Do you realise how tormented you have to be when you’re down to your last cetirizine, watching your entire life flash before your eyes like it’s a low-budget tragedy while you’re simultaneously debating whether the real issue is allergies or your lifelong commitment to being one step away from disaster?

I lied. This isn’t a letter, it’s a rant.

Every year, around April, the internet begins its annual propaganda campaign for summer. Suddenly, everyone is posting about how the heat makes them feel “alive”. It’s all about sundresses, eating fruits and picnic spreads. They begin saying things like “she belongs in the sun” with alarming sincerity. The Euro Summer Pinterest boards re-emerge. The collective fantasy (re: psychosis) seems to suggest that summer is a season of sensual abundance, with bronzed shoulders, salty wavy hair, mango juice dribbling down wrists and everything faintly smelling of sunscreen. Meanwhile, I am at home looking like I’ve been stung by a politically motivated swarm of bees. It’s actually a sensory nightmare.

I have never understood summer enthusiasts. To me, summer has always felt less like a season and more like an ongoing mass inconvenience. It enters like a hostile takeover of the body. My skin begins revolting first. It is sweat collecting in places that should remain theoretical. It is your thighs developing friction-based hostility. It is sleeping badly for three straight months, waking up already angry AND you guessed it right – sweaty!! It’s humidity thick enough to chew and cause a headache so perpetual that it feels emotionally targeted.

And then there are the hives. Not cute allergies. Not one inaudible sneeze into a tissue. I mean full-body betrayal. Raised welts blooming across your skin for reasons so mysterious they start feeling philosophical. Heat hives are particularly evil because they arrive alongside the thing causing them. You sweat, your skin reacts, the itching worsens, you get hotter and your body retaliates further. It’s the kind of itch that colonises your thoughts until you can no longer participate in civil society. The kind that makes you want to peel yourself out of your own skin and place it gently in cold storage. People underestimate how psychologically destabilising itchiness can be. At a certain point, it stops being physical discomfort and becomes the only thing your brain can process. Entire personalities have been ruined by chronic irritation. There is no graceful way to participate in society while your body feels like it’s buffering incorrectly.

And yet summer remains the season most associated with effortlessness. That is what fascinates (derogatory) me most about it. The performance required. Summer expects us to continue looking desirable while we’re physically deteriorating. You are meant to appear breezy and luminous while your nervous system is privately threatening legal action. Every beauty standard associated with summer feels specifically designed by somebody who has never experienced humidity in Mumbai. People say things like “just wear breathable fabrics,” as though linen can save me from atmospheric violence. Nothing about Indian summer feels breathable. Not the trains. Not the roads. Not the air itself. By now, the city has developed the energy of an oven that has forgotten it contains human beings. The sunlight becomes punitive. Metal surfaces turn hostile. My phone overheats with the kind of drama I deeply respect, because same.

There is also something uniquely humiliating about allergies because they are rarely treated like legitimate suffering. People hear “hives” and imagine a minor inconvenience, like a cartoon rash. They do not understand the exhaustion of constant discomfort. The way itchiness dissolves your ability to think about anything else. The way chronic irritation slowly alters your personality until you become mean in tiny, specific ways. Summer turns me into somebody who resents sunflowers, rainbows or the concept of love. In every way except the physical one, I Hulk out into pure, irritable rage at everything, all the time.

And somehow, despite all this, summer people persist. These people wake up early to “soak in the sun.” They describe the weather as gorgeous while the UV index is essentially issuing threats. They post beach vacations while I am indoors researching whether antihistamines can cause spiritual decay. I have watched people call summer “healing” while my skin is actively forming welts shaped like dissent. Maybe that’s why I resent the cultural mythology around the season more than the season itself. Especially if your body refuses to cooperate with the fantasy. There is something deeply isolating about living inside a body that reacts badly to what everyone else insists is pleasure. Every summer, I become deeply suspicious of people who say things like, “Hey, I love this weather, it’s my favourite!”

Their relationship to heat feels fictional. They are always “sun-kissed”, while the rest of us are trying not to fuse with public transport seating. I step outside for six minutes and return looking medically compromised. And perhaps this is why summer feels so personally offensive because it’s a season built around performance. You are expected to continue being socially available while being physically uncomfortable. To remain presentable while swollen, itchy, damp, irritable and exhausted. To participate in joy while your skin is actively filing complaints against you. The older I get, the less interested I am in pretending that this god-awful weather is anything but pleasant. I do not want a hot-girl summer. I do not want a beach tan. I do not want to sip citrusy drinks on a rooftop while pretending heatstroke is a lifestyle choice (okay fine, I might still want those citrusy drinks, but strictly in a suspiciously well-air-conditioned room). I want functional weather. I want shade. I want the ability to exist outdoors without my skin entering a state of protest. So no, I will not be “making the most of summer”. I will be avoiding it. Because for some of us, it has always been biological warfare with good lighting.

Anyway, that concludes my rant. I will be indoors until further notice.

A woman toggles between Hinge matches while listening to a podcast about attachment styles. Someone sends good morning texts to three different people they do not actually intend to date. A situationship stretches itself across eight emotionally ambiguous months because neither person wants to ask for clarity and risk seeming needy. Couples document anniversaries with cinematic precision online while privately discussing whether they should keep their options open.

Meanwhile, everybody is exhausted.

We constantly speak about love, yet increasingly struggle to sustain intimacy in practice. People are dating more, communicating more and exposing themselves to more potential partners than at any point in history, but genuine emotional security feels strangely scarce. The dominant explanation for this is usually psychological. We blame avoidant attachment styles, commitment issues, trauma, unrealistic expectations or declining attention spans. But what if modern romance is not simply failing because individuals are broken? What if the system itself is making real intimacy structurally difficult?

Capitalism thrives on mobility, optimisation, endless consumption and emotional instability. These conditions are fundamentally incompatible with slow, dependent love. The problem is not that people suddenly became incapable of romance. It is that life today increasingly rewards behaviours that erode the very conditions romance requires. And in its place, we have built a culture where casual sex, emotional detachment and disposable intimacy are not just normalised, but economically convenient.

The algorithm ate romance

We no longer encounter people organically. We browse them.

A person is now compressed into six photographs, a Spotify anthem, three witty prompts and a height requirement. Attraction becomes less about emotional resonance and more about marketability. The goal is not simply connection but competitiveness. The average person navigates romance through platforms designed with the same psychological architecture as social media feeds, gambling systems and e-commerce interfaces. Infinite scroll mechanics, intermittent rewards and algorithmic matching create dopamine loops that keep us engaged rather than fulfilled. In fact, dating apps are often more profitable when users remain perpetually searching. It is, in fact, not designed to be deleted.

Desire itself has become digitised. Dating platforms do not merely facilitate romance. They fundamentally reorganise how people perceive one another. Human beings become profiles. Attraction becomes data. Compatibility becomes predictive analytics. Romance has been rebranded as a market strategy, and the tragedy of it all is that intimacy now feels transactional. People once met through friends, at work, in college, in their neighbourhoods or simply because some invisible string kept pulling them back into each other’s lives long enough for something to grow. Attraction emerged gradually, often through familiarity. But digital dating flattened intimacy into profile optimisation, strategic messaging, aesthetic branding and endless comparison.

The paradox of endless choices is that it rarely produces satisfaction. Instead, it produces anxiety. When every interaction exists alongside the possibility of someone better, richer, hotter, smarter or emotionally easier one swipe away, commitment begins to feel less like intimacy and more like settling. People stop investing beyond the surface level because they have been conditioned to believe there is always a superior option in circulation.

Casual sex fits better

Real relationships are profoundly inconvenient. They demand repetition. Stability. Interdependence. Capitalism, however, rewards the opposite. The ideal modern subject is independent, mobile, self-sufficient and endlessly productive. You are expected to relocate for better opportunities, prioritise work above all else, continuously improve yourself and remain emotionally adaptable. Dependence is framed as weakness. Neediness is socially embarrassing. Slowness feels inefficient.

Within this structure, casual intimacy becomes incredibly functional. Casual sex asks for chemistry, not emotional infrastructure. It allows people to experience desire without having to reorganise their lives around another person. No difficult conversations about the future. No emotional entanglements that might disrupt ambition, mobility or personal freedom. Intimacy becomes temporary, flexible and low-risk. Situationships operate like zero-hour contracts, and while this dynamic is often framed as liberation, many people privately experience it as exhaustion. Because humans do not stop needing attachment simply because culture has branded attachment uncool. Casual sex can be healthy, joyful and emotionally honest. The problem emerges when emotional detachment becomes aspirational and when vulnerability is pathologised, and intimacy begins to feel embarrassing. Somewhere along the way, caring deeply became associated with losing.

Loneliness creates consumers

One of capitalism’s most successful industries is insecurity. A person who feels fundamentally loved and emotionally secure is harder to monetise. Stable intimacy often reduces compulsive consumption. When people feel emotionally anchored, they may become less dependent on validation through beauty products, luxury lifestyles, social media performance or endless self-optimisation. Lonely people scroll more. Spend more. Upgrade themselves more. Purchase identities more aggressively. Entire industries now profit from (romantic) dissatisfaction. Dating apps monetise prolonged searching. The beauty industry profits from desirability anxiety. Wellness culture sells self-worth back to exhausted people. Social media platforms thrive on comparison and a lack of emotion. Self-help ecosystems continuously diagnose relational inadequacy.

Capitalism does not necessarily want people to be heartbroken. But it absolutely benefits from people never feeling fully enough. This creates an emotional economy where dissatisfaction becomes perpetual. You are always one glow-up away from becoming lovable. One productivity routine away from becoming desirable. One therapy breakthrough away from attracting healthier partners. One better body, better wardrobe, better apartment, better lifestyle, away from finally earning intimacy.

Love, meanwhile, becomes conditional upon performance. Instead of asking whether someone makes us feel emotionally safe, dating in today’s world increasingly asks whether they add to our personal brand.

Romance is performative

Social media has transformed intimacy into spectacle.

And because everything is potentially observable, intimacy develops a kind of split consciousness. You are no longer just in the relationship, but you are also watching yourself in it. Intimacy is now staged, edited and reverse-engineered for legibility. The result is not necessarily inspiration. Often, it is alienation. People begin expecting relationships to feel cinematic at all times.

Romance becomes aesthetic before it becomes emotional.
Does this relationship look meaningful enough?

Real intimacy is often repetitive and deeply unglamorous. It involves witnessing another person in their least optimised state. We are becoming fluent in the language of desire while forgetting the language of devotion.

The disappearance of slow burn

Romance requires slowness. Not slowness in the traditional or conservative sense, but emotional spaciousness, enough time for trust, familiarity and attachment to deepen naturally. Of late, this possibility has been increasingly eliminated. Everybody is overstimulated. Overworked. Chronically online. Constantly reachable. Human attention itself has become fragmented by notifications, algorithms and productivity culture. Even rest now feels instrumentalised. People (including myself) schedule intimacy around work calendars. Date between deadlines. Reply to vulnerable messages while commuting or half-watching the new show. Emotional presence becomes difficult because the lives we currently live rarely allow sustained attention toward anything at all. And yet love depends precisely on sustained attention.

To love someone deeply is to notice them repeatedly over time. To remain. To endure boredom together. To become familiar instead of merely exciting. But contemporary culture worships novelty. The endless pursuit of newness: new experiences, new people, new possibilities, new stimulation. It makes permanence feel almost psychologically unnatural. Disposable culture does not stop at products. Eventually, it shapes people, too.

None of this means the past was better

Traditional relationship structures were often deeply unequal, restrictive and shaped by economic dependence. Sexual liberation itself is not the problem. The problem is emotional disposability. What present-day culture calls freedom sometimes resembles chronic instability dressed up as empowerment. Endless options do not automatically create deeper intimacy. In many cases, they create emotional paralysis. And perhaps this is why genuine romance increasingly feels radical. To truly love someone today requires resisting many of the values capitalism rewards. It requires choosing depth over endless options, presence over productivity, vulnerability over emotional branding and commitment over perpetual self-protection. Real intimacy asks people to become emotionally accountable in a culture obsessed with personal optimisation.

That is not easy, especially when everything around us encourages detachment. Perhaps modern romance feels emotionally bankrupt not because humans have evolved beyond love, but because the systems organising today’s lifestyle increasingly undermine the conditions that allow reinforced love. And maybe the most countercultural thing a person can do today is risk a genuine attachment anyway.

As someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy celebrating birthdays (only mine, I should clarify; I am otherwise elated to plan elaborate celebrations for everyone else), I knew exactly what I wanted my 25th birthday to look like more than a month before it arrived. I made my lists, discussed the vision with my friends, and sent out invites well in advance. I wanted it to be foolproof. For the first time in goodness knows how long, I didn’t want to spend the day nursing my anxiety or tending to the big sad. What they say about the frontal lobe developing in your mid-twenties is, in fact, not wrong. Things begin to look different on this side. But more importantly, you start learning how not to listen to that devil perched on your shoulder, the one constantly narrating a script of falsehoods about you.

The thing about being a sad girl with a sunshine disposition is that when the inevitable grey cloud visits, you must know how to carry a phantom happiness within you. Something light and rehearsed, ready to dance on its tiptoes in front of the people who keep cheering for more. Being an empath means I absorb every emotion, every energy, every physical sensation around me as if it were my own. It also means that in order to not hate the game entirely, I’ve had to learn the art of compartmentalising. My time, my feelings, my expectations, neatly folded into little boxes. Accepting that my days are never going to be black and white when I seem to carry a perpetual grey filter. But multiple emotions can coexist. They always have. I can be sad about losing people I once believed my life couldn’t exist without. And I can also be extremely happy that everyone who showed up for my party mirrored the excitement I had hoped for. The older I get, the more I realise that joy and grief share the same apartment; they simply take turns occupying the balcony.

Maybe this clarity only arrived because I turned twenty-five. I’m telling you, they might actually be right about this age rewiring your brain chemistry.

It was a wine and cheese night. My party. Fifteen out of twenty people showed up. The remaining five exist across cities and time zones. My birthday fell on a Sunday, but I took leave on Friday and Monday– my way of silently rebelling against the corporate life. So technically, I could have hosted the party on the day itself, but I chose the night before. I like my sleep, and most of my friends do too, so Saturday seemed like the responsible hedonist’s compromise. A few of my closest friends came over early to help me set everything up, which, in our language, is code for making sure I don’t cancel the party an hour before it begins because I’m suddenly not feeling the best. Something about my new tattoo flaring up and my everlasting relationship with nostalgia had me spiralling a little. I was missing people I couldn’t reach. The forty-degree heat outside wasn’t helping either. So they came over to make sure everything, and by everything I mean me, was in order.

I’ve built the kind of friendships that Taylor Swift sings about in New Year’s Day. Maybe she meant romantic love, but I’ve always been as romantic with my friends as I am with any potential partner. Possibly more. Anyway, these are friends who will help me clean up bottles after the party, but they’ll also arrive four hours early just to keep me sane until it begins. And if necessary, they’ll stay the next morning for coffee, electrolytes and an aspirin to soothe the collective hangover. There was cheese, hummus and dips arranged neatly on the table. A generous abundance of carbs. And pita bread, which we completely forgot to put out, so it now sits in my refrigerator like an abandoned prop, waiting to be claimed. There were candles. Flowers. So many flowers. Silver ribbon bows curling around glass bottles and the softest light.

My house becomes a home the moment my friends step inside it. I breathe a little lighter. Laugh a little louder. These are people I’ve known for the majority of my life. They have seen every version of me: the angry teenage one, the ambitious one, the angry adult one, the one learning how to survive heartbreak without making it her entire personality. They have, in many ways, helped assemble the person I am today. It’s surreal to have everyone who loves you gathered in the same room, simply celebrating your existence. The evening quickly evolved from a poised wine-and-cheese situation to full-blown drunken dancing to Chikni Chameli, with a glass or two sacrificed along the way.

At one point in the night, I paused to notice how my friends had naturally taken over every corner of my house. Someone in the kitchen was loudly debating the whereabouts of the last bottle of wine. The bathroom had temporarily transformed into our makeshift smoking area, full of laughter and half-finished stories. On my bed, one friend was nearly passed out; when I asked if she was okay, she slurred an enthusiastic yes while another friend carefully fixed her eyeliner. But my living room remains my favourite. On one side, a friend sat cross-legged on the floor, gently petting Hazel, my dog, until she drifted off to sleep. On the other side of the room, people had started an impromptu karaoke session. Everyone was happy. And I realised something simple and enormous at the same time: it really does take a village. Mine just happened to be gathered in my living room that night.

I’d like to believe things do get better. If not the best, then at least better than before. When you treat that phantom happiness as a kind of wild card, something you can pull out when the day feels unbearable, it becomes possible to make something beautiful out of nothing. Turn water into wine, as they say.

The world is already too full of sorrow to willingly drown in it. There is a strange comfort in knowing that you are both alone in this life and also deeply accompanied. That, at the end of the day, you are all you truly have, but along the way, you might gather a room full of people who will sit on your living room floor, sing terribly to early-2010s Hindi songs, help you clean up broken glasses and promise, in a thousand small ways, to never become strangers to you.

And sometimes, at twenty-five, that feels like enough.

2025 felt like 365 days of living inside a permanent Mercury retrograde. Everything misfired. Timelines collapsed. Conversations arrived too late or not at all. And almost everyone I know agrees, it was a year that asked too much and gave too little in return.

Somewhere on TikTok (the modern oracle, for better or worse), a creator predicted that 2026 would be the new 2016, a cultural reset, a return to ease and humour. I don’t know how much I believe in prophetic algorithms, but I do know this: despite everything, we are choosing to persist. Sometimes it’s by leaning on nostalgia, other times a silent rebellion of sorts.

And by that, I don’t mean the grand narratives of progress or the sanitised optimism we’re sold at the start of every year. I mean resistance reduced to its softest register. The kind Albert Camus alluded to when he wrote about imagining Sisyphus happy; not because the boulder disappears, but because the act of pushing it becomes a choice rather than a punishment.

A close friend once woke up in the middle of a tremulous depressive episode and told me she was certain she would never come out of it. She said it with the finality of someone with a survival-grade hope. She came out of it the next week. Not in a neat or permanent state, as pop-culture would have us believe, but as someone who shaped their being by the practice of living with their lows. This doesn’t preclude a return to the pits in any way, but she knows that and as do we.

This is about all of us, moving in and out of these phases, mistaking the depth of the moment for its permanence. Often, survival isn’t poetic. It’s practical. It’s indulgent. It’s stubborn. Poetry is born out of nostalgia but it only comes after survival. A survival that can only be sustained in the presence of other people.

Amidst our afflictions, I allow myself to be moved by how instinctively we show up for one another during these episodes. How we create soft landings without naming them as such. Sitting in silence. Sending reels or film recommendations when language fails. Sharing a Tumblr-esque joke or a vine reference as shorthand for I’m here. In a culture obsessed with self-optimisation, this interdependence feels almost subversive.

Not because there’s evidence of making it out alive, but because faith sometimes lies in allowing your people to find their way on their own timeline but staying close enough to catch them if they falter.

I can’t feel my rears anymore. I’ve been seated for far too long. The thing about dissociating is that when you stop, you’re right where you started (physically, at least). My last few posts have circled around movement and stillness. Funny, because both are part of my dissociation. It’s all in my head. I started writing this one because I had a moment of clarity, a fleeting second where I stopped and realised I am, in fact, right where you left me. Or rather, where I left myself. Everything around me seems to have gained momentum, but when I pause to reflect, I feel like I’m at a permanent standstill.

Sure, I got a couple of degrees, landed an impressive job, maybe even travelled to new cities, but with the same playlists, and the same conversations about what’s next. I bought things that were supposed to make me feel more adult- a moka pot, a ceramic mug that chipped within a week, a planner I stopped filling out after march. I switched shampoos, routines, and also my go-to brand of coffee. And yet, none of it made me feel like I am moving.

Sometimes I wonder if growth is quieter than I imagined. Less of a transformation, more like moss that grows in a slow, soft, invisible way until one day it’s everywhere. But I can’t help feeling like I’m stuck between drafts of myself. It’s like writing and rewriting the same paragraph until you forget what the original idea was, or opening a google doc you swore you’d finish and realising the cursor’s been blinking for months. The abandoned drafts still exist, though. They linger in the background, a cheeky reminder that even your unfinished versions still hold meaning.

It’s that same thing Carmy keeps chasing. His idea of progress is constantly tangled in perfection. His whole life feels like a mise en place of every emotion, every relationship sorted, labeled, controlled, but it never quite stays that way. He’s haunted by the chaos of his past kitchens, his brother’s death, his own impossible standards. He moves through it trying to find solace in the noise. In season 2, when he tells Sydney that “perfection’s the enemy,” it’s not just about food, he’s also talking about himself. He keeps trying to plate his life like one of his dishes that is precise and beautiful. But the thing about Carm is that he doesn’t know what to do when things actually settle. Peace unnerves him. Stillness is louder than the kitchen’s chaos. I recognise that within myself too.

The freezer scene in season 3 encapsulates it so well and for the most part, it really hit home. Locked in with his thoughts, cut off from the noise but still being able to hear it, he unravels. He’s forced to sit with himself, and that stillness feels almost violent. That’s what dissociation feels like; it’s when the silence starts to echo. Carmy builds and breaks, builds and breaks again, convinced that control equals safety and yet, the real metamorphosis is in the smallest apologies, the moments he lets someone else stir the sauce, or when he finally admits that he can’t do it alone.

That’s the kind of growth I’ve been circling around too. The kind that doesn’t look like forward motion but feels like surrender. The kind that asks you to stay in the room, even when everything in you wants to run. Maybe progress isn’t about getting unstuck; maybe it’s about learning to live with the parts of yourself that still are. Because staying is its own kind of movement. It’s sitting with discomfort long enough for it to soften. It’s realising that not every phase of life needs to produce something tangible. No shiny milestone, no clean before-and-after but simply enduring the in-between, learning to hold contradictions without trying to resolve them. Maybe it’s allowing yourself to be both restless and rooted, both lost and found, both unfinished and enough.

That’s what makes the in-between so sacred; that it’s not a waiting room for the next version of you, but the space where all your versions overlap. The drafts, the detours, the abandoned ideas, they all coexist here, quietly shaping the person you’re becoming, even when you can’t feel it happening. Maybe we don’t need a Michelin star right away. Maybe the point isn’t the star at all, but the kitchen you build while trying.

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve known I liked moving. There was no locational permanence in my life, not really. I’ve stayed in houses for years, unpacked boxes into bedrooms, learned the light patterns on their walls. And yet, I’ve always left them behind. My hand is always on the doorknob, even in my own home. I could be gone by morning, or I could stay another year. Both feel equally possible. This isn’t detachment, at least not entirely. It’s knowing that the moment you commit to one place, the rest of the world fades just slightly at the edges.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always found my truest sense of being in journeys. When I’m in transit, I know how to live instead of just exist. A window seat can make me feel more alive than any fixed address; the shifting landscapes, the changing light, the sound of wheels against the road, rails or the runway. It’s the promise that something new is always waiting just ahead, and that hope feels cleaner and lighter, than permanence ever has. A temporary home like a train carriage, an Airbnb, or a friend’s couch can sometimes be a better happy place than any forever one, if such a thing even exists.

For me, the journey has always felt like home. That’s why my hand lingers on the doorknob; not out of fear of leaving, but to protect myself from seeing what might change if I linger.

It’s not a big house. The furniture’s mostly secondhand, soft at the edges. There’s a wooden dining table that creaks when you lean your elbows on it, a sound that, by now, feels too familiar to fix. Someone always arrives late and apologizes for it in the form of strawberries and colourful gerberas. Someone else forgets what time we said. Another brings their heartbreak and sits on the floor, legs stretched out under the table. Someone always shows up anyway. We make room for it all.

The living room smells like freshly brewed coffee, the good kind; ground beans, moka pot, no sugar unless you ask for it. There’s usually toast, butter curling at the edges, a tray of eggs that were meant to be fancy but ended up scrambled. Maybe avocado toasts. Maybe some blueberry muffins. Definitely something warm.

I’ve lived in rooms where silence felt heavy. Where dinner was a solo ritual and no one asked how your day was. So now, I make the seating arrangement a form of love. I bake as apology, toast bread as prayer. People sit on rugs, on cushions, sometimes on the armrest of my couch. Phones stay in bags. Or maybe they don’t, but no one’s scrolling. There’s a playlist that knows when to stay in the background and when to bring everyone back to the present. The windows are wide open. The breeze doesn’t ask permission to come in.

And when the brunch lingers too long, game night begins. We forget the rules halfway through Uno, and someone rewrites them with a kind of confidence that everyone goes along with. Someone laughs too loudly. Someone else fakes outrage and throws a cushion. There’s always that one person who gets aggressively competitive, and someone who keeps score in a notebook that’s falling apart at the spine.

But none of that’s really the point. The point is, we all keep showing up.
With our leftovers, our inside jokes, our tired eyes, our recent obsessions. Someone’s in love. Someone’s nursing heartbreak. Someone’s between jobs or figuring out who they are again. My house holds it all. Not perfectly, but gently.

We linger. Even when it’s late. Even when the dishes are piled up. Even when Monday’s waiting just around the corner. No one ever really says goodbye. They ask, “Next week?” and someone, from somewhere in the house, always says, “Of course.”

Whenever I sit down to write, I subconsciously expect myself to say something meaningful. I scroll through other blog posts on here and immediately feel the urge to churn out a think piece of my own as if I need to prove, again and again, that I am in fact, a writer. So I think. I think of titles. I think of how to make them interesting. Sometimes it’s melancholy. Other times it’s a smart, winding monologue in my head. But always, there’s this pressure to make sense. To be perceived correctly.

But lately, I’ve found comfort in things that don’t demand sense or structure from me. Small rituals that ask nothing of my intellect, but just my presence.

Like brewing my own coffee.

A subtle shift from the usual instant powder (though Nescafé Gold will always have a place on my kitchen shelf), it began when I bought a moka pot during a sale at work. It’s a small black pot with the initials S&N, from the couture label Shantnu and Nikhil, and it brews just one cup. I love the whole ritual; filling the water chamber up to the safety valve, scooping a heaping tablespoon of coffee into the filter funnel, sealing the top shut, and carefully placing it on the stove. While it brews, I slip into my own chamber of thoughts about nothings and every things. Today, I was thinking about what to wear to work tomorrow, then about a piece I read describing grief as glitter. I briefly considered whether I should toast a couple of slices of bread and butter to go with my coffee. And then, just as quickly, my brain jumped to the Monday pitch meeting and how I still hadn’t thought of any solid ideas. But by then, the moka pot is full. The coffee is brewed. And I pause. I forget everything I was just thinking about for those four minutes, and the noise inside me goes still.

Sometimes, all I want is to watch my coffee brew and pour it slowly into my big beige mug, the one almost the size of my head.

So here it is, the piece I wrote when I didn’t know what to write.
And honestly? It’s exactly what I needed to say.

In the past two years, I traveled often-not for leisure, but between the city where I studied and the one I called home. Somewhere along the way, I stumbled into a ritual: a single song, played on loop, until the flight lifted into the hues of the sky. That song became a bridge, a tether to the home I was leaving behind. Long after I moved homes, I still clung to it, the way one clings to the scent of a familiar shirt. It stayed with me, woven into the fabric of the constant departures and returns.

This time, as I boarded the plane, I slipped into the habit once again. A safety check, a polite nod to the crew, and then the music app; my fingers finding the song that had carried me through countless takeoffs. The plane turned, its wheels groaning against the tarmac, angling towards the runway. But as the engines roared and the ground fell away, I realized something was missing. That warm, cocooned feeling, the invisible embrace of nostalgia and longing had disappeared. The song no longer felt like home to me.

It had always been a map of my emotions, charting the tension between leaving and returning. But it often spoke of others more than it spoke of me; of the people I was running to or from, of places that shaped me yet couldn’t hold me. I hadn’t noticed this until this song faltered in its meaning, leaving me untethered midair. So, I let it go. I queued up the song that is my current favourite. And there it was— the anticipation and the subtle trembling in my chest from heading to a place I’d never been before. But this time, it felt different; like heading towards something unfamiliar yet already mine to claim. I felt the urge to leave and return, but not to a city or a person but to myself.

In the world of Bollywood horror, there’s an uncanny trend: most ghosts are women. With unbound hair, blood-red eyes, and a tragic backstory that usually involves betrayal or injustice, female ghosts have long been the vengeful centerpiece of the genre.

From the eerie Manjulika in Bhool Bhulaiyaa to the heartbroken chudail in countless rural legends, the trope seems almost unshakable. But why do our cinematic fears so often wear a saree? In stark contrast, male ghosts in Bollywood are often depicted as affable, wise, or even comedic, far from the terrifying vengefulness of their female counterparts. Take, for instance, Gandhi’s ghost in Lage Raho Munna Bhai, who appears as a guiding force of morality and nonviolence, or the titular ghost in Bhoothnath, a lovable, fatherly figure whose story is tinged with humor and warmth. These portrayals make male spirits more endearing than fearsome, further underscoring the starkly gendered approach to hauntings in Indian cinema.

The movie Bulbbul offers a nuanced take on this enduring trope, intertwining folklore with themes of patriarchy and justice. Set in 19th-century Bengal, the film revolves around Bulbbul, a young bride whose life is marred by systemic violence. After weathering years of subjugation, abuse and betrayal by those she trusted most, Bulbbul’s transformation into a chudail—a witch with inverted feet—becomes a symbol of rebellion. Her vengeance is not mindless; it is targeted against the oppressive men who perpetuate suffering. Rather than portraying her as purely malevolent, the film humanizes Bulbbul, showing her as a product of her circumstances. Through this lens, the ghostly saree-clad figure becomes a manifestation of suppressed rage and a challenge to the societal structures that enable her victimization.

Similarly, Stree subverts the traditional image of the vengeful female ghost while maintaining its cultural roots. Inspired by the urban legend of ‘Nale Ba’, a Kannada phrase that translates to “Come tomorrow”, Stree introduces a spirit that haunts a small town, preying on men who disrespect women. Unlike other horror films, Stree injects humor and satire, using the ghost to critique the patriarchy and highlight gendered fears. The men of the town live in constant anxiety, adhering to rituals to appease the spirit—a paradox of reversed roles, where the typically dominant gender is now rendered vulnerable and fearful, tiptoeing around a powerful female entity. This role reversal subverts traditional horror dynamics, where women are often the helpless victims, highlighting a sharp critique of gendered power structures. The film’s tagline, “Mard ko dard hoga” (Men will feel the pain), underscores this shift, turning the gaze back onto those who typically wield power.

Both films dig deeper into the trope of the female ghost, exploring its roots in societal guilt and repressed trauma. The saree, blood-red eyes, and unbound hair of Bollywood’s spectral women aren’t just visual tropes—they are loaded symbols. They reflect the weight of expectations, the silenced voices, and the injustices women have endured over centuries. These ghosts embody the fear of female empowerment, the consequences of male transgressions, and the unease of a society grappling with its gendered inequities.

In essence, Bollywood’s female ghosts are not merely figures of horror; they are cultural mirrors. Through the stories of Bulbbul, Stree, Manjulika and countless others, we see how the supernatural becomes a tool to confront and articulate societal anxieties. The saree-clad specters of Indian cinema are as much about fear as they are about defiance, demanding to be seen, heard, and, perhaps, understood.

As I settle down with my extra-large cup of coffee in the quiet of the evening, my gaze drifts to the window, where birds trace their paths back home. Their graceful return mirrors our own—humans, too, scurrying back after a day steeped in productivity. I often ponder this rhythm we share, this endless craving for a sense of accomplishment, all while yearning to escape the binds of dependency. Breaking a cookie in half, I pause. The crunch of it reminds me of something simple yet profound: while productivity paints the day with purpose, it’s the small pleasures—like savoring my favorite cookie—that truly color it with joy.

Productivity has less to do with happiness than with the art of amusement. Yet, these two feelings are not at odds—they often dance hand in hand. Strip amusement from the equation, however, and we risk becoming nothing more than a tangled mass of gloom. At our core, humans crave joy, a spark to brighten the monotony of existence. We craft side quests, those whimsical detours that give our days texture and meaning. It’s in these pursuits, no matter how small, that we chase a fleeting euphoria—the thrill of simply being alive and doing.

It’s the thrill of ordering from a foreign delivery app for the first time; the nostalgia of arcade games revisited—first as a child, then as an adult, or the quiet wonder of the season’s first snowfall-each delicate flake resting momentarily on your coat. It’s the indulgence of savoring each bite at a gourmet restaurant; the warmth of tradition in stocking up for winter-crafting specialties that carry the essence of home. It’s the small victory of jeans that fit like a second skin; the laughter and magic of a costume farewell party; the artistic joy of sketching strangers with your favorite watercolor palette. It’s the flood of happiness at a childhood friend’s wedding; the excitement of a small business thriving with a big order, or the liberation of packing your bags for a long-awaited escape to the mountains. These are the sparks that light up the days, tiny rebellions against the shadows.

As I finish my coffee and brush away cookie crumbs, I feel a quiet reassurance in the rhythm of it all. For even when there are constant storms raging around us, we find reasons to bloom - like flowers breaking through the cracks of concrete.

The title of this blog is a gentle recommendation—its true significance to this blog can only be understood once you’ve watched the series.

I have a wandering attention span that tends to stroll off into oblivion every chance it gets. My therapist says that’s dissociating; I want to call it escaping because I’d like to believe that I have control over it. Since I’ve barely had the time to sit and exist with myself this month, I don’t have a metaphorical analysis about a hyper-specific personal experience that you can relate to this time. What I do have is a list full of instances where I witnessed love in action. A list that plays like a film reel each time my mind says mean things to me that make me question the presence of love. So while cityflo takes me home, I’ll take you places where love, in it’s softest forms prevailed.

This may or may not be a growing list;

• My toddler cousin sister bringing me fallen flowers (“because plucking flowers hurts the plant”)

• A stranger on the internet complimenting the work that I put out

• Mom cooking gravy with extra chunks of paneer every time I came back home from uni (I love having more paneer than gravy and the mess always got the proportions wrong)

• My roommate using dimmer lights in the morning instead of the big light so she doesn’t wake me up (I did the same during nights; it was an unsaid declaration of consideration that we shared)

• A close friend getting my favorite flower every time we meet

• My favorite English teacher from school staying in touch through festive wishes in the form of GIFs and stickers

• Mom cupping the corners of the kitchen shelves when she’s rummaging through them, so the house help doesn’t hurt herself while mindlessly doing her chores

• When my best friend makes plans to build a home with me where we make the rules (she already is my home)

• An online friend sending me pictures of the moon, sky and flowers (because it reminded them of me)

• The stranger who alerted me about my saree sticking out of the rickshaw I’m traveling in (they didn’t now an hour later I was going to trip and hurt myself anyway)

• My coworker ordering me food when I’m running late for lunch

• Nana calling the entire family immediately after a red alert announcement, asking us to reach home within the ‘deadline’ he imposed

• My best friend’s mom getting me cream buns every time she expects me over (I mentioned liking those once, years ago)

• Birds taking their time to trust me with the morsel of food I try feeding them

• Hazel rushing to the door as soon as she hears the car lock in the evening (she recognizes the sound of dad’s car)

• My favorite cousin being extra territorial whenever she feels like I have a new favorite person in my life (she doesn’t know just how much I adore her and how nobody compares to her)

• A school friend telling me how proud they are of how far I’ve come from when we just started out

• A stray snuggling into me when I try petting them

I’m sure there are so many instances that my brain’s forgetting to remember and maybe I’ll add those in whenever it comes to me. But for now, at the top of my head, these are some of the most revered moments that make me feel the presence of soft love around me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an angry person. I recall myself to have been a fairly angry child, too. Whether it was the teenage angst or simply a series of events that made me want to rip my skin off, I have been furious at the world for as long as I can remember. That might explain why I feel like my anger is tired. I’ve grown up angry but without having an outlet for it so it’s blatantly obvious that I’m constantly searching for relativity. Another thing about unresolved feelings is that it thrives in familiarity. I find it in the people I cross paths with and I look for it when I consume media. And when I find familiarity, I dissect it. I peel the layers off as if analyzing myself with a fresh perspective. This is why I’ve always admired fierce women. Their resilience often credits them into becoming the anti-heroes of their lives. Fierce women make the world uncomfortable. And I like it. It’s appealing to witness someone avenging a similar emotion and refusing to fit in a mould that caters to an ideal archetype.

In secondary school, I was introduced to a mythological character during English class and she never really left my mind since. I don’t recollect the entire prose correctly but I remember one thing and it’s that Medusa, the Greek gorgon was the antagonist of her story. But despite never hearing or knowing about morally gray characters, I knew that she was one. My final year thesis ended up being inspired by Medusa and everyone who knows me is aware of my colossal admiration towards her. She was wronged and was stripped off her femininity until she became distasteful.

While I was reading up and researching about female rage, I came across another icon that I’ve ended up adding to the list of angry women I admire— The feral Hindu Goddess, Kali. If the world didn’t endlessly chastise emotionally charged women, she would be considered the perfect embodiment of femininity. Kali is anything but the supposed “ideal woman” and believably, the reason why she is not easy on the eyes. She is an accurate metaphor for female rage; a woman loses her attraction to the world when she loses her composure and goes berserk. Kali’s tale is much like those who have to roam around with the label of being a ‘madwoman’ when they draw boundaries for the sake of self-preservation.

The world is quick to label a raging woman - hysterical, without delving into the crux of it. I’ve never been taught to look at anger as a standalone emotion. I’ve always perceived it as a secondary emotion to a more palatable feminine emotion that supports it. My anger is something I feel ‘because of’ an underlying grievance. So for as long as I can remember, I’ve gulped and washed it down to fit the flowery image that was reinforced upon me. It’s only now that I’m realizing that having held onto my anger so tightly and for so long that it’s wearing me out.

Half asleep but I can’t stop thinking about how there will always be at least one other person who is going through the exact same thing that you are. It makes me both happy and sad. Happy because there’s always someone out there who gets it and sad because sometimes you wouldn’t wish for others to go through situations similar to yours. Anyway, what I’m going to write about is neither happy or sad - it’s more of an appease.

The guy I went out with last week, is coincidentally going through a similar heartbreak. We talked about it briefly as we watched the sun descended into darkness. He mentioned how he felt lost and I bit my tongue from blurting out ‘‘same!!’’ at least a couple of times if not more. I’ve always been the kind of person who is pleasantly surprised every time someone else’s life coincides with mine. Most of the times the world feels foreign but during moments like this, the dissociation slowly wears off into affinity. That evening we continued talking about shared experiences and the jarring feeling of spending months building a routine around a person and then spending another few months to take them off of it. Conversations where I’m understood not because of mere comprehension but shared experience often makes me think about the numerous people who live in parallels with me and having no idea about it simply because we never came across each other during that time. The odds of crossing paths with them is so rare and in that rarity we continue living the same story in parallels, unaware until conversation strikes.

Even when you feel lonesome, you’re never truly alone because somewhere, another person is thinking the exact same thoughts as you are, wanting to find bits and pieces of them in another. If you’re lucky enough, you come across these people and if not, you hold onto the possibility of it. It’s a little overwhelming to think how if I did one thing differently, I’d be somewhere else altogether. I believe it is truly written and sometimes, deeming it a coincidence just doesn’t cut it.

“I think it’s nice that we share the same sky”, says Sophie, with sand in her hair and the sun in her eyes. Being on a holiday with her father, is what she was looking forward to all year long. Each mise-en-scene in this film follows a theme of simplicity, which ironically makes Sophie and Calum look incredibly complex. The visuals of Aftersun, elude the sombreness of an autumn afternoon despite having the setting of a summery landscape. Perhaps that's the idea behind the home videos Calum incessantly keeps recording. The sense of impending catastrophe permeates this movie. The minute detailing, the entirety of the film being presented as an eulogy, everything that is being implied and all the unsaid words feel as though it’s going to measure up to something explosive. But nothing of that sort happens. Between the close-up shots and the frames, there is stillness. It manages to capture the mundanity in their lives but also leaves us on a cliffhanger about their relationship dynamics.

Aftersun lingers for a very long time after it ends, almost like the burning sensations that follow a sunburn. It’s a child’s perception of her father and how she tries to understand what’s gnawing at him. The meaning of this film lies in the aftermath of all the emotions it makes us feel. When the climax scene plays out, the grown-up Sophie is seen watching all those clips on a projector screen, the same ones that were captured by Calum on his camera before. We’re left wondering what happened to Calum but this film is more than just that. It’s about Sophie’s memory garden, the one she built out of love for her father because she knew he wasn’t going to be around forever.

Aftersun poignantly captures the philosophy of living life forward but understanding it backwards.

Just the process, not the whole idea of it. So it sucks to know that I have to go through it every time the sun sets. Growth is oftentimes a synonym for change but so is forsaking. Moving forward also means leaving something behind.

When I moved away from home for college, I was erratic in the same way that I was when I had to move out after college. That tiny hostel room that was once a foreign space, quickly became a home for me in just a matter of time. So when I had to pack my bags and boxes once again, I knew it wasn’t going to be a pleasant ride. This reminded me of an instance during the initial days of moving into that room. It was a random morning probably a couple of months after settling into my room. I was wearing my comfort t-shirt and couldn’t stop wondering why it suddenly looked weird to me until I realized that enough time had passed since I moved out of home and my clothes no longer had Hazel’s fur on it. Up until then, it didn’t occur to me how this tiny detail had become a part of my routine until it wasn’t. 

Although I hate the process of change, I don’t hate the idea of it. I’m not talking about how sometimes, people grow in different paces and directions. And I’m definitely not saying it causes a ruckus every time that happens. However, what I’m trying to say is that underneath all the jitters, change seems pretty cool sometimes. Like when I dyed my hair red and got my septum pierced. Or when I get home and change into my indoor shorts after being in denims all day. I knew I needed it at some point and even though the jeans looked good outdoors, I had to get out of it once I came back home. Change usually reminds me of a younger sibling; you can hate it all you want but at the end of the day, you’re somehow grateful for it’s existence.

Having undergone a huge amount of change in the last two years of my life, I know one thing and it’s how you can never escape it. The only way out is through. When I think of change, I think of how someone used to always advocate for it by wishing me a happy new day every midnight. They reminded me how even though the last 24 hours weren’t as gleeful and yielding, there was always another 24 hours to change it. I haven’t exactly found an equilibrium when it comes to having strong feelings about the process of change, but I dislike it a little less every time I go through it. Change is awful and scary but sometimes it’s also the only thing that fills me with hope.

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I carry my grief inside the tote bag that hangs on my shoulder. I put it down only when I’m not on my feet. Over the years, I’ve learnt that I can create art from my grief but it’s daunting to make an exhibition out of it for the world to see.

My grief doesn’t always agonise me. At times, I seem to forget of it’s existence entirely; like when I give belly rubs to my dog and she decides to subtly snuggle in, careful not to break contact. During those times my tote bag is not only off my shoulder but it’s safely kept in a hutch by the wall. I forget about my grief when I’m in front of the ocean. All I can think of is how pleasing the sound of waves make me feel. How every wave that hits the shore carries my tote bag inside the sea.

My best friend sometimes carries my weighted tote bag around. She tries soothing the soreness in my shoulders with humor and food. She manages to protect me while also teaching me how to be prepared to carry its weight along. My tote bag sits there next to us while we laugh till our stomachs hurt; until it’s time to carry the bag back home.

My mother elucidates why she kept the contents in my tote bag. She knows just how much I hate carrying weights. She proceeds to tell me why my tote bag weighs so much and in those moments I almost forgive her. I discern how hers is a grief-case and not just a tote bag.

My friends help me interpret the fluctuating weight of my tote bag over a cup of hot chocolate and sometimes a plate of pasta. They don’t keep the same things in their bags so they try to understand the contents of mine and why they exist. They also help me decorate my tote bag with a crocheted mushroom and put flowers in it to make it more palatable. They help me realize that despite what I believe, my tote bag is in-fact just an accessory that I can choose to change the appearance of anytime I’d like. While I sit with them, the contents spread around us, I briefly forget about the weight of my grief.

Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t hate my tote bag. Oftentimes, I may feel tired, for it has made me the person I am today. But strangely enough, I’m also very protective of my tote bag for it has made me the person I am today.

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