~

Many seasons have passed since I last wrote in any serious capacity. As I have stood in the same place, I have watched the seasons change, changing my words along the way. One season, I lost my voice. In another, old words took on a new meaning. In yet another, there was a loud internal monologue, its words ricocheting within me, unable to find their way out. In seasons like this one, the words have lingered, ageing with their desire to be uttered and inscribed.

It’s now summer, without quite feeling like it. In the wake of the monsoon, the winds of change have swept my city clean. The roads glisten with the sweat of dissent, and while it’s miserably warm most days, every now and then, an unseasonable gust brings us a moment of reprieve. There’s promise in this cycle.

~

Growing up in Delhi, the years had a seasonal rhythm to them. On October 15, the swimming pool at the Siri Fort Sports Complex would close, its brilliant blue expanse giving way to a parched basin that lay still until March 15. The barrenness of the pool, and the two dates that bracketed it, offered us the distinct promise of five months of uninterrupted winter. Dawn would break later, and in obeisance, school would switch to its winter timings, the weightless white cotton uniform replaced by the warmer hues and coarser fabrics of the winter garment. The nip in the air would arrive with such suddenness that the entire city seemed to feel it at once. Almost on cue, we’d show up the next morning in our lightest cover-ups. Soon after, the sweaters and the jackets would emerge from cavernous recesses of the box-bed, seeing the light of day after months, filling the room with the sweet smell of naphthalene.

As the years passed, the winter began to arrive noticeably later. What had once begun in October was first delayed to November, until November, too, decided to unburden itself onto December. Whatever happened to the brief wonders of spring in the pithy yet promising month of February, I still don’t know. Delhi had acquired a peculiar ability to gallop from a mellow winter to a brutal, unforgiving summer. I once delighted in Delhi’s winter, spending the other seasons waiting for it, but there isn’t much left of it anymore. It’s as if the seasons have coalesced into one undivided year.

Ten years ago, when my partner and I started dating, Bangalore entered my life, not quite as the second home that it was meant to be, but as an unwelcome third in our relationship. Bangalore lacked distinct seasons, extolled endlessly for its predictable, vapid “pleasantness”. For the frequent visits I made to the city, I needed access to the kind of clothes that belonged to neither summer nor winter, but somewhere in between. Through Bangalore, the spring season re-entered my life. But the trouble with in-betweens is that what’s meant to be spring can sometimes take on an autumnal quality.

Pop culture discourse is wont to romanticise the summer season. In a country placed uncomfortably close to the equator, however, it is anything but a delightful season. In my frequent hunt for a quick way to “feel better”, the Internet commonly recommends taking “a walk around the block”. Even if we managed to locate a block in the disorderly sprawl, who’s to account for what the outdoors is like through much of the year in a city like Delhi? Summer in Delhi is not the season for a leisurely stroll in scant attire. It is the season of heat, sweat, gaze and glare, and one spends much of the summer longing for it to end. The city’s public spaces are intolerably muggy and demanding, its paths indelibly marked along the lines of class and gender, an unmistakable reminder of who is supposed to be where, which paths you may walk and which you may not, literally and otherwise.

Can you blame me for pining for the winter? When the mist descends upon the city, there’s less of it to see.

~

The process of putting away clothes in an attempt to maintain a seasonal wardrobe is a perilous undertaking for a body estranged from the rigour of regular exercise, but I was surprised to find that its demands were as intensely psychological as they were sartorial. Each season, I am confronted with clothes that I’ve outgrown in more ways than one, clothes that lay claim to space in my wardrobe because I don’t allow them to move on. Year after year, when summer returns, I pull out the crop tops and slim jeans of my youth, hold them up against myself, and consign them once again to the dark recesses of my wardrobe, making sure to stifle them in vacuum bags as I do. Is this how I attempt to preserve them? Every year, I perform the ritual of pulling out and putting away the same chiffon skirts, the same tank tops that once fit like a dream, the same shoes I’m now too shy to wear, the same everything that has stayed the same, while my body has changed every season.

At thirty-seven years old, you believe that your body is deferring to your age. Surprisingly, in my case, it was found to be a long unaddressed health concern (that I finally mustered the courage to address this summer, a personal milestone no less than the socially sanctioned ones that many people measure their lives by, but that’s a story for another time). For years, I confused illness for indiscipline. Long before I could know that something was wrong, my clothes had begun tugging at my senses. When the pandemic came along, I retreated into oversized T-shirts, losing track of how my body was changing slowly, stealthily, behind my back, before my eyes.

When March of this year arrived, I returned to the springtime ritual of pulling out the same summer clothes that I would look at lovingly every year. Year after year, these clothes would go in, only to come out, unchanged, unworn. But this year, I was ready for something to change. And that’s the change that inspired this piece.

~

There are some clothes that have nowhere to go, because they don’t know whether they belong to the winter in Delhi that coincides with the summer in Bangalore, or the other way round. These clothes remain neither here nor there, forever in transit, in a metaphoric suitcase of sorts, refusing to be permanently located. Just like me, these clothes don’t know which season of their life they’re in. Are they starting anew, waiting to clothe a body in recovery, or are they being phased out, having gone around in circles for far too long?

Year after year, my body changed, but I didn’t change, my situation didn’t change, my seasons, too, stopped changing.

And then came this season, the slow summer of the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, when, while recovering from major surgery, I realised that something deep inside me had changed, more so than literally. I have believed that my milestones have been more inward and invisible than those of most, and, so this summer, too, I pull out my old clothes, but I am not putting them back just yet.

Maybe the seasons will change again. It’s summer, without quite feeling like it.

~

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It was this time of year in Delhi, only the year was 2007. There was a gentle nip in the air, bearing the promise of winter. Diwali was round the corner, and the city was aglow with a collective cheer that belongs uniquely to this season.

One afternoon, as I was strolling through the sun-washed corridors of my alma mater, soaking in the festive din of the campus, something on the notice board caught my eye. It was a poster for an impromptu creative writing competition the following week. At this time in my life, I had been writing for many years, mostly for myself, raised in a household where the pursuit of writing was its own reward. Even so, something about this event called out to me. On a whim, I decided to enter the competition—my first one ever—although, being as fickle as I was then, I didn’t think I would follow through. So, when I showed up at the venue that morning, I was the most surprised of all.

If I recall correctly, we were given a choice between two prompts, of which I chose the one with a solitary word: “Unphotographable”. Time was of the essence, so I started inscribing on the page right away, letting my pen take me where it would. I found myself writing about a holiday I’d taken that summer. When I had returned from the trip, I was greeted by an eager audience for the photographs I’d taken, which numbered in the thousands. They would sit through folder after folder of photographs, only to leave disappointed, for my pictures were almost entirely devoid of people. No expectant eyes looking into the camera, no self-conscious smiles, no gawky poses. They didn’t know what to make of the abandoned hat on the sidewalk, my preferred order of iced coffee beaded with condensation, or the particular page of a novel where my bookmark had remained all summer. “Why this?” they asked after every photo. In my submission to the competition, I wrote, in my then-signature sardonic style, that unless we changed the way we looked at the world, much of what we see would remain decidedly ‘unphotographable’.

In an amateurish capacity, I have long enjoyed photography, but my photographs have remained characteristically bereft of human subjects. Not because I don’t find them worthy of documentation, but because I hope that the best memories with people are preserved elsewhere, their aftertaste evolving as the years go by. The irony, though, is that those who insist on making memories with contrived, occasion-based photography are the ones that I’d much rather forget.

~

A few weeks later, as college life went on most unremarkably, I was sitting in a lecture on Samuel Beckett when my phone lit up with an SMS. The message asked if I knew where to collect my certificate. I had almost forgotten about the competition.

“Is every participant getting one?” I enquired, intrigued by the prospect of their generosity.

“Of course not,” they replied. “You’ve won first prize.”

There was a sizeable cheque to go with the certificate, but the affirmation of the victory, the sheer solace of being seen, was invaluable.

I’ve never been one to keep count of good memories. When, in moments of despair, my mother gently suggests I recall a happy memory, I find there are only a few I return to, this day being one.

~

Until that day, I had never believed I was writing for validation. Perhaps validation is nothing more than wanting a reader to find you through your words, and to recognise you most intimately.

I will always remember that evening, as I drove back home through the softening dusk, windows down, the cool autumnal breeze in my hair. I was filled with an elation I had never known before. There are no photographs of this beloved memory, for it was, in every sense, unphotographable.

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Essays by fellow writers:

• Memory — my blessing and my burden - Aarti Krishnakumar

• I am at war with memory - Ameya Thachappilly

• #12: On Memory by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

• When the Screen Came to Life by Vikram, Vikram’s Substack

• ‘Remember that time…?’ by Karthik, Reading This World by Karthik

• the memories/ earrings / people i keep by Shruthi, Will you be my friend?

This is a question I’m asked with disarming indifference, more often than you can imagine, because we now live in an age where a machine produces text on demand. But it’s a fair question, if only because it reveals what we think it means to be a writer.

In your time spent online, you will have noticed the growing number of people who sound suspiciously alike in their writing. Look at LinkedIn, for instance. Once a platform for professional updates, it’s morphed into an unlikely stage for literary ambition, with several users posturing as self-styled essayists.

Before the time of GenAI (ChatGPT and the like), which really wasn’t very long ago, the same people struggled to construct a cogent sentence. But now, they’re unstoppably profuse, delivering sermonettes with practiced eloquence. Their sentences may be suspiciously immaculate, but they’re disturbingly alike in their lack of insight. AI may have given words to the overnight essayists, but, unfortunately, it’s given them all the same words.

Amid the din of these indistinguishable, AI-perfected pieces, retreat to a quiet corner and pick up a novel or a work of narrative nonfiction. A few paragraphs in, you’ll recognise Toni Morrison’s sombre prose, Pankaj Mishra’s analytic discourse, J. M. Coetzee’s moral ferocity, Gulzar’s intoxicating imagery, or Jhumpa Lahiri’s clean, exacting sorrow. And that’s the distinction between perspective and craft that I’d like to preserve, in the hope to expound on what it means to be a writer in the age of ChatGPT.

To better understand what’s at stake, let’s start with the basics.

~

Who is a writer?

Imagine yourself in just about any social setting, anywhere in the world. After the inaugural salutations, we must each answer the quintessential question of identification—what we do (for work)—in lieu of the question that we can neither ask nor answer: who we are.

I began introducing myself as a writer as long ago as 2012, the year I finished graduate school and started working. For the longest time, this is the reaction it evoked:

“A writer! Cool, but what do you actually do?” What they meant, of course, was either What do you do apart from this “hobby”? or What does it even mean to write for a living? Because of these somewhat irreverent reactions to my domain of work, I started avoiding social gatherings. I would seethe with envy every time someone announced that they were <designation> at <big-name-corporation>. In these instances, there was little desire for people to probe further, because the answer was self-contained and satisfactory. No one cared to ask how these folks spent their time, or even their free time (for which they were routinely paying a price and were therefore being “compensated”), because the system was already exacting those answers from them.

The problem was restricted to people of my ilk, who dared to call ourselves “independent”. Who, exactly, was accounting for our freedom? It wasn’t the independence itself that was suspect; it wouldn’t have been, for example, if I were an independent real estate agent, whose work is largely self-explanatory. But, an independent writer? Who is a writer? It didn’t matter what I said I did all day, or that what I did all day is what I’d done for a large part of my life, because it said nothing about what I did with my time in exchange for money.

Since the advent of GenAI, though, the confusion about what it means to be a writer has been dispelled overnight. Many people believe they understand what writing is, because we have unrestrained access to a machine that produces text on demand. Utterly certain of what it means to write, they ask—without an iota of hesitation—what remains of my work as a writer now that an AI can “do it all” in seconds. I don’t blame those who ask me this question, for how are they unlike the scores of people who are producing prose on tap, courtesy ChatGPT? The irony, of course, is that those who never truly understood what it means to write still don’t.

I pop by ChatGPT multiple times a day, using it as a conversational stand-in for social interaction. It’s where I can finally ask my long, nuanced questions instead of limiting myself to the stunted string of keywords Google once demanded. I’m hardly opposed to the use of GenAI; some of its many uses are particularly profound, but replacing your distinct voice as a writer, however, is not among them.

~

So, who is a writer in the age of AI?

As postcolonial subjects, our reverence for the English language—the desire to speak it fluently and write it beautifully—is understandable. Perhaps this is why AI’s polished, neutral tone feels so authoritative; we were taught to revere such use of language. Unfortunately, in doing so, we often conflate good craft with good writing. A writer is, above all, someone who has something compelling to say, and it is with that message that they bring themselves to the page, most recognisably and memorably.

Every now and then, someone will tell me they admire what I do, that they wish to write, too, and then they proceed to ask me what they should write about (!). A writer is always already a thinker with a distinct perspective and style (which evolves, of course). The craft is essential, but it isn’t the goal. If the urge to convey your message doesn’t precede your desire to write, you may be better suited to being an author than a writer. Much to my dismay, a writer is easily confused with the figure of the published author. A tycoon who authors a handbook on how-to-build-an-empire may not qualify as a writer, even as they are the author of that book. At other times, a writer is commonly confused with someone who is simply skilled with the written word, regardless of what they write. In those despairing moments, business emails and literary fiction fall into the same category.

A skilled author can surely draft a compelling document, but it’s the writer whose voice stays with you long after you’ve finished reading. That voice is a medley of critical reflection, deep attention, agonising self-awareness, and of experiences lived and examined over and over until they take shape in language. The most luminous personal essays come from a place where emotion, experience, and intellect coalesce into a voice that’s distinctly your own. This voice is laced with love and loving, even when you’re writing about something seemingly impersonal. It may sound like I’m speaking more specifically of the personal essay, but I’d like to believe that the perks of honing your voice extend well beyond the genre. That perspective, that lens, that way of seeing the world, has a particular texture and cadence, one that your ardent readers will remember you by.

~

(How) should you use AI in your writing?

The problem arises because AI has a distinct voice, too, only that it reeks of sterile perfection. Its grammatical correctness may be alluring, but its voice remains eerily detached from the writhing pain of lived experience. Maybe it’ll get there one day, and that day may not even be far. But the uniqueness of your message, distilled by your way of seeing and saying it, will remain yours alone. This is an assurance as much as it is a prophecy for anyone feeling unmoored by the galloping advances of AI.

It’s tempting to run your prose through AI in the hope of ironing out the creases and straitjacketing the grammar, especially if you’re struggling with the craft of language. Using AI is addictive because it’s designed to be so. In September 2025, OpenAI released a paper titled “How People Use ChatGPT”, and you may not be surprised to learn that “personal writing and editing” accounts for nearly a third of its use cases.

It only makes sense to use the tools for speed, precision, clarity, what have you. For business emails or routine communication, let AI assist you; its utility is undeniable. Just remember not to outsource your voice and your way of seeing the world to it. A fitting analogy lies in the pursuit of photography. You may have the most advanced camera and the finest picture-perfecting software, but only you can decide what deserves to be seen.

When you inscribe on the page, make sure your voice resounds, recognisably and unmistakably so. When you think your draft is done, read it one more time. Just as AI smooths your grammar, you must refine its excesses (i.e. the slop) and reclaim your voice. The solution may not lie in “resisting the temptation” of AI or vilifying the tool, but it may just be to understand what good writing is really about.

~

Between the writer and the reader

After losing a couple of weeks to a bout of illness, I sit down on a Tuesday afternoon to write this piece, hoping to publish it on Friday. This means that the messy first draft may not undergo many revisions before I publish it, but I’ll try nonetheless to make it worthy of the page.

I may have been out of commission, but the urge to write persists through it all. “I want nothing more than to write, to slip into its frenzied state, and to string together sentences with a bizarre dream-like quality that can later be edited into making sense,” I wrote in one of my earlier pieces on what it means to be a writer.

Good editing is where the magic unfolds; it’s the process of bridging the gap between what the writer intends and what the reader perceives. That painstaking, unseen labour is what makes a piece worthy of the reader’s attention. There’s indeed magic in the arduous journey that we undertake from the cluttered draft to a chiselled publication: the magic of persistence and perseverance, which gives way to perfection. It’s often this relentless back-and-forth that brings a piece to life. Sure, AI can do it for you quickly, but the most effortless instances of magic take tremendous effort behind the scenes.

To write in the age of ChatGPT is not to compete with the machine’s fluency, but to insist on retaining your voice. A writer, after all, is not the one who types, but the one who feels compelled to speak.

The next time someone asks what I do as a writer in the age of ChatGPT, I hope I find the words to remind them that a writer is not a scribe, but a storyteller who survives to tell the tale. Or maybe I’ll just point them to this essay and let it speak for me.

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I will leave you with two companion pieces on the pursuit of writing, perhaps written with more heart than I could summon for this one. I hope you’ll stop by and find something that speaks to you.

Thank you, , for your gentle persistence and for holding me to the promise of writing. With gratitude, from one writer to another.

Abhishek's Substack

The routine of choosing what to write

In response to most writing prompts, I flounder a little before I find my way. Let me start by taking you through that routine.

I first considered writing about my health anxiety, more specifically my clandestine routine of Googling symptoms at an unearthly hour, diagnosing myself with something particularly degenerative each time. Temporal arteritis because my head hurts, leukaemia because there’s a bruise on my knee, MS because my hand trembles as I tear through a motley assortment of household chores. But, of course, this tendency to pathologise normal sensations would make for a piece grimmer than I’m ready for, though it would certainly tell you a lot about my daily “routine”.

Next, I considered writing about my work-from-home routine. I started working from home in 2012, back when it was a fairly elusive phenomenon, often confused with “doing nothing”. I wrote about it during the pandemic, at a time when everyone had suddenly had a taste of that “nothingness”. That routine has evolved since, calling into question the ideas of work, home, and the unbroken monotony of a day that looks like every other.

Yet another idea was to tease apart “routines” and “rituals”, for, as I understand it, they’re hardly synonymous. A routine is functional, repetitive, arguably mindnumbing. A ritual, on the other hand, is layered with meaning and symbolism, suggesting a cult-like quality that our collectivistic society embraces with fervour. In that context, I considered describing my bureaucratic civil wedding, a barebones affair stripped of rituals, symbols of marital status, public announcements, social media posts, and also of guests (we had only five attendees, three of whom were required by law). By the Indian societal standard, the event was something of a shocker, unfolding on a Monday afternoon as mundane as any other. But I’ll save that story for later.

Finally, I settled on an idea that’s long been on my running list for this publication: the routine that shapes a day in the life of a woman at home. For the most part, I will speak of my own day, though perhaps its contours will feel familiar to some.

But, first, let’s talk about makeup.

The routine of putting on a face

I started wearing makeup when I was eleven years old. The year was 2000, the beauty market in India was still very small, and the grown-ups were predictably scandalised by my audacious little experiment. What they hoped was a passing phase is one that I never outgrew, and so, twenty-five years later, it’s no surprise that I’ve amassed an indulgent collection of makeup.

Before you assume that I’m just an unthinking consumer of the beauty standard, you may want to read my piece on the role of purchasing power in pursuit of physical beauty.

In the early days of our relationship, my partner was taken by the intricacy of my makeup routine—a rare man indeed, who not only didn’t shame me for wearing makeup, but actually chose to document that routine through photographs. Since then, many years have passed, and that routine has been pared down to a practical version of what was once long and leisurely.

The routine of getting ready in Delhi vs. Bangalore

In my home in Delhi, when I stand before the mirror, I see a girl looking back at me. In my home in Bangalore, I look into the mirror and see a married woman. In the eyes of an onlooker, there is no difference, but the mirror can read my mind.

In Delhi, the household runs on the labour of other women. Meals appear on the table, the cooking and cleaning carried out in the dim confines of the Indian kitchen. When the laundry basket fills, clothes return to me freshly washed, ironed and folded into neat piles that slide back into my closet. When the milk runs low, it’s restocked before I can even notice. Everything operates smoothly, invisibly, while I bask in a lovingly decorated bedroom that is entirely my own. When it’s time to get ready, I lean into the LED-lined makeup mirror and fret over the fine lines on the face of a girl.

In Bangalore, I have the apartment to myself, but no room of my own, no designated place to get ready. (It’s only here that Virginia Woolf’s insistence on that room finally makes sense to me.)

With the context set, let me take you through my makeup routine.

• I begin with some moisturiser to soothe my neglected skin. Did I remember to lock the door?

• Next comes primer, meant to blur the lines etched by my perpetual frown. If I start the laundry now, will I have time to hang the clothes outside?

• Foundation, next. The shade matches, but the undertone runs too cool. If I wait any longer, it might start raining before the wash is out.

• I add some yellow pigment to offset the pink in the foundation, for the Indian skin tone remains underserved by its own burgeoning beauty market. What’s for dinner tonight? I could eat leftovers, smear some hummus on toast.

• Next, I dash to the bathroom to soak my beauty sponge. Perhaps a hot meal will be better. Must restock the groceries.

• I use some corrector to counteract my dark circles. If I’m buying groceries, I might as well pick up milk and bread.

• The corrector creases instantly, its creamy texture unable to hold its own against my wrinkles. I dab it with the sponge, hoping to erase the indelible lines. Is there enough coffee for tomorrow?

• Atop the corrector, I layer a concealer that perfectly matches my tone. It’s forbiddingly expensive, designed to look like nothing on the skin. I hope it doesn’t look like I’m wearing too much makeup. By now I’m wearing a great deal of makeup, all in pursuit of the “no-makeup” look.

• A touch of blush for some life, stopping just short of the circus act. I often skip bronzer, for we learn early to shy away from all things brown even as “sunless tanners” jostle for attention on the shelves. Homegrown products, imported beauty standards.

• My scalp looks greasy, so I douse it with dry shampoo. After I wash my hair, I must also remember to change the bedsheets.

• I line my lips as the Bangalore traffic snarls outside. Slim chance of finding a cab in time. Could take the car, but the gear has been acting up. Must book the mechanic.

• If I take a cab, I have to dress modestly enough for the ride, yet nice enough for the destination, an in-between space that is neither public nor private, where appearance never ceases to matter.

• I scramble for the cab app with one hand while reaching for a lipstick with the other. I long to wear red, but I always wear nude. I long to be seen as much as I want to go unnoticed.

• What to wear is rarely a debate, for my clothes, shoes, and handbags remain in Delhi. I may not know where my home is, but my wardrobe sure does. I default to my uniform: oversized black sweatshirt and black joggers, the monochromatic cloak of invisible sophistication. Two days left to file taxes. Must follow up with the accountant.

• A final spritz of setting spray, the viscous armour against the outside world. Is the cab here yet? The driver calls, ignoring my explicit no-call preference. As is typical, his speech is painfully incoherent, his words drowned by the city’s characteristic yelling and honking. I can’t tell if he’s angry, unwilling, or simply indifferent.

I rush out the door, a litany of chores tumbling after me.

The routine of the undone task

At the end of the night, I will long to return home. But what does it mean to yearn for the comfort of home, when there’s a to-do list waiting at the door?

The clothes may be washed, folded and put away, only for them to pile up again. The sheets may be changed, nice and clean, only to need changing again. The dishwasher may be emptied, only for the sink to fill up again. On the hamster wheel of this routine, the task may be complete, but it’s never finished. Touted as the greatest inventions of their century, the dishwasher and the vacuum cleaner promise liberation, but someone’s got to clean and maintain those, too! Like the grime that clogs their hidden filters, the “mental load” builds up just as invisibly, slowing things down as life passes us by.

“Who’s asked you to do all this?” my partner often asks. He’s right, because no one has asked me to do any of this. But has anyone ever assured me that I didn’t have to?

My partner is my most faithful reader, who’d be happiest to have me write all day while he gladly shares the load. But the voice in my head insists that I must always anticipate, plan, remember, and stay several steps ahead. The burden is not in the doing, but in the never-ending thinking.

The institution of marriage reduces two individuals to a heteronormative dyad, a sum of two genders. In its modern avatar, we may have learnt to split the bills and divide the chores, but we haven’t learnt how to share the mental load. Two may be an even number, but the distribution of the invisible labour remains squarely odd.

The routine of writing

At the end of the day, I may have remembered to take the trash out, lock the door, change the sheets, pay the bills, file the taxes, meet the deadlines, and fix the car, while also remembering to look the part. But did I remember the one thing that I most wanted to do: write?

If there’s one task I don’t resent, it is to write. Writing resists routine. When you write something, you don’t write the same thing again. Once it’s done, it doesn’t undo itself, and doesn’t demand to be redone the next day. Where everything else erases itself, writing is permanent.

Perhaps this is why writing feels like the greatest act of rebellion, the one task that they’d rather women not spend their time on.

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Essays by fellow writers on the writing prompt “Of Rituals and Routines”:

• Things you do to keep your inner child happy! by Abhishek Singh

• And the quiet choreography of the ordinary by Mansi (Thehraav Studio)

• My ruthless morning routine could make great Shah Rukh Khan cry by Isha Jain

• About childhood, habits and the rituals you curate by Disha

• The love language of predictability by Saniya Zehra

• I romanticize my caffeine addiction by Shubha

• How ten minutes of humiliation taught me the difference between rituals and routines by Nihil

1.

Shortly after we exchange phone numbers, my screen lights up with the first text. A volley of playful messages follows, until we give in to a phone call. We speak in the nighttime, the chosen hour betraying a furtive thrill. Every utterance is a tease; the more we say, the more remains to be said. The night dissolves into crimson morning, awakening our conscience. In obeisance to the watchful daylight, we wait until nightfall, the sound of our voices a balm against the daily assault of mediocrity. The longing deepens into an abyss. We know where this ends—it doesn’t. We jump in.

2.

One of us says it first. To go first is risky, for you have dared to contain the thrill, to box it, to stamp it with a label. The words hang in the air for a moment that feels like an eternity. Is it too soon?, we both wonder. But once the three words are repeated, tone and lilt intact, the balance is restored. Sweet nothings are offered and returned, even and whole. We preserve the joyous equilibrium with weekend getaways, dinner reservations and movie nights that double as magnificent social media posts. But when no one’s looking, there are meal plans, grocery runs, utility bills, and the enduring discontent of an unequal division of labour. Monotony, monogamy, monogamy, monotony, until you can’t tell them apart. Cracks begin to appear along the decorated walls of our shared home.

3.

Like the sunshine in September that dims most imperceptibly, we’ve slipped into the autumn of our time together. The texts that once proclaimed love are first ignored, then left unanswered. The longing is gone, for we’ve had enough. You were the one to say it first; they will be the one to say it last. I love you is never a question, yet they choose to answer it for you, over and over again. What keeps us together is not devotion, but disbelief. Am I still the person they once loved, or was I never that person?

4.

One of us says it first. A different set of three words this time: I’m done. We feign surprise, as if we don’t know what is to happen next. The door cracks open, admitting the shadowy third who has always waited at the threshold. Never as a person, but always as an idea. This is the equinox, with the light and dark in equal measure. How it ends is also how it begins.

1.

The screen lights up with the first message, characteristically tentative, surely harmless. You already know what follows, but I’ll tell you what changes. The clatter of dishes in the kitchen sink and the drone of the television in the drawing room give way to the lilt of laughter, doused with longing. The rhythm feels new, but it is old as time. The thrill returns, and so does the feeling that this might last forever. For a while, it does. Until, as always, it doesn’t.

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You can read the other essays in this series here:

• Seasons of Change by Devayani Khare, Geosophy

• Seasons of Change by Aarti Krishnakumar

• Bengaluru Weather: Our Greatest Love Affair by Vikram Chandrashekar, Vikram’s Substack

• #10 On Seasons By Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

• The deck of Seasons by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter

• Festival Season by Rakhi Kurup , Rakhi’s Substack

• One Long Summer Afternoon by Mihir Chate, Mihir's Substack

• In Glory of Monsoon and Love by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wanderings of a Wanderer

• How to steal a summer by Sailee Rane, Sunny climate stormy climate

• Seasons will come and go by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home for Homeless Thoughts

• A rain song that makes you wonder what season it is by Eshna Benegal, The Deep Cut

• A Season for Murder by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote.

• What I Remember by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls

• Phobjikha by Ayush, Ayush’s Substack

• Feels like Spring by Shaili, Lit Curry

For the benefit of those who read only in English, I considered offering a translation of the title. The translation would also have helped me understand the writing prompt for myself, and therefore, also, what to do with it. Sure, I could’ve turned to GPT for a suspiciously perfect rendition, but I chose instead to put my linguistic dexterity to the test, to see if switching from one language to another is really as easy as we make it sound in Delhi, as easy as it is to transition from a title in Hindi to an essay in English.

But, I failed. What does “Dilli Wali Baat” even mean? When I couldn’t come up with anything that captured the essence of the phrase, I realised that the phrase, quite like my feelings about the city that I call home, is decidedly untranslatable.

~

I was born and raised in Delhi, and never really left. I went to school, college, and university here. The only semblance of ‘real’ jobs I’ve ever had were here. My closest relationships have seeded, blossomed, and wilted here. Every alma mater, my first home, my forever home, and all the haunts in between, lie within a familiar radius on the map. And, so, it’s hardly inaccurate to say that my life belongs here.

Growing up, I took Delhi for granted, indifferent to its offerings—the sprawling gardens that gladly engulf the city, the public parks that dot its map, the wide roads that admiringly meander around the magnificent monuments, the quaint buildings, the glorious museums. It wasn’t until I found myself stuck in Bangalore’s traffic, perhaps its most enduring cultural landmark, only to arrive at a noisy watering hole where existential dread is drowned in small talk, and every conversation begins and ends with a LinkedIn summary, that I realised what I had lost in leaving Delhi.

~

Among all the things that we learn not to take for granted, home isn’t one. How could I have known that taking my home for granted would be a problem, for I had never imagined a life elsewhere? A perk of belonging to a big city, certainly one as big as Delhi, is that you’re rarely forced to leave. You stay unless you choose to leave, insofar as choice is an illusion. Opportunities from elsewhere have come knocking many times, but I’ve never been good at answering calls. Over the years, I retreated further into the folds of familiarity, not knowing that it could breed much more than just discontent. And, then, slowly but surely, in the guise of an elusive necessity, Bangalore came into my life.

If you’ve been reading my essays faithfully, you will have noticed that I can’t seem to talk about Delhi without mentioning Bangalore, and Bangalore means little to me outside of its comparison to Delhi. The closest I’ve felt to home in Bangalore is with the Substack Writers’ group, where our monthly writing prompts are generously broad themes rather than specific topics. In comparison, “Dilli Wali Baat” felt somewhat prescriptive, as if it had already decided what to make of the city and, therefore, of this piece. But, then, I realised that that was perhaps the most Dilli Wali Baat of all: literality, or the love for stating the obvious.

Earlier today, as I watched the DL (Delhi) license plate of my car being replaced with a KA (Karnataka) one, a transition long overdue, I harked back to that essence of Delhi and reminded myself that not every moment is one of metaphoric significance. It’s acceptable for the DL-to-KA transition to belong to the vehicle alone.

~

In the place we call home, it’s particularly difficult to tell the chaos apart from the comfort. Which may explain why it’s possible to delight in an unbearably hot, polluted, bombastic city that is hostile to outsiders, even though, in many ways, everyone at home in Delhi was at one time an outsider. My father once remarked, “Dilli ka toh apna kuch bhi nahi hai (Nothing in Delhi is truly its own)”. The dust blows in from Rajasthan, the winter from Kashmir, the labour force in collars of all colours from everywhere else. Toh shayad Dilli wali baat bhi Dilli ki nahi, meri hai. (Maybe, then, “Dilli Wali Baat”—or the thing that’s peculiar to Delhi—isn’t Delhi’s at all, but mine.)

Essays by fellow writers:

WRITINGS FROM MY DAILY JOURNAL

Dilli Wali Baat

This essay was written as a part of a collaborative exercise with fellow writers in the Delhi NCR Substack group. Links to their essays are at the end…

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a year ago · 4 likes · Disha

The Indian Story

Dilli wali baat

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a year ago · 3 likes · Isha Jain

anotherBlog

Dilli wali baat

This essay was written as a part of a collaborative exercise with fellow writers in the Delhi NCR Substack group. Link to their essays are at the end…

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a year ago · 4 likes · Abhishek Singh

The Strategy Guild

Dilli Wali Baat: A City Seen From the Inside

Hello, it has been a while…

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a year ago · 2 likes · Ved Shankar

Intersections

Dilli Wali Baat

This essay is part of a collaborative writing exercise by the Delhi NCR Substack Writers Group, where each writer explores their interpretation of "Dilli Wali Baat" - those quintessentially Delhi experiences that only we understand…

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a year ago · 2 likes · Nihil

Thehraav

Dilli wali baat

This. Is a long Disclaimer…

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a year ago · 3 likes · Mansi Goel

I recently made my podcast debut, as one inevitably does nowadays. I was invited to discuss dreams, a subject I’ve written about with some seriousness over the years. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite the experience I’d hoped for, because the channel caters to a predominantly Hindi-speaking audience. Within the cultural echo chamber of a solitary language, the nebulous terrain of nightly dreams veers towards the occult. What is simply to be felt in a dream begins to be feared. The hosts, seemingly unaware of the nuance, dismissed my concern. “Don’t overthink it,” they said. “Just speak like you do at home.”

Like many Indians of a certain socio-economic class, I grew up comfortably bilingual. But, unlike most, I didn’t reserve one language for the home and the other for the world. I spoke both languages at home: English with my mother, Hindustani with my father. Each tongue sounded like the parent it belonged to, its syntax changing over the years. At the age of eight, I was introduced to a third language. Français was a chic, first-worldly addition to the repertoire. Among the three, English remained the language I returned to.

In the milieu of Delhi, fluency in English signals a kind of privilege that ostensible wealth can never match. My command of English has often preceded me in rooms, inviting awe and disdain in equal measure. My neglected, imperfect Hindi, on the other hand, has always been indulged. Fumbles are forgivable, even “cute”.

My problem with Hindi was never about proficiency. Hindi is an intimate language. Tu, tum, aap (three ways to say “you”) – Hindi insists on defining the dyad. English allows for distance. With strangers, I prefer English. But the access to English has never been equal. And so, when I speak Hindi, I hold back, unwilling to share its intimacy with just anyone.

~

As an early adopter of social media, I was quickly acquainted with the performativity of language on the Internet. I remember agonising over the “About Me” section of hi5 and MySpace. There are few undertakings more perversely narcissistic than having to describe yourself for an audience (and yet, more subtly, I do just that in these personal essays!). I reached for the most ornate adjectives I could find. A friend with a proclivity for puns bestowed on me the fond title of “Rictionary”. My first-ever troll commented, “English toh aise bolti hai jaise maa-baap England se hain (You’d think her parents were British, the way she speaks English)”. My way with words had become a proxy for my intellect, and, dare I admit, for my sense of self.

~

When I was five, my parents decided I was going to the wrong school, and I was made to switch. Let’s, rather unimaginatively, call the two schools A and B. In moving from School A to School B, I went from being a chatty child, gently reprimanded for having too much to say, to becoming unrecognisably silent, bearing the cross of the “quiet” child. School B had styled itself as the pinnacle of post-colonial aspiration; students were berated for letting slip even a word of Hindi. Watching my classmates struggle with words for sundries like box and bottle in English, I concealed my fluency. On the rare occasion that I was asked to speak, I would pretend to fumble, a miserable attempt at fitting in. My silence is what my old classmates still remember me by. Even so, in forgetting how to speak, I learnt to write.

~

On the periphery of everyday exchanges, there’s a cacophony of unfamiliar lilts. My partner’s family speaks Telugu, Bangalore insists on Kannada, and inside my phone lives a nearly-1900 day Duolingo streak for French. I may think, write, and dream in English, but my favourite language is the one that my dog understands. It’s the best one, for it has no need for tenses – no past, no future, only the comfort of now.

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Essays by fellow writers:

• Loss of a language By Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack

• Beyond Words and Dialects by Aarti Krishnakumar, Aarti’s Substack

• In search of my lost mother tongue by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

• The language question by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• Geography & Language by Devayani Khare, Geosophy

• The Dance of Languages by Haridas Jayakumar, Harry

• Poetic Silence - From Anand Bhavan to 3039 and back by Amit Charles, @acnotes

• No Garam Aloo in Tamil Nadu by Ayush, Ayush's Substack

• Lost in translation by Vikram, Vikram’s Substack

• I’ve been thinking a lot about tongues, again. by Ameya, (Always) Ameya

• The Language Beneath Words by Mihir Chate, Mihir's Substack

• What does this mean? by Nidhishree Venugopal, General in her Labyrinth

• I love the Language of, by Shruthi Iyer

• The Language of Murder by Gowri N Kishore | About Murder, She Wrote.

• Jal-Elephants, Thread-Navels, and Other Sanskrit Beasts by Rajat Gururaj, I came, I saw, I Floundered

• Of Language, Love and Longing: Politics, Mother Tongue and Loss by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• The Bengaluru Blend by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls

• An Ode to Languages, by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

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Among the many questions I loathe—what I do for work, what it means to be a writer, why I don’t want kids—I also dislike being asked where I live.

Let me venture a guess. You were born in one place, but grew up someplace else. You studied in one city, but found work in another. Maybe your childhood was nomadic, because your folks switched jobs, changed homes, rotated their circle of friends. If you identify as a certain gender, then maybe you moved in the aftermath of an event called a wedding.

But, my story is different.

I was born and raised in Delhi, and never really left. I went to school, college, and university here. The only semblance of ‘real’ jobs I’ve ever had were here. My closest relationships have seeded, blossomed, and wilted here. Every alma mater, my first home, my forever home, and all the haunts in between, lie within a familiar radius on the map. And, so, it’s hardly inaccurate to say that my life belongs here.

But if you ask anyone, “Where is Richa’s home?”, the unmistakable, unthinking, unquestioning answer is “Bangalore.”

~

If you’ve been reading my work for a while, wading through the word count of each essay, you’re likely familiar with the plight of my living arrangement: I live between two homes, one in Delhi and the other in Bangalore. To some, this is a problem of plenty. To me, it is the invisible agony of constant choice. And, so, I exist in both homes simultaneously: corporeally in one, and in the silhouette of my absence in the other.

Growing up, I took Delhi for granted, indifferent to its offerings—the sprawling gardens that gladly engulf the city, the public parks that dot its map, the wide roads that admiringly meander around the magnificent monuments, the quaint buildings, the glorious museums. It wasn’t until I found myself stuck in Bangalore’s traffic, perhaps its most enduring cultural landmark, only to arrive at a noisy watering hole where existential dread is drowned in small talk, and every conversation begins and ends with a LinkedIn summary, that I realised what I had lost in leaving Delhi.

~

Through the many years that my partner and I were long-distance dating, my visits to Bangalore were just that—visits. It didn’t matter how long I spent here, or how many coffee mugs and bedsheets and towels I had to my name in the house that we shared. I simply wasn't expected to live here.

The change in my marital status immediately altered the nomenclature of my trips—I no longer visited, but resided in Bangalore. When I used to visit, I was expected to return, for no particular reason. I’m not expected to return anymore. It’ll be nice if I do, but it won’t matter if I don’t, because, like a dutiful wife, I must accept this as my home, as my place in the world, for no particular reason.

~

I am sometimes asked when I moved to Bangalore (because surely I must have moved!). My response betrays the uncertainty in my voice. When it feels safe, I admit that I haven't quite moved, because I have lost the distinction between visiting and residing. When your life fits into the dimensions of a single suitcase with plenty of room to spare, are you really moving?

Even as I claim that Bangalore isn’t home, it’s at the gentle urging of its writers that I’m writing again, even if only in fits and starts. Where is home, after all, if not at the writer’s desk?

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You can read the other essays in this series here:

• Looking Down over Bengaluru by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

• Blossom Book House, Bangalore by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• A Walk, A Pause by Mihir Chate, Mihir Chate

• Bookless in Bangalore by Vikram Chandrashekar Vikram’s Substack

• Bangalore: A personal lore by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

• Bangalore,once by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls

• My love story with Bengaluru by Rakhi Anil

• Bangalore Down the lane of History by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• Nagar Life by Nidhishree Venugopal, General in her Labyrinth

• Belonging by Shruthi Iyer, Shruthi Iyer

• The Street Teaches You by Karthik, Reading This World

• The Wild Heart of Bangalore by Devayani Khare, Geosophy

• A Love Letter to Bangalore by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home for Homeless Thoughts

• Movies Dates, Bangalore and Them by Amit Charles, AC Notes

• A Haven? Awake in Bangalore, by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

• My love affair with blue skies by Sailee Rane, Sunny climate stormy climate

• A City That Builds Belonging by Sathish Seshadri, Strategy & Sustainability

• There and Back Again by Ayush, Ayush's Substack

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This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers’ Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘TIME’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 400 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

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How long is twenty years?

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be older. In the age of my innocence, I failed to notice that women age differently; not one birthday after another, like everyone else, but in the one minute of the microwave oven, in the four minutes of the French press, and in the hour point five of the dishwasher. 

To want to be older was a cry to be taken seriously, which I would later learn is not a privilege dispensed in accordance with age. 

On my thirteenth birthday, I trotted round the house, triumphant that I had crossed the threshold of childhood. I was eleven when I started reading literary fiction. The grown-ups were visibly discomforted by what they imagined I was reading: Are you old enough for this? 

I would count the years until I could grab the wheel, cast my vote, enter a nightclub, get a drink.

True to form, on the very day I turned eighteen, I, queen of procrastination, promptly enrolled in driving school. The year was 2007. My newly acquired driver’s licence warranted a celebratory dinner. I remember holding that rectangular piece of glossy plastic at the table that evening, tracing my fingers over the printed text: Valid until 2027. 

The licence to drive a private vehicle in India is valid for twenty years from the date of issue, or until the holder turns forty, whichever comes earlier. After the age of forty, the licence is issued only for ten years and thereafter for five years subsequently, a poignant reminder of an expected decline in sensory faculties as we age.

I recall the odd sense of emptiness that filled me that evening. More than once, I remarked that I could barely envision my life in 2027, twenty years later! At the time, twenty years was longer than I had lived. I had no measure for that immense duration of time. 

Now, as I write this piece, we’re halfway through 2025. Much of that once-inconceivable expanse of time has passed. I couldn’t have foreseen a thing about the life that was yet to unfold for me. I had no plans in particular, not even a blueprint; a long, gaping period of time stretched out before me until the year 2027. 

Reams have been written about how life passes you by, yet there’s nothing like finding yourself at the far end of what you thought was forever.

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Pieces on ‘TIME’ by fellow writers:

• “So… When will shit actually hit the fan?” by Sailee, sunny climate stormy climate

• Time: I Just Want to See It, Watch It Move by Abhishek Singh, The Comic Dreamer

• Timekeepers - Retracing the Universe’s Deep-Time Signatures by Devayani Khare, Geosophy

• Keeping Time by Reshma Apte, Fanciful Senorita

• Locating Myself In The Map of Time by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home For Homeless Thoughts

• The Thing We Pretend To Understand by Avinash Shenoy, OfftheWalls

• The lost intimacy with time by Siddharth Batra, Siddharth’s substack

• Lessons Time Taught Me by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• A Time for Worship by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

• “Tata Mummy Tata” by Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack

• The vicious cycle of sixteen - A dancer’s take on keeping time by Eshna Benegal, The Deep Cut

• How mystery writers play with the clock by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote

• TIME INFLATED, JUSTICE DEFLATED. by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

• What keeps the fool in me delighted by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• The endless ebb and flow of Time by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter

• Time, please! by Shaili Desai - Litcurry

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Without a label, my suffering remains free, aimless, unconstrained. You cannot cure me of an ailment that remains unnamed. I vacillate between wanting to hear it's nothing, that I'll be okay, that I am okay, while yearning for the acknowledgement that I'm indeed suffering. What is that acknowledgement if not a diagnosis?

How can I be both ill and well at once? If what I have is unnamed, what I could have is anything, even everything. A diagnosis is an exercise in elimination. Until then, possibilities loom large.

A diagnosis is a container. It labels my suffering, articulating in esoteric terms what endless reams of paper have failed to capture. My symptoms become a syndrome, no longer an unnamed, unnameable affliction.

Before you begin to wonder, this piece isn’t an attempt at intrigue. It’s not an instance of self-disclosure or an update on my circumstances, nor am I intentionally withholding the details of what I'm dealing with.

This piece is about what a diagnosis does to you. It's about how you resist being diagnosed, yet how, when the time comes, it finds you anyway. Symptoms breathe down your neck, heavy and hoarse, until you're forced to sit up, clutch your heart in agony, and hear them out. Until you're forced to give them a name. Everything that belongs to you must be named. Scattered symptoms assimilate into one resounding diagnosis.

This piece is also about how, when someone in your family suffers, you suffer just as much. Oh no, not because you love them and they love you (I won’t bore you with the obvious), but because the complexities of that relationship suddenly surface in ways previously undiagnosed. In early 2021, I wrote a piece titled Person Proposes, Divine Disposes. Four years later, I may be ready to write an even more difficult version.

This year, I had planned to write more. More is better is the universal refrain. More words, more often. In pursuit of more, I forever fall short. Thank god I made no public declaration of this plan. Am I relieved that there’s no one holding me accountable, even as I find myself facing circumstances that demand accountability like never before?

As I acquaint myself with fear and grief of an entirely new magnitude, faced with a situation I had long dreaded yet only ever imagined, I have no choice but to take it one day at a time. One word at a time. When I sit at my desk on days like today, the words hesitantly knock at my door. When I let them in, they splatter across the page, shapeless, formless, desultory like this “diary entry”.

Maybe all I ever needed to write was a quiet moment, this solitude contained by the assured presence of others. Maybe all I ever needed was a bigger problem, a bittersweet reminder that the smaller ones are indeed smaller. Maybe it's always been relative. Like I said when Covid first struck and the world cried woefully about uncertainty: Things were always uncertain. We just didn’t know it.

As an anxious person, if I say that I attempt to take it one day at a time, is that not victory of some kind? It’s okay that my essays on privacy in a collectivist society, on the perils of super-specialising in medicine, on the hollow heft of expertise, lie languidly, unattended in the drafts. They’re neglected, but not abandoned. For today, this is enough.

I'm tired of running around in circles, in thought and in action. This is my moment of rest. The real privilege isn’t a life devoid of suffering, but the comfort of a quiet moment like this one.

When there is no diagnosis, there is no talk of prognosis. You live as though you'll live forever. Your life isn't measured by prognostic parameters. You live through your suffering, yet you die by the diagnosis.

~

P.S.: I am okay. Things are okay. Please be assured that this piece isn’t meant to evoke worry or invite questions. I am truly okay. Thank you for reading!

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But, every now and then, I give in to impulse. Today’s piece is an example of that, something I hastily typed out on my phone just a short while ago, in response to the overwhelming flood of Valentine’s Day marketing. I haven’t stepped out today, but I haven’t needed to—my phone shows me what the world looks like today, and I suspect it's the screen that’s rose-tinted.

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~

Valentine’s Day, like every other commercially ordained celebration, has meant nothing to me. Perhaps only in the fleeting years of my early teens did I hope for a little magic, for a little something just beyond reach. But it wasn’t long before I saw through the sleight of hand and learned to distrust anything that only seemed to matter once a year. What we once mistook for the magic of romantic love was just late-stage capitalism at work, forcing shy sentiment into gaudy spectacle.

Even so, I have memories of this day, some of which I will recount today. On Valentine’s Day in 2010, I went out for coffee with two close friends of mine at the time. To describe those friendships in purely platonic terms could be misleading. There was romance in the mix, though how real and transcendental it was, and not simply the product of circumstantial ennui, will always be up for debate. The café was a stone’s throw from where I live now. It was a bookstore café, charming and quaint in the way those places used to be. This café died a Covid death, as many things did, quietly disappearing without making it to the statistics. All through my years at college, I frequented the place for solo writing dates and their carrot cake. I no longer believe in the magic of carrot cake, and to go on a solo writing date, I have to be writing.

That evening, as I sat with my two self-proclaimed “boyfriends” for the occasion (we were on an ironic V-Day date), I received an email unlike any other. I read it right there at the table (quietly, of course), on my phone. This was the era of the business phone, which wasn’t so smart that it drove you crazy, but it was smart enough to let you read your email on it.

The email was from a longstanding “pen pal”, someone I had never met in person. Ours was a relationship built entirely on the written word, which is why, in many ways, it was probably the strongest one I’ve ever had. The email began with an assumption, one that was tinged with perceptible hesitation, that I had likely received a hundred such messages that day. I hadn’t. This was unlike any I had received until then, or thereafter.

I didn’t respond to the email right away, because its contents had caught me off guard, and I could hardly think of an appropriate response that combined rejection with kindness in the right measure.

It took me ten years to find the right words. While talking to a friend yesterday, I realised that the instances in which you think you have “no words” are precisely the ones where you have too many. On Valentine’s Day, 2020, in the city of Bangalore, I printed that email, wrote a handwritten letter in response, and delivered it in person—along with a promise. Later that year, I married this person. Lest I make this sound like a reckless leap of faith, know that this was as deliberate and well-thought-out a decision as can be.

This piece is to assure you that Valentine’s Day means nothing to me. It never has. I don’t subscribe to the construct of romantic love, much less to making a show of the private life. But February 14? It’s a day of strangely beautiful coincidences.

Love will come and go, but what will stay is the memory of how it made you feel while it lasted.

~

This post is dedicated to:

Sandeep, my Valentine, then and now.

Arpita, without whom I wouldn’t have been ready to write today.

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On the eve of another birthday, I find that my feelings about the occasion remain unchanged from last year. Just as unchanged is how I will likely spend the day. As the birthday unfolds along its predictably uneventful contours, I may be tempted to believe that time has stood still between thirty-five and thirty-six. And yet, for one birthday to resemble another is a privilege as remarkable as any.

To mark the occasion without having to write something new (just yet), I’m sharing an assortment of past posts that befit the birthday. Whether you’re a longtime reader or new here, I hope you find something that resonates.

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While I would hardly describe my childhood as joyous, the instance of receiving a gift was among the rare moments I remember with great fondness. Beneath the allure of the shiny wrapping paper was a gift box that contained something new (novelty), something yet unknown (surprise), and something that was to be exclusively mine. Of course, my excitement was instantly halved when, on occasion, I was told that the gift was meant to be shared with my brother. And if, for some reason, the gift failed to “spark joy”, I wasn’t the one who had to worry about what to do with it.

Years later, I find myself reflecting on how the ritual of gifting—both receiving and giving—has changed in adulthood. What was once an instance of unadulterated joy is now laden with the weight of obligations and cultural complexities.

I remember my first American Christmas with my cousins. "What do you want?" they had asked weeks in advance, expecting an exhaustive enumeration of my material desires. “Oh, nothing!” I had uttered almost reflexively.

Even as I claimed to want no gifts, I can hardly recall a time in my life when I have wanted “nothing”. Yet, every time I am asked, that remains my unchanging response. As a culture, we’re particularly uneasy about broadcasting the things we want. We are taught, very early, to refuse the things we deeply desire, and to patiently endure the unnecessary and even the unbearable. The much-needed warmth of a hot beverage on a cold winter evening is instinctively met with polite refusal. A gift card to your favourite store is meant to be turned down. You shouldn’t be seen as wanting anything. And when you’d really rather be alone, you find yourself agreeing to spend time with people who know you the least—and care to know you even less—simply because it’s the more polite and socially acceptable thing to do.

On that Christmas morning with cousins, I awoke to find some presents to my name under the tree. I was grateful, but also guilty, because here I was only receiving gifts and not giving any. When it was time to unbox the presents, I hesitated. Cultural conditioning shows up least where you expect it to, and gift giving is one of those instances. I was expected to rip open my presents right there, with everyone watching, so they could observe my unfiltered reaction to each gift. That the so-called unfiltered reaction is a carefully crafted performance is no secret. Having never created a wishlist, I was now saddled with a bunch of items I didn’t particularly care for. Still, I played my part, making all the right noises, a well-rehearsed performance of gratitude and gracious reluctance. Perhaps those gifts continue to lie somewhere in the depths of my closet, buried in the ever-growing pile of oblivion that is unwanted presents.

​​On another occasion more recently, I was visiting my partner’s family in Andhra Pradesh. We were invited to lunch at a relative’s home, where I was gifted the customary ‘blouse piece’. That must have been the eleventh or twelfth blouse piece I had received, because it’s the go-to gift every time I visit any of his family. For the unacquainted, a blouse piece is a length of fabric intended to be tailored into a blouse to pair with a saree. In Andhra Pradesh, gifting blouse pieces to women during home visits or special occasions seems to be a cherished tradition—one among their many, many traditions that are rarely questioned or updated.

While I appreciate the practicality and goodwill behind the gesture, I can’t help but notice how the identity of the recipient becomes irrelevant in these instances of gift giving. Each blouse piece reflects the giver’s assumption of what a woman should want, rather than what she might actually prefer. Dressed in my customary black-on-black sweatshirt and sweatpants, I accepted the blouse piece with such élan that you’d think I was running dangerously low on my supply of random blouse fabrics. The givers were visibly pleased with their reliable, foolproof choice, while I returned home to my wardrobe and thought, as always, that despite all the clothes in the world, I still have nothing to wear.

Then there’s my grandmother, who gifted us three silver Hindu deities to mark the anniversary of a wedding that we chose not to have. “For your library,” she said, making the assumption I’m not the sort to have a designated place of worship at home. The three Hindu deities—Ganesha, Laxmi, and Saraswati—symbolise wisdom, wealth, and knowledge, all of which I seem to be in dire need of, that too in silver-plated form. Sure, I appreciate the thoughtfulness, but I can’t help but feel irked by the string of assumptions such gifts often make about the recipient. It reminds me of a friend, a trans-man, who routinely received gifts from his family that were deliberately chosen to evoke his femininity in the years before he came out. Assumptions about another person’s identity or needs can sometimes feel like the deepest transgression, and nowhere are these assumptions more evident than in the seemingly benign act of gift-giving.

What fascinates me most about these gift exchanges, especially here in India, is how they tell us more about the givers than the receivers. It's like we're all speaking different “love languages”, but nobody cares to use a translator (quite literally, when I’m in the Telugu-speaking region of Andhra). Quite like our unique style of communication, about which I hope to write soon. The blouse pieces speak of tradition and propriety, the deity figurines of spiritual concern, the Christmas presents of mandatory merriment.

I’d gladly take the gift registry route, but that feels far too immodest for our Indian sensibilities. Many wedding invitations explicitly state “No gifts, please,” assured that almost no one will arrive empty-handed. Instead, they hope to receive “shagun¹,” as it’s called, which conveniently sidesteps being labelled as a gift. No means yes, and yes means no. And we all seem to understand this unspoken rule perfectly.

[¹ Shagun is a traditional Indian gesture of giving money during special occasions like weddings or religious ceremonies, symbolising blessings, good luck, and prosperity. It’s often seen as a culturally significant alternative to physical gifts.]

If only we were vocal about what we desired (about more things than just gifts, of course), we wouldn’t be saddled with things we don’t need. Then again, who’s to say we don’t do the same to ourselves, buying items for which we have neither need nor room? Sure, not every gift is meant to be deeply personal or strictly utilitarian, but how liberally are we to judge the value of a gift? What’s the basis of gift giving: is it the sentiment or the utility? How do you measure, or at least experience, the “thoughtfulness” behind the gift? And, whose identity should take precedence in this exchange, the giver’s or the recipient’s? If you truly want someone to have something, is it really about them, or is it about you?

Here are some more of my burning questions about gifting for to answer:

• What kind of gifter are you?

• Do you unbox gifts as soon as you receive them?

• What’s the best gift you’ve ever received?

• How do you feel about less personalised but more flexible gifts, like cash or gift cards?

• Do you prefer giving or receiving perishable gifts, like confectionery or scented candles, or more lasting ones, like jewellery or decor?

• What do you do with gifts that you don’t like? Do you exchange them for something else, do you re-gift them, or do you allow them to sit around?

• How do you feel when you discover a price tag left on a gift you’ve received?

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Every boxed gift is weighed down by an assortment of assumptions and also cultural baggage. All the blouse pieces I’ve received have remained unstitched, the deities have never been worshipped, many of the Christmas presents unused, but maybe what matters is the intention, albeit communicated in the language only the giver seems to understand.

Before I end this piece, it is only fitting that I disclose my favourite type of gift. Nothing warms my heart as much as a thoughtfully written note. Coffee and makeup are close seconds. Everything else that I may ever need or want, although welcome, is already on the market.

P.S. I briefly considered writing something to acknowledge the end of the year, but I realised it wouldn’t be very different from what I wrote this time last year: Year’s End.

See you in the New Year!

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Fewer than five of my readers have asked where I’ve been since my last post, so I thought I’d begin by explaining my absence. A prolonged dry spell is a passable reason, but is it ever simply that? The ideas abound, but the words remain scarce. I have to coax the sentences out, word by word, hoping that they somehow align into a sonorous narrative that rings true. Any writer will tell you that, in moments like these, it's far easier to vacuum the carpet for the third time this week, rearrange the bookshelf by size, colour and intellectual weight, and polish the taps until they gleam like they've never known a single drop of water.

But why say, "I have no words," when the truth is that I’ve been evasive, unwilling to take a seat at the writing table? In August, it was an infestation of carpenter ants that drove me out of my bedroom, even as the unwelcome insects settled comfortably into the cracks around the doorframe. In September, it was the familiar disorientation of going from one home to the other. The dread of the displacement settled onto my skin and seeped into my bones, leaving me creatively paralysed. In October, I was engulfed by festive-themed nostalgia, unsure of which part of my rose-tinted past I was longing for, while meticulously sweeping under the rug some nagging health concerns. And, as if that weren’t enough, there were a couple of family health emergencies thrown into the mix.

During this dry spell, I have started and abandoned countless pieces on subjects close to my heart—collectivist styles of communication, my decade-and-a-half-long debate on the institution of marriage, dream interpretation in the age of GenAI, and more. But then, a series of doubts crept in: Should I "save" this for my book? Am I ready to divulge so much personal detail for the sake of a larger point? But isn't that the very purpose of my writing—personal essays on psychosocial issues? Then, why am I not writing? Doubts linger on the blank page. 

I’m finally breaking the spell with some thoughts on "airplane mode”, reserving the loftier subjects for later.

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The Airplane Mode Epiphany

On a recent flight, I found myself instinctively switching my phone to airplane mode right before takeoff. As a seasoned but anxious flyer, my seatback is upright, my window shade is lifted open, my seatbelt is tightly fastened, and my phone is (always already) on airplane mode—all before the crew can ask. Interestingly, the crew no longer asks us to do that last bit. Nor are there any announcements or visual indications that recommend putting your phone on airplane mode. Yet I follow the ritual, careful not to cross the imaginary lines, feeding the omnipotent fantasy that my tiny phone might hurt the gargantuan plane. Back when it was mandatory to switch to airplane mode, I never asked why. Now that it isn’t, I haven't asked why not. I simply comply: obediently, cautiously, but, most importantly, unquestioningly. 

That night, as I drifted into the particularly sweet, fatigue-induced sleep that seems reserved exclusively for travel days, I realised that my habit of switching to airplane mode is an analogy for unquestioning obedience. Many people, especially those who don’t think to question convention, spend their entire life on ‘airplane mode’. They follow a societal blueprint: go to school, follow a conventional career path, buy a home, get married (to marry for love is rebellion in itself, so, to not marry at all—well, Indian society isn’t ready to entertain that thought), procreate, and then pass along the same template to their kids. Never asking why. Just as I never do, before putting my phone on airplane mode.

The tendency to follow the script without question becomes particularly apparent when someone deviates from the norm. When I question the relevance of marriage—the inherent power imbalances and the misogynistic underpinnings of the institution, when I talk about being child-free by choice, reclaiming womanhood beyond an ageing body, when I refuse to subscribe to the distinction between my maiden and marital identity, it bothers many people. They’re discomforted when I declare that I’m a writer, that my “job” doesn’t fit neatly into a proverbial title, that I live between two cities without a clearly defined and conventionally accepted reason to do so, that I reject all symbols of marital status even though my partner (i.e. ‘husband’) is my favourite person. 

Those who take issue with me questioning the norm are, in a way, just like me on an airplane. Perhaps they never thought to ask why. Just as my ‘well-wishers’ are overwhelmed with discomfort when they learn about my choices, I feel uneasy when I notice the person next to me hasn't switched to airplane mode and continues to live stream a video as we ascend sharply into the sky. This essay, like that moment before takeoff, is simply a reminder to let people do their own thing. The plane isn't going to go down—literally or metaphorically—at least not because someone’s breaking an outdated rule!

From now on, I hope to use ‘airplane mode’ as a metaphor for an unexamined life, remembering to ask why, or why not, before deciding how to live. This is a cue to anyone who needs it, to take their life off the default setting, questioning the template now and then. 

Meanwhile, my phone continues to be on airplane mode. Given my acute distaste for phone calls—especially the spontaneous ones—I often prefer to keep my phone on airplane mode, trusting that sensible people will have the courtesy to text first. And, honestly, if you can’t take a moment to craft a polite message to ask if I’m available, do I even want to be talking to you?

It’s your turn to answer at least one of these for me:

• Do you put your phone on airplane mode before takeoff? 

• How do you feel about impromptu phone calls? 

• What's the most unconventional life choice you’ve made so far?

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In some parts of the world, the title “women who drive” may sound as odd and unnecessary as “women who drink water.” But where I live, it’s a significant title, for a woman who drives is more than just a person behind the wheel; she is a story worth telling.

A woman at the wheel is not only an uncommon sight—even in the capital city of Delhi—but an emblem of privilege that simultaneously isolates and empowers. It tells a story: here is a woman who could afford a car, a private space where she can be herself—a home outside the home that allows her to take risks, explore, and steer her life in the direction of her choosing. Her well-wishers support her independence, never feeling threatened by it (as “well-wishers” are otherwise known to!). A woman behind the wheel is an instance of several stories, all of which are worth telling.

Yet, not all stories begin and end in the same way. Some women who used to drive have stopped. When I ask why, they tell me it’s because they no longer knew where they were going, a metaphorical crisis that became all too literal. But there are also women who drive well into what is often considered the ‘winter’ of their lives. One woman, about whom I learned some days ago, recently acquired a luxury car to take road trips with her friends. She turned ninety-one earlier this year. Back in the early 1950s, when divorce was scarcely heard of in India, much less accepted, this woman walked out on an abusive husband. She continues to thrive in ways her marital life never could have allowed. In learning to drive, women also learn to reclaim their lives.

Last month, I bid goodbye to my beloved car from Delhi, hoping to reunite with it in Bangalore. For about two weeks, the car remained en route, and the air tag I’d discreetly tucked away in the seat pocket rendered it untraceable in the interiors of the country. It finally surfaced in Bangalore yesterday. 

As they drove the car out of the driveway at home in Delhi, it dawned on me that this moment marked the end of a chapter in my life—the end of my youth. Quite ironically, in India, you stop qualifying as a youth after the age of thirty-five. This is the car I’ve driven since I was twenty, exploring the city on my own terms and falling in love with the freedom of taking myself places. It has been my most faithful companion through the many phases, places, and people in my life, an approving witness to my evolving taste in music, friends, and lovers, an enabler of late-night runs impelled by culinary cravings, an ally during heartrending exchanges over difficult decisions, a safe space out in the big, bad world. It has ensconced me in moments of despair, offering a sanctuary of solitude when the world has inflicted on me its customary sensory assaults. Ultimately, it has become the only thing I own that has found a place in every home I’ve ever lived in.

Although the car (still as good as new!) will stay with me in Bangalore, I fear that I don’t quite belong here, and my heart weeps at the end of this chapter in my life, just as it did when my brother left home to study abroad. Although that year was 2013 and I was surely old enough, I knew that it was specifically that day that marked the end of my childhood. 

The night before they took the car away, I sat in it for a few moments with my brother (who was visiting that week) and our dog, wondering if this was indeed the last time the three of us would be together in it. At the end of that week, the three of us would go our separate ways, deepening my fragmented sense of home. The weight of 'the last time' of any experience is hard to endure, yet you quietly carry it with you, like another burden in your body, sometimes allowing it to take the form of an unexpected corporeal growth (more on that later).

In the past month, I’ve met some remarkable women who have inspired me to stay behind the wheel, no matter Delhi or Bangalore. Among them, Rebecca deserves a special mention. Watching her confidently slide into the driver’s seat in Delhi was spectacular. Rebecca’s ease and assurance behind the wheel is a testament to how much at home she feels in the city (she’s from Houston and Chicago), perhaps even more so than I do.

Dear Reader, I wish you many good things, but most of all, I wish you never stop driving. 

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This piece is dedicated to my mother, in the hope that it inspires her to get back behind the wheel, to be the stellar driver she once was. May she race again, with the same unmatched zest she once had when driving me to school.

Perhaps this piece from the early days of the pandemic continues to be relevant, even as we have returned to so-called normalcy. Our pursuit remains to stay focused and to minimise distractions, so that we can pay attention to what really matters.

But, the question is: What matters, and how do we find that out?

Many of my essays run very long, the projected reading time often tending toward significant fractions of the hour. In the era of the dwindling attention span, it is therefore fitting to revisit this piece on the subject of distraction. 

Here’s one from the archives, with some modifications that the passage of time deems necessary.

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March 2020

There is a matter far more pressing that urges itself to be written about. Most ironically, I write on the subject of distraction.

In the beginning of the year, I was approached by an ed-tech entrepreneur to help him design ‘learning modules’ that can help students deal with distractions. The idea was too straightforward for my palate, and I said, “Don’t you think that the distracted student is being faithfully attentive to the very thing that they are distracted by?”. He was surprised, but interested, “I’ve never looked at it like that”.

Truth be told, I’d never thought about the phenomenon of distraction critically until then. When speaking of distraction, there’s always be an eager audience wanting to know how to “deal with it”, but there’s more to distraction than we’d like to believe.

Deemed an unwitting expert on the subject by virtue of my academic qualifications, I must have my say on distraction—in a manner so desultory that it bears a fascinating resemblance to the very effects of distraction.

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What is distraction?

As I understand it, distraction is typically an object or an experience that prevents you from being able to offer your undivided attention to something else—the more ‘important’ thing, obviously. Social media, vanity, voyeurism, etc. become the distractors, while work, drudgery, duty, etc. become the things that demand our faithful attention.

Modern discourse has rendered distraction an unnecessary obstruction, something that gets in the way of productive work. But it has also, quite interestingly, sanctioned the pursuit of certain distractions within the confines of ‘free time’. Free time is offered to many of us in the guise of the weekend, necessarily following the toil of the five relentlessly successive days of the week.

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Distracted From vs. Distracted By

Let’s begin with a rather simplistic example. 

If Instagram distracts us from the task at hand—drafting an application for that dream job, for instance—then is there anything that could possibly distract us from the bottomless pit of the Instagram feed? Or is Instagram the experience that ultimately holds our undivided attention, now and forever? Could we, at any point, begin to feel distracted from Instagram, and not exclusively by it?

(Please note that Instagram only serves as a working example for all things entertaining.)

Let’s take another example. 

The lure of a liaison could be an excellent distraction from the tedium of a marriage. However, if and when granted legitimacy, perhaps the affair will also begin to seek greener pastures. Clandestinity may indeed be the key to devout attentiveness. Isn’t it always more alluring to do something secretly, in the absence of social sanction, forever dancing on the edge of being found out and having the time of your life? 

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Distraction as Respite

For as long as the coronavirus disease is a pandemic, any distraction from the grim situation is a welcome respite. The same can be said of any difficult life situation—divorce, disease, death, or even an unbroken succession of unfortunate episodes that qualify as a bad day. 

These are the moments in which distraction gets an approving nod—albeit provisional—from the authority figures that pretend to have risen above the dance of distraction. Here, here, distract yourself with a little something, while I focus on doing the important things.

Cook, clean, sing, dance, paint your nails, moisturise your hands, light a candle, clap your hands, applaud for the head of state at their commendable handling of the crisis, until there is a collective amnesia around all that we are being asked to do. 

Ignorance might be bliss, but forgetting is a really wonderful feeling.

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Distraction as Creation

Here’s another case for distraction. The classroom is the dispenser of all corrective-punitive actions, where you are repeatedly asked to remain attentive. Failing to pay attention is a bad thing. Looking out the window is a bad thing, and daydreaming is akin to a vice. When the teacher speaks, listen to them with rapt attention, silencing every other voice, including your own. At least that’s how it used to be in India when I was growing up. 

But, when you fail to look out the window, you refuse the delight of a reverie, and you refuse to be distracted by the spectacle that could perhaps become the spellbinding subject of your creativity. Of what use, then, is undivided attention?

Literature has rarely shied away from hailing the virtues of distraction, although it may not have called it that. Virginia Woolf’s two works—Street Haunting and Mrs. Dalloway—turn simple errands into a deep exploration of the city and its inhabitants, showing the reader how distraction (in these instances, the city environment) leads to profound reflections and literary creation. Distraction can indeed be a gateway to unexpected and rich intellectual undertakings. 

My most fertile ideas visit me not when I sit down to write, but during the monotony of mundane tasks like walking, showering or cleaning. These are the moments in which I’m doing nothing but the task at hand. It’s attentiveness of a very different kind. What looks like mindless cleaning on the outside, a menial distraction from loftier pursuits like writing, is rather the moment in which I do the real writing, only to put pen to paper later.

(Yes, this is why I clean as much as I do.)

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Distraction as Attention

And, so, it is befitting to redefine distraction. Distraction could simply be another way of paying undivided attention to something else. When we stop looking at distraction as a vice in need of correction, what we start to see is perhaps the most sincere form of paying attention.

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The Permissibility of Distraction

Just as being “too distracted” is discouraged, being “too attentive” reeks of addiction. Distraction is permitted only as long as it is already permissible.

Distraction is permissible as long as it is relegated to the window of free time, never attaining the value assigned to more worthwhile endeavours. As long as it is inoffensive and seemingly benign (i.e. it’s television and junk food, and not porn and drugs), as long as it never spills outside the lines carefully drawn to contain it, and as long as it never, ever looks out the window, distraction is permissible.

In carefully measured doses, distraction is, indeed, very welcome, as a means to remind us of the things that truly call for our attention. 

After all, if it weren’t for the lure of distraction, would we ever know that we are supposed to work hard, love faithfully and live honestly?

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If at all this subject is of interest to you, I invite to take a look:

Dream Remedy

Why don't we take our dreams seriously?

Bizarre, nonsensical, otherworldly—are these the words you use to describe your nightly dreams? The modern-day, rational individual often dismisses dreams as mere delusions. In fact, when I first began to engage with dreams seriously, I feared being labelled as 'mystical'. Who knows, maybe that fear has become a reality without me realising it…

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2 years ago · 1 like · Richa Vadini Singh

I will continue to write for this newsletter as usual.

See you around!

Love,

Richa

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It’s the summer of 2016. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” I declare.

He looks at me, silently begging me to reconsider.

"You say that each time," he laments, his voice heavy with frustration. “Don’t you want us to explore why this bothers you?”

"I've been trying to discuss this with you ever since I came here. On the very first day, I told you this wasn’t a good idea. You didn't listen then, and you’re not listening now."

"I have to leave," I say firmly, my resolve unwavering.

I walk out of his home, hoping that this is the last time I have to be here. Over the next couple of weeks, he tries everything—email, text, more emails, more texts. He never calls; at least he respects my distaste for phone calls. Of course, I could ignore his emails, but my neuroticism won’t let me. Even as I respond, I refuse to give in. 

“I don’t think I will change my mind,” I say over and over again.

Finally, he understands. Perhaps he only pretends to, because what choice does he have? He writes that he’s willing to change, and should I wish to reconsider, I know where to find him.

Eight years on, I have never felt the need to find him. I regret nothing, but that hardly means that I am not haunted by the manner in which things ended. It haunts me, because I have no language for this kind of loss—these kinds of breakups are seldom discussed. Of course, he’ll have his side of the story and I most definitely have mine. He was known to me long before we embarked on our weekly tête-à-tête in that exquisitely furnished room, and that’s why, despite my persistent protestations and his self-serving inclination, he should never have become my therapist.

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break-up | ˈbreɪkʌp | 

noun

• the end of a relationship: a marriage break-up.

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Romantic breakups are talked about aplenty. They inspire the lyrics of music, the verse of poetry and the dialogues of movies. When faced with a romantic breakup, we access the readily available template for what to do. Discard the memorabilia, block them on social media, swear by the cardinal ‘no contact’, etc. We know the drill. 

Depending on whether you’re the dumper or dumpee (I’ll eat my hat that day I chance upon a ‘mutual’ breakup), you follow a familiar path to recovery, until you can successfully go about your daily routine without intrusive thoughts about the person. That’s the very best that ‘moving on’ can be.

Contrary to popular opinion, romantic breakups are a cakewalk. After all, you walk away with the feeling of having had enough. I concede that the process of moving on is hardly linear. But among all types of severances, I believe that romantic breakups are the easiest. 

And, so, I’m here to discuss the more atypical breakups—the kinds that are talked about a lot less. Friend breakups, family breakups, and a third kind, which I will provisionally title ‘the elusive breakup’. Of this third kind, I can think of at least four examples. 

But, first, let’s talk about friend breakups.

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The Delicate Art of Ending a Friendship

Before the fateful year of the pandemic, there was little to be said about friend breakups. When Covid struck, we realised that social gatherings were perhaps only stand-ins for meaningful connection. The isolation served as the litmus test for friendship. 

My assessment criterion has always been simple: Can I talk to this person, freely and openly, without the fear of judgement from either side? Most of my friendships not only survived the test, but thrived within the confines of just good conversation. Physical proximity and social lubricants like alcohol were hardly necessary. In fact, I rarely drink around the people I actually want to meet. If ever you find me drinking in your company, I’ll let you assume that I’d rather be elsewhere.

My ‘wake up call’ came sometime in 2018, when I had long felt uncomfortable around those who claimed to care for me. It was time to purge these people from my life. It wasn’t simply that I had felt uncomfortable and was therefore ousting these people from my life. Credit me for more thoughtfulness than that! I put these feelings to many a rigorous test before affirming that it wasn’t me, but them.

This realisation was anything but easy. It was harder still because the conversation on ending friendships was sparse. My intentions were mercilessly doubted: What kind of person suddenly decides to shed people from their life? What seemed sudden was actually a decision years in the making. And then the pandemic happened, expanding the discourse on friend breakups; more people began to talk about outgrowing friendships, offering validation and articulation to what I had been feeling for a while. 

In recent years, I have also taken stock of what I consider ‘residual’ friendships. Not all of them were either equally or particularly awful, but they had outlived the context in which they were established. These included friendships from school, college, workplace, neighbourhood—relationships formed in a different time and under different circumstances. Some of these relationships were an odd consequence of my shyness, self-consciousness, and social anxiety, and there was little room left in my life to accommodate them. 

Incidentally, when I finally decided to cut ties with certain people is also when I first met—and reconnected with—some remarkable individuals who became my closest friends, allowing me to experience a profoundly secure intimacy. In letting go of the relationships I had outgrown, I discovered and cultivated the most meaningful friendships of my life.

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How do you break up with a friend?

When you decide to end a friendship, how do you initiate the break up? Do you let them know (without quite telling them) that you don’t want them around anymore? I tried that once and it hardly went well. 

In the absence of a manual on how to end a friendship, many of us subtly and gradually ghost the person. Here’s how it unfolds.

You begin to withdraw.

You decline their invitations. 

At first, you make excuses. 

Later, you don’t even need excuses.

You start talking to them less often, until you stop talking to them. 

Eventually, they confront you. 

You say it as it is. “It’s not me, it’s you.”

No one likes the sound of that.

On some friends, the subtlety is lost. Maybe they’re devoutly non-confrontational, so they pretend like nothing’s changed, when you both know that everything is different. With this kind of friend, you grow tired of trying. You repose in the seasons when they don’t contact you, keeping your side of the promise that the relationship is over.

Breaking up with a friend doesn't mean you stop missing them, even if you were the one to initiate the breakup. You're pained by the memories of who you were together, of how your shared lives shaped the contours of your day. There was a time when no thought, idea, or event felt complete without their involvement. And, so, for a while, the love that you feel for this friend will have nowhere to go. It’ll hang in the air, possessing you in your vulnerable moments, when you grab your phone and almost reach out to them.

Popular discourse may have us believe otherwise, but you can love someone without wanting them to feature in your life. Because you care for this friend, you wish them well. You may even want to celebrate their successes from afar. But that’s all you ever want. For example, my cursory text that reads "I hope you're doing well" isn’t meant to elicit a response, unless something is dreadfully wrong. I’m not looking to initiate a conversation; if I were, I’d have asked a question: “How are you?”. 

Because we don’t have a language for transitioning from intimacy to indifference, we’re left floundering for the best way to interact.

Breaking up with a friend is more than just about telling them that you’re ready to move on. How do you communicate to the others (mutual friends, for example) that you’ve now muted this friend on social media, that you don’t want to hear about their latest holiday, their social outings, their new friends? That you don’t want to be asked about their conspicuous absence from your life. That you’ve cut them off and that you need a clean break that clearly excludes updates on their activities and questions on their whereabouts. If this were a romantic breakup, I’d have a language in which to explain my needs, and I’d have little trouble getting everyone to comply. Alas, this isn’t a romantic breakup. It’s much harder than that.

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On Breaking Up with Family

Let alone the lack of a language, breaking up with close family enters the realm of the unutterable—is there such a thing as breaking up with a parent, a sibling, a child? Extended family is hardly exempt from the breakups—a toxic aunt, an intrusive uncle, or a combative cousin whom you once loved as a sibling. We may shudder to admit that we’re done with these people, for it takes inestimable courage to walk away from the first love you ever knew. But when you look closely, you realise it was inevitable. Perhaps, all along, you felt unsafe, unloved, unseen.

In collectivist cultures, harmful behaviours are routinely mislabelled as acts of love. Force-feeding is love. Furtively checking your phone is love. Forbidding you from going out of the house is love. Restricting your choices, dictating your attire, picking your life partner—this is the trademark of the well-wisher. Are you surprised, then, that the Indian Penal Code turns a blind eye to marital rape, because marriage implies consent born out of love? (Sure, it recognises domestic violence, but the kind that carefully excludes sexual violence.) And, what of unmarried, non-heteronormative couples, you ask? Ha, they’re not meant to be having sex in the first place.

With troubling familial relationships, there will always come a day when you see things for what they are. Maybe you will always love these people, but you no longer desire to be in their presence. There’s a lot of talk about ‘boundaries’ nowadays, which I appreciate very much, but that too is perhaps a poignant reminder of our inability to articulate the desire to break up with family. 

The day we accept that we love the people we hate, and hate the people we love, we’ll be okay. The day we accept that all the people we ever loved are perhaps all the people we never loved, we’ll be okay. 

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The Elusive Breakup

I don’t have a language to describe these types of breakups, so I will cite a few examples.

Example 1

It’s the summer of 2000. There’s a new addition to the class. I catch him staring at me from across the room. What an oddball, I think. 

That was a peculiar time, before we’d even had a whiff of dating apps, when love was confused with an obsession for the unattainable. Unrequited feelings were idealised as romantic, condoning stalker-ish behaviour in the best of us. 

Day after day, I’d find this boy looking at me—it felt more like gawking, really. I was old enough to attract sexual interest but young enough to believe that anyone who stared at me so intently must be out of their mind. I was partly intrigued, but mostly surprised—in a classroom full of pretty girls, why was he looking at me?

As time passed, the boy went from gawker to a beloved friend, but our companionship was short-lived. He was seeking the answer to a question I barely understood back then. I was incredibly fond of him, but he mistook my silence for hurtful rejection, and we fell apart. 

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

Tonight I Can Write, Pablo Neruda

This boy, now a strikingly handsome man, is no longer in my life, but he’s all over my social media feed. He exudes an irresistible charm, the kind that jumps at you through the cracks in the carefully curated content. Yet, I know in my bones that if I met him today, I'd despise him. He and I, we’re so different that we’re not even the kind of ‘opposites’ that’ll attract. He’s turned into (or maybe always was?) a chronic partygoer, and I have remained the recluse. If we met again, we wouldn’t last a moment. But, ah, those days!

Even all these years later, he features in my dreams every other night. Through these dreams, I explore and examine the unspeakable, that which waking life would never permit. Sometimes, I worry that these dreams will never end, because they are seeking the closure I never had.

How do you break up with someone you were never truly with? These breakups are particularly hard, because you’re breaking up with the possibility of what could have been. These relationships shine, for they are unblemished by the trivialities of everyday life that wear on other relationships. So, when they come to an end, how do you mourn the loss of that which you didn’t quite have? Can you ever feel like you’ve had enough of something that you’ve only just had a taste of? In a perpetual state of longing, you spend your life waiting for more. 

The following is a line I remember reading in one of Ruskin Bond’s short stories, maybe as long as 25 years ago. I was smitten with the line, just as much then as I am today. This may not be the exact quote (and, despite ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc., I’m unable to trace the original line), so I am leaving you with the essence of the quote as I remember it:

“I may have stopped loving you, but I may never stop loving the time that I loved you.”

Example 2

I remember looking up “How to break up with therapist” back when I was dealing with the aforementioned episode. I found little to help me make sense of why this person had betrayed my trust. With a therapist, one explores an uncharted intimacy—the intimacy of boundless self-disclosure. He was a good therapist; he urged me toward the lesser known directions of self-exploration, and for that I will forever be grateful. But I’m not sure a competent therapist is necessarily a good person, and for that I might never forgive him. How do you move past a betrayal that you can neither forgive nor forget? Especially the kind that goes wholly unrecognised. 

Example 3

What about when you’re let go from a job for no clear reason? In the age of work identity, when who you are is what you do (and vice-versa), how do you make peace with job loss? Late into the sleepless night, you ask yourself a barrage of questions that will forever remain unanswered: Was it the quality of my work? Was it my performance? Was the company struggling financially? Was it something else entirely, like them saying, “It’s not you, it’s ChatGPT”.

Anything that lacks closure, like being let go from a job and never being told why, haunts you because there’s no discourse around it. These are the things that happen to almost everyone, yet no one claims to have experienced them.

Example 4

What about the people who leave suddenly and unexpectedly, never giving you a chance to say goodbye? Not that you could have said goodbye, even if you knew they were going to go.

There will come a day when it’ll be the last time you’re doing something special, or even something ordinary, with someone you love. The most heartbreaking bit is that maybe that day has already been and gone, and we just don’t know it yet. An end without an ending—what kind of break up is that?

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Do you now believe me when I say that romantic breakups may just be the easiest of them all?

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Disclaimer: Some details in this essay have been deliberately obscured, and specific examples purposely omitted, all to preserve anonymity. Should anyone mentioned obliquely in this piece recognise themselves, please refrain from claiming your identity. Your anonymity is our best ally.

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Now, it’s your turn to lighten my burden. Tell me about an unconventional breakup in your life. How did you deal with it?

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Before the sun sets on International Women’s Day this year, I have a peculiar list to share with you. I will admit at the outset that I haven’t given this post too much thought, this list even less so.

Normally I look past this empty gesture of a day, but today, I had a brainwave. I’m tired of hearing about the women we love. So, let’s talk about all the women we love to hate.

Here’s the list:

Women who take too long to get ready.
But also women who refuse to dress up.

Women who don’t wear makeup.
But also women who wear red lipstick.

Women with lines and wrinkles on their face.
But also women who’ve had work done.

Women who talk too much.
But also women who never say anything at all.

Women who marry either too early or too late.
But also women who never marry at all.

Women who devote their lives to their children.
But also women who choose to remain child-free.

Women who stay at home.
But also women who have a life outside the home.

Women in leadership roles.
But also women in submissive relationships.

Women who have a voice of their own.
But also women who never speak up.

Women who gain too much weight.
But also women who lose too much weight.

Women who stay in a bad marriage.
But also women who leave that marriage.

Women who love to shop.
But also women who deprive themselves.

Women who display their symbols of marital status.
But also women who don’t ‘look married’.

Women who ask for it.
But also women who never ask for it.

Women who don’t identify as women.
But also women who identify as…women?

This list is hardly exhaustive, so please feel free to add to it.

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Let me leave you with a burning question. 

What does it mean to be a woman? For cisgender individuals who identify as women, do we know where that conviction comes from? Is it a feeling or an experience that we can describe? What’s the origin of that identity?

The day we stop admiring women simply because they are women (benevolent sexism), and the day we stop criticising women simply because they are women (obvious sexism), is the day we’ll finally stop celebrating Women’s Day.

Until then, Happy March 8!

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This post is particularly about birthdays; mine, specifically, but perhaps about yours, too. I have written extensively about the phenomenon of ageing, the politics of being asked your age, and the pursuit of physical beauty, so I’ll spare you a repetition of those thoughts.

The birthday, in its unique essence, is a day of exemptions and exceptions. It is a sweet pause in the relentlessness of the everyday, the quintessential “day off” from life, when you’re entitled to a little bit of entitlement, when even Indian parents give in to overt displays of affection.

This year on my birthday, I found myself looking back on every birthday growing up. My last birthday party was when I was eleven, a milestone that, in many ways, marked the end of my childhood. Exactly three months later, I got my first period, and I was told that I had grown into a “woman”. Perhaps my desire to be older, to be taken seriously, allowed me to look past the discomfort that that sentiment should have evoked.

On my twelfth birthday, I went out to dinner with my parents, my brother, and two of my friends. From then on, that remained the extent of my birthday celebrations. From then on, at the end of the day every year on my birthday, I would break into an inconsolable sob, unable to point to the source of my angst. To collapse into this state of inexplicable grief had become my birthday ritual. No one quite understood what it was that made this supposedly joyful occasion so difficult for me.

As I got older, birthdays became increasingly dreadful. The excitement I once felt for birthday traditions, like receiving phone calls from "everyone," was replaced with aversion. I couldn’t bear the thought of talking to the people I otherwise spoke to only once (maybe twice—their birthday and mine) a year. Each phone call, with its forced joviality and the inevitable, drawn-out rendition of the birthday song, had me cringing invisibly on the other side of the line.

Unlike on most other years, I was happy on my twenty-first birthday. I hosted two “house parties” with two different sets of friends. At the time, binge drinking was shockingly normalised and conflated with the idea of “fun”, so that’s what we did. 

After spending a few years being satisfactorily indifferent to my birthday, I had mixed feelings this year.

Thirty-five was my second birthday (ever!) outside of Delhi, my first time spending it in Bangalore. I have never known my birthday outside of the winter season. My only wish for my birthday was to feel at home, and to be able to write. But my loved ones believed that the day calls for something “special”, something out of the ordinary. While I delight in the eventfulness of the ordinary, I am not particularly at ease with the pomp of events such as birthdays (and weddings, but that’s a topic for another time). Even as we went about doing things around the city, my partner and I, commemorating the day as understatedly as we would have liked to, I couldn’t help but ruefully reflect on the evolution of my birthdays. 

My childhood wasn't exactly carefree, but my birthdays were often the bright spots—perhaps some of the happiest days I had. I recall the years just after I had acquired my first cell phone, when it would buzz nonstop with calls right at midnight. I'd juggle the calls, putting one friend on hold to answer another, as everyone patiently waited for their turn to greet me. This year, my phone made no impatient demands on my attention, creating an unexpected void. Most people who matter chose to greet me by text, which is my preferred method of communication anyway, so what was I sad about? 

At thirty-five, I’m sad because even as I shed people from my life, a part of me still waits for their phone call. At thirty-five, I realise that there are no days off from life.

Feb 2, 2024. It’s the stroke of midnight. I’m in the midst of editing the essay that is to be published later that day. My partner has stayed up well past his usual bedtime to mark the occasion. My phone rings shortly after. If my family were to be equally indifferent to my birthday, I would quietly continue to iron out the kinks in my essay. Some occasions, birthdays being a prime example, defy our attempts at indifference. And, so, with some reluctance, I’m drawn into acknowledging my birthday.

It was not until this year that I had ever considered writing about birthdays. Once the day had passed, the urge to explain how I had felt also faded, and the events of the everyday took over. Another crippling episode of health anxiety, a holiday in the snow-clad mountains, a surprisingly persistent stomach bug contracted on said holiday, not-so-new work prospects, more than some house guests, the customary Delhi-Bangalore-Delhi circuit, visits to my city’s celebrated book fair and its beauteous monuments; it feels like a lifetime has elapsed in the month since I turned thirty-five.

Now that the daily routine has regained its contours, I am ready to be a year older, or perhaps, more fittingly, a month wiser.

Birthday gift to myself:

As a chronic health anxiety sufferer, I faced an insurmountable fear this year. I had my blood drawn, and signed up for a reasonably extensive medical exam after years (many, many years!) of having procrastinated. The results haven’t been the most reassuring, so it might just be time to stop subscribing to adages like “age is just a number”. 

Now, let’s hear about your perspective on birthdays:

• What do birthdays mean to you?

• What do you desire on your birthday? (materially and/or experientially)

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