I just got back from a trip to the mountains, the kind where you detox and feels like yourself again. Monsoon, Mesmerizing view, good food, better company. Everything feels surreal.

Until something weird yet fascinating happened.

I came back to my room after hiking the mountains, firefighting the rain.😮‍💨. And I saw my dress which was turned red from white, which was not ideal. I didn’t got injured nor it was my that time of the month(iykyk)😑.I even thought maybe its some paint i sat on, and then I found out a leech sitting quietly on my leg. Living its best life. I, on the other hand, was not.

The thing that got me strangled was I hadn’t felt a single thing. Not when it attached. Not the entire time it was feeding. Nothing. And that was the time I think I got something for my next article to research on(just kidding i was screaming with fear and shock).😬

Turns out, a leech doesn’t just bite you. The moment it attaches, it releases a cocktail of chemicals from its saliva; a local anaesthetic that numbs the area completely in a way that you feel nothing, and an anticoagulant called hirudin that stops your blood from clotting, keeping it flowing freely for as long as it needs. That’s why when it finally detaches, you’re still bleeding, the hirudin hangs around in your system for hours.

The leech has 300 tiny teeth that make a Y-shaped incision in your skin, and the whole reason you don’t feel 300 teeth sawing into you is because the anaesthetic and anticoagulant are released the exact same moment the teeth make contact. This “stealth mode” allows a leech to stay attached for up to 45 minutes completely undetected. Can you believe this? 45 minutes. On your body. Without you knowing.

And when I researched about it more, I got to know that, leech saliva contains over 100 different bioactive compounds. Hirudin alone is so effective as an anticoagulant that leeches have been used in medicine since at least 1500 BC and are still used today in reconstructive surgery to promote blood flow after reattaching severed fingers and limbs.

Nature is truely something else. 😶‍🌫️

Because the leech didn’t sit down one day and decide to develop anaesthetic. It just gradually over thousands of generations, the ones whose bite went undetected survived longer. Ate more. Reproduced more. And over time that became the default. Nobody designed it. It just… worked itself out.

Which brought me to something I’d read about recently. Cave fish.

There are fish called amblyopsid cavefish; that live in completely dark underground water systems. Researchers found that these fish evolved blindness independently across multiple different cave systems each population developing the same trait separately, without knowing the others existed. The oldest of these species, the Ozark cavefish, began losing its vision up to 11 million years ago.

11 million years of slowly going blind. On purpose, sort of.

Because eyes are expensive. They take energy, nutrients, and resources to build and maintain. In a cave with no light and very little food, a fish that stopped spending energy on eyes it couldn’t use had more resources left over for everything else. So the body just let them go. And in their place, cavefish developed other things, enhanced sensory systems, different foraging behaviours, and even metabolic changes that scientists think might hold clues to understanding obesity and diabetes in humans.

The body didn’t lose something and become lesser. It traded one thing for something that fit its life better.

And then I started thinking even bigger. Because where did all of this even come from?

Around 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began with the Big Bang an expansion that created space, time, and all matter. Over millions of years, the first elements fused inside ancient stars, and one of those stars eventually exploded scattering exactly the building blocks needed to form Earth.

Dinosaurs ruled the earth from about 225 to 65 million years ago, until a 6-mile-wide asteroid hit the surface, created a dust cloud that blocked the sun, collapsed food chains, and wiped them out. After that, mammals rapidly diversified, and here we are, about 100,000 years of Homo sapiens later.

Every single step of that from exploding stars to cyanobacteria to a leech on my leg in a hill station in the monsoon is connected. One long, improbable, ridiculous chain of things going right just enough, just in time.

And I genuinely don’t know how to hold that entirely in my head. The science is all there. But something about it makes me want to believe there’s a hand in it somewhere. Not instead of science, alongside it. Something that’s been trusting the process for 13.8 billion years. I know it’s controversial for some, but this belief that there is power beneath us is what helps us keep faith and trust the process.

I find it easier to go through life believing in that. In something holding the thread.

Even if I’ll never fully understand the pattern.

Do let me know how nature surprises you every day!!

— [“Girl_Noticing”] 🌿

Published on Friday’s. Because Friday’s deserve something worth reading.

I’m a Gen Z employee, and I’m tired of the stigma titles that sticks to us. Impatient. Entitled. Allergic to hard work. That’s the version of us that shows up in boardroom small talk and LinkedIn think pieces written by people who last changed jobs in 2003. Here’s what nobody mentions in that version: we’re the generation watching our own workplaces run on autopilot, and we’re the ones being blamed for noticing.

At my previous company, the culture was still stuck a decade behind where the rest of the working world had already moved. No work-from-home, not even occasionally. Everyone has to be visibly at their desk by 9 AM sharp and can’t leave before 6 PM, regardless of whether the day’s work was finished by 2. Nobody questions whether the AI shift happening in every serious company on earth is happening here; it simply isn’t discussed. And the hierarchy runs on a rule so old nobody even says it out loud anymore: the manager is right, full stop, and disagreement reads as insubordination rather than input.

The 9 to 6 Museum

Here’s the part that should embarrass stagnant companies more than it embarrasses us: showing up doesn’t equal working. Being physically present but not actually productive, is estimated to cost employers roughly ten times more than absenteeism does. The average office worker logs close to 57 unproductive days a year while sitting right there at their desk, against only about 4 days actually absent. That’s not a Gen Z talking point. That’s a documented, quantified drain that stagnant companies are choosing not to look at, because looking at it would mean admitting that mandatory face-time was never a real productivity strategy, it was a trust substitute.

Being in the building for nine hours and being useful for nine hours have never been the same thing. Somebody just never told management that.

Flexible Doesn’t Mean Lazy

Ask for work-from-home, or even one flexible day, and the reaction in a lot of these companies is instant suspicion as if the request itself is proof you don’t want to work. But look at what Gen Z is actually asking for, because it’s more specific than “never come in.” Gallup’s latest workforce data shows 71% of us actually prefer a hybrid arrangement, splitting time between home and office. Only 23% want to be fully remote. A full 6% still want to be in the office five days a week. This isn’t a generation trying to vanish. It’s a generation asking to be trusted with a schedule, the same way a functioning adult is trusted with literally every other part of their life.

The irony is that a lot of Gen Z workers are voluntarily going back into offices this year, not because they were forced to, but because they want the mentorship and connection that remote-only work made harder to get. What we’re rejecting isn’t the office. It’s the office as a punishment for not being trusted.

Ambitious, Not Entitled

Every time we ask for a higher salary, we’re told we’re being greedy instead of ambitious. Every time we ask for boundaries, we’re told we’re lazy instead of healthy. Every time we ask for a workplace that doesn’t run on fear of the manager, we’re told we’re spoiled instead of reasonable. Somewhere along the way, wanting to be paid and treated fairly stopped being a normal expectation and started being read as a personality flaw but only when a 24-year-old says it.

And yes, we change jobs faster than any generation before us. That’s usually presented as a character flaw too. But look at why people are actually leaving: career advancement and better pay top the list, same as they always have for every generation nothing new there. What’s different is how high “poor management” and “values misalignment” now rank as reasons to walk. Those used to be things you complained about quietly and stayed for the paycheck anyway. We just stopped absorbing that cost silently.

There is nothing wrong with leaving a place that isn’t right for you. Loyalty to a company that doesn’t value your time was never actually a virtue — it was just what people were expected to accept because they didn’t feel they had another option. We do.

We Grew Up With the Tools You’re Still Afraid Of

Stagnant workplaces that won’t even discuss the AI shift happening around them aren’t being cautious. They’re falling behind in real time. Regular AI use among Gen Z at work jumped from 57% to 74% in a single year; one of the fastest adoption curves tracked in recent workforce data. We’re not scared of the tools. We’re the ones already using them to get to the actual, meaningful part of our jobs faster, while some workplaces are still deciding whether AI is a fad.

It’s Not About Age. It’s About Resistance to Change

None of this is really a Gen Z versus Gen X problem, even though it gets framed that way. Plenty of Gen X and Millennial managers are pushing exactly the same changes we are, and plenty of Gen Z workers are just as capable of coasting as anyone else. The real divide isn’t generational, it’s between people willing to update how they think about work, and people who’ve decided that the way things have always been done is the way they always should be done, simply because it’s familiar. Age doesn’t grant credibility in a world that’s changing this fast. Willingness to move with it does.

Being older doesn’t automatically mean being right about a world that didn’t exist yet when you started working in it.

The Only Question That Actually Matters

Is demanding what we deserve wrong? Not more than we deserve ,what we deserve. Fair pay for real contribution. Flexibility in exchange for trust. A manager who can hear pushback without treating it as a threat. Recognition that arriving at 9 and leaving at 6 was never the same thing as doing good work.

If the answer to that question is no; and I don’t think it is ,then Gen Z isn’t going to ruin the workforce. We’re going to rebuild the parts of it that were already broken, just quietly enough that most companies won’t notice until we’re the ones running them.

[“Girl_Noticing”]

Published on Friday’s. Because Fridays deserve something worth reading.

So let me try to tell it as honestly as I can.

It started with a word.

On May 15, 2026, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant was hearing a case in court. And in the middle of it, he referred to unemployed youth and activists as “cockroaches” and “parasites of society.”

He later clarified that he was specifically referring to people who forge degrees and attack institutions ; not every unemployed young person. And that clarification is important. But by the time it came, it was already too late.

Within 78 hours of that remark, a satirical Instagram page inspired by it had gathered 3 million followers. Three million. In three days. That’s not a trend. That’s a nerve being hit.

On May 16, Abhijeet Dipke, a political communications strategist in his twenties, a Boston University graduate who had previously worked with AAP registered the Cockroach Janta Party. The slogan? “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed.”

They took the insult and made it a identity. And young India responded.

But the anger wasn’t just about a word.

The CJP became the container for something that had been building for much longer.

On May 3, over 2 million students appeared for NEET-UG 2026 (the national entrance exam for medical college admissions). Days later, it was cancelled. An investigation found that questions had been secretly leaked to some students before the exam. 2 million people. Years of preparation. Gone.

At least a dozen students died by suicide in the days that followed.

Let that sit for a moment.

These weren’t students who failed. These were students who studied for years, some of them for three, four years only to be told that the exam they gave everything for was compromised by people who cheated. And then they were told to give it again.

The demand that came out of this was not unreasonable. Not radical.

Just: accountability. Resign. Take responsibility. Someone needs to answer for this.

Then came Sonam Wangchuk.

Wangchuk is an engineer, innovator, and activist from Ladakh, the man who built ice stupas in the Himalayas to store glacial meltwater for farmers, who reformed education in a region where kids were failing exams in a language they didn’t speak at home, who won Asia’s Nobel Prize the “Ramon Magsaysay Award” in 2018 for it. He has spent his life fighting for systems to work fairly for ordinary people.

On June 28, he arrived at Jantar Mantar and began a hunger strike in solidarity with the students calling himself an “honorary cockroach.”

He lasted 21 days before Delhi Police picked him up and took him to hospital not with his consent.

And this morning today, July 24 Wangchuk ended his 26-day hunger strike after the government gave written assurances: no cases will be filed against peaceful protesters, Parliament will hold discussions on exam paper leaks and education reform, and compensation is being considered for the families of students who died by suicide after the NEET cancellation.

Something moved. Whether it moves far enough, that’s the question.

Now here’s the part I genuinely don’t know what to make of.

On July 20, tens of thousands of students marched toward Parliament in what CJP called “Chalo Sansad.” 150 protesters were wounded, according to CJP. Delhi Police said 60 protesters and 118 security personnel were injured. There are videos of police with batons. There are also videos of protesters pushing through barricades.

Both things can be true. That’s what I keep reminding myself.

Because here’s what I’ve noticed about the last few weeks: everyone has an agenda in how they’re showing you this story. The opposition parties who demanded Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation since day one are now showing up at Jantar Mantar, holding candles. The ruling party is calling it politically motivated. Some media outlets are running wall-to-wall coverage of police violence. Others are running wall-to-wall coverage of protesters vandalising property.

I don’t know which videos were staged. I don’t know which injuries were exaggerated. I don’t know who threw the first stone.

And I think that uncertainty is being weaponised by everyone to make you pick a side before you know the full truth.

What I do know is this.

2 million students didn’t sit in the summer heat for a political party. Twelve students didn’t die by suicide for a photo opportunity. Sonam Wangchuk didn’t go 26 days without food because someone asked him to.

The original demand was simple: if the education system fails this catastrophically, someone in charge must be held accountable. That is not a left-wing or right-wing demand. It is just a basic expectation from any functioning system.

As of today, the CJP says their protest at Jantar Mantar will continue until Dharmendra Pradhan resigns. The government has given assurances but has not given a resignation.

Whether that’s enough I genuinely don’t know. Maybe the parliamentary discussion will lead to real reform. Maybe it won’t. Maybe the minister will resign. Maybe he won’t.

But what I hope what I really hope is that the actual issue doesn’t get buried under the noise. Under the politics, the viral videos, the opposing narratives, the people who showed up to this movement for reasons that have nothing to do with the students.

Because at the centre of all this chaos are kids who studied harder than most of us can imagine, in a system that failed them. And they deserve better than to become someone’s political prop.

They deserve an answer.

— [“Girl_Noticing”]

Published on Friday’s. Because Fridays deserve something worth reading.

Let me start from the beginning. Because this story is worth knowing.

Two hundred and fifty years ago.

On July 4, 1776, fifty-six men signed a document that changed the world. The Declaration of Independence. Thirteen colonies telling the most powerful empire on earth that was Britain, that they were done. That they had the right to govern themselves. That all men were created equal and had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote most of it, once said: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Heavy words. But they meant them.

The war that followed the American Revolutionary War, lasted eight years. George Washington, a general who had lost far more battles than he won, somehow held a unkempt army together through brutal winters and crushing defeats until Britain finally gave up in 1783. When the war ended, Washington was offered the chance to become king. He said no. He stepped down. Twice. Because he believed the whole point was that no one man should have that much power.

That decision, that restraint, is what made America, “America”.

The presidents who built the country.

Over 250 years, America has had 47 presidents. Some were forgettable. Some were transformational. Here are the ones who genuinely moved the needle, from both sides of the aisle:

Abraham Lincoln (Republican, 1861–1865) took charge of a country literally splitting apart. Eleven southern states left the union over slavery. Lincoln fought a civil war to hold the country together — and in the middle of it, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery. He didn’t live to see the full peace. He was shot at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, just five days after the Confederate Army surrendered. He was the first US president to be assassinated.

Theodore Roosevelt (Republican, 1901–1909) came to power because William McKinley — the sitting president — was shot at a public event in Buffalo and died eight days later. Roosevelt was 42, the youngest person to ever hold the office. He used it to break up monopolies, protect national parks, and build the Panama Canal. When he was offered a third term, he walked away.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat, 1933–1945) inherited the Great Depression — the worst economic collapse in American history — and pulled the country out of it through the New Deal: jobs programmes, social security, banking reform. Then came World War II. FDR led America through that too, though he died in office in April 1945, just weeks before Germany surrendered. He is the only president to have served four terms.

John F. Kennedy (Democrat, 1961–1963) was young, charismatic, and represented a new kind of politics. He navigated the Cuban Missile Crisis — the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war — with extraordinary composure. On November 22, 1963, he was shot while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas. His assassination shook the world. He was 46.

Ronald Reagan (Republican, 1981–1989) presided over the end of the Cold War. His philosophy was simple: smaller government, lower taxes, stronger military. Whether you agree with his economics or not, his conviction helped accelerate the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Barack Obama (Democrat, 2009–2017) became the first Black president of the United States — a fact that, given the country’s history, was nothing short of extraordinary. He pulled America out of a financial crisis, passed universal healthcare, and restored much of America’s international standing after the Iraq War years.

All of these men whether Republican or Democrat; had something in common. They understood that the presidency was bigger than themselves.

And then there’s now.

On July 4, 2026 America’s 250th birthday. Donald Trump stood at the Lincoln Memorial and declared it a Trump Rally.

Not a joke. He literally announced on Truth Social: “at The Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, we are going to host the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.”

The event was called “Salute to America 250.” It was organised by a group called Freedom 250, aligned with Trump which had taken over the National Mall celebrations. Two-thirds of the musicians originally announced for the concert series dropped out, citing concerns about the event’s political framing. PBS, which had aired the National Mall fireworks for decades, was cut out because the Trump administration had defunded it earlier.

Washington DC hit 39°C that day the hottest July 4 on record, beating a record set in 1919. Thousands had to be evacuated from the Mall due to lightning. Twelve people were hospitalised for heat-related issues. And Trump, unbothered, gave his speech at 11pm, saying: “It’s Saturday night, LET’S HAVE SOME FUN.”

Meanwhile, across the country, counter-celebrations were happening. Civil rights groups, Latino leaders, Asian American organisations, and immigrant families gathered under the banner “All of Us 250” marching, rallying, and arguing that America’s 250th birthday should include everyone, not just the people the current administration considers real Americans.

Both groups, standing on the same soil, celebrating the same country and seeing two completely different things.

So what has actually happened under Trump?

Since January 2025, the US under Trump has been, in a word, volatile.

On trade: Trump raised the average US tariff rate from 2.5% to 27% by April 2025 — the highest in over a century. He imposed 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, started a full trade war with China, and threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union. The Supreme Court ruled his sweeping tariff powers unconstitutional in February 2026, meaning roughly $166 billion in collected tariff revenue will now have to be refunded. The tariffs amounted to an average tax increase of $1,500 per US household in 2026. Consumer sentiment hit a record low in April 2026.

On the markets: Trump’s announcements and reversals caused massive volatility. He was accused of market manipulation, telling his Truth Social followers to “buy stocks” just before pausing tariffs in April 2025. Financial records later revealed he personally traded over $200 million in the stock market during his presidency, leading to accusations of corruption.

On wars: The US directly participated in strikes on Iran in February 2026, closing the Strait of Hormuz and causing a global oil shock. Trump’s approval rating dropped to 34% in May 2026 ;though it has since recovered slightly to 38%.

On democracy: He promoted the SAVE America Act, a bill that would significantly change how US elections are administered, just months before the midterms. PBS was defunded. The 250th birthday celebrations on the National Mall were handed to a Trump-aligned private group.

What would the old presidents think?

Here’s the question I kept sitting with.

George Washington who was offered a crown and refused, watching a president turn the nation’s 250th birthday into a personal political rally. At the Lincoln Memorial. Beneath the statue of a man who died to preserve the union and end slavery.

Abraham Lincoln, who said “A house divided against itself cannot stand” looking at an America where white supremacists and anti-Trump protesters marched simultaneously on the same streets on Independence Day.

I don’t think they’d be shouting. I think they’d just be quietly, deeply worried.

So is this 4th of July still worth celebrating?

Yes. But maybe not in the way it was sold this year.

The Declaration of Independence is still one of the most radical documents ever written. The idea that ordinary people have rights that governments cannot take away that is not nothing. That matters. Two hundred and fifty years of imperfect, messy, complicated democracy is still more than most of the world has managed.

But celebrating America at 250 means being honest about it, the slavery it was built on, the promises it’s still breaking, and the questions it’s still trying to answer. It means asking whether the ideals in that founding document are still being honoured or just being used as stage decoration.

Tell me in comments, did it felt like celeberating or not?

— [“Girl Noticing”]

Published every Friday. Because Fridays deserve something worth reading.

So the monsoon is finally here. And honestly, I love it. The smell of rain hitting hot concrete, chai that suddenly tastes stronger, bhajiyas that feel completely justified at any hour of the day. Mumbai in the monsoon has this whole vibe that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.

But then I stepped out. And remembered.

The traffic that doesn’t move. The roads that look like they’ve had a rough few decades. The water that just... sits there. Every year, same spots, same problem. And this week something happened that I couldn’t scroll past.

Yesterday only a 55-year-old man was walking on the road in Chandivali. Three BMC workers had removed a manhole cover to install a protective grill. He was on his phone, didn’t see the opening, lost his balance and fell in. By the time firefighters pulled him out, he was gone. The BMC suspended four officials, blacklisted the contractor, and announced ₹10 lakh for the family. Maharashtra’s assembly Speaker called it “culpable homicide.”

It was preventable. Completely, entirely preventable. And that’s what sat with me.

Why does this keep happening?

Mumbai receives around 2,400 mm of rainfall annually, mostly crammed into four months. That’s a lot of water hitting a very dense city very fast. The drainage infrastructure handling all of it dates back to the early 20th century, 2,000 km of open drains, 440 km of closed drains, built without accounting for how dramatically this city would grow or how high tides would rise. A large number of drainage outfalls discharge directly into the sea, meaning during high tide and heavy rain simultaneously, the water has literally nowhere to go, so it comes back.

And then there’s what we’ve quietly destroyed over the decades the mangroves along the Mithi River, the wetlands that used to absorb rain naturally. We built over them. And now we wonder why the city floods.

BMC spends approximately ₹10 crore every monsoon season just renting pumps to suck water out of streets. Every year. Not fixing the problem. Managing it.

Here’s where it gets interesting though.

Kuala Lumpur gets almost exactly the same annual rainfall as Mumbai around 2,600 mm. It is also a dense, fast-growing city built around two rivers that used to flood constantly. Sound familiar?

In the 1970s, major floods in KL lasted five days and submerged 445 hectares of the city centre. The Malaysian government looked at this recurring disaster and decided to actually solve it. In 2007, they opened the SMART Tunnel (Stormwater Management And Road Tunnel) a 9.7 km tunnel beneath the city that does something genuinely brilliant.

On normal days, it’s a highway. Commuters drive through it. During moderate rain, a separate channel at the bottom diverts floodwater while traffic continues above. During a serious storm, the road closes, floodgates seal both ends, and the entire tunnel becomes a flood conduit, diverting millions of litres of water away from the city centre. Within 48 hours of the storm passing, the tunnel is pressure-washed and reopens as a road.

The SMART Tunnel has prevented flash floods in Kuala Lumpur during almost 600 rainfall events since opening, including 9 major storms, diverting 5 million cum of floodwater in a single activation and preventing an estimated $1.58 billion in damage.

A road that becomes a river when the city needs it to. Then goes back to being a road.

Singapore, which gets 2,378 mm of rain annually almost identical to Mumbai went a different route. It built an “Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters Programme” that integrates drainage into the city’s design itself green rooftops, rain gardens, permeable pavements that absorb water before it even reaches a drain. Cities integrating this kind of green infrastructure experience up to 50% less flooding than those relying on conventional drainage alone.

The Netherlands, meanwhile, is a country that literally sits below sea level and yet it floods far less than Mumbai. Their philosophy is simple: stop trying to keep water out. Instead, give it space. City plazas that double as water storage during flooding. Parks designed to flood safely. Children’s playgrounds that protect entire neighbourhoods.

So what can actually work here?

The good news is that none of this is out of reach for India.

Covered and bolted manholes with chains or locking mechanisms are standard in most European cities. It costs very little. It would have saved that 55 year old man’s life.

Mumbai already has some movement BMC has identified 453 flood-prone spots, addressed 369 of them, and is installing IoT sensors on dewatering pumps for real-time monitoring. Pilot projects on permeable pavements and rain gardens are being tested in certain areas. These are real steps, just slow ones.

What could genuinely change the picture: treating mangroves as infrastructure, not obstacles. Restoring the Mithi River’s natural flood absorption capacity. Building even one large-scale underground stormwater storage system not a tunnel as ambitious as KL’s necessarily, but the same basic idea. Water needs somewhere to go during a storm. Right now, that somewhere is our streets.

And for worksites, open manholes, open trenches, any open excavation, mandatory barricading with reflective markers, especially during rain. Not as a suggestion. As a non-negotiable rule with real consequences when ignored.

Mumbai is a city that handles extraordinary things every single day. 21 million people, impossible density, a local train system that somehow works. The monsoon doesn’t have to be the thing that defeats us every year.

Other cities with our rainfall figured it out. We can too. We just have to decide it’s worth solving — not just managing.

— ["Girl Noticing] 🌧️

Published every Friday. Because Fridays deserve something worth reading.

But then I started thinking, Chat-GPT, Gemini, Claude, these AI systems don’t take breaks. They run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, answering billions of questions from people all over the world. Simultaneously. Non-stop. The chips inside the servers that power them run so hot that without constant cooling, they would fry within minutes.

So how do they keep them cool?

Water. Fresh, drinkable water. The same water that comes out of your tap.

And once I fell into that rabbit hole, I couldn’t come back out. Because what I found is genuinely alarming.

First ,Why Water? How Did This Even Start?

In the early days of computing, data centers used air conditioning essentially giant fans blowing cold air over servers. It worked when servers were relatively small and spread out. But as computing power exploded through the 2000s and 2010s, chips got denser, racks got hotter, and air simply couldn’t keep up.

Just as human bodies cool themselves by sweating, data centers began to be cooled by water evaporation , a process that dissipates heat and results in water being lost to the atmosphere. It was cheaper than running industrial air conditioning at massive scale. And so the industry made a choice, trade electricity for water.

What nobody fully reckoned with is that this trade has a cost. A very large one.

The Numbers That Should Keep You Up At Night

Let’s start with something personal. According to scientists at the University of California, Riverside, each 100-word AI prompt is estimated to use roughly one bottle of water(519 millilitres). You’re reading this newsletter. You probably typed a few things into AI today. Add it up.

Now multiply that by billions of users doing the same thing, every single day.

Large data centers can each consume up to 5 million gallons per day the equivalent of the water use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. A medium-sized data center can consume up to 110 million gallons per year equivalent to the annual water usage of approximately 1,000 households.

And here’s the part that stopped me cold: 49% of data centers don’t even record their water usage.

We are consuming water at the scale of entire towns, and half the industry isn’t even counting it. That’s not negligence. That’s a choice.

The Hidden Water Nobody Talks About

The water a data center uses directly for cooling towers and chillers is only part of the story. Beyond the water that cools the servers, data centers indirectly contribute to water use through the electricity generation needed to power their operations. That indirect use often makes up 80% or more of the overall water footprint.

Think about it the power plants generating electricity for these data centers, especially coal and nuclear plants, need enormous amounts of water to produce steam and cool turbines. Every kilowatt-hour has a hidden water price tag.

In the US alone, data centers have an indirect water footprint of about 800 billion litres. And producing a single microchip requires 2.1 to 2.6 gallons of water just to cool machinery and ensure wafer sheets are free of contaminants.

A typical chip fabrication plant uses nearly 10 million gallons per day. Every chip arrives at a data center already carrying a hidden water debt before a single query is processed.

The water footprint of AI spans three layers cooling the data center, generating the electricity to power it, and manufacturing the chips inside it. We only ever talk about the first one.

And What Happens To The Water That Goes In?

This is the part that genuinely infuriated me.

With good water quality, roughly 80% of water withdrawal in cooling towers is evaporated and simply lost released into the atmosphere, unrecoverable.

So the question I immediately had was: can’t we just condense it back?

In theory, yes. Water vapour can be condensed using cooling coils and collected back into a closed loop. But here’s the problem during the cooling process, part of the freshwater evaporates, and the remaining water becomes contaminated with dust, chemicals and minerals. This wastewater hampers cooling efficiency if circulated back so data centers are often unable to reuse it to their maximum capacity.

It’s a trap: use clean water, lose most of it. Reuse dirty water, damage the cooling system. The industry picked the cheaper option and communities living near data centers are paying the price.

The Ways Data Centers Cool Themselves ,And What Each One Costs

There isn’t just one method. Here’s what’s actually being used:

Evaporative cooling towers: The most common and most water-hungry method. Hot water from servers flows through a tower where it evaporates, carrying heat away. Simple, cheap, and devastating on local water supplies.

Chilled water systems: Water is cooled in a chiller and circulated through the building. More controllable, but still water-intensive.

Air cooling: Fans blow chilled air over servers. Uses almost no water, but air cooling is only effective under optimal temperature and humidity conditions. When faced with extreme heat or humidity, it fails forcing data centers in places like India to fall back on water-based methods.

Direct-to-chip liquid cooling: A newer approach where liquid coolant circulates directly across processor chips. Corintis, a startup that has partnered with Microsoft, uses silicon-based microfluidic channels as narrow as 70 micrometres, delivering three times higher heat removal efficiency and reducing chip temperatures by more than 80%. It raised $24 million in September 2025.

Immersion cooling: Servers are fully submerged in a non-conductive dielectric fluid. Because water has up to 3,000 times the heat absorption capacity of air, liquid cooling delivers far greater thermal efficiency without requiring energy-heavy refrigeration. At Crusoe’s Abilene campus in West Texas, a fully closed-loop, non-evaporative immersion cooling system means annual water use is just 12,625 gallons per building roughly 10% of the water footprint of a typical US household. That’s transformative.

Closed-loop cooling systems: Water circulates in a sealed system without evaporating. These can cut freshwater use by 70% or more. The technology exists. It’s just not the default.

But Wait, Can’t We Just Use Seawater?

The ocean is right there. Why are we draining drinking water when we’re surrounded by the sea?

The problem is that most data center cooling systems are evaporative they vaporize water to absorb heat. With salt water, salt and other minerals are left behind during evaporation, quickly clogging and corroding pipes, membranes, and cooling towers.

Seawater can technically be used, Google has adopted it in at least one facility but it requires significant investment in corrosion-resistant infrastructure, and seawater must be filtered and treated before use, which costs energy and money.

But there’s a genuinely exciting development right here in India: IIT Bombay researchers have developed a methodology for deep seawater cooling systems using cold water from ocean depths that can save 79% of cooling energy and cut emissions, with a rapid eight-month payback period. The ocean’s deep water is naturally cold enough to cool servers without evaporation.

In Sines, Portugal, the SIN01 data center the largest in Portugal has already implemented ocean water cooling at scale, in a collaboration between Schneider Electric and Start Campus. Ocean water has been used in a few places before, but never on this scale.

And Microsoft’s Project Natick tested underwater data centers submerged in the ocean, cooled by seawater and found the concept viable. The researchers found that heat from the process dissipated immediately into surrounding ocean currents without affecting the local marine environment.

This can be done. It’s being done. It’s just not being done fast enough, or anywhere near where the problem is most severe.

Meanwhile ,People Are Literally Dying Of Thirst

Only 3% of Earth’s water is freshwater, and only 0.5% of all water is accessible and safe for human consumption.

By 2030, AI-related water consumption could hit 9.3 trillion litres enough to cover the annual basic domestic water needs of over 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa for a full year.

And the injustice of where these data centers are being built is staggering. Big Tech companies present the construction of data centres in Latin America as an economic opportunity for the region but the impact of building data centres is felt most by the Global South. By taking these resources, modern-day colonialism plays out in the digital sphere.

Replacing electric fans with cooling systems might reduce carbon emissions but it simply switches the burden from electricity to water. The water footprint of digitalisation could be larger and more problematic than its carbon footprint.

We talk about carbon. We obsess over carbon. But water? Silence.

People Are Fighting Back And They’re Winning

According to Data Center Watch, at least 75 data center projects worth around $130 billion have been blocked or delayed across the US in the first quarter of 2026 alone the same amount that was blocked throughout all of 2025.

There have already been more than 70 rejections or restrictions in the first four months of 2026. Broad coalitions of ordinary people have organised to stop these projects chanting “No data center” and “We want water” outside planning hearings.

In Tucson, Arizona, residents consistently attended town board meetings and wrote op-eds opposing “Project Blue” a data center that would have taken millions of gallons of drinking water from the desert for cooling. In an unscheduled vote, council members unanimously decided to discontinue discussions with the developer.

Groups including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch, and Physicians for Social Responsibility have signed a letter to the US Congress calling for a moratorium on data center construction until regulations can catch up.

And at the policy level, movement is finally happening. The EU has introduced legislation requiring data centers to report their electricity and water consumption. The ISO/IEC’s first international standard on sustainable AI included water footprint as a key metric. In Wisconsin, new legislation has been proposed requiring data centers to publish quarterly electricity and water usage reports.

So What Needs To Change?

The technology for better cooling exists. Immersion cooling, closed-loop systems, seawater cooling, deep ocean cooling all proven, all available. New cooling systems could help conserve up to 80% more water than current methods.

What is missing is not innovation. It is accountability.

49% of data centers don’t record their water usage. You cannot manage what you don’t measure. Mandatory water reporting like the EU has now introduced must become a global standard, not a voluntary gesture.

The next time a tech giant announces a data center in India, the first question should not be “how many jobs will this create?” It should be: “where is the water coming from, how much will you use, and what happens to the community next door?”

Because sustainability is not just about your carbon footprint. It’s about your water footprint. It’s about the farmer in Marathwada and the child in Chennai and the 1.3 billion people who don’t have clean water while a data center in their region evaporates millions of gallons answering questions for people in New York and London.

Someone has to be accountable for that. And right now, almost nobody is.

I Want To Hear From You 💬

Did you know your AI prompts were using water? Does it change how you think about using AI tools?

Tell me. This is exactly the kind of thing we should be talking about.

[“Girl_Noticing”] 💧

Published every Friday. Because Fridays deserve something worth reading.

👋So I noticed — the world woke up today to the words “ceasefire signed.” After nearly four months of missiles, mines, burning ships, and rising gas cylinder bills, the US and Iran have finally put ink on paper.

But before we collectively exhale — let me tell you exactly what happened today, what it means for us in India, and why this isn’t quite the clean ending it looks like from the outside.

So What Even Is This Ceasefire? Plain And Simple.

Trump and Iran’s President Pezeshkian virtually signed a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding — the “Islamabad Memorandum” — designed to halt hostilities, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and establish a 60-day process for negotiating a comprehensive long-term settlement.

Think of it less like a final peace treaty and more like a 60-day timeout. Both sides have agreed to stop shooting — for now — while they figure out the harder questions: Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions, and what happens to Lebanon.

Key terms include the immediate lifting of oil export sanctions on Iran and a $300 billion private-sector reconstruction fund to rebuild Iran. But Iran’s missile program remains excluded from negotiations — and Israel has outright refused to recognise the agreement.

And here’s what happened this morning: Switzerland’s foreign ministry announced that the first round of US-Iran talks scheduled at Bürgenstock today have been postponed until further notice. The White House also confirmed that Vice President JD Vance was no longer travelling to Switzerland. The Financial Times reported the talks were called off because Israel launched a fresh wave of deadly airstrikes on Lebanon overnight, killing 18 people — and Iran demanded the Lebanon front be included in any ceasefire before talks could proceed.

So the deal is signed. The talks are already postponed. And Israel says the deal doesn’t bind them.

This is not peace. This is a very tense pause.

The People Who Paid The Price Nobody Talks About

Before we get to stock prices and rupee rates, I want to stop here.

Three Indian sailors have been confirmed dead after US military operations to halt tankers near Oman, as part of Washington’s naval blockade of Iran-linked shipping. Indian Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal confirmed the deaths. Over 18,000 Indian sailors were working in the Gulf region at the peak of the crisis, with 13 Indian vessels stranded in the Strait of Hormuz.

One Indian captain, Vijay Kumar, described being intercepted by Iranian naval forces after his vessel developed a technical fault: “Before we could even speak, they opened fire.” His crew was detained for 50 days. Chief engineer Anil Kumar Singh said: “Every moment felt close to death. We could not sleep for days as missiles flew everywhere.”

The diplomatic term for people like them is “collateral damage.” I refuse to use that phrase. These were ordinary people doing an ordinary job on an ordinary sea — that became a battlefield overnight.

And Then There Are The 9 Million Indians Nobody Is Talking About

India is the world’s largest recipient of remittances — money sent home by Indians working abroad accounts for nearly 3.5% of our GDP, more than all our exports to the US combined. Out of nearly 19 million Indians working overseas, about 9 million are in the Gulf. The Gulf diaspora contributes nearly 38% of India’s total remittance inflows — roughly $51 billion every year.

Remittances from overseas Indians stood at $102.5 billion in April-December 2025 — before the war hit. Now recruiters say hiring has dried up. One agency in Kanpur said: “Earlier, we used to place five to ten candidates every month. Now we are lucky if we can place even one or two.”

Approximately 1.1 million Indians returned from the Gulf region between late February and end of April. Thomas Cherian, 50, spent 18 years working in Saudi Arabia before returning on leave — only to find his employer had suspended projects and laid off 600 Indian workers. He doesn’t know when — or if — he can go back.

These people aren’t in the ceasefire agreement. Nobody negotiated for them.

What Has India Done? And What Should It Do Next?

India moved — though mostly reactively.

India diversified crude import sources from 20 to 40 countries by end of March 2026. But supply diversification alone doesn’t protect against global price spikes. It also secured a 2.2 million metric tonne US LPG supply deal for 2026 — about 10% of annual imports. Helpful. Not enough.

On diplomacy, India stayed neutral and smart — talking to everyone, picking sides with no one, and positioning itself as a bridge. At the G7 summit last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed renewed interest in IMEC — the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor — calling it a more resilient alternative trade route. India sits at the centre of it. That’s a real long-term opportunity born out of this crisis.

But the honest truth is this — over 96% of India’s 378 million vehicles still run on petrol or diesel, and investment in EVs and charging infrastructure trails India’s own 2030 goals by 82%. We talk about energy independence. We haven’t built it yet.

What needs to happen urgently: treat energy security as a national security issue, not just a policy goal. Piped gas replacing cylinders. Renewable energy replacing imported oil — not as a PR move, but as a genuine strategic shift. 34 Indian and foreign-flagged vessels are now cleared for safe passage through the Strait — this brief window of relief must be used to build resilience, not just restock.

Because the Strait could close again tomorrow. The next crisis is not a question of if. It’s when.

So Is This Really Peace?

Maybe. For 60 days. On paper.

As of yesterday, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said plainly: “Trump’s agreement does not bind us.” Iran’s army has reported 84 Israeli ceasefire violations in Lebanon since June 15. Netanyahu reportedly refused Vice President Vance’s request to scale back IDF presence in Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah did agree to a ceasefire from 4pm local time today — but that followed Israel’s deadliest strikes on Lebanon in days, killing 18 people overnight.

So where does this leave us? A deal is signed. Follow-up talks are already postponed. Israel isn’t bound. Lebanon is still being struck. Mines are still in the Strait.

This is a pause. A precious one — because pauses let gas flow, markets recover, and sailors come home.

But India cannot afford to just exhale and move on. This pause is our window to build.

I Want To Hear From You 💬

Does calling our sailors “collateral damage” sit right with you? And do you think this ceasefire will actually hold?

I genuinely want to know what you think.

— [“Girl_Noticing”] 🌊

Published every Friday. Because Fridays deserve something worth reading.

Let me back up.

I was on a flight back to Mumbai from Jaipur. The flight was delayed by six hours. Six. I was exhausted, irritated, running on airport coffee and sheer stubbornness. By the time I finally boarded, I just wanted to get home.

And then we flew straight into a thunderstorm.

The turbulence hit like the plane was being shaken by a giant hand. When I looked out my window, I saw a thick layer of clouds below us — and inside those clouds, continuous flashes of lightning, one after another, like someone was flicking a light switch inside the sky. I genuinely, for a few minutes, thought: this is it.

Reader, I survived. Obviously. But my brain did not let it go. Because that is what I do — I get curious. And I had a lot of questions.

So What Actually Happens When A Plane Flies Through A Thunderstorm?

First — the turbulence you feel? That is real, and it is not nothing. Thunderstorms can produce severe turbulence, wind shear and gusts, low clouds and reduced visibility — all of which can cause delays or flight cancellations. What you feel in your seat is the plane moving through rapidly shifting pockets of air, and yes, it is uncomfortable, but it is also something pilots train for extensively.

Now here is the part that genuinely surprised me. Commercial planes are designed to take lightning strikes. In fact, it is estimated that on average, each airplane in the commercial fleet is struck by lightning more than once each year — and aircraft often trigger lightning when flying through a heavily charged region of a cloud. The plane essentially becomes part of the electrical circuit between cloud regions.

So yes — that dramatic flash you sometimes see? The plane may have caused it.

But here is why you are safe: the aircraft’s fuselage acts as a Faraday cage — a container that blocks electromagnetic fields. The energy from a lightning bolt runs around the outside of the vessel, protecting the interior from any voltage. Think of it like the plane is wearing armour. The lightning enters, travels along the surface, and exits — usually without touching anything critical inside.

Lightning usually strikes the front of the cockpit first, then travels through the conductive exterior and exits through the tail. After landing, the plane undergoes a thorough inspection — the most typical areas of damage are the overhangs and rivets of the surface plates.

The last commercial plane crash in the US confirmed to be directly caused by lightning was in 1967, when a fuel tank exploded. Since then, aviation engineering has come a very long way. Every wire, fuel line, and electronic system is carefully protected.

But What About Landing In A Thunderstorm? Can They Just… Not?

This is the part that got me thinking about my six-hour delay differently.

The pilot-in-command makes the decision to divert or delay, prioritising the safety of passengers and crew above all else. The pilot then coordinates with air traffic control to find a suitable alternate airport.

And here is the scale of what ATC is quietly managing while you are sitting at the gate, annoyed: a single 15-minute delay for a commercial airliner can cost an airline between $10,000 and $20,000 in fuel, crew overtime, and passenger compensation. Multiply that across dozens of flights during a storm, and you start to understand why those decisions are not taken lightly.

In India, airlines diverted approximately 1.2% of scheduled flights in FY2024-25 — over 30,000 diversions across 164 million domestic passengers. Weather accounts for 60–65% of all diversions, and monsoon months see diversion rates triple at storm-affected airports.

Now here is something genuinely exciting that happened just last week — directly relevant to my Jaipur experience. India’s first SkyCast System was inaugurated at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport on May 29 — one of only 19 such systems in the world. It blends multiple advanced atmospheric observation technologies to deliver real-time weather forecasting, and has already shown a noticeable drop in flight diversions during recent thunderstorms.

One small but meaningful step toward turning six-hour delays into two-hour ones. And I am very much here for it.

Now Here Is Where It Gets Geopolitically Interesting!!😉

Bear with me — this is the part my curious brain could not let go of.

Modern aircraft are not just metal and wires. Newer airliners like the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 are made with a higher proportion of composite materials like carbon fibre, which means reduced electrical conductivity. To compensate, aerospace manufacturers are deliberately laying conductive wires in the fuselage — not connected to anything, but specifically designed to attract electrical current and guide it safely away from fuel and electronics.

These materials — the composites, the conductors, the high-performance magnets in the engines — rely on something called rare earth minerals. And right now, the global fight over these minerals is heating up fast.

Between fiscal years 2022–23 and 2024–25, China accounted for between 59.6% and 81.3% of India’s permanent magnet imports by value. The same magnets that go into electric vehicles, wind turbines — and yes, aircraft systems. Beijing’s tightening of rare earth exports in 2025 shook global supply chains and underscored the vulnerability of industries dependent on these critical materials.

India is finally waking up to this. In November 2025, the government approved a ₹7,280 crore scheme to develop integrated rare earth permanent magnet manufacturing capacity. And in Budget 2026–27, dedicated rare earth corridors were announced in Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu — covering the full value chain from mining to finished magnets.

And then just last month, India and the US signed a major framework agreement on rare earths and critical minerals — building on PM Modi and President Trump’s shared vision of secure and trusted supply chains for critical minerals as a strategic priority. As part of the broader Quad framework, India, the US, Australia and Japan intend to mobilise up to $20 billion for critical minerals supply chain initiatives.

The plane I sat in, sweating through turbulence over Jaipur, is part of a global supply chain that stretches from the mines of Tamil Nadu to factories in China to boardrooms in Washington. I did not know that when I was gripping my armrest. But I know it now.

So What Is My Takeaway From All Of This?

India’s aviation infrastructure is improving — the SkyCast system at Delhi is proof of that. The engineering inside modern aircraft is genuinely remarkable. And the rare earth push is a long-overdue strategic move.

But I keep coming back to this: we are building faster planes, smarter ATC systems, and bigger airports — all while the weather is getting more unpredictable, the monsoons more erratic, and the storms more intense. El Niño, climate change, the urban heat island effect — all of it feeds into more volatile flying conditions, especially during Indian summers and monsoons.

The question I am sitting with is: are we building our aviation infrastructure fast enough for the climate we are flying into? Not just the climate of today, but of 2035? Of 2050?

And I Want To Hear From You 💬

— [“Girl_Noticing] ✈️

Published every Friday. Because Fridays deserve something worth reading.

Stepping outside in Mumbai this May felt less like summer and more like walking into an oven. On May 26, Mumbai recorded 34°C — but with the humidity factored in, it felt like 48°C. Forty-eight. Let that sink in for a second.

And here’s the thing — I am writing this on World Environment Day. This year’s theme is “Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future.” with the global campaign #NowForClimate — focusing on the urgent signals the Earth is already sending us, and the signals we choose to send back.

Well. Mumbai’s signal this May was pretty hard to miss.

So I went down a rabbit hole — and here’s what I found.

First — What Even Is El Niño?

Okay, let me break this down because most articles make it sound like a PhD thesis.

Imagine the Pacific Ocean as a giant bathtub. Normally, winds push warm water toward Australia and Asia, keeping our side of the world wetter and cooler. El Niño happens when those winds weaken — and that warm water sloshes back toward South America instead. When that happens, weather patterns across the entire planet go haywire.

Think of it like someone tilting the bathtub. Everything shifts.

And when El Niño arrives, India tends to bear the brunt.

What Does It Mean For India?

Quite a lot, actually.

Historically, El Niño has been associated with a weaker southwest monsoon in India — years like 1987, 2002, 2009 and 2015 all witnessed drought-like conditions tied to weak monsoon performance. And India’s monsoon isn’t just a weather event — it’s an economic lifeline. The country receives nearly 70% of its annual rainfall during the June to September period alone, and a good monsoon is crucial for sustaining the agrarian economy and for replenishment of water reservoirs.

A bad monsoon doesn’t just mean less rain. It means food prices spike, farmers suffer, and inflation creeps into every household.

On the health front, the numbers are stark. According to the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, people in India experienced an average of 19.8 heatwave days in 2024 — the warmest year on record — with estimated potential income losses of about $194 billion due to heat-driven labour reduction.

And here’s a detail that quietly bothers me: despite this severity, heatwaves are not formally recognised as a disaster under India’s central disaster framework — which obstructs formation of a uniform response mechanism and hinders long-term adaptation funding.

Some progress is being made though — in November 2025, the 16th Finance Commission recommended that heatwaves be included in the national list of notified disasters, given their scale and the fact that they often exceed the coping capacity of affected communities. It’s a step. But only a step.

This Has Happened Before — And The Aftereffects Were Brutal

The 1877–79 global famine coincided with El Niño events, leading to widespread mortality across India and China due to climatic stress.

More recently, the 2015–16 El Niño coincided with a deficient monsoon in India at 84% below the Long Period Average. Farmers across Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh suffered crop failures. Reservoir levels dropped. Rural distress spiked.

History keeps rhyming. And we keep being surprised.

Now Add The Middle East Crisis Into The Mix

Here’s where it gets complicated for India.

El Niño already threatens our food supply and monsoon. But simultaneously, India imports nearly 85% of its crude oil — and even a few dollars’ increase in global oil prices can materially affect the country’s energy economics.

With ongoing instability in the Middle East driving crude prices up, state-run oil companies are absorbing losses of around ₹1,000 crore every day to keep petrol and diesel prices stable for consumers — and that pace is not sustainable.

Now combine that with a potential El Niño-linked weak monsoon — lower agricultural output, higher food prices — and you have a pressure cooker situation for the average Indian household. Climate stress and geopolitical stress, arriving together.

Strong El Niño-linked heat conditions could shave up to 2.5% off India’s GDP in 2026, according to climate researchers. That is not a small number for an economy of our size.

So What Is The Government Doing?

Today, on World Environment Day, PM Modi urged a commitment to sustainable growth and highlighted that government initiatives like “Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam” have contributed to adding nearly 1.19 lakh hectares of forest every year. He also reaffirmed India’s commitment to Mission Life — the lifestyle-based environmental movement that uses today as a key annual mobilisation moment.

India is also the only G20 nation currently in line with the 2-degree Celsius global warming cap, and the share of non-fossil resources in India’s installed electricity generation capacity has reached 45.4%. That is genuinely worth acknowledging.

On the ground, the Ministry of Health has directed states to operationalise dedicated heatstroke management units, ensure ambulance preparedness, issue early warnings, and maintain real-time reporting of heatstroke cases.

But here’s my honest take — the response is still largely reactive. We wait for the heatwave, then manage it. We need to get ahead of it.

What We’re Not Doing — And Should Be

This is the part I can’t stop thinking about. And on World Environment Day of all days, it feels worth saying loudly.

The global adaptation finance gap currently stands between $187 billion and $359 billion annually — and the countries most vulnerable to climate change are often paying the highest cost to finance climate action, with climate finance for developing countries increasingly adding to debt burdens rather than relieving them.

India needs to push harder on this at every global platform — not just as a moral argument, but as an economic one.

Beyond that, here is what I think is missing:

A national heat insurance program for daily wage workers and farmers who lose income during heatwaves — because right now, the burden falls entirely on the most vulnerable. Mandatory cool zones in every city — shaded, water-equipped public spaces that are actually accessible, not just on paper. Going beyond daytime temperatures to include nighttime temperatures in heat risk planning — because Mumbai nights at 28°C with 70% humidity are genuinely dangerous too, and nobody is talking about that. And treating climate adaptation as an urban infrastructure priority — cool roofs, green corridors, permeable roads — the kind of things that take years to build but that we should have started yesterday.

India is living the consequences in real time — cities face worsening air quality, summers bring longer and more intense heatwaves, and the monsoon, on which agriculture and water security depend, has become more erratic.

The science isn’t waiting. The weather isn’t waiting. The Earth sent us a clear signal this May. The question is — what signal are we sending back?

And I Want To Hear From You 💬

Do you think India is doing enough on climate finance? Have you noticed the summers getting worse where you live? Is there an angle on this I missed? What do you think needs to change?

I know I got a bit late, but you know Office deadlines puts the hobbies on backseat.😒

Happy World Environment Day. 🌍

— [Girl_Noticing]

Published every Friday. Because Fridays deserve something worth reading.





But here’s the thing. No matter what’s happening in the world, Friday still feels like Friday.

That extra pep in your step walking into office. The lightness. The quiet joy of knowing that when you get home tonight, you can finally exhale. Two whole days — just for you.

I genuinely feel more motivated on Fridays than any other day. Not because work is fun, but because I know what’s waiting on the other side. That sigh of relief when you walk through your door? Unmatched. 🚪✨

And honestly? I think everyone deserves that. Weekends aren’t laziness — they’re necessary. A little time to yourself is what keeps you sane, motivated, and human enough to show up again on Monday. 😄

Kudos to those who love their weekends — this one’s for you.

Here’s my little announcement 📬

Every Friday, from here on — you’ll find a fresh newsletter from me, right here. Something I noticed. Something happening around us. Simple, honest, and straight from my curious little brain.

Consider it your Friday treat. 🎁

See you every week — same day, same place.

— [“Girl_Noticing”] 😊

Subscribe now

The world never really slows down, does it?

Every single day there is something happening. Something new to read, something surprising to hear, something that makes you stop and think “wait, what?” And for the longest time, I would just… sit with that feeling. Turn it over in my head. Talk about it with people around me. And then let it go.

But lately I figured — why let it go? Why not write it down instead?

So here I am.

I am someone who gets genuinely curious about things happening around me. A news headline, a change I notice in my city, a conversation that stuck with me, something in the world that just doesn’t sit right — these things pull at me. And I have opinions about them. Perspectives. Questions I can’t stop asking.

This newsletter is my way of letting those thoughts out.

I am not an expert. I am not here to lecture anyone.

I am just a curious person who sees things a certain way — and wants to share that with you. Simply. Honestly. Without all the noise.

And here’s the thing — I don’t just want you to read my perspective and nod along. I want you to read it and think “hmm, but what do I think?” Because figuring out your own perspective is just as important as hearing someone else’s.

So if you are someone who wants to understand what’s happening in the world in a simple, real way — without jargon, without agenda — this place is for you.

If you are still figuring out what you think about things — this place is for you.

If you are just curious, like me — this place is definitely for you.

Every week, I’ll show up here with something I noticed. Something worth talking about.

I hope you stick around.

— [Girl_Noticing]