I was actually doing a random questionnaire on the web about what kind of friendship will suit me (I can send you the link if you guys want, lol). But it got me thinking, we never actually think about friends like, “I would like a tall friend, or a friend with blue eyes,” the way we do for our romantic partners. No outer attributes, only the inner ones, the ones you match with. We have always heard “I would never be friends with them,” plausible, understandable. But who would you actually be friends with? Look closely, the friendships which have formed despite the situations you were in. It happened just like that, you didn’t actively search for it (good things happen when you don’t look for it), you met, you clicked, and *snap of fingers*, you guys are friends. That’s crazy, right?

Talking about different types of friendships, the ones you clicked with, they’re your friends. Few people like to call them acquaintances, but I like the word friends better, makes me think I have so many of them, lol. Then come the ones you keep on consciously and subconsciously clicking with, somehow you keep maintaining it and they become your lifelong friends, few become best friends, but that “best” is just their descriptive title for you, they suit YOU the best.

And going in further, we have friends that faded, due to an argument, due to a misunderstanding, due to other options, and due to just life. And that’s the thing about life, it doesn’t ask permission. You got busy, they got busy, you found your people as life continues and they found theirs, and now it’s been years and neither of you have called first. Sometimes I also think about you guys, not sad about it, just aware of it. If I saw you tomorrow it would be like no time has passed, and we both know that, that’s the weird magic of that kind of friendship, it doesn’t need maintenance to still be real. So you specifically, whoever you are, thinking “oh,” you have left a part of yourself with me. The way I talk, some slang I still use, some habit I picked up without noticing, you’re still in there somewhere. Even the ones who ended on a bad note and we’re never getting that back, you left something too. My old roommate used to say “brother??” when she got annoyed at someone in front of me, and I still catch myself saying it now. [see this is the least dramatic goodbye I could write and I’m still tearing up a little, jasmine candles make me soft apparently]

And you know, there was this thing I used to say to a friend, “I will never be the one to leave first in a friendship”. Well, spoiler, that’s not entirely true anymore, but that’s a story for another 2am. This one is for the ones who have stuck with me, and I want this one to stay light and easy.

So this blog is for all of the above mentioned people too, and this is also a letter to my friends. That’s why not every friend gets a quiet exit paragraph, some of you get a whole dedication because you deserve the noise. This is me naming qualities, not names, so if you’re reading this and going “wait is this me,” it probably is, several of you, I contain multitudes of people I adore:

To the one who gets weirdly, productively jealous when I mention hanging out with someone else. Not toxic kind but a little unhinged. I love it.

To the ones who’d guard my leftovers like it’s Joey’s food, a very specific, very sacred kind of loyalty.

To the ones with Charles-from-B99 levels of attachment, who will go feral on my behalf over something I’ve already forgotten about. Thank you for caring more than I asked you to.

To the ones who did the whole “we’ll always be like this” bit, HIMYM style, the group that felt permanent because you were all in the same city at the same messy time. Few of you were absolute bitches, if we’re being honest. Some of you I still have, some of you became guest stars in a show that used to star all of us, and a few of you left for a season and just came back, we just picked up again like nothing happened. Everything’s okay, all of it.

To the ones who never once made me feel like I had to earn my place. To the ones who know exactly what all my tattoos mean, who knew about the show I was obsessed with for weeks, and know exactly how my OCD hits when it comes to all of this. To the ones who are okay with my ugliest laugh, who know all about my exes. To the ones who know about my absolute LOVE I have for my fictional characters. (Nobody knows how I like my coffee, not even I do, but you know everything else.)

But yes when we think of these shows, we think of Jim to my Pam, or Jake to my Amy, or Chandler to my Monica. But that’s secondary. Even Garrett Graham to my Hannah Wells is secondary. Because when I think of it, I think of friendships first (and maybe that’s just me now), I think of Allie to my Hannah or OG reference: Caroline to my Max.

And tonight I want to talk about the future a little too, the friend I’m still manifesting, or maybe I already have her. Not a boyfriend, a special kind of roommate, my own personal “2 Broke Girls” (but please universe make us insanely rich), the one who’d look at me and say “promise me we won’t end up like that.” I’m picturing her as the one I’d go grocery shopping with, or lay my head on her stomach, scrolling through my phone while we discuss boys (I love being a girl’s girl). [side note: this post is fairly gender-fluid when it comes to friendships in general, the “her” is just how my brain pictures it tonight] Drinks on a random Tuesday for no reason, and by Wednesday we’re talking about starting a business together. Not exactly a big moment. That’s the whole point. And if she matches my neurotically obnoxious laugh when I crack the silliest joke (I love laughing at my own jokes) I already love her for it.

So yes, happy belated Friendship Day to the ones who stayed, the ones who left a piece of themselves behind anyway, and the ones I haven’t met yet.

Hey Alexa, play “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”

Did You Feel That?

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People think being diplomatic is a new ‘orange is the new black’. But have you ever met anyone without an opinion? The truth is there is no one who doesn’t have an opinion, everyone does. The only thing is they don’t know the situation well enough to have an opinion. If you tell a person a thing in great detail, he/she is bound to have opinions. Even a “damn she bored me with those details” is an opinion.

And politics is something you’re surrounded by, even when you’re not aware of it. Everything is politics, from actual politics to fashion to tech to market to economy. The only point is how much you choose to ignore it, tbh. And a fool once said “ignorance is bliss”, well, I choose to say otherwise.

I like knowing it all, every single detail (and sometimes that detail could hit way too close to home but I will still choose to know it) even though it sometimes might involve stalking (oh please don’t think this post is for someone who will feel validated after stalking someone. PLEASE DON’T).

But wait, let me be a little honest here. Geographically, politically, geopolitically, historically, nada nada. I’m down to earth dumb (/dumbfounded) about it. I know nothing. Wait, correction: I knew nothing. But I think of myself as a knowledge monger, an info glutton [oops, heavy words alert ;)]. I love being intellectually voracious even though information doesn’t get retained in my head for the long term, especially when it’s needed in the conversation. You will find me doing “huh?” “uh?” “hm” mostly, ugh. But yes, these areas are also something I decided to be a little aware about, coz hey, a girl being political is hot, am I right, folks?

And I do have a good memory, which reminded me just now that we’re moving south of the topic. So yes, politics, what is it exactly? Politics is the quiet art of the human narrative, the eternal negotiation of power, the shared stage where we script our collective destiny. It is the architecture of human coexistence, built from compromise, ambition, and the fierce battle of competing dreams. Do I sound like a writer now? (Uh, I googled half of it just now.) Moving on. What’s going on in the world? How to be aware of it?

It is simple and not so simple at the same time. World politics. Man, how to be aware of the whole world altogether? Well, then be aware of your country. If you can keep track of which show is gonna come out when, how many seasons, what the storyline is, when the new Spider-Man movie is coming out (personal attack here: so excited for it, though), you can TRY to know about your country too. Read about it. If nothing else, your vocabulary will improve and you’ll know your own human rights. It has a lot of benefits, I can’t list them all.

If you just realised about Spider-Man, then I hope you might even have watched Daredevil and Punisher, since they’re kinda in the same storyline. Even watching that show, Kingpin was a corrupt mayor of New York. You were interested in that. But you’re not aware of the governing party irl, the one you or your parents actually voted for?

Now let me say it, because this I knew even while being dumb. When you choose someone to be your representative, be it a college section or the whole goddamn country, you are ALLOWED and you are SUPPOSED to question them whenever you feel like it. And they are ANSWERABLE.

Let’s stop beating around the bush and make it clear before we go further: this is not me handing you Politically Aware 101. I don’t have that. I’m not qualified to teach you anything about the constitution or geopolitics. But here’s the thing nobody tells you: you don’t need to be qualified to start paying attention. You just need to start. So consider this me dragging you along while I figure it out too. We’re doing this together, badly, in real time. Okay?

Topic 1 (country wise political news)

Quick disclaimer before I get into it: this isn’t exactly how it went down, down to the last fact. Do your own research if you want the full picture, this was never meant to be a political blog, so I’ve kept it short on purpose.

So here’s what happened, in the way I understood it, not the way a newspaper would tell you.

There’s this man, Sonam Wangchuk. Twenty-six days into a hunger strike, not for himself, he’s already educated, he wanted an audience for the rest of us. Twenty-one days of nobody showing up. Then, out of nowhere, they pick him up. Without his consent. Hospital. Someone probably called it a rescue. I call it what it looked like: nobody comes for three weeks, and then suddenly it’s an emergency the second the cameras start rolling, and more people started questioning.

That’s around when the anger boiled over into an actual march. A bunch of Gen Z kids called themselves the Cockroach Janta Party. Cockroaches, because apparently that’s what you become to a government when you won’t die quietly. They were angry about leaked exam papers, again, millions of students retaking exams they’d already broken themselves preparing for. So they marched, toward Parliament, July 20th.

Police called the march unlawful before it started. Fine, debate that if you want, I did, at midnight, like a functioning adult. But here’s what isn’t up for debate: kids ended up in hospitals with fractures and head injuries and blood clots, because lathi-charges are supposed to stay below the waist, and apparently that’s more of a suggestion. You can be against breaking barricades AND against cracking skulls. Both. At once. Wild concept.

Pradhan resigned. July 25th. CJP called it off “in good faith.” Wangchuk called it a win of patience. Cockroaches won, democracy won, they said.

A win is a win. One man alone, they could ignore. Thousands of people who wouldn’t go home, they couldn’t.

Still, accountability is owed. The people who got hurt didn’t get an apology, they got a headline. The headline closed. The wound didn’t.

Topic 2 (special mention, very much known to most, even though not the whole scenario, worldwide political news) — Palestine

There’s a ceasefire. Technically. Signed, brokered, backed by the UN, hostages released, an international force on the ground to watch it hold.

And also, people are still dying in it. Israel controls more of Gaza than the truce line was supposed to allow. Aid groups got told to hand over full staff lists to keep working, refused on principle, lost their licenses. So even with a truce “active,” feeding people is still a fight.

Here’s the question I keep landing on: is anyone fully happy? Fine, maybe. But happy isn’t the bar, growing is. Is a country under a ceasefire actually allowed to live, rebuild, grow, or is the war just sitting there with them now, quieter, not killing everyone, still killing someone. Calling that peace is generous.

Funny thing is, this isn’t even a new question. It’s the oldest one there is, just wearing a different outfit every time it shows up.

The trolley problem asks it: do you pull the lever? The Gita asks it, Krishna telling Arjun to fight a war he doesn’t want to fight, because standing still has a body count too. CRISPR asks it: if you can edit a gene, should you? Curing a disease, sure, but what about editing intelligence, what about deciding what “better” even means before you touch someone’s DNA. Wangchuk asked it with his own body. Gaza’s asking it right now, at a national scale.

Same question, every single time: when is it okay to intervene, when does the intervention cost more than the thing it was trying to fix. Nobody’s handed me a universal answer, and I’ve stopped expecting one. Rarely does anyone agree with just one side of the coin, and you have to at least acknowledge the other before you can honestly pick one. You don’t have to either, you just need to be aware and have your amorphous opinion.

And if none of that made you care about politics, fair, honestly, maybe it’ll make you care about being human instead. That part exists in everybody, somehow, unless you’re a serial killer, in which case, no comment. It’s just decency, really. Knowing what’s going on, at least in your own country, then the rest of the world. Because the alternative is being the person who casually says “let’s add Palestine to the Europe trip” without knowing what that sentence actually means right now. Funny, until it isn’t.

Somewhere in that same show I brought up earlier, there’s a monologue that’s been sitting with me differently since July. Not word for word, but the gist of it: a broken city, a rotten system, and a reminder that the city belongs to its people, not to whoever’s exploiting it, and the only way it gets fixed is if everyone, weak and strong, decides to take it back together. Ahh, Matthew Murdock knew too.

So here’s where I keep landing, for what it’s worth, I did say I’m not qualified: but prevent the suffering you can actually see. Don’t engineer an advantage for your side dressed up as justice. Find the middle path even when it’s less satisfying than picking a team. And be honest about what doing nothing costs too, because “I stayed out of it” is still a choice with a body count, you just don’t have to watch it.

Don’t let yourself get flattened by one form of media, one feed, one angle, وسيلة إعلام (waseela i’lam). Gather what you can from wherever you can, then form your OWN opinion, not the herd’s. Speak outside the boxes of right and wrong. Own your voice.

That’s what this page has always been about.

And maybe this too: in a room full of people, when no one’s going to speak up for you, be the one who speaks up for somebody else.

Did you feel that?

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Dead Poets Society did that to me.

(If you haven’t watched it … first of all, what are you doing here. Second of all, go. Come back after.)

It’s basically Mohabbatein if Mohabbatein went to an elite boarding school in Vermont, replaced Shah Rukh Khan with Robin Williams, and swapped the violin for Walt Whitman. Same energy though. Teacher shows up. Rules get broken. Everyone cries. Everyone’s changed forever.

Mr. Keating walks into Welton Academy, a school that runs on Tradition, Honor, Discipline, Excellence, and the first thing he does is tell the boys to rip pages out of their textbooks.

I felt that in my soul. I would never do that. I love books. I physically cannot do that to a book. But salute, honestly. Salute.

He also stands on his desk. Not to look tall, one of the boys guesses that, valid attempt, but because he wants them to understand that you have to keep looking at things differently. From angles you haven’t tried. From heights you haven’t stood at.

I was sitting on my bed in Chennai, blue Lays in hand, diet Coke on the side, my closest friend beside me, 2am, and I thought about four years of college and went — oh.

Silently. Not fully understanding what was there, because I was still in the middle of it. Sometimes you have to get out of the picture to actually see what it was. And now I am doing the same thing.

The oh is bigger now.

Here’s the thing nobody really talks about, the middle.

Not the topper. Not the one with the wild story everyone retells at reunions. Just the middle. Showed up. Survived. Got quietly hurt by people I trusted. Walked out the other side going was that it?

Relief, mostly. Not grief. Just relief.

I never had a Keating. Not even close. But I did have people. Not throughout, not the whole ride, but at specific points in time, a specific set of people had my back. And I forever owe them my respect and my gratitude. I wouldn’t have done this without them. (or would have, but still. mwah.)

Gratitude takes you a long way. That’s all I’ll say.

There’s a scene where Keating explains how to measure poetry. Perfectionism on the Y axis, importance on the X axis, the area the poem covers on the graph defines its greatness.

And then he goes — such that excrement.

Big words. Very impressive. Completely useless.

[Side note: a rule I stand by, or try to stand by, is that “Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.” Greatest quote of Ted Mosby. And yet here we are.]

Because you cannot measure what hits you in the middle of the night. You cannot graph it or grade it or put it in a rubric. You just feel it. You take it with you. No apology, no measurement, no justification.

“We don’t read and write poetry because it is cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion.”

My friend and I just looked at each other after that. Some things you just let them sit WITH you. For a long time. And it’s okay.

[trigger warning: suicide]

Then there’s Neil.

“After you finish medical school, and you are on your own, then you can do as you damn well please.”

Spoiler alert — Neil kills himself.

He finally did what he damn well pleased. Just not the way any of us wanted.

I did tear up. I did feel sad. But yeah, I just sat there. Some things you just carry, I guess. As long as you can.

There’s a courtyard scene where Keating sends the boys out to walk. And they all fall into the same rhythm without realising it, same stride, same sync, same pace, and he stops them.

I spent four years walking without knowing whose rhythm I had picked up. Most of the time, it wasn’t mine.

That’s what I failed to think then.

Find your own walk. Take it all with you, the good, the bad, the quietly devastating middle. Make it yours.

Walt Whitman wrote, and I read this as a kid, forgot it, and found it again in the middle of the night,

I used to write poems, actually. Somewhere in the middle of college, I stopped.

Maybe I’ll start again. You can judge them on the graph if you want. (maybe one or two of you will swoon. we don’t know yet.)

If you had to write a poem about your life, what would your verse be?

(barbaric yawp /ˌbɑːr.bər.ɪk jɔːp/ noun: a big, chaotic, glorious noise made just to hear yourself exist)

Mine was sitting on a window ledge with my friend at 2am, gossiping, giggling, rebranding my Instagram. Not a desk. Not a yawp, technically. But kind of was, for me.

If you related to any of this, I see you. I really do.

If you didn’t, genuinely, good. That means you had a good college life and I’m happy for you.

I’m not gonna say I didn’t have a good college life, that I didn’t have my moments. I did. And I know a lot of people would kill to be in my shoes, but that’s what they think.

I have had my fair share of fun. But something still doesn’t sit. And it probably never will, fully.

And! If something doesn’t sit, let it stand. Let it leave out the fucking door. You can still get on your desk and salute it as it goes. Bad experience, good experience, confusing middle experience, all of it is a lesson. All of it is yours. Let it go. LET IT GO. But also let that be your reminder.

Carpe diem, I guess. Basically a fuck it. Six months left. Find your own walk. Find your own self.

Remember: shit happens sometimes, man. All’s well that ends well.

Did you feel that?

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* They are STANDING on the table and watching you *

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I laughed. Then I didn’t.

Here’s the thing about Samay Raina. He spent an hour and twenty minutes telling us that everyone on the internet is performing. That it’s a game. That the persona you see is never really the person. And then, in the same breath, on the same stage, he proceeded to be the most unperformed version of himself I have ever watched on a screen.

The audacity of that. The beauty of that.

I was crocheting at 4 AM when I watched Still Alive. There’s something about doing something quiet with your hands at an ungodly hour that makes everything hit harder. No defenses up. Just you and the screen and whatever it decides to say to you.

What it decided to say to me was a lot.

The Apoorva moment (my favourite bit, I’ve listened to it on repeat)

There’s a part where Samay talks about Apoorva Mukhija. Not briefly. Not gently. He goes there fully, and he says this —

“It was not Apoorva giving a comeback to a rapper from Gwalior. It was a woman standing up for herself and winning against a man. In this patriarchal setup where no one expects a woman to say anything, in that same setting, that girl killed the guy’s ego in his own language. She won. He lost. It was a powerful moment. Humari chori choro se kam hai kya. Three FIR! That is the price of women standing up for themselves. And if I would have edited this episode again, I would still keep her comeback in. Because I think she killed it, man.”

Women have been saying this since the day the controversy broke. Loudly. Consistently. And it floated.

And then a man said it on stage, with that much conviction, and suddenly it had weight in rooms that weren’t listening before.

I’m not angry about that dynamic. I’m just tired of it being true.

But hey, love when I see men supporting women. It’s rare. 🤍

Hmmm.. Three FIRs though. That’s the price? Let that sit.

The parents bit (the one that got me)

I adored how Samay talks about his mom. The purest soul he knows. And I even like a mumma’s boy *wink wink* — mothers are beautiful like that, caring about you in real time, with genuine words and even more genuine worry written all over their face. Whereas fathers, like Samay’s here, were sending memes. Wholesome in a mentally strong, completely unreadable kind of way.

And then the confrontation. When Samay asked his dad if it hurt, everything that happened, his dad said —

“Mera Kashmir mein ghar chala gaya, tab nahi roya.”

I didn’t cry when we lost our home in Kashmir. I’m not crying now.

A rock. His own kind of love, just in a language that takes a while to learn.

Samay unpacks an entire generation of fathers this way. Men who bottled everything so completely that “I love you” became impossible. Who carried loss and silence and handed it down not as words but as absence. Not villains. Just men who never learned another way. “I am a man” said with a straight face, like that explains everything.

It kind of does. And that’s the saddest part.

PS: If you can, go hug your mom and dad. Remind them of the softness this world keeps making them forget. The “I love you” is in there. It doesn’t need permission to come out.

Media and politics (don’t even get me started)

He said something I keep turning over —

“Internet is a game we play to set high scores in our bank accounts.”

And yet. Politicians went after comedians. Media ran the story for weeks. FIRs were filed over a joke that people watched voluntarily, alone, in their homes. Real issues, the ones that need courtrooms and cameras and actual outrage, sit quietly.

A joke made people angrier than injustice. Make it make sense.

And Samay knows it too. They should be glad comedians exist, because the moment people stop laughing, they start asking real questions. And that, for certain people in certain positions, would be a very troublesome thing indeed.

The outro (the one that’s all over your Instagram right now, and for good reason)

Jo bhi karo, dil se nahi. Dimag laga ke karo.

Whatever you do, don’t do it with your heart. Use your head. Detach.

I spent four years attaching myself to every single person I met in my college. Every friendship, every connection, every person who passed through and even every moment spent with others. I felt all of it fully. And one by one, each one left. Because that’s college. Nobody told me that. I learned it the hard way, not one goodbye at a time. Sometimes all at once.

I’m proud of my emotions. It’s literally why this blog exists. But I wish I’d had this advice earlier. Not to feel less. Just to choose better.

Always a little late to everything. Even this… ;)

And then he ended with —

Which brings me to Balraj, Samay’s person, the one who’s always just there. If you’ve watched Still Alive you know exactly what I mean, and how a clichéd “this too shall pass” ChatGPTed in real time somehow meant everything. And if you haven't watched, just know — the internet collectively said I want a Balraj and I think that's the most human response possible.

I’m lucky I have my people. The ones I can count on, the ones I’d call at 4 AM, the ones who make an ordinary Tuesday feel like enough. Hold yours close. Don’t wait.

Here’s what Still Alive really is. It’s Samay Raina saying, I played the game, I know the rules, and I’m done pretending the game is real. A man who earned everything, deciding that from now on he just wants to be himself. That’s honesty.

And I think everyone, at some point, gets that random spike of courage to be real. Honest. Even kind. Even gentle. When that spark comes, keep feeding it please and if you’re funny on top of all that, genuinely, good for you, we need more of that in this world.

To fight your battles, big or even small, even when you know you won’t win them. You might win someone’s heart though, and I think that is enough. Stand up. Even to your friends or your parents. Or stand up to that one trainer at your gym who tells you your dress is too short when you’re just wearing yoga pants and a full length skin tight top. Tell him his words were wrong and he should choose them better next time. And regardless of whether he gets it or not, it needs to be said. I said it. Someone had to. And someone will always have to.

Just a —

Tiny revolution. No scoreboard.

Did you feel that?

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Okay so I need to talk about Black Mirror. Very random. I know. But trust me you would wanna hear what I have to say.

People are always interested in creepy stuff but they just don’t accept it. Underneath they are curious with “Wait, Pause! Could that really be like that?” “You are kidding me.” And no guys, I am not kidding you. I know many of you might have already heard or even seen the show and as my page says — I am too late to tell you about Black Mirror. But let’s still discuss this.

I first discovered it when I was passing out of high school. The name seemed interesting so I gave it a try. First episode? The president. A pig. Activities I will not be describing and no, it was not related to eating pork. Omg I am not into these things trust me lol — but like, wow. Who would think to make a series like this and keep the very first episode this unhinged?

And now passing out of college, the show still stands. Still intrigues me.

Last year I watched Season 7 before Season 6; small detail about me, I have extreme OCD so I have to finish what I start AND in order. But my boyfriend, being my boyfriend at the time (now my ex, for a reason, ahem ahem?) — I pitched him the Black Mirror concept, was just so happy I intrigued him, decided to watch together but he chose Season 7 instead of Season 6 where I was left off. I was a sucker for giving in to his things. At least we’d finally spend quality time together, right? You can probably guess why the breakup was inevitable. Or not — a story for another blog.

Anyway. Back to today. Season 6. Because we only watched a few episodes together before his interest shifted — shocking, I know.

Now before I get into it: for those who don’t know, Black Mirror is mostly about technology. Creepy, 2050s kind of tech that makes you go “what an imagination, man.” Each episode is its own short film, completely different story, different cast, different world. That’s what I love about it, it’s a series that feels like a collection of movies.

But Loch Henry? Least techy episode of the lot. No futuristic gadgets. No AI gone wrong. Just humans. And somehow that made it the most disturbing of all. They shifted from technology creeps to real life inhuman creeps and I was not ready.

So what actually happens?

Davis and Pia are young filmmakers who travel to Davis’s sleepy Scottish hometown to make a documentary about - wait for it - a local egg hoarder. Riveting stuff?? Heh! But they stumble upon a much darker story. Turns out the town was rocked by a series of murders years ago by a man named Iain Adair. Davis’s friend Stuart, who runs a pub on the brink of closing down, convinces them to pivot and make a true crime documentary instead. Tourism could come back. Fame could follow.

So they start digging. Old newspapers. VHS tapes. Interviews with locals. Even Janet (Davis’s mum, the sweet grieving widow) agrees to be interviewed. Now here’s where you need to know about Kenneth, Davis’s dad. A respectable local policeman. Beloved by the town. When Iain Adair was finally being caught, he shot Kenneth in the leg. Kenneth never fully recovered, caught MRSA, died later in hospital. Janet always held Iain Adair responsible. Grieved publicly. Carried herself with quiet dignity for years.

So when Janet sits in front of the camera for her interview and says warmly, almost nostalgically, “It’s been so long since I’ve been in front of a camera. Your dad didn’t have this much equipment” —

I heard it. Noted it somewhere in the back of my head. Moved on.

Fast forward to the moment of truth.

Pia plays one of Janet’s old Bergerac tapes on her laptop late at night. It glitches.

What comes up is not Bergerac.

It’s Janet. In a nurse outfit. And a mask. Role playing. And the full picture comes together… Janet and Kenneth weren’t just witnesses. They were participants. Alongside Iain Adair, they were into wild, kinky sex with their victims. They would lure tourists, torture them, record everything. The nurse outfit, the mask, the recordings — it was all part of it. And when it all came crashing down, Kenneth, the jolly cutesy dad in all the old photographs, the respectable policeman the whole town mourned and somehow quietly put all the blame on Iain Adair. Died shortly after. Left Janet to grieve publicly and privately carry the secret for decades.

And suddenly — “Your dad didn’t have this much equipment.”

Oh.

OH.

That’s the kind of line that doesn’t hit you when you first hear it. It hits you later, when you’re just sitting there and your brain goes — wait. That’s what I call witty witty writing. Which is alliteration by the way: same starting letter, multiple words. W, W, W. You’re welcome, that’s your free English lesson for today.

Oh and the polaroids. The victims’ polaroids — photos of them with their killers, kept like souvenirs. I paused and stared at that for a full minute straight. No it is not creepy, detail oriented person right?

Then comes the documentary within the documentary.

The BAFTA scene. Davis wins best factual series for Loch Henry: Truth Will Out. And the way they present that fictional documentary inside the episode — the editing, the pacing, the cinematic feel, the way they weave in the equipment line, the kinky stuff, the whole truth. I genuinely think Black Mirror hired a separate editor just to make it look like a real award winning production. It could pass as an actual true crime documentary. I got goosebumps. Not from a jump scare. From how devastatingly real it felt.

But sadly, Pia never gets to see any of it. When she discovered the tape late at night she ran, trying to get away from Janet who had realised she knew the truth. And in that panic, she drowned in a river. Gone. Just like that. Not dramatically, not in a confrontation; just a slip, an accident, a river. I didn’t think she would die like that. So unconnected feeling, so random. Which honestly makes it more real, doesn’t it? That’s just good writing.

Davis sits alone in his hotel room after the BAFTAs. BAFTA in hand. And there’s a note from Janet.

For your movie.

She killed herself. Left him the ending his documentary needed. Wrapped it up like a gift.

I sat with that for a very long time.

Okay now here’s where I spiral a little — bear with me.

I was so obsessed after watching this that I did what any normal person does. I opened Claude and asked, “okay how do I actually get hired to write for Black Mirror?” Because whoever is writing this deserves to know I am available.

Now that’s a long stretch I know, close relations and all, but Claude did manage to say -go write for other shows, build connections, maybe you will get recognised. Eh, worth a shot someday ;)

But anyways.. what if I told you the most interesting part about how stories in this show actually get written?

It starts with a “what if.”

One uncomfortable question. Taken seriously. Committed to completely. That’s Charlie Brooker’s whole formula. That’s the entire secret.

What if the true crime documentary you’re making is actually about your own family? What if the grieving mother you’ve been interviewing was the monster all along? What if winning a BAFTA is the worst thing that ever happened to you? What if the jolly cutesy dad in all the photographs was never who you thought he was?

And honestly? That’s not just the Black Mirror formula. That’s the whole secret to storytelling. You can write anything - - any story, any idea - - just start with “what if” and commit to it completely. That’s it.

What if you can never really know a person — truly?

That’s what Loch Henry left me with.

Did you feel that? Will you give it a try if you haven’t?

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