past wound? That…makes sense. And I hate it.

I’m writing this to get her out of my system, but also to talk openly about the roots of not being chosen, and what sparks limerence–a concept I recently learned about, that names the endless daydreaming and insatiable need for reciprocation. It’s universal, but I believe women and queer people experience it profoundly.

Ours is a culture of love supremacy: we grow up believing romantic love completes us, that its presence or absence reveals who we truly are. Societal mechanics reinforce this deficit. In patriarchy, male attention is emotional currency (whether we want it or not). If we didn’t get it, we spent years doubting our worth and learning to accept scraps because we believe it’s all we can get. If we did get it, we lean on it as a source of security, because our self-worth falls apart without it.

For queer folks, the intensity compounds—we’ve had to face immense fear just to love at all, and so it becomes a kind of savior. At the same time, we develop a belief that we’ll never be chosen in the sunlight.

Put it all together, and you have a recipe for wanting love more than your own well-being.

I knew I was a lesbian before I had words for it. But because boys were interested in me, I serially dated them. A double life: in love with my girl best friend while dating boys—safe and sick at once (hello, compulsory heterosexuality). And it’s nuanced: I liked some of those guys. But I was still pretending. Still believing only what the world showed me I could have.

I remember standing side by side with her in our high school bathroom. We were 15, fixing our hair in the mirror. She caught my eye in our reflection and said, “I wish you were a boy so I could date you.” A belief took root, and echoed through years of blurred relationships with women. I’m still undoing it: I, as I am, will never be chosen by the one I want.

Fast forward to my latest pedestalized lover. Here is a woman who, by all accounts, should choose me—we’re out lesbians, we’ve had magical dates, the conversation is both sweet and deep, there’s fulfilled attraction. I’ve just spent over a year single, getting to know myself after a decade of relationships. I’m ready, and she’s perfect. The stars have finally aligned, right?

So, when she abruptly left—I lost my sense of self.

And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I still feel sick at the thought of her rejection. And this heartbreak sat on top of several others that had cracked my foundation.

But her departure broke me open, because I was simply begging to break. I wanted love to magically solve my dissatisfaction and loneliness, and she looked like the answer.

I met her when my world was in greyscale. Her little fairy self appeared to remind me I can produce my own color. In a moment that I felt isolated and wrong in my queerness, she reminded me that I have agency to claim space as a lesbian. That no one could grant me my queer joy—it was already in my hands.

At first, I lamented: it has to be her! She’s creative, ambitious, connected to queer community, works with artists, runs her own business, travels the world, and god, is she beautiful, and so feminine and….on and on. Then I picked up these shards and made a mirror. Oh. I want queer community. I want a creative life. I want to travel more spontaneously. I want to revel in my femininity as a queer woman.

I fell apart so completely, I got to rebuild into the version of myself that I’ve always dreamed of.

My logic? Well, if the supposedly perfect woman doesn’t want me; if love isn’t going to be my purpose; if I can do everything “right” and still not be chosen, then…why can’t I be an artist?

See, when this illusion of love as the ultimate savior shattered, I could finally drop the desperate searching and contorting myself (and other people) to fit into a preconceived image.

I found courage to pursue truth without perfection. I found truth in the name of my pain.

She reached into my chest, clutched my heart, then quickly retracted—and the holes illuminated my deepest desires. The kicker? They had almost nothing to do with her.

I met her and lost her in Boston. I hadn’t written anything outside my journal, I worked in tech, had no queer community, and my health was at an all time low. Today, a year later, I’m in New York, left tech, fully immersed in writing and filmmaking, my scripts have placed in competitions, I hug my queer friends often, and I’m healthier than ever.

The life of my dreams, born from breaking open.

I still think of her. I feel ridiculous for wanting to see her again. For secretly hoping that she reads this someday, and knows how profoundly I felt for her.

We kept “in touch” through a playlist of sapphic music (good old ambiguous, masochistic queer ache, eh?). It was just enough to keep the pedestal version of her shiny for months after we’d exchanged a single world.

She left me love songs, but never sent a text. I convinced myself she’s just afraid or not ready. I didn’t want to move on in case she came back. My softness for her suppressed my own sadness, my love for lesbian yearning kept me addicted to the what if.

Dear Sapphics, I think we’re especially at risk of falling into pedestalizing dynamics: longing is core to our experience, admiration and desire often blur together, and let’s be honest: women are just swoon-worthy.

So, here is a new Law of the Lesbian Lands: the people who really want us, will make it known without a shadow of doubt.

Trust the evidence. Those who love us, will love us. Those who want to be in our life, will make the effort to be in it. It’s not our job to decode the subtext, or wait for anyone’s journey to unfold. Let’s enjoy fantasy the way we enjoy guilty pleasure TV: without letting it define our worth.

Say it with me: we can be fully desired, chosen, loved. And we will, by the people meant for us.

I’ve since severed the final tether between us. Offered her my hand one last time, and helped her down for good.

Lately, I have been building a new statue for the pedestal.
I just cut the ribbon for the grand opening of its display.

It's of me.

One I’ve built, piece by piece—
by choosing myself.

Genesis

On the couch, lightly depressed, I’d just finished another movie on my list of queer films (Hedwig) and I was aching in that special way: devastated and inspired at once. The Origin of Love played, and from seemingly nowhere, I sang the words that became my chorus. Within the hour, the lyrics were on the page—simple in words and rhythm by design. That simplicity is the heartbeat of this song: a way to catch raw truth before it gets overworked.

This song is about the birth of dissociation through hiding my inner world, and the return to self by speaking my truth. I wrote it about the years I hid my queerness, but it’s also about masking depression. Double life—the wound deepens when you think the world carries on without noticing that you’re dying inside. Visibility becomes freedom.

Demo & Lyrics

After 15 years of writing music in secret, this performance was the first time I sang my own song in front of other humans. I was nervous (shaking), but the moment itself felt like a lightning strike. A step out of the shadows, just like this post. Both are new beginnings, small but seismic.

The Lightning Strike

[verse]

I was myself,
They said I was sick—
Don’t trust—trust your desiring.

Isn’t it hell,
To make myself shrink?
Run—run cuz I’m hiding.

Run—run cuz I’m hiding.

[chorus]

I wasn’t alive,
I didn’t exist.
And nobody even noticed—
Double life.
Like walking around, with a knife—
In the center of my eyes.

I wasn’t alive,
I didn’t exist.
And nobody seems know this—
Double life,
A lightning strike,
In the center of my ribs—

[verse]

I fall sick,
The more I know.
Done—done with lying.

I hide in,
Daydreams alone.
Jump–jump till I’m flying.

But time shrinks,
The more it grows.
So live—live, cuz I’m dying—

Live—live, cuz I’m dying—

[chorus]

Now I’m alive,
I’ll try to exist—
And you might even notice.
Aligning inside,
Seeing divine
From the center of my eyes.

Now I’m alive,
I’ll try to exist—
And you will surely know this.
Aligning inside.
A lightning strike
From the center–
The center–
The center–
The center of my lips.

The center of my lips.

A lightning strike–
From the center of my lips.

Catch my other songbites here:

It’s not as simple as just whacking a ball (sorry to baseball players). To hit one, you have to stop. Surrender. Look at it. Give it a dialogue. Listen. One ball says: who really cares what you have to say? The other: nobody reads anymore, it’s the era of scrolling. Or even: once you do this, you’re exposed. Vulnerable. You know what happens when you let your guard down. THWACK! I took that one in the gut.

But it has come to my attention that this ball-shooting machine is not all that evil. That fear is actually a mirror, showing me what I deeply want.

I’m in the throes of building a life that is aligned with my greatest fears and desires (they’re friends now, by the way). I suppose I believe on the other side of sharing my thoughts is the possibility of genuine, human connection. So, here’s the gist of it.

The early 2000s. There I was—closeted and angsty in the heart of the hetero patriarchy: Delhi, India. I would write endless love songs, architecting lyrics so that listeners could assume it was about a boy, when I knew it was about the girl I secretly loved. It was there and then that I began my career as a professional chameleon–soon to be retiring, I hope. I watched movies in which two women fell in love and realized that my feelings were a real phenomenon (imagine that?).

Music and movies were my oxygen. But how could I be a storyteller? Being gay and an artist? Unfathomable. Coming out as an Indian lesbian was a full-time job, people!

Now imagine Fear, crafting baseballs, whispering sweet, evil nothings into the seams as it prepares to hurl them at me. If they see who you really are, they will hate you. If you are not beloved, you will be alone. If you are alone, your life never mattered to begin with.

So, I had to be serious. And art is frivolous, right? For more than a decade, I succeeded in the pursuit of seriousness–majored in Economics, rose the ranks of tech companies as a product manager. I did it as an out lesbian. I traveled the world. If you looked at me, you would see a woman flourishing. And I made sure of it. Never mind the cost: only my health and lifelong calling.

Then Fear began to stitch hefty, dangerous ones. Even when you have everything, you are empty: you are destined for misery. Nobody will truly love you, because love is not real—life is transactional, and you? Drain resources. Not a good investment. You will be alone. And as we know: if you are alone, your life never mattered to begin with.

Then came the time that I stopped swinging altogether. I’m still pretty bruised up from it.

Somehow, I stood again. Picked up the bat. But I didn’t swing—I just sort of tapped the ball, so that it fell at my feet. Then I sat with it. I heard the whispers from the seams. I listened. Befriended them. Untangled the threads.

Hell, if I try so hard to be “perfect” and still feel alone and terrible inside, why bother trying? I’ll admit, at first, it was nihilistic. But it transformed into freedom. I recognized that the world had too much permission over how I feel about myself. That, as long as I abandon taking my gut feelings and emotions seriously, prioritizing other people’s comfort over my own, I will always feel alone and misunderstood.

This is how I learned that fear is a mirror. Why was I so afraid that my life didn’t matter? Because I fiercely believe that it does.

I want the world to believe it too. I want it to admit that an Indian lesbian can be a screenwriter, a filmmaker, a musician. A writer on Substack. That somebody, somewhere, will care. That somebody already does: me. And that’s enough to matter.

Now I’m hitting balls, people! This year, at 30, I moved to New York, quit my full-time tech job, took care of my health, and threw myself headfirst into the world of filmmaking. I’m still afraid, still uncomfortable. But I’m learning that this feeling means I’m on the right track. (For the record, I always feel most agitated right before a breakthrough).

This one’s in your court. I’m tempted to go on, but promised myself I’d keep this short, and I promise you, dear reader (if you’re out there), that I will be back with more.

With love,
Brea