“Resilience isn’t the measure of your strength or perseverance; it is the measure of your belief. The belief that no calamity can stop you.”

All my life, if there was one thing my harshest critics and warmest well-wishers agreed upon, it was my resilience—the will to face the end, but never lose hope. From a young age, I wore this trait like armor. Whether it was walking away on my own two feet after my body was hit by a pole in a brutal accident, or playing through an entire football match in the 4th grade after a senior tackled me, only to realize at the final whistle that my leg was fractured. Or perhaps it was my JEE days, where I never lost hope simply because I could smell my desired rank—and if I could smell it, why couldn’t I taste it?

For a long time, I thought this grit was entirely my own invention. It was a narrative that fueled my own little messiah complex. But time has a way of humbling us. As I grew older and my parents slowly began to open up about their own histories, I realized something profound: this resilience wasn’t forged by me. It is something that runs deep in my DNA, woven from both sides of my lineage.

This is the story of those two strands.

The Boy in the Stable

My father comes from Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, the youngest of five siblings. My grandfather worked in the CISF, an armed forces unit tasked with protecting key infrastructure, a duty that forced him to toil far away from his wife and children.

As the story goes, my father studied in the village government school, pouring over books that were likely outdated long before they reached his hands. But from the moment he was born, he possessed a fierce, unyielding will to study. Seeing this fire, my grandfather made a hard choice: with limited resources, he could only afford to educate one child. He chose my father.

Soon, my father began to excel. But the rising hero of this story quickly met a familiar, ancient villain of this part of the world: casteism.

Our family belonged to a lower caste, living in a separate village from the upper castes. When a lower-caste boy—for whom simply passing an exam was considered a generational achievement—not only passed but secured a first division and topped the class, the shockwaves were palpable. The prejudice was real and immediate. In the 11th grade, his tuition teacher flat-out refused to let him study under him because of his caste.

While battling this indignity, a greater dilemma loomed. When it came time for higher education, my grandfather didn’t envision engineering. He imagined an apprenticeship as an electrician at an ITI, a practical path so my father could quickly start earning for the family. But my father’s ambitions were larger than his circumstances. He wanted to be an engineer. An electrical engineer.

He fought for his dream. With the backing of his school principal, he got into a diploma program that would eventually allow him to transition into an engineering degree. But those diploma days demanded a heavy toll. Having money only for college fees, my father lived in a literal stable. To this day, he reminisces about it, wondering how he survived in those conditions—but he did.

After two years, he took the entrance exam and secured the 3rd rank in the entirety of MP. He missed out on MANIT and SGSITS, landing instead at MITS Gwalior. But he was finally studying electrical engineering. He didn’t just graduate; he took home the gold medal.

But resilience is often the twin of ambition. He took the GATE exam and got into IIT Delhi. Let that sink in: a boy who hadn’t formally completed his 12th grade walked through the doors of IIT Delhi. But he knew this wasn’t his final destination. Soon after, he secured a position at BARC as a nuclear engineer at the Tarapur reactor. His ultimate ambition called for the IES, an exam he failed—a regret he carries to this day. I suspect that lingering regret is the very reason he always gives me the freedom to make my own decisions regarding competitive exams. He never wants me to carry the same ‘what ifs.’

Finally, an IITian with a prestigious government job, it was time for marriage. An arranged marriage, of course.

Enter my mother: my OG software.

The Quiet Alpha

My mother’s background was the exact inverse of my father’s. My maternal great-grandfather was the village head, and my nana was the first engineer in his region, eventually rising to Chief Engineer in the irrigation department.

My mom was the third of five siblings, but make no mistake—she was the alpha. Unlike the stereotypical middle child who fades into the background, she was the anchor, cherished by her parents and siblings alike, and the one child every single one of my grandparents’ friends knew by name.

In her 11th and 12th grades, she took PCM and graduated with distinction. But finding it boring, she pivoted to economics, eventually completing both her BA and MA. My nana used to beam with pride, declaring his daughter the most intelligent of them all. Relatives, always ready to pierce a proud father’s logic, would retort, “Then why hasn’t she cleared any government exams?”

My nana never had an answer for them. Perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to explain to extended family that his brilliant daughter had quietly sacrificed her own UPSC ambitions because she refused to leave the side of her ailing mother, who was in the final stages of cancer.

But a 24-year-old unmarried woman was a ticking clock in the eyes of society. The family began looking for proposals, and soon, they found my dad.

The Sangam

To say their union was the Sangam of the Ganga into the sea would be an understatement. It was a literal inter-caste, inter-class collision. Most of my mother’s family vehemently opposed the match—why marry into a family that didn’t even own land? But my nani and a few wise relatives stood their ground in support. Perhaps it was my father’s undeniable charm, or his striking handsomeness, that cured the skepticism. We’ll never truly know.

They had a grand wedding, though the bride’s side vastly outnumbered the groom’s. (I, unfortunately, was not invited to this wedding. For this grave sin, my parents repent by treating my brother and me to a grand feast every year on their anniversary).

After the wedding, my mom accepted what she thought was her fate: to be a homemaker. But my father refused to let her brilliant mind go to waste. “What is the benefit of studying so much if you don’t use it?” he challenged her.

He pushed her to prepare for the MPPSC while I was growing in her womb. When I was born—just two months shy of their first anniversary—my father took absolute responsibility for me, aided by my mausi, bua, and an army of relatives who simply couldn’t resist my infant charm.

After a grueling exam and a rigorous interview, my mother was selected. But triumph brought a new complication: her posting was in Bhopal, and we were living in Mumbai.

Without missing a beat, my father—acting like an absolute Chad—left his hard-earned BARC job in Mumbai so we could move to Bhopal. He took a job in a private firm to support her career, the very firm he works at to this day.

The Legacy

Both of my parents have left an indelible mark on my soul. I’ve undoubtedly inherited some of their flaws, but their virtues are the foundation of everything I am.

Perhaps the trials of their youth—the stable, the prejudice, the quiet sacrifices—forged them into the unstoppable forces they became. I owe a profound thank you to those harsh childhoods. They gave me the absolute role models, and the greatest parents, a poet-philosopher could ever ask for.

But earlier today, I watched a guy in a sleek car wave a pristine flag out of his window—just seconds before tossing a plastic wrapper onto the street.

It’s a small thing. But it got me thinking about the uncomfortable reality of exactly where we stand at 80.

We are a long, long way from the chains of colonial rule. Let’s give credit where it’s due: we aren’t the same country we were in 1947. We’ve clawed our way out of the absolute poverty of the mid-20th century. We are swinging between the 4th and 5th largest economy in the world, sitting comfortably at 3rd in purchasing power. An average Indian today lives twice as long as someone born the day the British left.

We have the numbers. We have the sheer, brute force of economic growth.

But numbers on a spreadsheet don’t tell the whole story of a nation’s soul.

The $45 Trillion Crutch

Too much of our national discourse is still looking in the rearview mirror. Yes, the British drained an estimated $45 trillion from this subcontinent. Yes, colonial rule was a systematic, brutal stripping of our wealth.

But how much longer are we going to use the past as a crutch for the failures of our present?

We have to stop looking backward.

We claim this ancient, unbreakable unity, yet we harbor deep, volatile fault lines that everyone—external enemies, internal opportunists—exploits with ease. We spend so much energy fighting over historical figures, regional languages, and river waters that every debate inevitably devolves into “us vs. them.”

The Third-World Reality Check

Here is the hardest truth to swallow while the national anthem plays: despite our booming economy, we still live with a third-world civic sense.

Our laws and our judiciary are cripplingly inefficient. We demand our fundamental rights with absolute, fiery ferocity, yet we develop total amnesia when it comes to our fundamental duties. We complain about systemic corruption while looking for shortcuts. We revere this land as sacred, and then we spit on it.

For too many of us, Independence Day has been reduced to a passive holiday. It’s a day to sit on the couch, watch a movie, and feel patriotic without actually doing anything patriotic.

I know people will read this and say, “Come on, today is a day to celebrate, not to be a cynic.”

And they aren’t entirely wrong. Tomorrow is for the freedom fighters who gave their blood, sweat, and youth for this soil. It’s for the protestors who stared down the barrels of British rifles.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Those men and women didn’t take bullets just so we could hoist a flag once a year and then go back to tearing each other apart. They dreamed of a powerhouse. A politically united, middle-income giant that could look America or China in the eye.

They dreamed of greatness.

The Departure Lounge vs. The Foundation

As I see it, the youth of this country are splitting into two camps.

There are those who look at the broken systems, the political noise, and the lack of civic sense, and decide that India simply cannot be redeemed. Their end goal is an exit visa and a departure lounge.

And then there are those who see the raw, chaotic, immense potential of what we could be. And they choose to stay.

I am always going to be the latter.

I am choosing to work for my nation. I am working for that core idea of India—one rooted in ancient, philosophical traditions, where your civic duty (Dharma) is inseparable from your personal success. If we can fuel that ancient wisdom with our modern economic engine, we are genuinely on the cusp of something extraordinary.

But greatness takes accountability. Not just applause.

Over to you: Which camp are you in? Are we the generation that leaves, or the generation that fixes the foundation? Let me know in the comments below.

But was this power imbalance baked into our biology, or was it a tragic byproduct of our shift to a sedentary, farming lifestyle?

The Paleolithic Reality: Co-Authors of Survival

To find out, we have to look past the Victorian myth of “Man the Hunter.” The stones and cave walls of our Paleolithic ancestors tell a story that shatters modern assumptions: women weren’t just waiting in caves; they were co-authors of human survival.

Look at the ancient cave paintings of Pech Merle in France. Modern analysis of the hand stencils blown onto the rock walls reveals that up to 75% belonged to women. They were humanity’s original storytellers.

The strict biological division of labor is also a myth. In 2020, archaeologists in the Andes unearthed an elite, 9,000-year-old big-game hunter buried with premium weapons. Bone analysis proved unequivocally that the hunter was a woman. In the harsh reality of the Paleolithic world, survival demanded pragmatism, not gender roles. Everyone contributed.

Even our earliest art—the famous prehistoric “Venus” figurines, long dismissed as primitive male fantasies—are now believed by modern anthropologists to be self-portraits. They match the exact perspective of a pregnant woman looking down at her own changing body, capturing her own autonomy.

For tens of thousands of years, humanity thrived in this delicate partnership.

The Venus of Willendorf. Long dismissed by early archaeologists as primitive male fantasies, modern anthropologists now suggest these ancient figurines were actually self-portraits—women documenting the profound transformations of their own bodies.

The Great Shift: The Invention of Patriarchy

But then, we planted seeds. We settled down. The Agricultural Revolution gave us the concept of private property and the accumulation of wealth. Suddenly, to pass that wealth down to a legitimate heir, men needed to guarantee paternity—which meant controlling the movement and sexuality of women.

The egalitarian dawn had set, and the long era of patriarchy was about to begin.

The First Civilizations: Law, Land, and Lineage

The consequences of this transformation were neither immediate nor universal. As the first civilizations emerged, they developed strikingly different answers to the same questions: Who could own property? Who inherited wealth? Who held authority within the family?

The status of women would ultimately depend on how each society answered them.

The first written chapters of this story emerge from Mesopotamia, often called the cradle of civilization. Here, women could own property, engage in trade, and hold influential religious offices as priestesses. Yet the same civilization also produced the Code of Hammurabi, one of history’s earliest legal codes, where laws concerning marriage, inheritance, and adultery reveal an increasing concern with controlling family lineage and preserving property. Rights existed, but they were becoming increasingly defined by the authority of fathers and husbands.

Travel west along the Nile, however, and the picture changes dramatically. In Ancient Egypt, a woman could inherit land, sign legal contracts, conduct business, and even initiate divorce without requiring a male guardian. Such rights would remain extraordinary in many parts of the world for centuries. While political power overwhelmingly rested in male hands, figures such as Hatshepsut proved that, under exceptional circumstances, even the throne itself was not entirely beyond a woman’s reach.

Further east, the story grows more nuanced. During the early Vedic period of India, women participated in religious ceremonies, composed hymns preserved in the Rig Veda, and philosophers like Gargi Vachaknavi and Maitreyi challenged renowned sages in debates on the nature of existence itself. Yet as kingdoms expanded and social structures became more rigid, many of these freedoms gradually diminished, reminding us that history does not always move in a straight line toward progress.

Before social structures rigidified, intellect took precedence. Here, Gargi fearlessly questions the nature of existence in a court of male scholars, a powerful testament to the freedoms of the early Vedic era.

Diverging Paths: The Mediterranean to the East

Across the Mediterranean, Ancient Greece presented its own contradictions. Athens, celebrated as the birthplace of democracy, denied political participation to half its population, expecting women to remain largely within the household. Sparta, by contrast, educated its women, encouraged physical training, and allowed them to own and inherit property. Two Greek city-states, separated by little more than geography, had reached profoundly different conclusions about the role of women in society.

An archaic bronze statuette of a Spartan girl running (c. 500 BCE). Unlike Athenian women confined to the household, Spartan women were trained in athletics, viewing physical strength as essential to the state.

Rome occupied a middle ground. Roman women could own wealth, manage estates, and wield considerable influence within their families, yet they remained excluded from voting and public office. Their authority was often informal rather than constitutional, exercised through family, patronage, and social standing instead of law.

Meanwhile, in Ancient China, especially under the Zhou dynasty, family and social order increasingly revolved around patriarchal ideals. Lineage, filial piety, and ancestral continuity became the foundation of society, placing women within carefully defined familial roles. Influence certainly existed, but it was most often exercised within the household or the royal court rather than through public institutions.

The Long Road Ahead

Viewed together, these civilizations reveal a truth often lost in simplified narratives: there was never a single experience of womanhood in the ancient world. Some societies granted women rights that would seem remarkably progressive even by later standards, while others steadily narrowed their freedoms.

The rise of agriculture did not produce one universal model of patriarchy; it produced civilizations that each negotiated power, inheritance, and gender in their own way. And this was only the beginning. As empires expanded, religions spread across continents, and legal traditions became more deeply entrenched, the position of women would continue to evolve—setting the stage for the long and complex history that would eventually give rise to the earliest movements demanding equality.

Yet, history shows us this is not always true. Across the globe, governments that have successfully steered their nations out of economic despair frequently find themselves voted out of office.

To understand why, we have to look at the sheer trauma of economic reform. When we look back at the industrialization of Western Europe, we often forget that it took place over two to three centuries. Modern nations try to capsule that exact same societal evolution into ten or twenty years, often underestimating the violent consequences of their ambition.

Industrialization is arguably the most disruptive process in human history. It is a devil that dismantles pre-existing societal structures, hierarchies, and agrarian traditions to forge an entirely new order. It forces short-term pain for long-term profit. For a government to initiate this, they must be willing to sacrifice their own political survival for the future of the nation state.

The Architect Who Lost His Job: India in 1991

A prime example of this dynamic is the Indian government under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991.

When Rao took office, India was on the verge of bankruptcy. The country was facing a severe balance-of-payments crisis, with foreign exchange reserves plummeting to roughly $1.2 billion—barely enough to cover three weeks of essential imports. Under his leadership, and with Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister, the government made the difficult choice to dismantle the bureaucratic “License Raj,” devalue the rupee, and liberalize the economy to foreign trade.

These reforms literally steered the country away from disaster and laid the architectural foundation for India’s 21st-century economic boom. By 1996, GDP growth had rebounded to over 7%. Yet, in the 1996 general elections, Rao’s party suffered a devastating defeat. He absorbed the immediate political backlash and pain of the reforms, acting as a statesman for the next decade rather than a politician fighting for the next election.

This cartoon brilliantly captures the domestic political vulnerability of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. While they secured the necessary IMF bailout and launched the New Industrial Policy to save the economy, they faced intense domestic backlash and accusations that they had surrendered India's economic sovereignty to foreign powers.

The Dictator’s Grave: Prosperity and Democracy

In autocratic regimes or governments with selective suffrage, economic reforms trigger a different kind of disruption: the “Dictator’s Dilemma.”

Authoritarian leaders often force industrialization to build national strength. However, this economic growth inevitably creates an educated, urban middle class. Once citizens are freed from the daily hardships of economic survival, their focus shifts. They begin to demand civil rights, political representation, and freedom of expression.

This is precisely what happened in East Asia. In the Republic of Korea (South Korea), military strongman Park Chung-hee drove the “Miracle on the Han River” in the 1960s and 70s, achieving staggering export-led growth. Similarly, in the Republic of China (Taiwan), the Kuomintang oversaw rapid industrialization under martial law. By the late 1980s, the newly wealthy middle classes in both nations became the torchbearers for political reform. In 1987, South Korea held its first direct democratic presidential elections, and Taiwan lifted its 38-year martial law. The dictators had industrialized themselves out of a job.

Furthermore, this rapid industrialization acts as a great equalizer. As the labor market expands, women enter the industrial workforce. By proving to patriarchal institutions that they can perform the same labor and generate the same economic value as men, the justification for denying them the right to ink their fingers at the ballot box completely collapses.

Grassroots woodblock prints like this one became the visual language of the South Korean democratization struggle. The fierce, revolutionary imagery reflects the mobilization of the newly formed urban middle and working classes, who utilized their rising economic power to successfully demand the dismantling of the military dictatorship in 1987.

The Chinese Exception: Capitalism as Survival

The People’s Republic of China presents a unique variation of this timeline. Under Deng Xiaoping, following the diplomatic openings aided by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, China adopted “Communism with Chinese characteristics”—effectively state-directed capitalism.

China witnessed rapid growth, deeply studying the collapse of the Soviet Union to avoid repeating its mistakes. This gave rise to a massive Chinese middle class. However, the turning point was the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. While South Korea and Taiwan yielded to their middle class, the Chinese Communist Party chose a different path.

Following 1989, rather than strangling the private market, the regime actually accelerated it. During Deng’s famous “Southern Tour” in 1992, the government doubled down on aggressive capitalist wealth creation. The unspoken social contract became clear: the government would provide relentless economic growth and private prosperity, so long as the public surrendered demands for democratic political power. It shows the extreme lengths to which a regime will go to protect its absolute authority, heavily risking the eventual “middle-income trap” to maintain control.

This piece illustrates the ideological paradox of Deng Xiaoping’s later years. Following the political crackdowns of 1989, Deng doubled down on state-directed capitalism—famously associated with the pragmatic mantra, "To get rich is glorious"—trading democratic reform for relentless, government-mandated wealth creation.

The Democratic Paralysis

Understanding how disruptive economic reform is explains why so many modern democracies simply refuse to do it.

To industrialize effectively, a state must relax land acquisition laws and make labor regulations business-friendly. In the short term, this means agrarian societies suffer as land is repurposed. It means workers face tougher conditions to compete globally, and the underprivileged watch industrialists get rapidly richer while feeling left behind.

Executing this requires a monumental amount of political capital. Coalition governments, which rely on fractured voting blocs, simply cannot afford it. If a government came into office relying heavily on the agrarian vote, pushing industrial land reforms would directly attack their core constituency.

Therefore, rather than risking their survival on necessary but painful economic overhauls, these governments pivot. They make their tenures about rhetorical victories, social identity, and populism rather than structural economic change.

Ultimately, economic reforms are necessary for the survival of a country, but they are highly dangerous for the survival of a government. The next time you find yourself wondering why a ruling party is stalling on vital economic action, ask yourself: are they thinking about the next decade of the nation, or are they only thinking about the next election?

For me, that line resonates deeply. I have always believed I was destined for success—and perhaps much more. But even a “gifted” child carries scars, and the memories of those scars, born from decisions I now regret, still linger.

This is the story of my first real failure. It was an academic defeat, but more importantly, it was an emotional one.

In my family, the running joke was that Abhimanyu could do anything he wanted—except draw, of course. I was so remarkably bad at sketching that I used to draw biology diagrams with a ruler, and they would still look hideous. But outside of art, I lived my life in extremes. If most people gave 90% to a task, there was always one arena where I would give 101%.

From third to eighth grade, I was at the top of my game in dancing, singing, and sports. That was the era of my life overflowing with certificates and prizes. Then came my eighth-grade phase: the prime of my quizzing and debating career.

The Curse of 101%

Since the third grade, I had consistently led my house to first place in the inter-house quiz. But in seventh grade, under my watch, we placed second. I felt a stinging sadness for the first time, but it ignited a new fire in me for the following year.

Before eighth grade, we used to get shortlisted for inter-school and regional-level quizzes, but we were always far from the podium. I decided that was going to change.

Getting selected that year is a story in itself. I had a fierce competitor in my class from the same house, and initially, she secured the spot. It broke me. But I didn’t lose hope. On the day of the quiz, she was running late, and driven by an intense, almost ruthless ambition, I convinced her to give up her spot to me.

After two rounds, my team was in dead last with negative points. It was my time to clutch. In the remaining two rounds, I gave it absolutely everything I had, and we finally secured first place. That victory opened the floodgates. Later, I won a consolation prize in the Canara Bank Quiz, second prize in the WWF Wild Wisdom Quiz, and second prize in a state-level debate on road safety, felicitated by the State Transport Minister. A photo from that day proudly served as our family’s display picture for a long time.

A Father’s Warning and the Taste of Silver

In ninth grade, the pandemic hit. I drifted into online gaming and largely disregarded my studies. That era of complacency ended abruptly with a wake-up call from my father.

“Veer, the only thing you are truly best at is your academics. Don’t let it go to waste.”

That simple, sharp truth forced me to change. I finally unlocked the academic prime I needed, finishing ninth grade with a 93%. Riding that momentum, I scored a 99% in tenth grade—but I was still second.

This silver-medal finish did two things: it made me yearn obsessively for more, and it inflated my ego. I began making fun of my younger brother simply because he wasn’t as naturally gifted in his studies. I felt invincible. But a massive humbling was waiting for me just around the corner.

The Great Humbling

In eleventh grade, I chose the PCMB stream, fully assuming I would dominate it just like everything else. I was getting good marks, but I was no longer the best. By twelfth grade, complacency had entirely taken over.

My teachers tried to warn me. “Abhimanyu, please improve. If you keep going like this, you will get a 4,000–5,000 rank in JEE Advanced, not a top 100.”

I didn’t change my habits. When the results came out, I landed a 6,000-something rank in Advanced. My teachers had been right. It broke me, but my ego and fear convinced me I could do it again. I took a partial drop year, only to score a 5,000-something rank, missing out on a good IIT by a mere 30 ranks.

If the 2024 JEE Advanced made me cry, the 2025 JEE Advanced completely broke me.

My parents had always wanted me to give BITSAT my full attention and go to BITS. In my arrogance, I refused to oblige. I had effortlessly scored 330+ in 2024 and assumed I would do the same in 2025. Instead, I didn’t even touch 240.

For the first time in my life, I truly lost.

Swallowing the Ego

I was forced to return to the college I hated, walking back to face the very people I had proudly told, “I will be in an IIT next year.”

At first, I did what anyone with a bruised ego does: I blamed everyone else. I blamed my parents, I blamed my circumstances, I blamed everything but my own complacency.

And then came the ultimate taste of my own medicine. My brother—the same brother I had routinely degraded over academics—looked at me and asked the question I had been dreading:

“Why aren’t you in an IIT?”

I was entirely against returning to my college. But my HOD and my professor stepped in. I will never forget what my HOD told me when I was struggling to find a way forward. He looked at me and said,

“It takes a lot of guts to have the courage to do this. Remember, you can still achieve success. Maybe your path goes through IIIT now, but your success has not been taken away from you.”

Those words were the lifeline I needed. They helped me gather the courage to swallow my pride, walk back onto campus, and face reality. I will always be deeply grateful for that guidance.

What does this teach you? Failures are part and parcel of the human experience. But remember this: early failures are the crucible in which your character is forged. Experiencing your very first failure at the final step of success doesn’t just shatter your dream—it shatters your entire personality.

My first real failure tore me down, but it also cured me of the illusion that talent alone is enough. In the end, it taught me the absolute necessity of humbleness. The times you find yourself in will not always be the same, and your circumstances will inevitably change. But the character and personality you cultivate are what will definitively help you overcome any setback.

And for that, I am finally learning to be thankful.

Over to You

We all carry scars from the times we fell short of our own expectations. I would love to hear your stories in the comments.

What was your experience with your first real failure? Did it break you, or did it build you? What did you ultimately learn from it?

Let’s remind each other that the setbacks we survive are proof that we are growing.

“Empathy without boundaries is not emotional intelligence, it is self-abandonment.”

A few days ago, my best friend shared these words with me. We were talking about what I have always considered my defining trait: my unconditional kindness.

I have always felt an overwhelming need to be kind to everyone, regardless of how they have treated me. I love listening to people, helping them combat their fears, and working as a free therapist for anyone who needs one. I am the person who takes the blame for everything, always telling myself I could have done more. I strive to heal people, cheer them up, and let them know they are loved and cared for—even if I have only known them for a single minute.

The Hidden Burden of the Healer

But beneath all this outward happiness and kindness lies a heavy burden. It is a burden felt only by my inner self.

In my pursuit of absolute, perfect kindness toward the world, I realized I was neglecting the person who needed it most. Because I was giving unconditional kindness to everyone else, my inner self was being left out. I never fell in love with myself. I never made my inner self feel that he also requires my love and affection.

Craving Love in the Wrong Places

When you don’t love yourself, that neglected part of you starts craving it from external means. The pursuit of feeling loved by others is exhausting. I could care so deeply for the people I loved, but I could not care for myself.

It brought me to a difficult realization: if I can’t care for myself, how can I truly care for others? Or perhaps the truth is simply that I just didn’t know how to care for myself at all.

The Loneliness of the “Granted” Friend

Sometimes, unconditional kindness tricks you into thinking you have friends. But the reality is that boundary-less givers are often the loneliest people on earth. It is not because they don’t have people around them, but because they don’t have anyone they can truly call their own.

We become taken for granted. We are treated simply as healers—called upon in times of crisis and left behind when the storm passes.

Angels with Sunflowers

At the start of this year, things happened that made me question myself. I questioned my character, my personality, and whether I should just stop being unconditionally kind altogether. But I asked myself: should a person in the future suffer due to someone else’s past actions? Definitely not.

Then, sometimes, angels with sunflowers come into your life. They remind you that you are kind, and that it is a beautiful thing. They remind you that you can still be unconditionally kind, but not to everyone, and certainly not at the price of yourself.

The Architecture of a New Kindness

You can only truly heal people when you are alright—when you are in your best senses. So, how do I adapt? How do I keep the core of who I am—someone who deeply observes and cares for human nature—without letting it consume me?

• Practicing the Pause: Before I rush in to absorb someone else’s crisis, I am learning to take a breath and check my own emotional reserves. I ask myself: Do I have the bandwidth for this today? If the answer is no, I will kindly step back.

• Redirecting my Loyalty: The first person who gets my unconditional grace, patience, and love is now the guy staring back at me in the mirror. I am finally treating my inner self like someone worth saving.

• Redefining Connection: True friendship isn’t built on one-sided emotional dumping; it is built on mutual respect. I will still offer my warmth and my ear, but I am no longer offering my peace of mind as a sacrificial lamb.

My kindness remains, but it has evolved. I will be unconditionally kind, but conditionally based on the people and the situation. Because empathy without boundaries isn’t emotional intelligence. It is self-abandonment. And I am done abandoning myself.

To my readers: If you are the designated “healer” of your circle, consider this your official permission slip to clock out and rest. You cannot be a sanctuary for the world if your own foundation is crumbling.

Have you ever felt the lonely weight of being the unconditional giver? How do you protect your peace? Let me know in the comments below—I would love to read your thoughts. This time, as a fellow traveler, not just a therapist.

Today’s India presents a grimly distorted mirror to that narrative. Women are still abducted and violated, but instead of finding sanctuary, they are delivered to hospitals or police stations where they undergo a dual post-mortem—one of the physical body, and another of their character.

Sexual violence is undeniably a deep-seated problem, but our collective approach to addressing it is fundamentally flawed. Whenever a high-profile tragedy occurs, the public discourse immediately defaults to emotional reactivity. The masses clamor for spectacular retribution: chemical castration, immediate hanging, or public executions.

What they fail to realize is a core axiom of modern criminology, famously posited since the Enlightenment by thinkers like Cesare Beccaria: crime is deterred not by the severity of the punishment, but by the certainty of getting caught. The true solution does not lie in performative, draconian legislation passed in a state of panic. It lies in comprehensive police reforms that increase the efficiency, speed, and integrity of investigations. Harsher laws mean nothing if the probability of conviction remains negligible; a state that relies on the threat of the gallows is often just masking its inability to police its own streets.

Furthermore, reducing this violence requires a profound cultural shift toward the institutional protection of victims. In less-industrialized or agrarian regions, where traditional power dynamics remain deeply entrenched and economic dependency is high, this shift is notoriously difficult to achieve. True progress requires breaking down these rigid hierarchies and building a system where victims are met with institutional trust, ensuring they do not feel threatened, isolated, or second-guessed the moment they report a crime.

Up to this point, mainstream commentary usually stops here, treating sexual violence exclusively as a female struggle. But the rot runs deeper, and a truly rigorous analysis demands that we look at the entire scope of the crisis.

Men and young boys are also subjected to sexual assault—frequently at the hands of authority figures, teachers, relatives, or acquaintances. Yet, male victimization remains such a rigid cultural taboo that a boy will often choose to carry the trauma to his grave rather than face the societal ostracization of speaking it aloud. The silence surrounding male victims is a byproduct of the same broken cultural framework that marginalizes women—it reduces sexual violence to a rigid binary rather than recognizing it for what it truly is: an exercise of power.

Equally neglected by the mainstream consciousness is the pervasive vulnerability of transgender individuals. Often pushed to the absolute margins of society, trans people face disproportionately high rates of sexual violence, yet their systemic marginalization leaves them with virtually no institutional recourse. When the law defines sexual violence through a narrow, rigid lens, it effectively strips entire demographics of their humanity, leaving them exposed to predators who operate under the shield of complete legal impunity.

If we are to confront this reality honestly, our legal framework must evolve. The path forward requires the implementation of comprehensive, gender-neutral rape laws and the dismantling of narrow, gynocentric legal structures that turn a blind eye to the full spectrum of human vulnerability. Justice cannot be asymmetric if it wishes to be absolute.

Ultimately, sexual violence is a crime of opportunity and a brutal assertion of dominance over the vulnerable. It is a weapon used to exact control, and it can happen to anyone—a man, a woman, a transgender individual, or a child. While we may never completely eradicate this dark facet of human malice, we can definitively reduce its footprint. To do so, we must look past emotional outcries, demand rigorous institutional reform, and commit to an unyielding, objective overhaul of both our laws and our culture.

The Architecture of Betrayal

The Vajji confederacy was the earliest example of democracy in the Indian subcontinent. For centuries, it flourished as a beacon of collective governance, yet its greatest strength—its openness—became the very instrument of its demise.

The collapse began not with a sword, but with a whisper. Ajatashatru, realizing the Vajjis were invincible so long as they remained unified, sent his chief minister, Vassakara, on a mission of “diplomatic sabotage.” For three years, Vassakara lived among the Vajjis, feigning exile. He moved through the halls of power, systematically sowing seeds of suspicion. He whispered to the rich that the poor were plotting; he told the youth that the elders were corrupt; he manufactured petty scandals until the once-famed “consensus” of the republic dissolved into a cacophony of paranoia.

By the time the diplomatic betrayal was complete, the Vajjis had stopped meeting in their assemblies. The democratic machinery was paralyzed by a “cancer of the mind” long before the first Magadhan soldier crossed the Ganges.

The Toxicity of Polarity

We often treat democracy as the pinnacle of governance, a system where leaders are mere representatives held accountable by the people. But democracy harbors a latent toxicity: polarity. It is a system that, when corrupted, can turn a son against his father and a husband against his wife. When the “will to win” at all costs becomes the only metric of success, the society fragments. We become so consumed by the desire to see our internal “enemies” defeated that power becomes the only thing that matters—even if that power is wielded by a tyrant.

The fall of Vajji was a direct result of this fragmentation. The ranks were so infested with infighting that the citizens grew to hate their fellow countrymen more than they feared a foreign dictator. They were happy to be ruled by anyone else, so long as it wasn’t “the other side” in power.

The Ghost of Weimar

We see this same “autoimmune disorder” in the 20th century with the Weimar Republic. Post-WWI Germany was a progressive democracy born in trauma. The humiliation of the Ruhr occupation and the economic strangulation of the Great Depression—where the “silver lining” of the Dawes Plan became a noose—created a vacuum.

Into this void stepped the National Socialist Workers’ Party. Led by an obscure figure who had already failed once in the Beer Hall Putsch, they rose again on a tide of populism. Even though they couldn’t win a clear democratic mandate, the nationalist factions—driven by a refusal to work with their rivals—handed him the Chancellery. In their pride and spite, they transformed one of the world’s most progressive democracies into the most horrific tyranny on the planet.

The Road We Travel Today

We now find ourselves on that same road. The polarity between party supporters, and even between men and women due to their political opinions, is at an all-time high. We are a single “bad incident” away from watching the entire structure fail.

The warning from history is clear:

• Leaders are the face of democracy, but institutions are its backbone. * When we allow our institutions to be degraded and eroded in the shadows, we invite the rise of dictators.

• When we prioritize the humiliation of our neighbors over the health of our state, we are already conquered.

The Solution

There is still time, but it requires a difficult medicine. We must refuse to be hyper-polarized. We must strive to understand the “other” point of view, even when it is uncomfortable. Most importantly, we must keep our leaders accountable and never—under any circumstances—allow our institutions to be weaponized for partisan gain.

Please, never let your institutions be eroded. Because once the pillars fall, the only thing left is the sword.

Searching for the one meant for my side.

I looked around and thought it wasn't there,

Just empty silence in the winter air.

But now I see—it isn't that love died,

It simply needs the turning of the tide.

For love and seedlings share a common creed:

It is not through extremes they find their seed.

They do not crave the flood or scorching sun,

But quiet, steady hands until they’re won.

Like Livia and Vion, green and still,

They grow through patience and a constant will.

So let it wait, and let the roots take hold,

Consistency is worth more than the gold.

For love is not a spark that quickly dies,

But the obsession in a striver’s eyes.

The drive to heal, to win, to build a throne,

To watch her bloom into the best she’s known.

She is my fuel, the reason for the flight,

The North Star burning through the darkest night.

I’ll be the constant rain, the gentle dew,

For everything I am, I give to you.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contain multitudes.” — Walt Whitman

We love to view the world in binary. If a person does something wrong, we immediately cast them as “evil,” assuming their darkness extends to every corner of their life. Conversely, when a “kind soul” commits a crime, we treat it as an anomaly—we claim they were framed, misunderstood, or pushed to the edge.

But humans aren’t binary. We are the offspring of both angels and demons, possessing both profound kindness and vicious hatred in the same heart. We are deeply flawed, yet we spend our lives yearning for a perfection that wasn’t made for us.

The Trap of the “Perfect” Image

This obsession with perfection often bleeds into how we love. We frequently forget that our partners have their own distinct personalities; instead, we try to morph them into an image that serves us best.

In the race to find the “perfect” person, we lose sight of the compatible one—the person who cheers for you during your worst moments and doesn’t just want you to grow, but wants to grow alongside you. We trade a genuine teammate for a projected ideal.

We Are Hypocrites of the Highest Order

I’ve realized that everyone is a hypocrite about something. It’s part of the human condition.

• It’s the father who preaches that children should choose their own career paths, while passively nudging his son toward the one he already chose for him.

• It’s the model speaking on “natural beauty” on television while hiding every perceived imperfection behind layers of makeup.

  

I am not exempt from this. In fact, I might be the biggest hypocrite of all.

My Own Paradox: The Animal Lover

I am a massive animal lover. I’ll pet every stray I come across; I have more photos of animals in my camera roll than photos of myself. Yet, I am also the one eating eggs every morning and waiting for my father to order chicken every month.

My vegetarian friends used to corner me with this. “Why don’t you advocate for the chicken’s life?” they’d ask. “Is it just because they aren’t ‘attractive’ enough?” For a long time, I didn’t have an answer. I would just deflect or get defensive.

But eventually, I found a solution: I accepted it. Now, instead of reacting, I acknowledge it. I tell them, “You’re right. This is my hypocrisy, and I own it.” The moment I stopped fighting to prove I was “consistent,” the argument died. There is a strange, quiet power in simply acknowledging your own contradictions.

Beyond the Fence: The Power of Bias

We all have a bias. We all love some things more than others. This doesn’t make us “bad”—it makes us biological.

To my friends who sit on the fence over every topic, trying to remain perfectly neutral: doesn’t it hurt? Acknowledging your bias and your hypocrisy doesn’t just help you make peace with yourself; it opens a door to seeing the world clearly. When you stop pretending to be perfectly objective, you can finally understand the points against you. You stop reacting with anger and start observing with curiosity.

A Calm Place in a Divided Age

In an era where ideologies are increasingly polarized, acknowledging our own flaws might be the only bridge we have left. We don’t need to build a perfect utopia; we just need to cultivate a quiet, honest space where we can express an opinion without the immediate fear of being shamed or name-called.

Raven Perched on Fence Post at Sunrise in Mountain Meadow by Josh Blackman

The path to that space doesn’t start with being “right.” It starts with a simple, radical admission.

Consistency is a performance; honesty is a practice.

I’ll keep petting every stray animal I find, and I’ll probably keep eating my chicken dinner. I’m no longer interested in winning the argument or protecting a “pure” image of myself. I’m interested in what happens when we stop pretending.

When we finally lower the masks of our own “perfect” logic, we might find that the person on the other side of the fence isn’t an enemy—they’re just another beautiful, messy hypocrite trying to make sense of the world, just like us.

I’m curious—what is the one contradiction in your own life that you’ve been tired of defending? Maybe it’s time to just acknowledge it.

David with the Head of Goliath By Caravaggio

“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment—as well as his prison.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Guilt is a universal haunting.

Often, it begins in the vacuum of innocence or the recklessness of sheer childishness. We act, we speak, and we move through the world unaware that our wake is tearing others into shreds. We don’t comprehend the scars we leave until much later, when the fog of our own ego clears and we are forced to look at the damage.

But the most dangerous thing about guilt isn’t the sadness it brings—it is the way it can kill you from the inside out if it remains unreconciled.

The Reactive Hero: Tony Stark’s Blindfold

The best modern study of “guilt-driven sabotage” is Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War.

Stark views himself as a protector, but he is a man built on layers of guilt: the weapons his company sold, the lives lost in New York, and the accidental creation of Ultron. When a grieving mother confronts him about her son’s death in Sokovia, Stark doesn’t just feel sorry; he enters a reactive state of mind.

He stops making decisions based on logic and starts making them out of a desperate, frantic need to be “restrained.” This leads to the Accords, which ultimately fractures the Avengers.

The Lesson: When we don’t reconcile with our past, our attempts to “fix” things often just create new tragedies.

The Literary Decay: Raskolnikov vs. The Conscience

If Tony Stark represents the external chaos of guilt, Dostoevsky’s Rodion Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment represents the internal rot.

Raskolnikov believes he is acting for a “higher logic,” but after his crime, his guilt manifests as a literal physical illness. He becomes delirious, isolated, and “torn apart.”

• Stark tries to fix his guilt through control (The Accords).

• Raskolnikov tries to fix his guilt through isolation and intellectualizing his crime.

Both fail until they reach the point of total collapse. Dostoevsky teaches us that you cannot “think” your way out of a scarred conscience; you can only survive it through confession and a return to humanity.

From Individual Burden to National Healing

This cycle doesn’t just happen to individuals; it happens to entire civilizations.

• Germany post-WWII: Through the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (the struggle to overcome the past), Germany chose to live in the light of its guilt. They built memorials in the heart of their capital, making the guilt visible so it could be reconciled daily.

  

  Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

• South Africa: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission understood that you cannot simply “move on” from a shredded past. They realized that by acknowledging the pain out loud, they could prevent the guilt of the past from killing the future of the country.

  

The Path to Thriving: Guilt as a Compass

Having guilt is not enough. In fact, staying in a state of perpetual, unaddressed guilt is a form of self-indulgence—it keeps the focus on your pain rather than the person you hurt.

To live—and truly thrive—you must reconcile. This means:

1. Acknowledging the harm without making excuses.

2. Making amends where possible.

3. Transforming that guilt into a conscious choice to never repeat the action.

Guilt can be a cage, or it can be a compass. The choice depends on whether you are willing to look at your scars in the light.

Over to You: Let’s Talk About the Ghost

We have all been Tony Stark at some point—reacting blindly to a mistake we made. We have all felt a bit of Raskolnikov’s fever when we realize we’ve hurt someone we love.

How do you deal with the “ghost” of guilt? * Do you tend to over-correct and try to control everything like Stark?

• Or do you withdraw into yourself like Raskolnikov?

• What was the one moment that helped you finally reconcile with a past mistake?

I’d love to hear your stories and reflections in the comments below. Let’s learn how to turn our cages into compasses together.

Orestes Pursued by the Furies by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Can we claim our love to be subtle?

The way I held your hands when you were feeling down, is that subtle? The way you consoled me when I was almost crying, is that subtle?

The way we take care of each other, when we are unwell, is that subtle? The way we give each other space, while still being with the other, is that subtle?

When you kissed my forehead, to tell me that you are right next to me, to alleviate my fears and anxiety, is that subtle?

The way you see parts of me that I haven’t shown to anyone, and the way I accept parts of you that no one did, is that subtle?

The way your presence matters, your effort matters, instead of just empty words, is that subtle?

What is our love? Is it meant to be the premonition that I keep having? Or is it meant to be one, with lots of ups and downs, all courtesy of our respective healing arcs?

What exactly is our love? Was it gradual? Was it instant? Was it meant to happen? And where would we be right now, if we had met before?

Where would we be right now, if we had never met each other? Would we still be happy or would we keep waiting for each other, to come and fill that void that seems to exist within us?

Would we still be here, if we never met the way we did?

What would have been our fate then? What would have been our destiny then?

Is it right to call our meeting a plethora of choices made by us, all in the right time? Is it correct to assume that everything that happened to us, was meant to happen, so that we be where we are right now?

What assumption am I making when I feel that every decision, whether stupid, or innocent, or well-thought, brought me to you, you to me and we to us? What belief am I holding on to, when I believe, that you are meant to be mine and me, yours?

What hope am I holding on to, when I believe we will have a future together, that you won’t leave me, like the others did, in my past?

What confidence do I have that I was not too broken to be loved by you? On what authority am I saying that I deserve your love, your care, your affection? Am I right to hold it hostage for myself, or I am too far gone?

What is this insensitivity of being unable to accept your love for me? Am I too conditioned to believe that I deserve nothing, nor your care, not your affection, not your love?

When will I heal from this? When will I grow from this? When will I free myself from this, these restrictive bonds that keep me out of the reach if your love?

When do I get to break free, be the free bird that I desperately need to be? How can I gain back my freedom, the freedom to feel, the freedom to accept your love, the freedom to be the best version that I can be, for you?

How can I make sure that you will never feel unloved, unsafe, insecure, or unstable, when you are with me? How can I make you understand that you are precious to me, that you are valuable to me? How do I make you see that I love you and that I won’t ever leave you?

And how do I make you feel that you are my the one, the one that I have been waiting for almost my entire life?

Can we truly call our love subtle? Can we claim it to be something quiet?

The way I held your hands when the world felt too heavy—is that subtle? The way you reached out to console me when I was on the verge of breaking—is that subtle? When we care for each other in sickness, or the way we grant each other the grace of space while remaining side-by-side—is there anything small about that?

When you kissed my forehead to tell me you were right there, specifically to silence my fears and steady my pulse—that wasn’t subtle. The way you see the hidden rooms of my soul that I’ve kept locked from everyone else, and the way I accept the parts of you that the world ignored—that is a revolution, not a whisper.

What is this love of ours? Is it the premonition I keep having, or is it a masterpiece made of ups and downs, painted by our respective healing arcs? Was it a gradual climb or an instant spark?

I often wonder where we would be if we had met years ago. Or worse—where would we be if we had never met at all? Would we still be happy, or would we spend our lives pacing the floors of that void that seems to exist within us?

Is it right to call our meeting a “plethora of choices”? Am I right to believe that every decision—every stupid, innocent, or well-thought mistake—was a breadcrumb leading me to you, and you to me?

But then the shadows crawl in. I hold onto the hope of a future, yet I fear you’ll leave like the others did. On what authority do I claim I deserve your affection? Am I holding your love hostage, or am I simply too far gone to realize I’m allowed to have it? When will I finally break free from these restrictive bonds? When do I get to be the “free bird” I desperately need to be?

How do I make you understand that you are my “one”—the person I’ve been waiting for my entire life?

The Answer: The Reward for Kindness

Yes, our love is subtle. But its subtlety doesn’t make it lesser; it gives it a perspective all its own.

It is the perfect reflection of who we are: You are the Golden Retriever, radiating warmth and seeking the light; and I am the Black Cat, content in the sidelines, yet secretly yearning for the undivided attention of my favorite human.

When I talk to you, when I listen to you, or when I am simply near you—I am never alone. I have never felt unloved, insecure, or unstable in your presence. You are my muse and my motivation; you are the proof that someone actually cares.

Regarding your freedom: You are already free, baccha. The only thing restraining you is the ghost of your own insecurity. But with my daily efforts, I promise to help you slip through the clasp of those fears.

We don’t truly know why we fell in love, or even the exact second it happened. We met by the whims of fate—a simple “like” on a post, a glance at a profile—but it feels as though it was written in the stars long before we clicked “follow.”

I used to feel that my kindness was a burden, a trait that went unrewarded in a harsh world. But perhaps the universe realized that what I needed wasn’t “success” in the way the world defines it. I didn’t need something I could achieve through sheer hard work; I needed someone to fill the voids. I needed a partner to clear the fog of my nihilism.

You are my reward for all that kindness. It was my fitoor—my obsession with staying kind despite everything—that brought you into my life.

But in reality, these two contrasting terms complement each other so profoundly that one is incomplete without the other. As George Bernard Shaw famously observed:

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”

This insight reveals the truth: they aren’t enemies; they are partners.

The Illusion of Opposites

We tend to romanticize Optimism—that sweet hope that everything will go merrily as planned. It is the fuel of dreams. On the other side, we villainize Pessimism, viewing it as negative energy.

However, true pessimism isn’t about negativity; it is about preparation. It is the mindset that designs Plan B, the escape route, and the safety net. It is the architect of survival.

In life, we require a healthy balance of both.

• Only Optimism leads to the highs of delusion, where we blind ourselves to reality.

• Only Pessimism drags us into the depths of nihilism, where we never dare to start.

Optimist in Thinking, Pessimist in Action

When we first conceive a goal, we start with optimism. It is all sunshine and vision. But soon, we understand our constraints and the realities of life. This is where the pessimism grows in us.

This shouldn’t be feared. This pessimism allows us to navigate the issue within our constraints. This leads to a philosophy I live by:

“Be an Optimist in thinking, but a Pessimist in action.”

Having both feelings is not contradictory. Optimism is born of the independent mind—free and thoughtful. Pessimism, however, is often born of society: the boundaries, the constraints, and the fear of failure.

The Necessity of Fear

Is the fear of failure wrong? No. It is simply preparation.

Returning to Shaw’s analogy, the plane represents the audacious, gravity-defying goal of flight. But the parachute represents the fear of failure.

If we had just planes without parachutes—born out of the fear of crashing—the sheer risk might have led to the fall of the idea itself. The parachute doesn’t stop the plane from flying; it gives us the confidence to take off.

The Yin and Yang of Success

Optimism and Pessimism are like Yin and Yang; one cannot survive without the other. We need the “sunshine” of optimism to set the destination, and the “shadow” of pessimism to show us where the potholes are on the road to get there.

I am curious to know where you stand on this spectrum. Do you find yourself naturally leaning toward the high vision of the plane, or the cautious preparation of the parachute? Or do you believe, as I do, that fear is a necessary ingredient for success?

I’d love to hear your perspective on how you balance these two forces in your own life.

“There is no talent here, this is hard work. This is an obsession. Talent does not exist, we are all equal as human beings. You could be anyone if you put in the time. You will reach the top, and that is that. I am not talented, I am obsessed.”

— Conor McGregor

Obsession is often painted as a villain.

We are told it is a gateway to toxic emotions—jealousy, hatred, self-destruction. We are told to find balance. We are told to let go.

But is obsession always negative?

When we listen to the speeches and tales of the highly successful, a different pattern emerges. They don’t just “like” what they do. They certainly imply an obsession for the things they love.

• Athletes push their bodies past breaking points.

• Musicians view themselves as eternal students, obsessed with mastering every note.

• Founders go as far as they can to bring their ideas to fruition.

Is this really obsession? Or is it something else? I call it the positive sibling of obsession: Hunger.

The Power of Hunger

It is the hunger to be the best in the world. The hunger to achieve the unachievable.

We see this in Cristiano Ronaldo. I have always been a Messi fan, but I cannot question the hunger of CR7. Even now, the visuals of him crying during the 2022 World Cup make my heart ache. Here is a man who has already achieved the status of one of the best players in history. Yet, at age 40, he is still grinding. He is still working harder than anyone else to finally complete his dream.

But we also see this hunger in those who faced early rejection.

Take Michael Jordan. Before he was a legend, he was a high school student who was cut from the varsity basketball team. He went home, locked his door, and cried until he fell asleep. But he didn’t quit. He didn’t change his dream. He let that rejection feed his hunger.

He used that pain to wake up earlier than everyone else, to practice harder than everyone else. That obsession turned a rejected high school kid into the greatest player of all time. He didn’t just want it; he needed it.

The 30-Rank Heartbreak

Anyone who has been through the grind of competitive exams understands this specific type of hunger.

We all start with a dream for that seat in our college. But as time passes, if that goal isn’t met, the hunger can turn sour. It gives you sleepless nights, breaks your confidence, and eventually shatters you from within.

I resonate deeply with this because I lived it.

In my first attempt, I cleared the exams for IITs, BITS, and NITs. I had options. But I wasn’t satisfied. I had a hunger for a specific branch—my deserved branch. I refused to settle. I took a partial drop, worked harder than ever before, and secured an even better rank the next year.

But as fate would have it, I missed my dream branch by exactly 30 ranks.

It shattered me.

It made me question my very existence. Am I really good enough? Am I actually made to do something significant in this world?

The Pivot: From Ranks to Returns

For a while, the silence was deafening. But I realized something: Failure didn’t extinguish my hunger. It only refined it.

I have traded the exam syllabus for financial models. The arena has changed—from lecture halls to the high-stakes world of Investment Banking and Private Equity—but the intensity remains the same. I am treating that “30-rank gap” as a debt I plan to pay back with interest.

Talent is common. Intelligence is everywhere. But that raw, terrifying hunger? That is your edge.

Talent takes you to 100%. Hunger takes you to 101%.

I hope you enjoyed this post.

I’ve shared my “30-rank” story—the moment my hunger truly began. Now, I want to hear yours. Do you view obsession as a dangerous flaw, or is it the necessary fuel for success?

Let me know your thoughts on hunger and obsession in the comments below.

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

— Vincent van Gogh

When you read the title, you might think I believe no one can artistically match Van Gogh. You’re wrong.

It wasn’t just the art that made Van Gogh; it was his resilience and his undying love for his craft.

The Myth of Appreciation

Van Gogh, as we all know, never received appreciation for his work during his lifetime. But did that stop him from painting? No.

This was a man whose entire life was a series of convictions against convenience. Before he was a painter, he was a lay preacher in the Borinage, a destitute Belgian mining district. He was eventually fired. Not for a lack of faith, but for being too faithful—for giving away all his possessions and living in squalor just like the miners. He was too intense, too committed, too much.

His “muse,” whatever it was at the time, was something he followed with a terrifying, all-consuming passion, regardless of what the world thought.

This is the opposite of what we do. Being on Substack, and in life, we want our art to be appreciated. We want to be known.

I’ll admit my own hypocrisy: when I first started writing here, I got caught up in the race. I felt that overwhelming need to overdo things, driven by an almost undying greed for more subscribers. I wasn’t just writing; I was chasing validation.

It forced me to stop and ask myself the hard question: Was I doing this for the views and appreciation, or for my original love for writing?

We all want our work to receive love, to touch people, and to bring a positive change. But in this pursuit, we forget why we started. We forget our first muse.

The Nectar of the Mind

Van Gogh teaches us this one thing: you must have an undying love for your muse, even when it gives you nothing back.

Think about this: In a career that spanned a decade, he created over 2,000 artworks. He famously sold only one painting while he was alive: The Red Vineyard.

He wasn’t painting for a market. He wasn’t A/B testing color palettes. He was painting to silence the voice in his head, to capture the “nectar” of his mind.

Love your muse because it may not be giving you bucks or appreciation, but it is giving your mind that nectar which it definitely needs.

“But We Need to Earn Money”

My author friends will be thinking, “This is fine, but we need to earn money. It’s not only our passion but also our profession.”

The only advice I can give is to still do it for your joy. Because the day you feel you are overdosing on the “profession” of it all—the day it becomes only a job—you will not be writing as you did before. You will be losing the joy of it.

So, Why No New Van Gogh?

This brings us back to the title.

The reason there will not be another Van Gogh isn’t that we lack talent. It’s that we lack the silence he worked in.

Van Gogh operated in an almost total public vacuum of feedback. He had no subscriber counts, no engagement metrics, no ‘likes,’ and no comments.

His entire “audience” was one person: his brother, Theo. His validation came from a single, private, loving correspondence, not a global, metric-driven platform.

We, on the other hand, live in a deluge of feedback. We are surrounded by analytics and the pressure to perform. We are conditioned to check for the very appreciation he never received. He only had the nectar of his art; we have that nectar plus the addictive, distracting drug of external validation.

The Ultimate Audience

In the end, we all crave attention. We want the world to love our art.

But perhaps the ultimate appreciation isn’t from the crowd at all. Perhaps it’s the quiet, resilient love you show your own muse, day after day, in a world that isn’t listening.

That is an appreciation you can learn to love. And unlike subscribers or ‘likes,’ it’s an appreciation no one can ever take away from you.

So, the next time you sit down to write, think for a second. Ask yourself: Am I loving this, or am I just doing it to be appreciated?

Thank you for reading.

This is a conflict I think about constantly as a writer. Now I want to hear from you.

Leave a comment: How do you balance the “nectar” of your muse with the “bucks” of the real world? How do you keep creating when it feels like no one is watching?

He fears the silence of the empty room, But suffocates in crowded, loud perfume. He’ll stand apart, a man of ice, Then curse the world for its own vice.

He loathes the voice that breaks his guard, A simple “hello,” sudden, hard. Yet hunts the stranger, breaks the pact, The first to speak, to build, to act. He’ll forge the bond, then flee the chain, A endless cycle, sun and rain.

He craves the warmth of hand-in-his, The solid truth of a real kiss. But when it comes, he sees the lie, A script performed, a passing sigh. He calls it “false,” a hollow play, And pushes all the love away.

He thinks to die, to end the noise, To drop the struggle, break the toys. But as he leans into the void, He sees the ones he can’t avoid— The faces that his absence breaks, The aftershocks his leaving makes. And so he lives, a debtor bound To walk upon the living ground.

He wants to be a force for good, A kindness, clear and understood. He prays for heaven, path, and sign, To walk the straight, a perfect line. And yet, he finds, with each intent, His feet upon the stone descent. He wants the light, he knows the creed, But walks to hell with every deed.

It’s a line straight from a movie, but it feels painfully real, doesn’t it?

Let’s talk about Batman, Daredevil, and Robin Hood. What’s the thread that ties them together? Sure, they’re famous. They have entire mythologies built around them.

But the real connection is their persona: they live in the shadows, and they are vigilante justice makers.

The Allure of the Man in the Shadow

I’d argue that most people love Batman, even if they’re loyal to Marvel. What makes him so compelling?

It’s not just the gadgets. It’s because he doesn’t have abnormal superpowers (and no, being rich doesn’t count). He isn’t a god sent to save the world.

He is just a mere human who wants justice to prevail and will go to any means to see it done. He’s a man who’s had enough.

A Fascination Born from Frustration

This brings us to our own fascination with vigilante justice. We love when people take the law into their own hands and deliver impromptu justice for their loved ones.

But why?

Maybe the reason is a reluctant acceptance: we realize that sometimes, we simply will not get justice through legal means.

Maybe the perpetrator is too big, too powerful, too connected.

Or maybe we’ve just lost faith in the legal system itself. We see the hypocrisy. We know that for the rich and high-status, “justice” and “punishment” are severely different than for a person coming from the lowest strata of society.

The Rage We Don’t Talk About

We all want a just and fair society. But when we see the blatant incapabilities of our legal institutions, we can’t bring ourselves to trust them.

And that’s where the vigilante comes in.

Are they illegal? Yes.

But we love them because they are actually providing us justice, by any means necessary.

Let’s be honest: we love when a father or a brother brutally murders his sister’s or daughter’s rapist. We love it because we know the legal system might fail him. We feel he should take the matter into his own hands.

Wanting to be Batman isn’t about fancy cars. It’s about a raw human emotion: the desire to stand against injustice and do everything in your power to stop it.

When Emotion Takes the Driving Seat

Now, you must be thinking that I’m in full support of this.

Well, yes and no.

On one hand, we can never truly understand the grief-ridden rage of a father who has lost his daughter to these monsters. We all want the perpetrators to be hanged or “encountered.” The vigilante is just doing what we secretly wish we could.

But what are we losing in the process?

We are letting our emotions take the driving seat. And when that happens, when does the cycle of violence end?

The Real Problem

I don’t have the full-fledged solution. But I know this: if we could regain our trust in our legal and justice institutions, the idea of vigilante justice would die down.

The fantasy of the vigilante isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom.

We only need a vigilante when the justice system turns a blind eye to the victim.

A question for you:

Do you think vigilante justice is ever truly justified, or is it just a dangerous fantasy? Where do you draw the line?

Leave a comment below—I really want to know what you think.

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