In 2026, I resolved to talk to one new person every other day, and now they all want me. The chaiwalla outside my office wants me; he asked if it’s better to marry a Bangalore girl, when I had simply asked him if he’s married. My Rapido bhaiya wants me; he asked for my number through the GPay app after the ride was long over. After my visa got rejected, the man on my flight back home from Chennai wanted me too; “I can be your sugar daddy”, he said, with the same casualness as offering me his window seat. Everyone at Chin Lung’s wants me, starting with the tipsy man who asked me out in a closed elevator, on the way up to Chin Lung’s, while I was too afraid to say no until the doors opened and more people filed in. And a man boarded my Metro train instead of his own, just to tell me I was pretty, and I made conversation lest he follow me home.

I do the voices, I do the little pause before the punchline. I mimic these strange men, and I make people laugh, and I make them believe I laughed too. I am, by every measure, a good sport in such situations.

So naturally, when I went to the doctor for excessive bleeding and a month-long period, and he decided to ask me out, I had a punchline ready:

It wasn’t actually my gynaecologist. My period had worsened after meds instead of stopping, and I needed help. My gynaecologist was busy, so she sent me to the emergency department at her hospital and asked me to have the doctor there consult her. To do that, I gave the ER doctor my number.

It wasn’t a move. The number was given so that care could happen.

He was kind, efficient, and quick. I remember being grateful. The consultation was better than the ones I usually have with my gynaecologist, which come laden with judgement and impatience.

Later that evening, he messaged me to remind me that I could reach out if the symptoms persisted or worsened.

The next day:

1 PM. He asked what I liked to do on the weekends.

2 PM. He reminded me not to party, since I should not be drinking on my meds.

3 PM. I answered, of course, I answered. No parties, I told him; I’ll just go for a picnic in the park. Because it was true, and because I was raised to answer a question when someone asks it nicely.

3:30 PM. He told me he’s going to Bob’s. He implied I should come.

I did not reply.

It wasn’t as creepy as it could be. I keep coming back to that. He did convert a channel that existed for care into an invitation, but it wasn’t the worst.

He might have been flirting, or he might have been testing my resolve about mixing alcohol and meds. I stared at the message and waited for it to slide down my chat list, as people I actually cared about texted me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

If it was meant to be friendly, a cold no would be rude. If it was more than that, any reply would make me an invitation. If I replied, I might get a second message, a third, an awkward encounter in a hospital corridor I’m bound to walk down again.

Silence was easy, recommended. So that’s what won.

7 PM. He sent another message. It was the same one, asking me to come to Bob’s, with a spelling error corrected.

Maybe he could not bear the typo, saw it hours later, and felt the unbearable itch of leaving things unfixed. But I know what this edit does: it pushes his chat to the top of my list. It buzzes and says I am still here in a language that can never be held against him.

I put the phone face down and willed my friends to text me so the chat would sink, and I wouldn’t have to face it again. Silence is an exit that feels safer than others. I’ll never know if he was actually asking me out, and that’s partly the point.

I have been friendly with strangers, a kindness I offered to stop situations from turning awkward. I am starting to think it is also a door I leave open, and that I haven’t figured out how to close without it costing me something.

People wonder why I stay friendly despite my discomfort with how things move ahead. I don’t know either. The dare had been simple: meet strangers in bars or metros or parties, and never speak to them again.

It was a romance of the fleeting nature of life. I loved the idea of connecting with someone for a little while and letting them go. Instead, this dare has made me feel less and less like a person looking for a momentary connection and more like a cut of meat, offered up to men to chew into.

Of course, my friendliness gets misconstrued. How stupid of me to think I could engage in a one-off conversation. Of course, the other person will think it’s more than that. I’m a lamb offering herself up for slaughter.

So I make it a joke. The chaiwalla wants me, the man on the flight wanted me, my doctor wants me. I am no longer the object of the joke, but the author. If I control the narrative, no one sees that I’ve just described: a man deciding I’m the object.

Every interaction with a stranger makes them feel more human and me more like a piece of meat. (The women, to be fair, have been nothing but wonderful)

The Doctor is the one who stays with me. In every other situation, I have put on a performance, known the consequences and implications of my friendliness.

But I went to him as a body that needed care, and not as a body that might be wanted. And a few hours later, I was a prospect in a chat thread, reached through the number I gave for my own safety.

I went to the hospital with an underlying fear that I had genuinely messed up my uterus; I left with the reminder that to some people, that’s all I am.

I won’t reply. I don’t think he’ll text again. And as far as I can tell, I’ll never know what his message meant.

I will tell the story to my friends. I will make the crude joke. I will get a laugh out of it. In 24 days, I will go back to the hospital to refill my dose, and if I happen to meet him, I will be friendly again.

And as the laughter echoes in my brain, I will remind myself that I am the author of the joke and not the object, no matter how much the world may want to treat me as such.

It has been months, since I last wrote something for myself. My screenplay lies forgotten in some doc that has now been on memory saver mode longer than it was actively worked on. The novel hasn’t moved past the first three chapters. Every short story penned never has an ending. My socials have been hanging on to a promise to post more regularly that is broken at the end of every week.

The only thing I have consistently churned out has been copy about biscuits and Doraemon and more biscuits and more Doraemon.

I want to talk a little bit more about endings. It doesn’t matter if the story has a satisfying ending or is left open-ended, if it’s tragic or comedic. I just never get there.

I have the tendency to stop watching tv shows an episode before it ends, or its final season. I can never finish a book past Act III. Every fiction novel on my shelf is read to the last quarter. I don’t stick around for epilogues or after-credit scenes. I hate most movie endings. And I have never once written an ending to a story.

Is it the fear of letting things end? Is that the reason why I am yet to put my papers down? Or move out of my parent’s home? Or apply to my dream university? Shouldn’t this question be the ending of this rant. Shouldn’t I write more about unfinished stories, and manuscripts, and relationships in my life before I write about my fear of it finishing? Isn’t that how it’s written?

I don’t know how to write or what to write. I just know once I begin, I will have to end it. I don’t know if I’ll even like what I will write. I don’t know if anyone will even read it. The title is not compelling, this essay meanders with no point to make. It could very easily be an entry in a journal; except I am not ready to deal with it ending in my notebook and never being seen again.

We know the structure things follow, there’s an introduction, a context, a build-up, a climax, a comedown. Even when not followed, these structures continue to be followed. Sure, a story can meander or be cyclic, it'll still end. Be it a song, a book, a joke, an anecdote, a sexual encounter, a meal prepared, a function, a fight, a life.

I am in awe of every writer who writes a story with an end. Which is almost every writer. I am in awe of every writer, for I believe every writer is a better writer than I am, including those who’ve never lifted a pen in their lives.

I do lift a pen often, but it’s weighed down by my unwillingness to let things end.

My handwriting has always been bad. It begins neat, but then I lose steam towards the end, and it always just becomes illegible jargon. For some reason, my school had chosen to grade handwriting as well, and seeing that C in a sea of A’s seemed dispiriting. But I never improved. I went to handwriting classes for months on end until I was in Eighth grade. It never improved, I continued being the only girl in class with bad handwriting. I still volunteer to take notes during meetings sometimes, and it always ends up with people deciding my G’s look like S’s, and a capital J like an I. I wrote my mom a shopping list to help her out for her trip, and she came back empty handed because she couldn’t read what I meant to write.

I continue being the same girl in fourth grade who got her first and only C in handwriting class, the same girl in tenth grade who scored 60 in an English exam because the teacher couldn’t read her handwriting, the same girl in college being called down to her professor’s room to read out her answer sheet, and the same girl at work being asked to rewrite the notes on the board.

I mostly type what I need to write. I sometimes journal, but with a sketch pen, rather than a pen or a pencil, the colours and thickness feels more permanent somehow. It’s not neat, it’s not legible to me sometimes.

This is just another way of me not letting it end after it’s words on a sheet of paper.

I want to be capable of writing an ending, except I have never read an ending. Or experienced it satisfactorily.

I have never ended a relationship, just let it fester long enough that it dissolves. I have never ended a meal, always leaving some of it behind at every restaurant. I have never experienced the end of a story, a movie, or a show and been content.

I don’t know how to end conversations, or how to end an essay. A conclusion doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. A brief at work never sees a resolution, not just because I’m in mainline, but because I don’t know what it is. And no story written by Apeksha comes with an ending.

You know what, I will take it back. I act as though I don’t know how to get to the ending. I could watch the last episode, no one forced me to walk out before the finale. I have room in my stomach to eat that final bite, but I just don’t want to eat it. And I know how to end this essay, but I will still choose to end it on a stupid question.

Am I just someone who’s afraid of ending things? Or am I incapable? Am I ever going to move out of Writers block or will I continue living at Writers block at the edge of the city that’s never-ending?

I return to the same ritual every night.

I close my door. Lock it. Check again if it’s locked.

I turn off the lights. I put my earphones in. Play the last song that was playing.

And then I begin.

I have waited all day to get to this moment.

Every word, every action, every thought until this hour, for this permission. It’s a ritual I can’t fall asleep without. It’s a ritual I can’t live without. I must do it every night, or I cease to be me.

I

The first step.

I reach for what I keep hidden in my cupboard. In a box of pads, because I know that’s the one place in the house that is free from scrutiny. A box that’s wholly my own. A box where I hide my shame. The pads, the weed, the vape, the hidden special thing. Everything that made me feel human.

I roll the joint in the faint moonlight that filters through the windows. I never pull the blinds. I like the little glimpse I get into the real world, the real world that’s not my home, or the one I know.

For the longest time, I lived on the first floor, my window overlooking the road. I would smoke up against the window and just look outside to that world, the one that comes alive after 1 AM. Teenagers looking for a spot to smoke weed, couples trying to make out in their cars, construction workers trudging a loud and musical way back home. They would never look up, comfortable knowing that it’s late and they’re in a residential area that sleeps at 8. And I would long for them to look up. To somehow join me in what I was about to do, after the joint ends. Somehow, they never did. They would finish their ritual and move on. Probably to the next quiet, dark lane.

The joint is over.

II

The next step.

I light an incense stick. It was a gift given to my mother by our soon-to-be cousins-in-law, for a pooja. I wonder if I am dirtying the gesture of goodness by what I use it for.

But I do it because I like the smell; it no longer smells like my room. It starts to smell like the ritual. It emits a light too faint to make a change, but enough for me to focus on some other source.

Francesca Woodman remained partially hidden in her photography – blurred, behind furniture – turning her body into a ghost of itself. Exposure took two meanings: being seen and being vulnerable. Exposing, witnessing myself without exposing to the witnessing.

Her photography comes alive in the light filtering through the leaves and branches of the tree outside my window and washing over my body like waves, the smoke of the incense blurring my vision, the darkness of the night failing to hold weight against these subtle changes I force.

The smell of weed lingers. The incense stick somewhat masks the smell. I wipe the ash away from the windowsill and throw the seeds and filter out the window.

I walk to my cupboard where I left the box. I undress. I open it again.

III

The next step.

I take out the hidden thing. It glints in the moonlight.

It’s a weight I know and am comfortable with. I palm it, admire it. I bring it close to all the parts of my body that remain hidden in the day.

IV

The next step.

I take the plunge. I put it in. I drag it through the crevices. I feel the intrusion. I take it out.

And it’s finally there – the release.

The world looks different in the dark. There’s no red anymore. It’s just shades of grey. It flows down my legs and leaves behind a grey trail. I wonder if it would look different in the light.

My fingers come back covered in the same grey, and so does the thing. I take the rag out and wipe.

The rag I use to clean up also stays hidden in the same cupboard, the same box, dried and dirty from last night, beginning to dry again.

The dread that follows the release is not so disconnected from the shame of the act. Pain and pleasure cross wires, and the aftermath remains the same.

I touch myself. I follow the scars, the rises and the bumps, the moles, as much as I can with as little light as this.

I just want to see how far I can take the human body; my body. The limits of pleasure, and when the pleasure turns to pain, and when that pain turns to pleasure again.

Human bodies are so marvellous that way. I once came across a video of the most extreme survival stories and a YouTuber ranking them into tier lists. A tier list of the human body’s limits; human bodies trapped beneath ice; buried under rubble; lost at sea. The human body, refusing to surrender.

The human body became my drug of choice. The ritual became my medium for the drug.

If one can snort or smoke the same drug, I can choose to feel pain or pleasure with my body. It was plain curiosity. An exploration of how it feels, how far you can take it, how much my body can take.

Maybe curiosity is inherently sinister. Curiosity led to exploration, and exploration led to addiction, and addiction led to shame. And now here I am, ashamed, afraid, hurt, and trying to hide the evidence of my shame.

V

The final step.

The ritual isn’t finished until the evidence is gone. It doesn’t feel reverent anymore. It’s become mechanical. The relief is over. The comedown is over. Now it’s just motions.

I think of Francesca’s photography as I clean up. I don’t know what Francesca was trying to convey in the image that I have attached, but I know how it makes me feel. The dread of a hard edge and my soft body. The body becomes a site of pain, pleasure, and everything in between.

I wonder if my ritual was ever an exploration, or even about pain or pleasure at all.

I used to know which one I was participating in. But I’m not even sure the distinction was ever load-bearing. The ritual starts the same and ends the same. The difference, if there is one, might only be the music I listen to during, and even that I have lowkey started to doubt.

You are in a metro. You are looking at people.

Everyone has earphones in.

Everyone is on their phone. Or reading a book.

You were too.

You just went underground, lost network and are now looking up.

You sneak a glance at the girl next to you. At her phone.

Her reel has also paused midway.

She scrolls up. Scrolls back down.

The reel plays. And stops. At the same spot.

She repeats it.

You try the guy next to you now.

He has his Spotify open. His song has paused too.

It’s a Malayalam song you don’t recognise.

He plays it from beginning again.

You look back down on your phone. Your Instagram screen time is over. Only two more times you can open it today.

You have three more underground stops to go before the train goes back up. It’s not worth it to just watch the same reel over and over again.

You look back at the girls phone. You look back at the guys phone. They are stuck in a loop of trying to negotiate with their phones.

You look away. A man is staring at you. You wonder why. And that’s when you see he’s looking at your chest. You turn away. Back to looking at other peoples phones.

Someone watches reels. Someone listens to music. Someone is smart enough to think ahead and downloads the next episode the night before. It’s not you.

Back when you commuted through metro every morning, you caught every episode of Bigg Boss vicariously through this woman who had the same commute.

Was this what people were doing before phones as well? You suppose that’s true. Instead of reels it was newspapers and magazines and books.

But maybe there was more.

Maybe people were striking up conversations with other people. Maybe you could too.

You are approached by a man. He says you look gorgeous. You look like someone who knows how to dress.

You don’t want to engage in conversation. But your phone doesn’t have network. And there’s two more stops till it comes back. So you take your earphones out, put your phone in your bag and talk. Probably the first word you’ve said since you entered the metro station.

He asks for your name. You give him a fake one. He repeats it to you.

Ananya. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.

He doesn’t know that’s not your name. That you’re not beautiful, really.

You ask him where he’s headed. He says he had to take the other train. The one that goes to Whitefield. He saw how beautiful you were and had to talk to you. So he got on the same train as you.

You think how that could be a meet-cute. The beginning of a romance novel that your mom would probably read.

If only he was taller. If only he was cuter. If only you were actually Ananya.

You laugh and say that’s flattering. But he doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know Ananya.

You also don’t know Ananya.

You wonder if he’s lying. If he’s also trying to kill time till the network comes back on.

He has long hair. He’s wearing a band t-shirt of a band you’ve never heard of. He looks maybe a decade older than you.

You wonder if he thinks you look a decade younger. You wonder if he approached you thinking that. You wonder why that didn’t deter him if he did.

He comments on the clothes you’re wearing. He asks if you’re dressed to pitch a presentation.

You look down. You try to see what he sees. Wearing formals to meet a childhood friend and her boyfriend was a choice. But your dad had ironed it earlier today and it looked pretty so you’d worn it.

You tell him you were meeting a few friends for drinks and are headed back home. The only true thing you’ve told him so far.

He sees the books you bought held against your body. When you went to blossoms like everyone else on a Sunday in Bengaluru. You hold them to create distance from this man and wonder if it’s enough.

He asks if you’re a writer.

You laugh. You’re not a writer. But maybe Ananya is.

You say yes. Copywriter is technically a writer. You ask him how he could tell.

He said you have a way with words.

You say that you barely said any. And he says it was enough.

You know he’s lying. But you believe him.

You have wanted to be a writer your entire life. But you have always shied away from the title. A writer is someone whose work has been published. A writer is someone whose work has been filmed. A writer is someone who has actually written something. And Ananya got to be one in a ten minute conversation. You’re already jealous of somebody who didn’t exist three stops ago ago.

He asks if you’re from here. You say yes. He says that’s not possible. You have had this conversation a million times before. But you choose to have it again. You ask him why. You know why.

He says it’s your accent. You know what that means. You spent your entire teenage hood speaking into a voice recorder and listening to it over and over again to school the accent out of your tongue. You made sure to replace Bangalorean slang with Internet culture. You made yourself neutral.

You changed your vernacular. You changed your voice. Maybe Ananya existed long before this conversation.

You laugh and say you didn’t know that. You knew that.

He says you have a cute laugh. You know what’s coming next.

He asks if he can hear more of it over a cup of coffee. That’s when you know this moment is over.

You don’t want a cup of coffee. You don’t even want to know this man.

You apologise. Say you’re not interested. That you’re glad he shot his shot but this is not for you. He’s respectful. He backs off. He even gets off at the next stop and you believe his story that he was supposed to be on the other train.

Long after he’s gone. Long after you’re back above ground and you could have been using your phone. You continue thinking about the interaction. Not about the man. But about Ananya.

She seemed fun. Receptive to strangers approaching her. Already a writer and not afraid to call herself one. Someone who’s beautiful with a beautiful name.

She was also self-obsessed. She didn’t care about the man. She didn’t ask for a single one of his interests. Or what he does. Or even his name.

You want to know her more. But when The train emerges from underground, Ananya doesn’t. It’s just you again. In the train.

The guy who was trying to listen to music is long gone. You didn’t even notice when he left. The girl who was watching reels has now moved on to twitter. The guy staring at your chest continues to do so. You wonder if he’s the only one present in the moment.

The network is back again. You take your phone back out and put your earphones back in. You place the new books near your feet. The metro’s emptier. You get to lean against the pole. You look at the screen time app on Instagram. Two opens left. You click open. It’s going to reset at midnight anyway.



Every morning begins with a long, hard look at myself in the mirror. Every night ends with a long, hard look at myself in the mirror.

And every time my brain struggles to reconcile them as the same person. Something passes from morning to night.

The person looking back at me in the mirror at night is not the same person who looks at me in the morning. The person who looks at me at 3 AM, when I’m high off my face and dressed in my prettiest underwear, is not the one who looks at me at 4 PM, coming out of yet another depressive spiral.

I have a full-length mirror in my bedroom, and only a half-length one in my bathroom. The bathroom is all the way across the house. In the seven years I lived in the house, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I saw myself bare in a full-length mirror. Perceiving myself, as a whole, bare and naked to vulnerability, was too big a step. I only ever undressed in my bathroom, only ever undressed before a shower.

A half-length mirror could hide my vulnerability; shame only existed below the belt. A full-length mirror would not just be a reflection of my body, but a reflection of every little thing I dislike about it. The biggest shame of it all, being a woman. Only recently did I start actually looking in the mirror.

And I didn’t see myself. I only saw her.

The act of looking at the reflection in the mirror never feels like my own. It’s a borrowed act because there’s no way the person in the mirror is me. The body I see, the face I see, the hair, the smile, the teeth, it always feels like borrowed parts of something not yet whole.

There’s no connection between the person who lives my life and the person in the mirror. I keep thinking, when I’m living through my day, what my reflection is up to. Everyone around me is perceiving the reflection I saw in the morning, but is that who I truly am? The clothes I decided to put on, the way I decided to wear my hair, the way I did my makeup. Was I dressing myself or the person in the mirror?

I look at the person in the mirror. And I think, who is this person looking back at me?

I like to imagine that the person in the mirror has a whole other life of her own. After I’m done getting ready for work in the morning, I say goodbye to the person in the mirror. She goes to her own job, her own friends, her own gym, her own life. We meet every morning for a hello, and we move on. Every night, when I see her again, I see her having lived her life.

Even if all I did that day was rot in my bed, the person in the mirror went through something else. She met her friends after a year, drunk at brunch at 11 in the morning, went to an arcade, or a fair. She looks tired, the way one looks tired after a long day of pleasant activities. Not because she spent all day bed rotting and smoking up and bed rotting even more.

I asked a bunch of people how often they look at themselves in the mirror. Like, really look. Naked, clothed, taking time to just look. The consensus is not often. Everyone is insecure about something. Something no one even perceives in them. Everyone continues to perform for an internalised gaze, even in the comfort and vulnerability of their homes and bodies. How often are we riddled with other people’s gaze, never realising that gaze is superimposed on our own gaze?

I think it’s because there’s something so strangely unnatural about our ability to perceive ourselves. I read somewhere that we were never meant to look at ourselves beyond murky reflections in water. For the first thousands of years of human existence, mirrors didn’t even exist. People just lived lives, not knowing how they looked.

The invention of the mirror just made people aware of their identity beyond their homes and families. Now there was a unique perception of one’s characteristics.

Lacan wrote about how, before we perceive ourselves, we perceive the self in the mirror. We know that the ‘you’ in the mirror, according to our mothers, is the ‘me’ in the mirror. First, we exist as the extension of our mothers, and then as the reflection in the mirror. Alienation is baked into our understanding of selfhood. Before we ever know ourselves, we know our reflection. It’s strange to know that for a species that never looked at its reflection, we now perceive our reflection as ourselves. Maybe the disconnect I have felt around reflections the whole time is actually the human way to perceive reflections.

I had read up on the myth of changelings as a kid, and I convinced myself I was one. In Celtic folklore, ‘changelings’ were the children of fae, weaker and frailer than their own, thus replaced with robust human babies. It made sense. The person my mother showed me in the mirror as ‘me’ was actually her baby. I was just the changeling who had taken over her daughter’s rightful place.

I was just a little bit off, just a little bit sadder than other human children, a bit meaner, a bit of a bully, a bit of an attention seeker, a bit of all of that, but never ugly.

Since I was a kid, even as a changeling, I knew that the person in the mirror was beautiful. I knew that she resented me for taking her place, but she was happy where she was. I grew out of believing that. But, somewhere deep down, I know it still bugs me.

Sometimes, I look at her in the mirror, dressed in her prettiest, laciest underwear. The lights are low, the candles are lit, the music is set.

I see her, and I wonder who it is she’s performing for tonight.

I see her the way I imagine a man sees me, and I think, am I ever free from the male gaze?

I see her body, the way the lace hugs her curves, the hair, the face. I think what it is about all of this that was decided to be attractive? Who came out with the volume of what is desirable and what is not?

Is it even a question of the male gaze? Or is it just a question of visual pleasure?

Sometimes I spend hours just looking at the person in the mirror. She seems happy sometimes, she seems sad most of the time, she seems confused, she seems disgruntled. She stares back at me with the same curiosity as I extend to her. She smiles; she cries; she laughs, and the same fang sticks out as mine; she has the same scar as me from when I broke my nose; and she also cuts her bangs and regrets it immediately after.

The person in the mirror is my friend, the person in the mirror is my lover, the person in the mirror is my biggest hater.

But the person in the mirror is not me.

One thing I love doing is eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations. What makes them laugh, what makes them sad, what could potentially be the one thing I could talk to them about? It’s a glimpse into the lives of people I could never know, but also somehow know so intimately through snippets of giggles and hushed secrets I was never invited into.

A year ago, I started working at a job that required me to commute by metro for an hour. I used to listen to music and podcasts at the beginning, but forgetting my earphones one day introduced me to the glorious world of fleeting conversations. It was like tuning into a podcast, not knowing the hosts or the context. It was, of course, a blatant invasion of privacy, but public spaces in India are a blatant invasion of privacy. If we are close enough for my face to be in your armpit, or your hair up my nose, we are close enough for me to listen to your conversations.

One of these conversations that stayed with me was among a bunch of girls, headed back home from MG Road after a night out. As they crashed into the boogie, drunk and loud, everyone was annoyed, tired after a long day of working, it was a Tuesday after all. But, there was such a glow around them. Drunk laughter travels faster than sober laughter, and it didn’t take long for it to reach me.

I didn’t know these women, they didn’t know me, but I felt a sense of connection to them nontheless, a surge of FOMO to be a part of whatever it was that was making them howl with laughter. So I turned off my music, and scooted closer.

They were translating dirty talk into their native language.

“Touch me” became “Nannana muttu”.

“I want you” became “Main tujhe chahta hu”.

Of course it was a lot more explicit than that, but you get the point. That it’s awkward to flirt, or have sex, when it’s in any other language than English.

I thought it was funny too. I had to hold back my laughter as they continued to make more literal translations of increasingly explicit statements. It’s a conversation I have had often with my friends too. About how sex becomes a comedy when it’s in our languages. What is smooth in English, becomes a staccato of embarassed laughter, and stutters when switched.

But that got me thinking, why is it so?

Among the urban, English-speaking people I know, this is the norm.

Dirty talk happens in English. Sex happens in English.

Desire in our mother tongues exists as a punchline to intimacy.

I thought it could be because English creates an emotional distance. It’s easy to say Daddy in a language you didn’t learn to say Appa in. But that doesn’t seem entirely right.

I mean, the obvious explanation is, of course, colonialism.

Intimacy didn’t exist in a vacuum. India is the country that gave us the Kamasutra, the Gita Govinda. People were having sex in their languages before colonialism, and people continued to do so after. The only change is in its perception.

The colonisers left, but their language and morality stayed behind. Indigenous sexual vocabulary became vulgar, and English became the face of sanitised intimacy. English gained prestige and became the face of sophistication.

I saw a tweet the other day.

People who say “didn’t knew” give me the ick.

People in the replies agreed, people gave more examples, and it all served to remind us that desire is not separate from power.

Attraction also doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Attraction has absorbed the hierarchies around it. The language we find attractive is the language we have been taught to respect. The prestige that English carries in urban India shapes our dating preferences. The language associated with power is inherently associated with desire and sexuality.

But all of this feels too technical. We didn’t learn dirty talk from school, or something. We don’t need to see it from an academic perspective at all.

Before I ever had sex, I had already learnt its vocabulary. Borrowed scripts for dirty talk from films, from porn, from fanfiction. I had already memorised my lines before ever getting close to the real thing. And all these scripts for Urban India is overwhelmingly in English.

The language in which we first encounter sexuality becomes the language in which we perform it. And after all, what is sex but a performance. I memorised my lines from fanfiction, I learnt the blocking from porn, I learnt the delivery through films. I practiced sex long before ever performing it and I only practiced in English. English became the language of sexual imagination.

By comparison, Indian media is eclipsed behind the shadow of censorship. Desire is implied, behind songs, or closed doors, or metaphors, or the two sunflowers kidding. Sex exists, but it’s never spoken about.

I did an extremely narrow and biased survey, and by that I mean I spoke to my friends and coworkers. No one ever watches porn in Hindi or Kannada or Bengali or Marathi. No one knows why. They said the camera quality is bad, it sounds vulgar to listen to, it sounds dirtier somehow, in one instance someone said it sounded chappri. (A term extremely offensive and completely proving my point)

Native sexual vocabulary is associated with vulgarity, with being lower. Sexual desire is rooted is caste coding as much as every other discourse that ever happens in India.

And there is truth in this entire story. But I think my discomfort with this is not yet explained.

Because my discomfort is with the weight of what this language means to me.

All my lessons about being a woman arrived to me in Kannada and Hindi.

The native language of my childhood was the language of instructions, the culture that told me to cross my legs when sitting, to cover myself, to not talk so fast, or so rude, to not attract attention.

It was in Kannada that I was told to change my top because it was too tight fitting. It was in Hindi I was told to not duck to low while serving food, or neckline dips.

It was in my native languages that I was told that my sexuality was not mine to own, but to guard. I knew what desire meant, but only as a threat.

What allowed me to imagine myself as a sexual being came through English. Feminist writing, discourse about consent, discussions of pleasure and anatomy, my agency and autonomy were all in English. Filthy writing, women expressing desire, sexuality at the rawest form was all in English.

So, when I have sex in English, it feels free.

Why does a sentence sound sexy in English but ridiculous in Kannada?

When I translate desire into my mother tongue, I am forced to confront all the baggage that comes with it. Family. The language is crowded with voices that have nothing to do with sex.

I don’t think we should start a moment and reclaim Indian sexual language in some grand sense. I think I just want to feel connected to my own. I don’t want to separate some languages with shame and some with desire. I want them to coexist. I want to be the same adult expressing sexual needs as the kid I was expressing my needs.

I don’t want my sexuality to exist beyond the language that raised me. I just want to create resistance against the distance it created.

To the girls I overheard in the metro, thank you for letting me explore what it means to have sex in my native language. I hope they too can explore their languages further than as a punchline after a night of drunken fun.

This Wednesday, while we were driving to work, Vachana prayed when an ambulance drove past.

When Puru asked what she prays for, she said,

“For the person to live… but only if he deserves to.”

That’s a point to latch onto.

What do you mean deserve? Also, why “he”? Are you saying all women deserve to live? Or rather, what does it even mean to deserve to live?

We laughed it off because who are we to answer questions like that?

The next day,

I found myself sitting in the back of an ambulance,

alarms blaring,

and a woman lying in front of me,

as we weaved through the traffic.

And I thought back to that conversation.

Maybe I am the person who has to answer these questions.

Does this woman, who I was beginning to develop complicated feelings about, deserve to live because she deserves it?

Or because she’s a woman?

And somehow,

I had become the person responsible for answering that question,

because I had become the person responsible for ever placing that question above her.

The situation is still up in the air.

My license might be up for debate.

Now a judge will decide whether I deserve to drive.

A doctor will decide whether she deserves to spend another night in the hospital. (Update from the future: She doesn’t. She’s fine)

My parents will decide whether I deserve to keep my car.

And somewhere in all of this,

The situation arose because I decided whether this woman deserved to live.

PS: There were almost no injuries it was super minor. I was barely moving when it happened. But I think right now I’ve earned the right to exaggerate.

Also, for the pic attached: everyone in the hospital was watching RCB together. It really does bring us all together.

Reading one book a day.

365 books, one for each day.

Two months in, I have only read 19.

I was disappointed in my inability to commit. If I can’t commit to something as simple as reading a book a day, how can I commit to anything else?

One day I’m going to work on my dream project that requires showing up every single day and I won’t. I’ll start going to the gym and only go once a week. I’ll meet someone who deserves to be loved everyday and only love them when I am in the mood.

That reflection made me realise I may have been doing exactly that for most of my life.

Only committing ten percent of the time is how I’ve coasted through life. Like a constant autopilot - I only put the effort once in a while and then I crawl back into my cocoon until the next time I feel like showing up.

When I started writing this note, I had planned it as a sort of redemption arc - maybe about how it’s okay to take the time out here and there. That you deserve the rest, the break and reading 19 books is actually a big deal.

But it was never about reading 365 books. It was a challenge to myself, to see if I could commit. And, as of now I haven’t been able to.

I am disappointed in myself and I needed somewhere to put that that wasn’t just my notes app.

But anyway, this is also the preface to my series reviewing all the books I have read this year. So. I’m just gonna hope I can commit to that one at least.