My beautiful partner, obsessed with rivers, trees, flowers, and stars, told me a few weeks ago that the holiness ascribed to river Ganges has led to its ruin, while the Chambal, because of its ‘curse’, continues to thrive and be a home to many many species. The river that’s revered, exalted, and accorded the status of the mother—Ganga Maiya—is struggling to exist as a living, flowing entity! A self-sustaining ecosystem is being destroyed while being prayed to.

The irony is stark, not unfamiliar, though.

It seems impossibly hard to forage and find a specific moment when I realized that women are deemed to be goddesses in this country. Older relatives would let my brothers touch their feet but not me—ladkiyan pair nahi chua karti, they would say. A random aunty would respond to my greeting by calling me ghar ki lakshmi. On the eighth or ninth day, during Navratri, in most households in my neighborhood, nine young girls would be invited for Kanya Puja. The men and women of the house would, then, feed and adore them, touch their feet, join hands in front of them to seek blessings, and send them back home with gifts.

Recently, someone from the extended family shared a picture of their three girls on their WhatsApp status with a poetic Hindi caption that said: daughters are born in the homes of those who are blessed by God. I laughed and remembered how disappointed the said person was at the birth of these daughters and how desperately they wanted a son.

The more I live, the more I learn the contours and edges of this ‘pedestal’ that’s supposedly used to ‘respect’ and ‘worship’ women. The pedestal comes in various shapes and sizes and is often in-built with the roles assigned to women. Being an ‘elder sister’ means you were born before your sibling and it also means that you have to display worthy good-girl behavior so your sibling can follow in your footsteps. Being a ‘daughter’ means you were born to your parents and it also means that you have to behave in a prescribed way so you bring honor and glory to your family. Being a ‘wife’ means you have legally married your partner and it also means that you have to prioritize running his life over yours. Being a ‘mother’ means you have birthed a child and it also means that every waking moment of your life should belong to the child you are destined to care for. The definitions of these in-built pedestals aren't exaggerated here, in fact, they are rather limited. Just like the shape of the pedestal, the sizes vary too. The pedestal can be a small one, built to make you feel responsible and guilty at all times, constantly dictating your every move. It can also be huge, suffocating and crippling you while you strive to exist.

Growing up, the pedestal felt like a trap to me—I had to do more to deserve the bare minimum. A slight misstep and the basics could be at stake. The missteps were neither laid out nor enforced by one person. It was all omnipresent—the caution, the shame, the rules of being a good girl were in the air I was breathing. There was no one to blame, but everyone was responsible for teaching me how to sit, walk, laugh, talk, and be. The precision was necessary for survival. One wrong move and my privileges (the bare minimum) could be taken away.

I learnt the tradeoffs quite early and I was prepared to make them. I knew if I could follow the script to the T, I would get the things that were important to me. My father bought me a bicycle in sixth standard—very important for the freedom I craved—that I started using to go to school. Soon after, the uncles of the neighborhood were worried about my ‘safety’. I was too young, the roads were too unsafe, there were men loitering and catcalling women, they said. I didn’t stop cycling; my family, fortunately, didn’t force me to. But I knew the burden of keeping myself safe on the road was on me. My skirt couldn’t be too short, I couldn’t be seen having fun with friends, home to school and school to home with a resting face. Follow the script to the T because one misstep and the blame of someone harassing me on the road could fall on me—and not on the harasser.

Later, the year I graduated and started my first job, I would watch Shoojit Sircar’s Pink and grieve the loss of the child I was never allowed to be. Why should an eleven-year-old have to worry about her safety? How could we let the onus of that safety fall on her? How could she not be sure that if the unfortunate things adults kept talking about were to happen, the world would be on her side? That eleven-year-old was handed over a script she diligently stuck to until she couldn’t, for the script was so heavy that her body was bruised carrying it over the years.

If women are holy goddesses, they can obviously never be human. I don’t know, then, why I am still surprised when a woman is tried and picked apart for the most basic things that make her a living, breathing, mere mortal. Oh how dare she fall in love! How dare she leave her child at home to go to work! How dare she giggle in his attention! My god, she had a drink! Oh the sky would fall upon us now that she has chosen her own career over his. Did she really flirt with you? Did I hear her swearing? Oh she ate the whole thing? Did she just fart? Ew, such hairy hands!

A woman has to be a goddess or a maa, behen, beti in this country to earn her existence—being a human, a citizen, a person is not enough. She can only be safe if she is in relation to someone, preferably a man. She needs to earn her bare minimum existence. She is allowed dignity and peace only if she agrees to embrace the pedestal, follow the script, be pious and pure, and remain in service of the imagination we have imposed on her. Everything human is a sin, she is taught very early on, a sin she would be tried and punished for.

My heart beams when I see a woman take up space, laugh loudly, dance shamelessly. I am in awe when I see her be herself and not perform to the tunes of those in power. I love the giggles, the rage, the snorts, the tears, the audacity to go against the script. I love the women who choose to leave the mediocre existence that’s offered to them, wrapped in shiny, glittery paper, neatly tied with a golden bow for they can see through the facade and dare to demand better.

I am able to find my way today through this maze whose walls seem to close on me because of the women who came before me, tore the script handed to them, and kicked the pedestal they were told to climb on.

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It's slimy but I want to keep touching it. It sticks and I hate it and yet my fingers keep going back. Such a strange way to describe my relationship with the home I grew up in but how else do I talk about the stickiness of something that refuses to leave. I have known people who are good at dissociating, who have learnt to draw a boundary, create a bubble, and live inside it oblivious to what is happening outside. I am envious of them for I am exhausted of straddling two worlds, of carrying two selves. Who I was taught to be is in conflict with who I inherently am. Who I was taught to be is so deep in my bones that I sometimes do not even know who I would be without it.

I was the child who lend a sympathetic ear to my finicky grandmother when she wanted to complain. I was the one who consoled my father when he was irrationally, and often dramatically, mad at someone. I was the daughter who could see through my mother's exaggerated smiles and gather that she was upset. In my twenties, when I would get to come home only for a week, twice a year, my biggest complaint would be that even for that one week my home couldn't pretend to be a joyful cocoon I desperately needed. My siblings’ ignorance to it all made me feel like I was over-sensitive. And my general skepticism of my own memory still makes me wonder if how I remember my life is false and tainted. Is it just the story I tell myself or did it all actually happen?

Your childhood home could be a happy hazy memory that warms and coddles and makes you feel safe on a dreaded rainy day. It could also be a threatening, persistence presence that shames you into becoming a better version of yourself. It could be a soothing shade of a big, old, wise banyan tree on your adulthood. It could also be a weight on your back that seems to grow heavier on heavy days. This essay, many many books I have loved, songs and cinema I keep going back to wouldn’t exist if a childhood home could be boxed in one of these categories. The reason we do not tire writing and singing about it is because it is all of this and then some more. It warms and threatens. It’s soothing and heavy. You wouldn’t have existed without this home and yet you long for a version that could shed the skin that was wrapped around you inside this home.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, a multi-generational saga, is the story of two brothers, Subhash and Udayan. You see them through their inseparable, joined at the hip childhood and then a diverged, distant adulthood. There is a lot of ache in the story of this family. You can pick any thread of it and be drowned by the melancholy of what their life could have been and what it turned out to be. A book whispers to you; what it says to you, it says only to you. The time and place you are in your life defines what stays with you from a story. It’s been months since I read the book. What I couldn’t shake off from this story is the belief that anyone who has ever left their home, even by choice, has left because of an anguish they feel towards the home, the family, the neighborhood, the country they were born into. This was the first time I read a book and grieved not only for the characters but also their childhood home. The home that was built with so much love and care and hope. The home that lost everyone it loved slowly and eventually. The home that stood erect and steady even when everyone who was supposed to live in it had left.

P’s childhood home was also painstakingly and carefully built by his parents. The land was bought; it was within their means only because the area was not yet developed or densely populated. P moved to his new home when he was five years old. He often talks about how as a child some of his favorite memories were formed cycling through those dark, quiet alleys. The houses were far and few in between so there was enough space for snakes, squirrels, peacocks, sparrows, and rabbits to thrive. It’s been more than two decades, his home looks the same but the area around it is unrecognizable now. More people, even more cars, and no rabbits or sparrows.

The town I grew up in also had the tragic, good fortune of witnessing rapid urbanization. Faizabad lost its identity when Ayodhya became the center of national politics. I usually visit my hometown once a year now. A couple of years ago, everything seemed to have changed from one visit to another. Roads dug up, home demolished to widen the said roads, new flyovers, newer franchise showrooms, a mall, plethora of homestays, a functioning airport, and a much fought for (literally) temple in the middle of it all. It was an out of body experience to hear the name of this town in the news every other day. After a while, I grew numb to it. Growing numb was and still is a defense, a self preservatory, often cowardly way to cope with the becoming and unbecoming of a town that has been homogenized, ripped off of all the texture, and reduced to a single, profitable identity.

In Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga, you see the ache of being forced to leave one’s home through Keenu, whose memory has betrayed him but his mind is unable to let go of the longing he feels for the home he grew up in, the people he grew up with, and the girl he made promises to. In one scene Keenu, Ishar Singh Grewal, a 95 year old man is on a video call with his grandson. Keenu, bedridden and weak, is giving him directions, asking him to turn left and right and go straight only to eventually get lost because the lanes have changed. Everything has changed since he left and yet he yearns for a homecoming, a desire that is keeping him alive despite his body and mind giving up with every breath. I sobbed in the theatre for every Keenu who’s had to leave his home, for every Jiya who spent her life waiting for the return of a time she was the happiest in. In this film, the political and personal are inseparable, woven threads just like they are in real life.

My childhood home exists within me, in my laughter that I share with my mother, in my anxiety that I share with my father, in my ego that I share with my grandmother. A tree can expand and blossom but it still derives nourishment from its roots. On the days, I try to run away from mine, life humbles me by reminding how I am a nobody without these roots. In my thirties, my visits to the town I grew up in are melancholic. My home exists on a land that has changed and so has its people. Some changes can be explained through the socio-political context, while others can only be sensed. On some days, I want to run away from this home, on others I crave it. I bruise easily but I can also see through those leaving these bruises. I have begun to notice how hard my father works and how he passes out in bed in the middle of our chatter. I see the thin, almost translucent, skin on my grandmother’s hands. I feel how small my mother seems when I hug her.

There is an ache in leaving this home behind. There is an ache in coming back to it.

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I found the words, the language, to describe how my mother might have felt when she left her maiden home only on the day I left mine. At 18, I left my parents’ home for education and then work but the feeling of suddenly not belonging to my childhood home was only felt on the day I got married. Despite being urban-educated, upper-caste, and sufficiently privileged, I couldn’t escape the curse of patriarchy, which ensures that a woman has no home until she builds her own. It’s been five years since the day of my wedding, and I have often caught myself wondering about how in a day my relationship with my mother—already strong—suddenly deepened without an iota of additional effort from either side.

I found the answer on a random Tuesday during my usual afternoon phone call with her.

To figure out the genesis of my disabling mood swings around my periods, I asked her if she had felt those too. Despite all the vocabulary and awareness around menstrual health, I find it extremely difficult to explain the intangible symptoms of my period to another person. How do I explain that my head becomes an unlivable place every month for a while? The pain is not physical, but that does not make it any less real. I wondered how my mother managed it in her time without the omnipresent internet teaching us all the basics of menstrual health and pre-menstrual syndrome and feminism. I wanted to know if anyone was there for her when she cried herself to sleep only to wake up to a blood-soaked underwear the next morning. I wanted to understand if she could make sense of her unfounded annoyance and sadness that surrounded her periods.

My questions and her subsequent answers immediately put into perspective that we have never had this—or even a remotely similar—conversation before. I had been the daughter who was taught about periods and was given a sanitary napkin when she needed one. But once I had grown up enough to be comfortable with the contours and edges of my menstrual life, I had never turned around and bothered to ask her about hers.

A part of the reason was also that my menstrual health had made me sick in numerous ways and landed me in multiple hospitals throughout my twenties and I didn’t think any woman around me—including my mother—could or would relate to my experience. Later, I would grow up to discover many such amazing, beautiful women through books and the internet who have suffered enough and more to make me feel like I was not the only one troubled by my uterus and ovaries. I couldn’t have been, I know now.

On the phone call with my mother, it only took a tiny confession and a little probing from my end for her to tell me all about it. Her physical pains, her mental upheavals in her twenties and thirties, and now her menopausal symptoms and how no one really bothers to understand them. “In our days, you had to manage these things on your own,” she said, as a matter of fact. It was not lost on me that, despite sharing a warm relationship, this was one of the most intimate conversations we have ever had. Care and warmth do not guarantee vulnerability. It took me 31 years to find a shared language between my mother and me—one that communicated my pain while understanding hers.

I vividly remember this one incident when I was in sixth standard, curled up in bed, nursing a stomach ache. My father was extremely kind to me that day because he thought I was going to get my first period (I wouldn’t). I remember my mother saying some version of: she is experiencing what I experience every month. I don’t remember my mother’s tone or my father’s reaction. But I remember her need for his attention. I didn’t understand it then. I do now. Since then, I have seen many men, in and around my family, who have given their daughters the care and attention that their wives deserve too but never receive. If only I could hold the hands of all fathers and tell them that the best thing they could ever possibly do for their children—sons and daughters—would be to be kind and caring towards their mothers.

I am in my early thirties, constantly thinking about mothers and daughters not only because of how my relationship with my mother has evolved over the years but also because my female friends are experiencing renditions of the same. R and I have known each other for ten years now. We met in 2016 during our first job. She is the first among my friends to experience motherhood. We often speak about how she has found comfort and solace in her mother’s presence pre- and post-partum. R’s mother was there to help her with the delivery. On the day of delivery, mostly everyone was excited to welcome R’s child, but her mother was only worried about hers. The never-ending mental tabs that are open in R’s head now that she is responsible for another life make her think of how her mother might have handled it all by herself.

S and I met in Mumbai during our masters in 2018. Since then, she has fallen in love, gotten herself into a marriage, fallen out of love, gotten divorced, moved countries, and begun a Ph.D. S grew up being uncomfortable with her mother’s unconventional choices. But she now realises that the absence of ‘normalcy’ in her home made her understand and accept queerness in families and individuals and in her own self in a deeper way. Her mother, who’s had her own marital struggles, has not only understood S’s rather rebellious choices but also stood by them. In my video calls with her, S often boasts about how her mother has grown with her over the years. “She goes to the gym now, and lifts weights,” S tells me happily. She dreams of taking her mother out of the small town she has spent most of her life in and showing her the world.

My friends and I are leading starkly different lives than our mothers. Ours is full of privileges and chances that they never got. And yet as we grow up to have households and relationships and families of our own, we find ourselves thinking about our mothers as if we are tracing their steps, maybe slightly differently and more easily but they are still our mothers’ steps. We are treading similar, if not the same paths, that our mothers walked on decades ago and the understanding of it makes us love them a little more and hopefully a little better every day.

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If you have felt the helplessness of loving someone who is too hard and too unkind to themselves, if you have endured the persistent urge to show them how they make this world a better place by their sheer presence, I am sure you understand why kindness to not just other people but to yourself is paramount. Loving someone who is unkind to themselves is a painful endeavor. How you see them is not how they see themselves, and you wish you could change that. You wish you could hold their hand and show them what’s so obvious to you.

And so, please consider this essay a love letter, born out of helplessness, and written for those who have been their own worst critics. I am going to try, to the best of my ability, to tell you how to love yourself a little more and a little better.

1. You might have inherited the definition of good and bad from your faith, your religion, your community, or your elders. Compassion, gratitude, hope, generosity are good. Anger, jealousy, greed, insecurity are bad. The idea that there is a saint and a satan, an angel and a demon, a police and a thief, a hero and a villain is instilled in us so early on that some of us are never told distinctly, in so many words, that we are all inherently equipped with the good and the bad—it’s all within us.

   
   When you look at yourself critically, scrutinizing every little thought and feeling that crosses your mind, please ask yourself: whose gaze are you embodying? When you are shaming yourself, whose voice are you hearing in your head? It is not yours. That voice has stayed with you for so long that you might have forgotten that it was never yours. It could be of your grandfather’s who has been a puritan all his life. It could be of your mother’s who is a perfectionist. It could be of anyone from whom you have learnt the distinction between good and bad. But it is not your voice, and when you will begin to speak to yourself a little loudly, that inherited voice will grow softer and lose its impact.

   

   Choosing not to act on every feeling is necessary. But censoring how you feel is not. You have to allow yourself to feel the envy or the greed or that stupid insecurity or whatever it is that you are feeling and judging yourself for. You are not a bad person for feeling bad things. You are just a person.

2. We are taught respectable ways of being very early on. You are told that it is polite to speak and laugh a certain way, to keep your work away from your life and life away from work, to forgive and forget, to not ask for things, to not demand attention, to not need too much, and to definitely not seem vulnerable. If you are grieving, grieve behind your black curtains; if you are anxious or depressed, don’t bring down the mood of the room by talking about it. If something good happens to you, it is impolite to boast about it. If something bad happens to you, it is attention-seeking to mention it.

   

   But how could there be one respectable way of being when we are all different people? Your friends don’t like being vulnerable with each other doesn’t mean your desire for that kind of openness is inappropriate. Your partner wanting to be left alone when he is upset doesn’t mean that you wanting to be cajoled is incorrect. It is not cool to be mysterious, and it is definitely not uncool to be seen trying and trying hard. There is no one correct way of being; the sooner you allow yourself to act in a way that feels natural and comes easy to you, the freer you will feel.

   

3. Having a community, a group of friends you can rely on on a bad day is good, but having a few self-sustaining, grounding hobbies up your sleeve that you can turn to when you are not feeling like yourself is even better. The strength of knowing that you will be okay by yourself, that you can pull yourself up if needed, gives you the freedom to walk out of a relationship that you know isn’t serving you. You, then, stay with people because you want to, you like to, not because you need to.

   
   In the past few years, I have found so much solace and comfort in books that now when I read those quotes about books being your favorite companion or literature saving you, I no longer roll my eyes because I get it. It is strange, but when I look at my bookshelf, I genuinely believe that no matter what life throws at me, I will survive because I have these books. I have always been a reader, but I had never depended on my books the way I do now. I don’t know how to explain this to a non-reader—I can imagine some of them rolling their eyes. If I were in their place, maybe I would have too. The idea of having a calling has always felt like a illusion to me. The closest I have come to it is realizing that my calling, if there is one, might simply be to fill my days with books and to read for as long as life allows me to.

   I envy people who can wear their feelings lightly because I often find myself drowning in them. But then I read. And reading begins to feel like a soothing balm on an aching head. And I find myself reaching out for this balm more and more. And it makes me feel invincible in moments. Like nothing can get to me because I have found a balm I can keep going back to.
   
   Find something in your life that resembles what a bookshelf stands for in mine.
   

4. The idea that understanding something logically or rationally helps you get over it is punctured very quickly as you grow up.

   
   Logically, you have always known that the purpose of your body is not to look pretty—whatever your definition of pretty is—but to do pretty things. You know vanity could be worth seeking, but not worth killing yourself for, and yet you look at the weighing scale and shame yourself over and over again. And you let yourself fall for the things that exist only to take advantage of your bodily insecurities.

   
   Every well-intentioned comment or piece of advice—on my skin, body, color—I heard growing up felt like a nibble on my skin then, an almost painless pinch. But I have carried it for so long that it has festered into a wound—a constant reminder that I don’t look the way I am supposed to. I do know now that this is nearly a universal experience and not something unique to me. Knowing this helps.

   
   What else helps is repetition. There will be things you will have to learn to repeat to yourself. Even when you feel like you have got it, every once in while, there will be a day when that repetition will be required. And so, if you have grown up hearing too many opinions about how you look, who you are, or anything that is inherently yours, you will have to remind yourself: who you are may not be palatable, digestible, or conventionally acceptable but that doesn’t make it any less worthy. Repeat it as many times, and for as long as you need to.

   

5. My favorite thing about growing older is having perspective. Most feelings, experiences, and heartbreaks can be processed a bit easily because you have been there before. If not exactly there, then some place remotely closer or similar. This is not your first heartbreak, this is not the first time you’ve got nasty feedback on a piece of work you are overly attached to, not the first time you have been terribly sick, not the first time you have felt like there is no meaning to life, not the first time you are crying yourself to sleep. I am not saying there are no new experiences. But the days of your life do not make you feel as unprepared as they did ten years ago? Or twenty years ago? The world seems familiar because you have been here a while and more importantly you understand your own patterns better.

   
   You have been in your head long enough to know your way around it. You know what triggers you; you also know what brings you joy or peace. Use this knowledge to your advantage. And while you are at it, please keep reminding yourself of how far you have come. Another repetition we all need. It is so easy to be consumed by your ambition and dreams and desires but it is equally important to acknowledge and thank your younger self often because you wouldn’t be here without her.

   

   The bad doors you walked into, no matter how terrifying they were at the time, have led you to where you are today. And I know this knowledge does not make your suffering go away but it could at least help you to make peace with it.

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The assumption that women will misuse the laws meant to support them always makes me wonder why this suspicion is reserved only for women.

Every woman at work is there because she and the women before her have literally fought for decades to be there. The only reason to assume that period leave will reduce efficiency and make women unemployable is that you either believe women who don’t suffer much will take leave anyway, or that many women who are currently suffering in silence will finally stop doing so. To the first point: if only a small percentage of women experience severe symptoms, why assume others will misuse the policy? And if a significant number do suffer, but you still oppose giving them leave, then by the same logic of women being unemployable, you might as well take away maternity leave too. Why is women’s health always framed around making babies or terminating pregnancies, and never around their own well-being?

Why would a woman take menstrual leave if she doesn’t actually need it? Why would she risk her right and opportunity to work, earn a salary, advance in her career, and enjoy all the benefits that come with being good at a job? Even a privileged woman in this country can’t take her right to do paid work for granted. I can say this because I am a privileged woman writing this in 2026. I am living the dream of my younger self. You know what that dream was? It was to be “allowed” to have a job. I saw the women in my family getting married, and despite having an education, their super-educated in-laws and very progressive MNC-employed husbands didn’t “allow” them to work. All my 15-year-old self wanted was to earn my own money. A bare minimum human right was my north star—my biggest dream.

I did not want to write what I am writing because I know I am opening a Pandora’s box of painful, traumatic memories. But if you know anything about writing, you also know that sometimes you plan what you’re going to write, and other times you’re possessed by a thought or a memory, and the words simply take over. This essay was born out of one of those moments of possession.

I was twenty years old, living in a hostel in Delhi, when I saw the floor of my bathroom covered in blood. It was a lot of blood. And despite forgetting chunks of my life, that memory remains very vivid in my head. A pad that should ideally last me at least four hours was getting soaked in thirty minutes. That was the first time a gynaecologist diagnosed me with a fibroid in my uterus, which was the cause of the bleeding, and went ahead and told my father to think about getting me married at the earliest. I was twenty years old, still in my third year of graduation.

I continued to live with that fibroid, that kind of bleeding, and many other symptoms for six more years. In 2021, it was surgically removed when three gynaecologists, one after another, said that I would keep bleeding like a tap (yes, they used the word tap) till I get the surgery done. Why no gynaecologist thought of this surgery for the six years of my suffering is a whole other essay, but I am sure some of you can easily guess.

For these six years, while I knew about the uterine fibroid, I was a functioning adult with a haemoglobin level of only 6–7, when the normal range for an adult woman is 12–15. I met multiple medical professionals during this time who worried about my future husband and my nonexistent baby, but never for me. I’m not going to elaborate further on the misogyny prevalent in healthcare; enough has already been written about it, and it is so widely acknowledged that many urban businesses now advertise non-judgmental doctors as a selling point, as if that shouldn’t be the norm. But it isn’t. A well-meaning doctor once told me that these medical professionals, whom we sometimes put on a pedestal, don’t exist in a vacuum; they are very much a part of this patriarchal society. And that, I guess, is all we need to understand.

The conversation about periods or period leave is not simple because women experience periods differently. Some women do have painless periods, and they go about their day as normally as possible, while others experience debilitating pain along with other physical and mental symptoms. They deal with this either by powering through their workday or by taking sick leave. Even women who suffer from conditions like PCOS, endometriosis, or fibroids experience different symptoms, which also vary in severity. No one solution can help every woman or is needed by every woman. But that’s true for all policies and rules, isn’t it?

I am 31 today, and I spent my twenties managing my menstrual health alongside my education and job—but I was always expected not to make a big deal about it. No one was alarmed when I told them about my bleeding for the longest time. How is that possible? Six years of living with heavy bleeding and abysmal haemoglobin taught me that even well-meaning people—including women—often see women’s pain as normal, something to be tolerated and silently endured. If one woman speaks openly about her suffering, suddenly she is labelled “difficult to work with.” And who wants to be seen that way?

The physiology and medical complications are difficult enough to deal with, but it’s the stigma, the shame, and the taboo surrounding periods and women’s bodies that made my experience traumatic—something I am still recovering from. The shame of staining a chair you are sitting on, the frequent bathroom breaks you have to take in the middle of a meeting, the realisation that you’ve suddenly got your period, but there is no washroom on the road, and now you have to hide that blood leaking out of your body because God forbid anyone sees that a woman is on her period.

I continue to manage my menstrual health alongside my mental health. Much of that mental suffering could have been avoided if I had lived in a world that treated women as whole human beings and not just baby-making machines. You expect women to partner, marry, and have children, and get pissed off when they refuse to. And yet, despite all the progress in tech, AI, science, and whatnot, the needle suddenly stops moving, and the world seems to fall apart when a woman demands the bare minimum.

Period leaves give women the space and legitimacy to have a conversation they haven’t been allowed to have for the longest time. It acknowledges their suffering after years of being denied the language to even put into words an experience that shapes their everyday lives. We don’t make policies based on what is already accepted in society, do we? We make policies to imagine a better world, to define what should be accepted. Workplaces can either trust their employees and watch them thrive, or doubt them at every turn, demand constant proof of dedication, and watch them shrink. And somehow, we are so good at choosing the latter. Sigh.

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N is three years older than me, but when you are six and nine or seven and ten, that three-year age difference means nothing to you, and so I addressed her by her name and played with her all the silly little games that kids in the early 2000s used to play when the internet (fortunately) wasn’t that significant in our lives. We grew up together. And then apart. After school, I moved cities for education and work, but she stayed back in our sweet, little, stifling hometown. I changed houses and roommates, moving from one tiny apartment to another, while she continued to live with her parents. We used to meet fleetingly once or twice a year whenever I visited home.

A few years ago, when I met her after she had gotten married, my first obvious question to her was: How had life changed? And while I could have imagined and expected a thousand good and bad responses, what she told me came as a surprise. She said she feels freer and more independent now that she's married, and there are fewer restrictions on her. It made sense. In small towns, parents’ usual comeback to their daughters’ most basic asks is jo karna hai shaadi ke baad karna (do whatever you want to do after you get married).

Certain things suddenly become acceptable if your husband wants or “permits” you to do them. And if, by sheer good luck, this esteemed husband of yours is a noble man, then you could do whatever you want while pretending that all you’re doing is keeping your husband happy, as told by your mother and father and uncles and aunts and even people who have literally no business telling you anything. The conversation with N made me giddy. She drives, goes to the gym, wears fun clothes, and travels. N knows that a woman doing things for her pleasure is not okay, but anything done for a man is—she has learned to use that to her advantage. I wonder how much of this is her conscious doing and how much is just instincts kicking in—the ones you develop while navigating this world as a woman.

If you are an upper-caste, English-speaking, tech-savvy, urban-educated woman who earns her own money, the way you claim your space in a world largely run by men might look very different from the majority of Indian women whose lives—literally the roof on their heads—still depend on not rubbing their husbands and their fathers and often even their mothers and mothers-in-law the wrong way. Your well-intentioned but devoid-of-context advice of ‘She should leave that toxic job’ or ‘She needs to divorce her narcissist husband’ or ‘Why is she not standing up for herself?’ only helps you sleep better at night because neither is it something most women can afford to do, nor is it empathetic enough to acknowledge the acts of defiance they are already doing with much more grit and courage than you and I can ever imagine.

If a needle can accomplish the task, a sword is unnecessary and will only get in the way. My grandmother used to repeat this saying a lot—it actually comes from Rahim ke Dohe. I think the saying has stayed with me over the years because I have seen women use it every day to survive and often thrive within the ever-pervasive patriarchal structures. Most women cannot afford to uproot these structures, so they learn to manoeuvre through them. They choose their battles carefully because there is no way they can fight them all. I wish we all had what it took to burn the world and build a safer one from scratch, but most of us stay where we are planted and try to mend what we can without losing ourselves completely.

All the theories and ~isms we have studied can be challenged by different lived realities. Things you swear by can prove to be utter nonsense for someone who doesn’t inhabit the world you do. Marriage is an inherently patriarchal institution. It’s a losing game for most women in India. And despite being happily married, I don’t go around recommending it to women because I believe that the chances of marriage changing a woman’s life for the better aren’t very high. But who am I, and what do I know? All my beliefs crumbled under whatever N told me about her new life. Talking to her gave me an insight I would have never had otherwise.

I am no saint, nor are you, and so I often find myself judging privileged women who “choose” to celebrate Karwachauth and fast for the lives of their husbands. The ones who make their husbands fast along with them to maintain some semblance of equality bother me even more. If you have the education and the money and the power to make better choices for yourself and for every woman who is looking at you, why wouldn’t you? But again, who am I, and what do I know? And so while I can sit behind my screen and judge a bunch of women doing something that makes no sense to me, I would still never go on to advise anyone against anything. Because the bottom line is, I don’t know anything about your life. Even now, when I go back to my hometown, I’m surprised to see that the only way most women get to meet and have fun together is by going to each other’s houses for satsang or kirtan or other religious gatherings. Who am I to tell them any better? And what is better?

I have never been a fan of those who come with an inherent confidence to advise one and all. I don’t understand how a certain something that has worked for you can be stretched and extrapolated into something that works for all, when the ‘all’ comprises a population that is as diverse and as complex as it gets. We have always known and been with people who like sitting on a pedestal while they look down on others, scrutinise their lives, and go on to tell them what to do with an assuredness I am envious of but would never want to emulate. These well-intentioned, advice-giving people have always been a part of our lives; however, like everything, social media has made it much bigger because now you can monetise this skill.

The self-help-advice-sermons-prescriptions-life-lessons industry pisses me off like nothing else does. I might be an anomaly, though, because there are as many advice seekers as there are givers. Everyone is waiting for a listicle that can fix their life in six minutes. We have all somehow made up our minds that someone else is going to tell us everything, from what we should eat to when we should sleep to who we should date! These listicles and sermons are not being sold in a vacuum; people are sitting desperately with open hands to receive them. God forbid, but today, if you are vulnerable about how you look or the skills you have, there’s someone out there waiting to make money off that vulnerability.

I wish we could go back to reading other people’s slice-of-life stories and anecdotes without trying to find a life lesson in them. I wish we could tell our own stories without thinking about what people are going to take away from them. Distilling larger, complex, nuanced narratives into simplistic one-liners and bite-sized carousels is like buying canned juice: you are opting for something overly processed and preserved and still hoping that it will nourish your soul. Distilled narratives don’t have space to hold contradictions; no wonder we’ve grown so out of touch with our own. I crave a space where different realities can coexist and where that coexistence is the norm, not the exception.

The next time I go home, I know I will meet N again. She will tell me more about her newfound independence. I will nod and smile and listen. And I will remember that when we were six and nine, freedom meant running outside without asking anyone. Now it means something else for each of us. I will see women gathering in living rooms for satsang and kirtan, laughing over tea, negotiating freedoms in ways I may never fully understand. And that’s okay. Not understanding someone else’s way of living is beautiful because it humbles you. It asks you to suspend your judgment and notice that other people are not living smaller lives, just different ones.

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I HAVE READERS. I am writing a note to them! Ah, it is surreal. It is unbelievable. It is my wildest dream come true (I need to start dreaming bigger). Having a readership is new. It happened in 2025, and for that, I will remain eternally grateful to this year. My sporadic writings and even publications until last year never had a readership, or at least not substantial enough to reach me. When I created a public Instagram account in 2023 and put “writer” in the bio, a (big) part of me mocked me: Who are you? lol. You are not a writer, writer. A mockery I have lived with and made peace with. For the longest time, I called myself a writer publicly without being able to believe I was one.

In an effort to rectify that, at the beginning of this year, I decided to write and publish an essay (almost) every week. I set a target of forty essays—around forty thousand words. What I am publishing today is my 36th essay, also the last one. It might seem like I didn’t reach the goal, but I did. I am elated, ecstatic that I managed to write these 36 pieces and put them out despite all my self-sabotaging instincts. It is a huge win for me (you have no idea).

There is a highlight on my Instagram named “thank youu” that stores some (only some) of the lovely messages I have received over the last few months from absolute strangers who know me only through my words. It might seem like that highlight is me bragging to the world (and there’s no harm in doing that). But honestly, that highlight is me bragging to myself, showing a middle finger to the part that mocks me constantly. Believe me, I need that brag the most. Every time I struggle to believe I am a writer, every time that mocking voice becomes too loud, I go to that highlight and read those messages. It helps me continue doing what I love.

Having people read your work is a feeling I cannot describe in words (so much for being a writer!). I can live and die for it (okay, too dramatic). I have always, always been a reader. Books have helped me navigate the toughest of times; sentences have given me joy, hope, and warmth. They have helped me wake up in the morning and get on with the day. They have also calmed my nerves and helped me sleep. I am a fan of words. I am fan of writers. I really, truly think they are magicians. What my favorite writers have done for me, if I can do even a fraction of that for someone, I would be in (a writerly) heaven.

If you are someone who has read my work this year, please know that you have changed my life in the best way possible. If you have messaged or commented to tell me how an essay of mine made you feel, I am forever indebted to you. I am not an inherently confident person. So thank you for helping me believe that I am doing okay.

While I regularly published essays this year, I didn’t submit any fiction—not even one short story. I wrote and rewrote them, but as the deadlines of my favorite magazines approached, I was overcome with crippling anxiety. I couldn’t make myself submit anything (as silly as it sounds). I do hope to change this in the coming year. I want to get those stories out of my drafts. It doesn’t matter if or when they find a home (okay matters a little); but the priority is to be able to submit them.

I want to continue writing here (this is home territory) for you and for me. I want to continue reading—which comes easily to me because I survive on a regular dose of books. I also want to continue hosting my tiny little book club (based in Bengaluru).

I know the world has moved to videos (largely), and everyone is making and watching reels and vlogs. But I still believe we will find our way back to words, to books, to cinema, and to art made by and for humans.

Thank you, dear reader. I wish you a very happy new year. I hope you stay warm. I hope you and I get to read more books, sip good coffee, sit in the sun, and walk our way through hard feelings.

Leaving you with an excerpt from All Fours by Miranda July. See you next year :)

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the choices we make

Some memories haunt you because they deserve to, but there are also those that you know have overstayed their welcome. Why the hell do you even remember this silly little thing from ten years ago? But you do. For me, one of those memories is 17-year-old me sitting in a classroom listening to the story of this man—my teacher, who must have been in his late thirties then—and how his life has been nothing but an array of easy choices. ‘Whenever I was at a crossroads, I chose the easy path,’ he said. I don’t remember if he was proud of where those choices have led him or if he was lamenting. But since then, in hindsight, I have always wondered if I can categorize or call my choices easy. And if I can, what does that say about me? Also, what are the parameters I am judging a choice on? What makes me label a choice easy?

The world I come from, the gender I belong to, romanticizes suffering and hardships—it could be a way to survive it. Being carefree and joyful is considered frivolous and childlike, while being somber and serious is supposedly important and mature. Sacrificing yourself for the greater good apparently makes you great. Not respecting your own being enough to give it the love it deserves is not frowned upon or considered a sin (it should be). Indian institutions—social, educational, familial (think: family, school, marriage, religion)—thrive on glamorizing restraint and self-sacrifice. You can’t pour from an empty cup gets stomped upon and buried under the heap of duties and responsibilities, the should-s and the ought to-s.

There is some merit in pausing to define what exactly is easy and how the passage of time disrupts that definition. Just a few years ago, doing what’s expected of me, going with the flow without ruffling feathers seemed the easiest thing to do for the non-confrontational, anxious me. I am still the same—non-confrontational and anxious—but I’ve realized that if you listen to the world over your body, it eventually catches up to you. And so the immediate ease of taking the path of least resistance is swallowed and digested by the suffocation that comes from ignoring your own voice. So then easy isn’t the choice that’s easier to make in the moment; easy is what you can live with.

The connotation of working ‘hard’ is also strange in the Indian education system. Imagine a hardworking student, and be assured that they would look bogged down, unhappy, and drained of all fun. Even an average student, in their wildest imagination, does not consider that they could choose to work ‘hard’ at something not because they are supposed to, but because they are genuinely obsessed with it.

In 2018, I got back to education after working for two years. I still remember sending this annoyingly chirpy and happy audio note in a WhatsApp group of friends and rambling about how much I enjoyed being in the class I had just come out of. I was surprised—it was a revelation for me that I could love being in a classroom. It’s unfortunate that the revelation happened at 23. It is so damn fortunate that it happened. I was finally at home in a humanities college after being a science student all my life. So then easy isn’t the pursuit that gives you the best worldly results; easy is recognizing and following your curiosity.

I think at some point in your childhood you are told that the easy (fun) path is the wrong path, which then leads you to the understanding that the harder one should be the right one. The burden of ‘doing the right thing’ could be exhausting because the idea of ‘right’ keeps changing as per the convenience of those who hold power. And hence it’s important to keep questioning it. Who is it ‘right’ for? Who is it serving? In 2016—the year I graduated—India’s most beloved actor played the role of a therapist and told Kaira (and the world) that choosing the easy way is not always as bad as we make it out to be. Being in a job you constantly dread, staying in relationships that drain you are all hard things to do, but not necessarily right.

I love fandoms—absolutely adore them. But I have never been a part of one. I have never really worshipped an artist, never loved one enough to defend all their wrongs. Even when an artist’s work moves me, I’ve never been someone who tears up at their wedding or cries at their death. All this was true until I went down the rabbit hole of reading Andrea Gibson’s work the day they died from cancer at the age of 49. I had come across their work before but never really read it for hours like I did that day. I knew of them but only truly read about who they were the day they stopped being. I sobbed in bed. I read their poems and cried. Gibson’s deep compassion for the human condition made my heart ache—they weren’t supposed to die, not so young.

I think about death often, sometimes obsessively, sometimes so vividly that I wouldn’t dare let anyone into my thoughts. I was 22, lying on a stretcher in unbearable pain, eavesdropping on the conversation of doctors and nurses around me, waiting for my parents, and desperately praying for life. I was scared of anesthesia because I didn’t know if I would wake up on the other side—I did. That day divided my life into a before and an after. My twenties were filled with small and big health scares and occasional hospital visits. And so I am somewhat aware of what it takes to make peace with your mortality without losing hope and joy. It’s easy to slip into the abyss. It’s frustratingly hard to accept and embrace your life for what it is. And Andrea Gibson held their life so softly, so lovingly, that it broke my heart when life escaped their grasp.

I don’t know if it makes sense to label our choices as easy or hard. It feels too simplistic, too flattening, and very unnecessary. What I do know, though, is that it is easy to let life pass by, to be numb, to dissociate, to be a pessimist, to give up, to lose hope, to sit on a high horse and judge others, to stop trying, to let resentment fester, to remain in limbo, to never stand up for yourself or others, to let fear dictate your choices, to abandon yourself, to insulate yourself from pain, and to grow bitter in the face of suffering. It is extremely hard to look for hope, to sit with uncertainty, to resist the urge to create answers where there are none, to endure the discomfort of knowledge, to turn away from the bliss of ignorance, and to allow yourself to feel pain—for in shutting out pain, you also shut out joy.

If you carry one thing into the new year, let it be the choice to find hope in broken places, kindle light in the darkest corners, and stay fully alive for as long as you draw breath.

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An eyelash falls; you gently place it at the back of your hand to make a wish. The calendar sheds its last page, and you begin writing letters to your future self, setting resolutions with renewed conviction. If there’s one thing we, as human beings, excel at, it’s assigning meaning to things and making them a part of our lives in a way that makes the ordinary feel extraordinary.

So I wasn’t surprised when choosing a book for the Bengaluru-based book club I run became a bigger decision than usual this December. What should we read as a group to close out the year? December demands a cosy, comfort read, but why not keep pushing ourselves and pick something that we might otherwise overlook —  especially when we’ve committed to doing exactly that every month? The human urge to build meaningful rituals seems to be at its peak when we are at the cusp of a changing year; it’s in moments of transition that we yearn most earnestly for familiarity and hope.

I was fascinated to learn that there are readers who return to a specific book every year between December and January. I have always found refuge in words, and so the idea of a particular piece of literature keeping someone company on New Year’s Eve every year delighted and intrigued me. I wanted to know the what and the why. What is it about a specific book that calls someone back each year, especially during this time?

You can read the full essay here.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 35th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year.

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I was pissed at him, but all I wanted was for him to sit by my side and cajole me a little more. He apologized. I was still mad. Later while talking to him, I realized I wanted more — more affection, more attention, more care. Some people want to be left alone when they are upset so they can process things in their head and come back with a perspective. I am not one of those — have never been. I want to be showered with attention when I am mad because I hate being mad and not being able to share every detail of my life like I otherwise would. Maybe everyone hates it?

It is hard to understand how and why one would go without speaking to someone they love for days and weeks. But you have been there and seen it around, and so have I. It’s very silly (and human) to need and want to be understood and cared for but package and present it as anger. Instead of telling someone how the thing they said or did made you feel, you get angry and hope that they read your mind and make it up to you exactly the way you think you deserve. You would rather be angry than be your vulnerable, desperate, and pathetic self. Won’t you? It wouldn’t feel so pathetic, though, if you knew that all of us are exactly that — maybe at different times in our lives and maybe with different people — but we are all pathetic in love.

In 2015, as a second-year college student, I went on a little trip with an organization I was interning with at the time. My phone died, and somehow I couldn’t talk to my parents that night to tell them I had reached safely. I don’t remember the details of why I couldn’t charge my phone or call from someone else’s — but let’s just say that despite being a very cautious and aware twenty-year-old, I couldn’t realize that I should prioritize this call over a thousand other things that were going on in my young adult life. The next morning, when I did speak to my father, he wasn’t kind. He was angry, and he didn’t mince his words while telling me that. I was infuriated. What does he think of himself? Why can’t he understand that I am a grown-up? Does he not trust me? You get the drill.

At the beginning of this year, my eight-years-younger brother was visiting me in Bangalore for his semester break. He went out for dinner with his friends and didn’t come back by the time he had told me he would, and when I tried reaching him, his phone was switched off. My brother is not a child, and most likely his phone’s battery was dead — despite knowing and telling this to myself repeatedly, I was angry at him. When he came home, the first thing that came out of my mouth was not the kindest thing to say to someone who had just come home after having a good time with his friends and who hadn’t really done anything intentionally to piss me off.

Over the years, I have come to understand what it feels like to be worried sick for someone you love — doesn’t matter how unnecessary that worry is because most worries are. Expecting kindness from someone who couldn’t sleep or rest for hours because they didn’t know your whereabouts is somewhat unreasonable. And so while I hated this worry disguised as anger when I was at the receiving end of it, I understood it better when it came from me.

Anger as an emotion has always been difficult for me to understand or make peace with. There are people around me who would be better off without the anger they keep spilling around. But I have also met those who need some amount of reasonable anger to go about living their lives without letting people step all over them. The child in me still freezes, especially when one’s expression of anger involves raising one’s voice (or yelling on text). The adult me, who understands long-loving relationships a bit better, tries to make sense of where the anger is coming from. Yelling and screaming sucks, but the passive-aggressive-cold sulking isn’t any better either, is it?

Love and power are so entangled with each other that it would be utterly foolish to believe that any expression of anger could be excused in the name of love. That is a slippery slope, because in a society like ours, people will justify the nastiest things under its guise. Nothing illustrates the truth that you can feel whatever you feel yet still choose how you act more than the way you behave when you’re angry. It is human to feel anger toward those you love, but it is just as human to refuse to let those feelings dictate your respect for their boundaries — especially when you hold the power. Your anger must never cost someone their dignity.

For the one holding power in a relationship, anger seems to be the easiest crutch and the weakest choice. You are too scared to be vulnerable or show your hurt, so you’d rather wear anger like armor, hoping it shields your desperation, your need from being seen. For the ones who have never held power, anger is an unfamiliar language, learned in moments when their endurance is exploited.

If you are someone who has been overusing anger as a crutch or wearing it as armor to hide behind it, I hope you find the courage and strength to fall apart and to trust the people you love to hold you and help you piece yourself back together.

If you are among those who overextend and over-accommodate to avoid conflict or confrontation, I hope you learn to trust your people enough to know that you can be mad at them once in a while and believe that they will still stay.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 34th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year.

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A couple of years ago, at work, I had an agreement of sorts with two of my female colleagues. Whenever either of them would be called to this male colleague’s cabin, the other two would give her a call after 10 mins and pretend that she is needed for some urgent work. We had to rely on the pretense because this male colleague — very senior to us — had no idea when he should stop talking. He would talk endlessly — explaining things we already knew, giving advice we didn’t need, and gloating about things we didn’t care for. It was easier to nod and listen to him than to tell him off. So we did what we could and moved on. That man was not peculiar, though — I have met many of the same. And you have too.

Why would a person go on and on about something without pausing even once to listen to what the other person has to say? If you are passionate about a certain thing, you would love to talk about it. I get that. But wouldn’t you also be curious to know how the other person feels and what they can add to your understanding? Wouldn’t their opinion make yours richer? Isn’t a conversation always, always better than a monologue? Unless you believe that the other person has nothing substantial to add. But why would you believe that? Everyone — who isn’t you — will add some or the other thing to your understanding and you can always choose to accept it or not. But why aren’t you curious? Why aren’t you asking them questions? Why aren’t you eager to listen?

I imagine, it must be quite burdensome to presume that you know more and others can’t add anything to the knowledge you already have. It must come with a huge fear of being wrong or inadequate. Your worst nightmare would probably be that you might make a fool of yourself. How do you comfort yourself when an opinion you hold too dearly turns out to be wrong or when an idea you are absolutely in love with gets rejected? Sitting on a pedestal looking down on everyone else, I am sure, isn’t as glorious as it seems. It must feel lonely and uncomfortable and can potentially strain your neck if you aren’t careful. Right?

It’s easier for me to be friends with men who are a little feminine — I have said this statement a thousand times fleetingly in different ways, never really explaining what I mean by it. It’s been one of those preferences that’s so instinctive and primal that I don’t think I have ever even given it a second thought. But now when I am thinking about it a tad bit more because of this video, and this one, and this one — I realize what I mean is that I like men who can loosen up, who can laugh loudly and cry easily. It’s easier to be with men who aren’t afraid of making a fool of themselves every once in a while. And I absolutely adore the ones who are secure enough to show their love generously.

The only way to be friends with someone is to be able to have a good conversation with them. And a good conversation is nothing but the sum of vulnerability, openness, and acceptance. But if you’re not careful, being a “man” can come with an unnecessary pressure to always be “strong” or to “have it figured out.” That pressure can make you care more about appearing a certain way than about being honest. Masculinity dipped in patriarchy makes you lean towards control over connection. A rejection that’s supposed to help you grow can start to feel like the end of the world. And when you spend too long trying to look invincible, that weight can either break you completely or harden you to the point where it starts to hurt the people around you.

It’s not easy, though, to go against what’s expected of you. It takes a lot of grit and guts to be yourself and not someone you know you would be applauded for. Men are appreciated for being “a rock” even by the most well-meaning of us. I have also seen men around me being mocked and ridiculed for being vocal about loving their wives, for spending a little too much time with their infants, for being flamboyant, and sometimes for simply being unapologetic about their emotions. If you are chronically online, it might seem like the world is changing and I do hope so. But the change on ground is not that palpable, not to me at least. Patriarchy has more roots and stems and leaves in all of us than we can possibly imagine. Even the most self-aware of us are a work-in-progress.

As a woman who’s disadvantaged at every step of the way, I know it’s hard to empathize with the one who is getting the advantage most of the time at your cost. But sometimes I do wonder what would the world look like if men knew in their bones that the fight against patriarchy is not really a fight against them but for them. What if they knew that patriarchy dehumanizes them as well, that despite all the benefits, it does not allow them to be human.

If they knew — really knew — would they, then, be more invested in the idea of feminism? I don’t know. Maybe? I think it’s an animalistic instinct to be selfish and to look out for ourselves. Men should care more if somehow they understood that it’s not just about their mothers and wives and daughters but also about them. It irks me to believe — and I don’t want to— that human beings are capable of doing the right thing only when it’s in their self-interest. But if it’s true, then so be it. As a man even if you are solely worried about your own interest, you should still be on my side.

I have met so many men I wish I had never met. My life would have been better if I had never crossed paths with them (don’t look for a silver lining here; not every cloud needs to have one). But that does not change the fact that some of my longest and most endearing friendships have also been with men. And so I hate men, and I love men — all at the same time.

Are these men I am friends with perfect? No. They are all a work in progress and so am I. But I think we will get by till the time we can see each other as people and listen — really listen — without interrupting. Also, till the time we can be willing to acknowledge that sometimes the systemic advantages bestowed on men can make them arrogant and ignorant and women furious. Despite it all, the fight is not against one another — it never was — but always against a system we all continue to live and breathe.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 33rd essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year.

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“A female writer cannot afford to feel her life too clearly. If she does, she will write in a rage when she should write calmly.” When I read these words while reading Deborah Levy, I repeated them several times out loud and in my head. It felt as if she was speaking to me, addressing me directly. She was telling me that some distance from what you are going through or feeling is always good for your writing. And I agree, so forgive me, Levy, for just this once because I am doing the exact opposite of what you would have wanted.

I have also always been wary of ‘making everything about gender,’ even though in a country like ours everything is about gender. And so here I am writing from a place of absolute rage because I don’t know where else to put it.

India is celebrating a historic win (duh, you’ve heard, I am aware) — a game that’s largely been about men has women on the center stage today. Many women like me who are not even invested in the game are teary-eyed and cheering for the women in blue who have literally fought against odds you can’t imagine to be where they are today. There have been opinions floating on the internet, and rightly so. A tweet said something along the lines of, ‘You can be happy and proud about this without being cynical, misogynist, or feminist.’ I am not sure about how to do this, and I don’t think I even want to. This win is historic and monumental and deeply emotional because of its context, and asking us to not acknowledge that very context is ignorant at best and misogynist at worst.

I have never watched tennis, but I have religiously followed Sania Mirza’s interviews. I think it gave courage and comfort to the young girl in me who grew up in a neighborhood that made a big deal out of every little flight she took. In 2007, when I started cycling to school, the uncles and aunties told my parents to not “allow” me because there were men out there and it wasn’t safe. Most of these uncles must have made women in and outside their homes feel uncomfortable, and most of these aunties must have not paid heed to their daughters when they complained about these instances, but, well here they were, “concerned” about my safety. I was fortunate that my parents didn’t listen to these well-wishers and helped the 12-year-old me experience the life-changing independence of riding a bicycle to school, to swimming classes, to Kathak practice, and whatnot!

Mirza’s interviews also comforted the teenage me who could see how young girls were sexualized and scrutinized and how quickly the world liked to forget that they were dealing with a child as soon as her body started remotely resembling a woman’s. Most women in India are body-shamed and slut-shamed at home first before anywhere else. If reading this makes you uncomfortable, well, I am not sorry. Please sit with your discomfort.

I can quote multiple instances of varied kinds of violations from my life and from the lives of women I have known despite all the privileges we have had. But what’s the point? Don’t you already know it? Don’t you read it in the news literally every day? I am not even talking about the big things here that make the news. I am talking about the tiniest of things that women have to care about and pay attention to and fight against on an everyday basis to live a decent life, to have a decent job. Don’t ask me how they manage to excel at it then — forget about being world champions — because I really don’t know. It’s a superpower, maybe, to be able to thrive in a world that makes it hard for you to just survive. After spending so much of their mental bandwidth demanding what’s owed to every human being, I don’t know how these women manage to be winners while being kind and caring and funny (I LOVE Jemimah’s dance videos).

Maybe they wake up every day and tell themselves that until it’s done, no one will believe it can be done, and so it’s important that they do. Maybe they lean on those who have their back with or without their worldly achievements. Maybe they have certain privileges that make it slightly better for them. But please know and remember that these women — or every woman who makes it — are an anomaly. They have managed to fight against every system that’s rigged against them and stood triumphant. Not everyone can. Not everyone should need to. It’s unfair and inhuman to constantly demand excellence from women — and other minorities — while not giving them the bare minimum.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 32nd essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year.

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Seeking company to get rid of loneliness seems to be a rite of passage. You know you have been there. You have befriended people, attended parties, maintained relationships — romantic, platonic, familial — to fill a void that only grew deeper and wider with every attempt. You laughed at the joke you didn’t remotely understand. You nodded while disagreeing profusely in your head. You pretended so hard that you forgot for a moment what the reality was. And when this ordeal became too exhausting, you went into your shell, shutting all doors, dwelling on the futility and unfairness of it all — what’s the point?

Think about when you were at your loneliest and don’t be surprised or alarmed when the first memory that resurfaces is the one where you were surrounded by people — your people. And you felt utterly, miserably lonely for no fault of yours or even theirs.

It’s a living nightmare to be a lonely child — you were forced to witness a world that should have been forbidden to you, and you didn’t know what to do with it or where to put it all because your feelings were too big and too improper for the adults to even look at. To feel this way as a young person is to, in turn, be constantly haunted by the hunch that something is terribly wrong with you.

You could be immensely loved by someone and still feel lonely in their presence, for love is not some sacrosanct feeling — it’s not always selfless, unconditional, or even generous. Sometimes the people who are supposedly closest to you don’t really love you but their projection of you. They are so attached to their idea of you that anything that can potentially puncture it scares them. Their love is so steeped in this fear that there is no space to hold your truth.

I grew up telling people (and myself) that I am not someone who enjoys festivals and almost immediately feeling guilty for it. How can I be so cynical that I can’t be happy when everyone else is? It’s only now that I realize that my anxiety around festivals is rooted in loneliness. Every festival comes with its own sets of customs and practices, and I grew up around people who loved to follow them. Diwali meant home decor, lighting, fireworks, dressing up, cooking, and eating, and I had the privilege to see my family happily and enthusiastically come together for all of it. It was visible that their heart was in it, and I felt lonely because mine wasn’t.

The dictionary tells you that being lonely is being without company, but life teaches you really quickly that you could be extremely lonely in a sea of people too. A mere physical presence never comes with a promise of being seen or understood — which is the real antidote to loneliness. Is it not worth seeking company then? Should you rather choose to be alone? Only if you assume that no one out there has the capability to see you, which is as absurd as it sounds. The people who you hoped would see you might not see you. The people who you were born to or grew up with might not see you. But there must be many out there who will see you for exactly who you are and how you want to be seen.

If you have left your childhood home (I hope you have), I am assuming you have also met friends and loved ones and crossed paths with people who have made you feel seen and safe. Some of them might not be a part of your life anymore but at some point they showed you what it’s like to have a hand to hold on to while walking on a foggy road, to fall with a belief that there is someone to catch you. Their presence, at some point, made you comfortable enough to not be constantly paranoid about how you are being perceived.

Inconvenience is the cost of community — I came across this quote in some corner of the internet and it hasn’t left my mind since. The biggest inconvenience, I realize now, is to take chances on people, to let them in, to show up for them, and to allow them to show up for you as well. It’s inconvenient because you will be humbled and your heart will be broken and your ego will be trampled upon. Sometimes you will be pushed to become someone you are not. You will be miserable, you will make others miserable, and then at some point you will meet those who will start loving the parts of you you have punished yourself for. Eventually you will return to yourself — we all do.

Is it just about finding your people then? If you were loved for who you are, would you never feel lonely? And is not feeling lonely such a coveted goal?

I met my partner in 2014; he was 18, I was 19. We became friends, grew up with each other, got married in 2021, and started living together. There are still days when I realize that there’s this whole world inside him I might never be able to reach. He will say the same thing about me if you ask him. To love someone is to accept that it’s impossible to ever truly, completely understand another human being. There’s always something left — unsaid or unnoticed.

Before you met your partner or friend or even before you became a part of your parents lives, they led full lives you know almost nothing about. Everyone you know has memories — good and bad — that are so deep down that you might only get to see a glimmer of it once in a while. There are battles they have fought whose traces are impossible to find now because their scars have almost faded. There must be people who came before you and experienced a version of your loved ones you probably will never get to see. To love someone is to love them with all their baggage, seen and unseen.

You could be loved deeply and generously and still feel lonely because every once in a while you will realize that you are too complex and layered and beautiful for anyone to completely figure out or decipher. Despite being surrounded by people who see you for who you are, there will still be days when you will struggle to find someone who is feeling what you are feeling or even someone who can understand it. There will be days you will be lonely in your thoughts and dreams and fears and apprehensions. Maybe the human condition is a constant struggle to understand someone and be understood.

If only we knew that everyone — even those with lovely friends and partners and community — feels lonely and that loneliness is not a rival we are meant to be constantly at war with, we would stop bending ourselves backwards to avoid it. Seek friends and community because your joy and sorrows are meant to be shared, but to put the burden of your loneliness on your loved ones is asking them for something they neither possess nor can give you. It’s a privilege to have people who want to understand you better every day, who are excited with every new revelation of yours while knowing that this process will never end, that love is a perennial journey of discovery and acceptance.

Not feeling lonely shouldn’t be such a coveted goal as we make it out to be because anything specific and unique about you will make you lonely. If you are a deeply empathetic person, you will feel things others don’t, and you will be lonely in those feelings. All of us witness this world in a way no one else does, and that means a part of us will always inhabit spaces no one else can enter.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 31st essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year.

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Once upon a time, you could have been an artist who created things that were not meant to immediately see the light of day. You could have let those drafts sit in the dreary darkness of your drawer for a few weeks or months with the trust that you would come back to them when it’s time. Instead, here you are allured by likes and retweets and by a promised vanity that you think you are supposed to chase.

You are so used to being perceived by others and constantly perceiving others that you don’t know how to imagine a life beyond this. The self-proclaimed virtuous people on your screen tell you that if you don’t hit publish now, you never will — a part of it is true and the other rubbish. If you put out everything immediately, you are nipping the potential to create magic right in the bud. Your draft could have become something bigger and better if only you were patient enough to give it some more time. If only you had enough faith that you would keep coming back to it till you were done.

You want to be read — all writers do — but you hate when others reading (or not reading) your work becomes pervasive enough to influence how you feel about a piece of your writing. You do want them to love what you write — or at least like it enough — but you don’t want this itch of yours to ever determine what you choose to write.

You know your job does not end with putting words on paper. You are aware that you are supposed to do everything possible to make sure your words reach people, but you hate that you have to jostle for attention and grab eyeballs and keep producing and make people come back to you for more. You don’t want to grab anyone! Would a gentle tap on their shoulder not work, you wonder? You would rather not promise more. There will be more — you hope, but the algorithm demands a promise. It needs you to return every day to feed it.

You have always loved documenting the nothings of your life and oversharing and telling people your story and letting them come to you with theirs. But suddenly you are supposed to worry about lighting and sound, and you are racking your brain trying to find a suitable song that fits the carefully curated and most sanitized version of your camera roll.

You are supposed to have a background score for your words too, and so you spend time looking for what fits best even when you know that silence is what actually, truly, fits. Why is everyone trying to find a caption that makes them sound smarter and funnier? You wonder while missing the good old days when people clicked anything that caught their attention and posted them with random words. There was no urge to make life look more profound than it actually was. You miss the spontaneity of it all. All of this began with a need to express, but there is hardly any expression now — you are only left with performances.

You want to see their art and show them yours, but it feels like everyone — all of humanity — is screaming into a void and there’s no one listening. Social media detox seems like a funny concept — well-intentioned yet funny. A break from what’s omnipresent is not sustainable. It’s a band aid solution to a chronic problem. It may be a way to feel better about yourself for a short while, but if you are an artist, social media and tech is your boon and bane, your blessing and your curse. You wish you were an artist when the addictions and the allures were not all-consuming. You are not, though. And so here you are writing on the very same platforms you are often disgusted by.

I saw the above tweet a while ago and haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I have always been a sensitive, perceptive person. I feel a lot. I absorb things easily and it’s not always pleasant to be this way. But it is who I am. Lately, I have realized that feeling nothing is much scarier than feeling everything. I care, I worry, I laugh, I sob — I live. But there have been phases in the last few months when I have felt numb. The more I see, the less I seem to care. The more I consume, the less I am able to engage.

When I can live vicariously through your life via a screen, why should I bother to live at all? When in twenty-four hours you demand me to care and feel the pain for ten different things, my body shuts down — it gets too overwhelmed to respond to even one. And that’s scary because it’s pushing me to become someone I am not, someone I don’t want to be. The screens that my eyes are glued on, the metrics I am obsessed with, the relationships that exist only in the algorithmic world, the bite-sized entertainment that makes me laugh but only for a second, and the errands and chores that have become frictionless now, devoid of any human interaction are all ingredients of an apathetic life — my apathetic life.

Your screen tells you about a new crisis unfolding in some part of the world every day. The cycle of you caring about things ends at you resharing a post or retweeting a headline. On some day, you do this and feel momentarily better, making no real difference (mostly). Other days, you look away completely and avoid watching anything that’s concerning because you are not able to cope with your own immediate worries. Then comes the guilt, again making no real difference.

You know what’s happening everywhere, all the time, whether you can do anything about it or not. But you often know nothing about what’s happening on your own street, in your town, or even inside your building — because that doesn’t make it to your feed. The fact that you might be able to actually make a difference there, move a needle, feel a sense of purpose gets lost because you have already exhausted your limited tokens of care helplessly staring at everything that’s wrong.

You wish there were an easy answer, a simple, doable solution — but there isn’t. So you keep holding on to your ability to feel and care in a world that’s incessantly trying to numb you. You’re trying to engage deeply and meaningfully, instead of being overwhelmed by shallow, surface-level noise. In a world that only cheers spectacle and virality, you’re teaching yourself to be patient and to honor your own pace.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 30th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday.

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1.

You argue, you confront, but you stay.

Or you assume, you sulk, and you leave — without saying anything, without giving the other person a chance to hear you out or even share their side of the story.

You have been both. But from here on, you would want to be the former. Even if you eventually have to leave, you’d rather go as someone who tried and failed than as someone who was too scared or too precious to try.

2.

Zooming out and looking at the bigger picture makes you realize how small — and often irrelevant — the things that bother you really are. Zooming in and paying closer attention to the world around you gives you hope, especially when that device in your hand keeps telling you there’s none.

You want to be someone who innately understands this. Someone who, on days when you’re too much in your own head, overthinking every little detail, knows that going for a walk and simply observing the neighborhood, the people around you, their lives, the plants and insects and dogs that cross your path, will remind you that you’re just a tiny pebble on a vast mountain and that things are often better than they seem. And on the days you’ve consumed too much news and convinced yourself that there’s no humanity left in the world, you hope you can still take yourself on a walk, and meet kind strangers who, by their sheer existence, are making the world better.

3.

Sometimes, you feel immensely petty. You surprise yourself with how sharply your brain keeps track of the things you didn’t get but were hoping for. You feel disappointed by the people you love, and by the ones you wish would love you back.

You don’t want to shame yourself for feeling this way, but instead take pride in never letting those feelings dictate how you act.

4.

You are sensitive and perceptive — your heart feels more than you sometimes want it to. It still surprises you how a single phone call from someone miles away can completely shift how you’re feeling — because you absorb the other person’s energy like a sponge, whether it’s light or heavy.

You want to remember that while this sensitivity can feel exhausting, it’s also what allows you to feel connected to the things you love most — books, writing, art, nature, walking, love. You carry pain and sorrow in big ways, but you carry joy and love just as fully. And you wouldn’t want to trade that for anything.

5.

Solo trips don’t excite you; living your firsts with someone you love does. You love doing your own thing while someone beside you does theirs. You’re sappy and corny and hopelessly romantic. You love love. You love conversations. You love admiring people from afar, having crushes, talking to them, and sometimes, talking about them.

You’re beginning to realize that taking care of people, helping them feel good about themselves, and making their lives a little easier in small, invisible ways matters to you. And on some days, you even wonder if that’s the bigger purpose of life. Honestly, it would make perfect sense if it is.

6.

You love reading big books and watching silly shows. You can be completely closed off with some people and annoyingly open with others.

You don’t want to treat your personality like a perfectly curated room, where everything fits neatly and the colors always match. You’ve started to accept that you’re full of contradictions and so is everyone else. Labels like “introvert” or “chatty” don’t make sense anymore. You are both. You could be both.

7.

The best thing about growing up is that, by now, you’ve already tried to run away from who you are. You ran far and wide. You adopted favorites, acquired tastes, even built a life around things that were never truly yours. And now, you’re exhausted. You’re thirty and you’re tired of running.

So, you begin to return to yourself. To become the person you once ran from. It’s peaceful and, surprisingly, also a lot of fun.

8.

You love the 5 PM sunlight — of course they call it golden hour. You love clear skies and cotton clouds. You love the breeze on your sweaty skin after a long, satisfying walk. You love it when someone has a big laugh — it’s infectious; it makes you laugh too. You love fangirling over a teen romance show you have no business being obsessed with. You love waking up to flowers you bought and carefully arranged the day before.

All of this feels cliché, so familiar, so relatable and you’re starting to realize that’s not such a bad thing. In fact, it’s kind of beautiful. There’s something comforting about being part of a shared human experience, about loving what everyone else loves. The urge to be “unique” feels a little overrated. There’s joy in being part of the whole.

You remember how, as a kid, you’d say “same pinch” when you and your friends liked the same things. You just want to be that kid again.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 29th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday.

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It was a holiday — no meetings to run to, nowhere to be. You still left the bed earlier than usual and left home in pursuit of a view, a destination that could fill the void, make you feel the same wonder and awe you felt a long time ago. Were you trying to recreate an old memory or experience something new? You’re not sure. After a point, is it even possible to create new memories, or are we just chasing the highs we’ve already had?

The view did arrive. It was a beautiful meadow. You were amidst the clouds; you could see the matchbox houses and also the peaks. The wind soothed the sweat on your skin. You sat for a while, had a sip of the water you packed for the hike. A part of you was soaking in everything, celebrating the climb. The other part had already started looking at another peak — the one you were supposed to climb. The meadow gave you everything you came for — why climb further? People you came with were climbing further. You didn’t come this far to give up so easily. Who decided this is giving up, though?

You sat there resting, catching your breath, but your mind wasn’t at rest. And then your gaze shifted to other people who were resting with you, clicking pictures, enjoying the breeze. There were a few of them who seemed like they knew their way around — they had led the way till here, and everyone else had followed. You met them by chance, like a bunch of people going on the same journey usually do. You were grateful to them, for they had spotted the easier, doable trails for the group to walk on.

You were most grateful to the kids, though. Young girls — probably eight or nine years old — walked in wonder, and sometimes while whining, but they kept walking and climbing. They trusted when the adults told them, “Just ten more minutes and we’ll reach.” They surrendered easily to the beauty of nature and to the advice of the people they were walking with. Their tiredness couldn’t dim their excitement. There wasn’t an iota of fear of not finishing, of giving up, in their eyes. You looked at them all the way, especially when you felt like giving up. If they could do it, so could you. If they could do it, so could you. You muttered it under your breath and kept walking without looking at the enormity of the world you were leaving behind.

Stamina was never a problem — you had no qualms about being slow or taking breaks in between. Your problem was your fear of difficult terrains, or rough patches, or the steep rocks that punctuated the beautiful trails, and the way they triggered your worst imagination and made you doubt the ability of your limbs. How do you climb these rocks without imagining the worst? You were sitting there, catching your breath, questioning all your decisions — and then you looked at that young mom who had a toddler clung to her. She climbed with a toddler! She and her partner decided to climb this hill with a toddler!! Irresponsible? Who are you to declare that?

People love climbing mountains — some they build for themselves, some are built for them. You are in awe of this love, this constant need to challenge their existence, to experience something new, something that moves them a bit and makes the subsequent mundane bearable. You wonder if some traits are hardwired in humans — if it’s a primal, animalistic instinct to constantly be in pursuit of something, to find another finish line before you enjoy the one you’ve just arrived at.

Is it not okay to be in a constant pursuit? Why not? Moving is good. Flowing is good. Settling will make you stagnant. Isn’t it? Weren’t you told to be like a river — to flow, to adapt, to detour gracefully around the rocks? So you do. You try. But here’s the thing: a river isn’t in pursuit. It doesn’t rush to reach the ocean. It moves because that’s its nature. There’s no finish line it’s desperate to cross. And maybe that is the difference. The point isn’t to always chase wonder — the next peak or the next high — but to be present enough to receive it when it arrives.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 28th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday.

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I survived the pandemic, especially 2020, on a heavy dose of television. Gilmore Girls and Schitt’s Creek made the six hours after work seem like six minutes — an easy way to escape all the anxiety and dread I was feeling at the time. I wanted those months at home to pass quickly, and binging on comfort shows helped me do exactly that. They made my days shorter. We are not living in the pandemic anymore, and the world — surprisingly, like a sponge — has gone back to its original shape (in some sense). Now I don’t want my days to feel shorter.

Another thing that 2020 can be remembered for, other than the pandemic, was the introduction of short-form video content on social media — Reels on Instagram in Aug 2020 and Shorts on YouTube in Sep 2020. It has only been five years (I know, right!) and I am sure you do not remember what life before Reels looked like. Before we hold each other’s hands and go any further in this essay, let me make one thing clear in case it already wasn’t: I am writing this piece from the pits — in a state of worry — exactly where you are reading it from.

On my good days, I don’t scroll Reels. I do open the apps, look at what my friends and people — I, unfortunately, have a parasocial relationship with — are posting, but I don’t go on my Explore page or the Reels page to have my fingers move on autopilot and go from a get-ready-with-me to the TSITP Bollywood edits — which I thoroughly enjoy — to high-protein, 15-minute recipes.

On bad days, though, when I am too stressed or anxious to pick up a book, go for a walk, watch a film, or have a conversation, short-form video content has a horrible chokehold on me. Like they know that I am easy prey to feed on at the moment. Like they can see that I am vulnerable and insecure and sensitive — the perfect time to sell me ideas and lifestyles and ideologies, knowing there’s a higher chance I will buy into it to make myself feel better.

Sometimes I am also the perfect target of very therapy-speak-y, simplistic, devoid-of-any-context videos that will validate whatever I am feeling even if what I need is for someone to challenge me and show me the flip side I am probably overlooking. Isn’t this what they show in horror movies too? The demon always getting into the body and psyche of the most vulnerable person. You decide who the demon, here, is!

When I think about people in their twenties who are living with ADHD or anxiety or depression — and there are so many of us now — I wonder if it would have been easier for our minds to cope with these conditions had there not been these low-hanging escapes at our fingertips to suck us in but leave us way worse.

Maybe if there were no Reels to scroll, then even on a bad day, I would have picked up my phone to call a friend? Or just played music? Or at least tried to find an alternative that didn’t leave my brain more stimulated than it already was. Imagine social media — and now AI — undoing what decades of psychiatry and therapy have managed to do.

I am someone who’s rarely sure of myself. It’s a matter of fact; neither self-deprecation nor a compliment. So I don’t know if I should be alarmed when my friends tell me that they have started watching everything — including movies and TV shows — on 1.5x or 2x. But I am alarmed. I love watching movies that are plot-heavy and pacy and you can’t take your eyes off the screen even for a second. But I also love the ones that are more sensorial (think: Perfect Days or All We Imagine as Light), where nothing really happens, but if you allow them the attention they demand, they will leave you with goosebumps and something softer in your heart. But I don’t know if in a few years there would even be an audience who would be able to sit through these. And that has to be alarming, right?

When we were children, two decades ago, our parents’ biggest worry was that we were playing too much. After school, all we wanted to do was go outside and play games. And parents were responsible for making sure that we came back home on time and spared a couple of hours to finish our homework, etc. Now when I think about that worry — it doesn’t even seem like one. It’s actually a blessing to raise a child who wants to go out and play! Being bored and cooking up stories in our heads was such an important part of our childhood. But I am terrified for parents who are supposed to bring up kids today because of how impossible it is to enable these kids to experience what boredom even looks like.

If you didn’t already know, Instagram is testing a new auto-scroll feature, so the little movement that your fingertips were doing to go from one Reel to another won’t be needed anymore. You can sit back on your couch with your matcha in one hand and phone in the other and let these Reels consume you for hours. How fun! Can’t wait for my fingers and hands to go obsolete, because really, who even needs them.

Children don’t cry; they wail, there’s a performance, a tantrum to it, because they know that someone will come and help them and solve their problem or give them exactly what they want. As an adult, I know that I am supposed to sob in silence because really, there’s no one coming to help me. If I wake up and choose to stay in bed for an hour scrolling on my phone, no one cares. It’s not a big deal. It raises no alarm. It’s neither a cry nor a wail. It’s business as usual. What a life!

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 27th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday.

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Rilke said, “No feeling is final.” The Priest said, “It will pass” to Fleabag’s “I love you.” Nicholas Sparks said, “Emotions come and go and can’t be controlled, so there’s no reason to worry about them.”

I have lived some life and gained enough perspective to know that all of them are absolutely right — and how comforting it is that they are right! There’s one emotion, though, that I do worry about because it does not seem to be as fleeting as the others. And that is resentment. It’s not entirely fair to compare resentment with other emotions because it is not momentary and you don’t feel it in a jiff.

Resentment is like a wall you put together brick by brick, only to eventually be caged and suffocated by it. It’s a plant you water even in your sleep, and wake up one day to find a prickly cactus drawing blood from the very hands that nurtured it. It’s a beast you feed when you’re trying to be nice and polite and all those worldly things you’re told you’re supposed to be at all times.

If you’ve seen an overworked, underappreciated woman — most probably you have — you already know what resentment looks like. It looks like someone who is so jaded and weighed down that they’ve lost the magic in their eyes — their rose-tinted glasses have turned muddy. There’s so much bitterness in their life that even on a good day, their heart doesn’t swell, for it has forgotten how to. Women become resentful because they’re taught to suppress their feelings to keep the peace, and men because they pretend they have it all together even when they’re falling apart.

A child feels joy, sadness, anger, disappointment — but never resentment. Maybe that’s why being childlike is such a precious compliment for an adult. When you describe someone as childlike, you know that they’ve somehow managed to protect their innocence. Admiration comes easier to them. Children don’t have the ability to resent their existence or anyone else’s because they are not trying to hold back all the time. Neither are they judging their feelings. They say it as it is. They cry it out. They tell you what they want. At times, they are bratty enough to snatch it from you. But they are mostly honest — with themselves and with you.

A big difference between being nice and being kind is that kindness does not cost you your own being. You can be kind without letting people and situations step all over you. Kindness involves seeing other people’s needs but also your own. You know it in your bones that you can’t pour from an empty cup, so you don’t try to.

Niceness, though, is a facade, a pretense, a performance many of us learned to put on to survive because we couldn’t afford not to be liked or approved of by the people we lived with. You don’t feel loved or secure enough, so you constantly find yourself trying. But niceness percolates and becomes a part of your skin, your being. The performance doesn’t stop even when the audience has left.

You are nice all the time, to everyone — even though you don’t have to be anymore. You’re so used to saying things you don’t mean that you don’t even realize when you’re doing it. Being nice makes you expect the exact amount and the exact kind of niceness in return, and when you don’t get it, you feel the sting. You resent them. And you resent yourself.

Somehow, in cultures where respect seems akin to agreement, you often start resenting the people you respect — your elders or those in authority — because you fear telling them the truth. I’m not even talking about the big truths here! Small little lies — the harmless ones — come out of your mouth before you can give it another thought, just because you don’t know how not to please those you’ve always wanted a pat on the back from.

You resent those you look up to because you don’t want to lose their validation. But sometimes, if you’re not careful, resentment can also seep into equal relationships when you become overly obsessed with being the bigger person — the generous or the forgiving one — all the time. Others may put you on a pedestal out of love, but you don’t have to live there. You are only human. So be one.

There will be days when you’re irritated over nothing. You might not always understand someone’s unmet needs because you’re too busy dealing with your own. You can always apologize and course-correct if that’s what it takes. But you don’t have to try to become a saint or shrink yourself just to allow others to grow. There has to be enough space for all of us to be flawed and whole.

I had a gazillion fears before I got married and started living with my partner. The biggest one — after watching countless couples grow to resent each other — was making sure that never happened to us. You could call it premature worry; after all, who even thinks about these things when they’re young? Well, I did. Because I know myself well enough to realize that if I’m not careful, my eldest-daughter instincts — people-pleasing, always being the bigger person, never asking for what I need — could burden our relationship in ways we wouldn’t even see coming.

Also, sharing a space with someone is a whole different ball game. If you’re upset with your friend who lives thousands of miles away, you have the time and space to process that anger — or at least deal with it on your own terms, without involving them. But when you’re in each other’s space every day — doing life together, sharing responsibilities — it becomes almost impossible to hide how you really feel. So I don’t.

Sometimes, if we need to gently probe each other, we do. If we’re feeling something terrible — even if we wish we weren’t — we still say it out loud. If I’m feeling lonely, I tell him. I ask for help. I ask for what I need. We do get mad at each other — like any two people living together would — but we don’t stay mad. A walk and a heart-to-heart usually does the trick. I rant or gossip about whoever I’m upset with, and he listens — and vice versa. That’s our version of holding space.

Resentment grows in silence. It creeps in unannounced, tightens its grip around your chest, and makes you feel heavy all the time. Even on sunny mornings, you feel full to the brim. The hurt turns into rot. It festers, sours, and spills out in ways you can’t always control. It swallows your lightness, and with it, your relationships. Your intention — to protect others, to hold it all in so no one else gets hurt — ends up hurting everyone anyway, including you. So what’s the point of carrying that weight alone? You’re human. You weren’t made to live on a pedestal or to always be the bigger person. Maybe it’s kinder — to you and to those you love — to give words to your frustrations, and hurts before they sink in and settle too deep.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 26th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday.

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A few months ago, I applied for a writing fellowship, which I didn’t end up getting. But the process of working on that application wrecked me completely and revealed something about the way I work that I hadn’t noticed in such a glaring way before.

There are parts of yourself you’re aware of but never care to probe into, because it’s uncomfortable to sit with your thoughts and question why you did what you did, especially when you have ten thousand ways at your fingertips to drown it all. And drown I did, until today — when I’m here, forced to think about it, to make sense of it, and, well, write about it.

I procrastinate a lot — maybe all of us do — and while I know that procrastination can, at times, be good for creative people, I also know that if left unattended, it can be crippling to the point where, forget about working on the task at hand, you find it absolutely impossible to even sit at your desk. There are theories and articles and books written about how the reason for procrastination isn’t laziness or lack of ambition, but I’m guilty of never paying attention to any of it.

Paying attention requires effort and introspection, while labeling yourself lazy is the easiest thing to do. The problem, though, is — where do you go from there? Now that you’ve decided you’re lazy, what do you do? Bask in that laziness? Make peace with it? Die in shame? What do you do? Mostly, you end up doing nothing. You procrastinate, feel shame, get anxious, procrastinate more. It’s a loop — a loop I find myself stuck in often. How long I stay stuck really depends on how I ended up in the loop in the first place.

I didn’t sit at my writing desk for an entire week a few days ago — not because I was busy or sick or had other priorities. There was absolutely no tangible reason. I just couldn’t make myself sit at the desk, despite having all the time in the world. I was extremely anxious, constantly thinking about the drafts I’ve abandoned and need to go back to. But I kept going about my day, doing the routine things I have to do to sustain myself: eat, sleep, work. I was making impromptu plans to not think about writing, but I was still thinking about it. Compulsively. All the time. And then, after a week of torture, I had the epiphany — the déjà vu moment — and I realized I had been here before. I had been in this exact loop while working on that fellowship application.

The reason for being in this loop was — finally, fortunately — right there in front of me. And it didn’t scare or intimidate me, but was actually a relief. It was like being diagnosed and finally having a name for a disease you’ve been suffering from for a long time because now you’ve finally identified the problem at hand — a necessary prerequisite for solving it. My problem was being way too invested in the result or the output of a process while knowing that I can do nothing to control it. I procrastinated 100x more when I cared deeply — and a little too much — about getting the thing I was working towards.

Deadlines motivated me, but once in a while, when a deadline came along for something I’d wanted for a long time — something that could potentially change my life or fulfill the dreams I’ve been toiling for — I would almost freeze. This situation is bad for any kind of work, I imagine, but for writing it’s especially worse because the longer you take to return to a draft, the scarier it becomes.

Procrastination pollutes joy. You might be having a ball lying on your bed watching your favorite show, but at the back of your head there’s a constant nagging voice telling you time is running out. You aren’t really having a ball then, are you? When you’re procrastinating, you’re not able to rest even while resting, and you’re not actually having fun even while having fun. And that’s exhausting.

I have no advice for you — not at the moment, at least. I haven’t figured out how to stay out of the loop myself yet. But now that I know the reason I’m not able to work towards this deadline is because I’m too worried and too obsessed with the result, I’m going to try and care a little less. I’m going to tell myself, repeatedly, that I am only responsible for working towards it. Try and give my best. And then, quickly, move on to the next thing. That is literally all I can do. And I have to allow myself to do that much.

Sorry for being a day late, but if you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 25th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday.

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You wake up, check your phone, scroll through your notifications, and get stuck at one. That one notification, then, keeps hammering on your head and buzzing in your ears for the next few hours. The notification could have been about an announcement of someone achieving something you have been striving for or dreaming about. It could have also been a declaration of a relationship or an association you longed for or wished to be a part of. And sometimes it could simply be a stinging reminder that you aren’t where you thought you were supposed to be.

If that notification was celebrating someone you don’t know and owe nothing to, then all you have to do is sit with your feelings and face them, which isn’t easy either. But if it was about a friend or a loved one, then you not only have to feel your feelings but also show up for that person, be a good friend, and make sure that your sulk does not dim their shine.

Being overpowered by self-pity and consumed by the sliminess of inadequacy, insecurity, and envy makes you feel like your grossest, ugliest self, and yet, we’ve all been there. Depending on who you are and the stage of life you are in, you either feel like this every other day (don’t wish this on anyone) or once in a while, but it’s never easy to grapple with. One good thing about growing up and being a little older is that you don’t feel this way very often, but when you do, it’s still a gut punch — you do recover quickly and easily, though, because you have some perspective.

Some feelings — like self-pity or envy — hold a mirror in front of you and force you to look at the shadows and the dark corners within that you might have been overlooking or deliberately avoiding. Despite having all the self-awareness in the world, there are moments you are caught off guard — like I was this past week. I thought I didn’t have self-esteem issues anymore, and I have done enough work to not feel like an imposter, but sometimes the ghosts of these issues creep in unannounced, despite it all. And you are left wondering if all the work you have done was for nothing. But I am told no growth is linear. So I will grow and fall back — but I will also get up because I have done this in the past innumerable times.

I am not a very competitive person — ambitious and a daydreamer, yes, but not competitive. I don’t need much to be content or at peace with myself. This is a fact; neither have I actively worked towards it nor am I particularly proud. Some traits come built-in in your system — this is one of those. And so once in a while, when I do feel left out in a race I am not sure when I signed up for, it does mess with my head.

I have not been in a writing slump, but I have also not been writing enough or as much as I would like to. The past week was just me looking at other writers — I love and admire — and being envious of their craft and the publications they are managing to get a byline in. When it rains, it pours — at least in my head. And so at work too, I felt like an imposter — like I didn’t belong to the spaces I was a part of and had in fact worked hard to earn.

All of this angst I had been feeling all week came out when, on an ordinary weekend morning, it dawned on me that I still have not learned how to drive completely. I am ninety percent there — on Bengaluru roads ninety percent is not good enough. But my partner, who started learning with me, has perfected the skill. And that realization just unleashed something I had been holding back all week.

Some waterworks and conversations later, when I could think with a clearer head, my partner reminded me of everything I already knew. Not everyone’s starting point is the same, and so comparing the end products of two completely different journeys is like measuring mangoes against onions — it makes no sense.

It’s easier to deal with these feelings at the stage of life I’m at, because I’m no longer in school or college — places where comparisons like this aren’t an anomaly but a part of the structure itself. I’ve left those systems, and the mindset that came with them, far behind. As someone who isn’t competitive, these feelings do surprise me a little, because it’s not very often that I find myself slipping into this space. But when I do, I tend to judge myself a little too harshly.

All feelings demand your attention — you have to notice them, sit with them, and give them space to move through you. If you don’t, they linger and start to stifle or suffocate you. And instead of giving them that necessary attention, I often find myself trying to escape feelings of insecurity or envy because they don’t align with the image I hold of myself in my head. They make me feel small.

When something good happens to a friend — or even a stranger — I want to be happy for them. I want my first reaction to be awe and admiration, not insecurity or self-pity. So when those messier feelings do surface, I find it hard to accept that they’re a part of me. It’s extremely uncomfortable to admit — even to myself — that something good happening to someone else can leave me feeling inadequate, even when I don’t want to.

The point isn’t to never feel these things — I’m human, and I will feel all kinds of things. The goal is to notice them without shame and to choose — again and again, every single time — who I want to be in response.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 24th essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday.

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In 2013, just before leaving for college, I soaked my diaries in water. I watched as the ink bled, the words blurred, and the pages turned to pulp. Then I tossed it all into a garbage bag. I couldn’t take them with me everywhere, and I couldn’t leave them behind to be discovered someday. So the only place that felt right for those diaries — filled with teenage angst, fleeting crushes, and dramatic complaints — was the trash.

When asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I said I wanted to go to Edinburgh, Scotland, to research malaria — too specific, I know. But I was inspired by a senior from school who was doing exactly that. What inspired me, though, wasn’t his workday — it was everything outside of it. A pretty big clue, if only I’d been smart enough to catch it.

It would be unfair to blame it all on my smartness, though, when everything that I liked doing as a child seemed silly and frivolous in my head. I envied my friends who enjoyed reading science magazines or doing math because I didn’t. They could become something and find a place in this world because of the things they liked. But who could I possibly become by reading storybooks, comics, and novels?

So when I started my undergrad, in 2013, I stopped reading and writing completely for a while. I wanted to “work hard” towards becoming someone who could earn their own money — that was the most important thing considering where I had come from and who I was. If you didn’t want to end up like every other woman you grew up seeing, financial independence was the only way. It still is.

My plans failed spectacularly, though. Neither was I good at science, nor did I have the interest or curiosity to get better at it. And no matter how desperately I tried to pull away, I was still drawn to stories and the art of storytelling. I couldn’t help it. It took me years — and a lot of failing and falling — to accept who I was and what I liked. Acceptance came eventually, but respect remained elusive.

I had accepted who I was, but I still didn’t respect my own ideas. I thought they were frivolous, even stupid. I wanted to write about feelings and emotions. I wanted to examine my relationship with people, with the world around me. And these weren’t choices I consciously made; they were simply the thoughts that consumed me, constantly. Who would want to read this, though? Isn’t it cringe? I saw storytellers as magicians, and I wanted to learn their magic too. But I was so unsure of my wand, so skeptical of my tricks.

Being in academic institutions didn’t help either — they only made me feel smaller. I constantly compared myself to others who were thinking and writing about big things like climate change, international relations, and world politics, while I was focused on my home, my neighborhood, my city. I wanted to pay attention to what was happening in my immediate surroundings and within me and write about that.

Reading women writers helped immensely. Their work made me realize that my struggles weren’t just mine, and that I wasn’t the first to write about them. They made me feel seen. More importantly, they gave me the courage to tell my own stories. It was through their words that I began to take mine seriously. What once felt small started to feel worthy.

If you are an artist, you don’t build bridges or treat the ill or fight for justice, what is your purpose then? Why should your art matter? We are living in times when there are enough answers to this question on the internet, but anything external doesn’t help as much as looking for an answer within you. If you want to be an artist, it’s very likely you already know its purpose. You have experienced it in your life. Art has helped you; it has saved you when nothing else could.

I only began writing seriously and deliberately a couple of years ago, when I finally gave in to the joy I feel whenever I read or write something. For most of my life — through school and college — ambitions were shaped by external markers: money, fame, influence. We were taught to want success because of what it could add to our lives, and those additions were always measured in material terms. Writing didn’t seem to fit into that logic. It offered nothing tangible — no guarantee of wealth or recognition — just the satisfaction of making sense of your experiences through words. But eventually, that satisfaction became impossible to ignore because it gave me a sense of self.

As someone who has tried to force-fit herself, let me tell you: it’s painful to pretend to be someone you’re not. There’s a ‘mainstream’ for everything, and if you don’t fit neatly into it, you’re left with no choice but to create your own stream. You can’t keep squeezing yourself into a mold just to maintain the status quo, keep others comfortable, or avoid ruffling feathers. Once you find the courage to carve out a current that matches you, your pace, it starts to feel more freeing. And eventually, it becomes impossible to imagine flowing any other way.

Those diaries may be gone, but I’ve finally started writing the kind of stories I was once terrified someone might find; and now, I want them to be read. And that’s something, isn’t it?

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 23rd essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday.

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