i tend to get so miserable when i am cold. my feet are always freezing no matter how many socks i wear, my nose feels thawed and abnormally large for some reason, my lips get so chapped and it burns but it weirdly also makes me look sexy and dangerously kissable, and my hand perpetually feels like icicles, like i have just shook hands with a yeti.

but i don’t mind any of it when i am in sethan. i think one of my happiest version comes from me being there, just frollicking and dilly-dallying and thinking to myself that i am a forest fairy.

everyday there feels like a new possibilty even though there is a monotonous flow to most things. like my morning coffee, and how we would always go to anjali didi’s kitchen for breakfast and i would always get the egg aloo parantha. for the first week, pritu and i would share a parantha and once pritu left, i started sharing it with jimmy and bella, the two most adorable matriarch dogs of sethan. anjali didi also makes a fresh batch of chutney everyday but it gets wiped out by dinner-time because it’s like drugs. we would always sit beside the road during our breakfast, outside anjali didi’s kitchen, taking in the warm morning sun and all the climbers would meet there and we would discuss what and where we were planning to go climb for the day. we would take the crashpads and leave the village for the day somewhere between 9 am to 11 am (depending on how productive or lazy we are feeling that day). we would mostly walk but sometimes hitchhike to the place where we wanna climb and in between the climbs, we try to find every patch of sunlight between boulders and trees so that we can huddle up and sit under the warmth. we would all meet up at jango’s for a late lunch, after which we proceed to climb some more and then we start heading back to the village by 7pm while stargazing and trying to spot flying squirrels. we know anjali didi would be mad if we are not there by 8pm for dinner. we would then either take a beer or a apple cider or arak (if you are feeling brave) and decide whether we all wanna hang out at the village cafe or go to any of the hostels to play silly games.

pictured: anjali did’s egg aloo parantha

i am gonna say this at the expense of me sounding like a grown man who has either done mushroom or lsd for the first time and has just started understanding empathy and kindness but it truly feels like sethan & i are one. i wake up to birds chirping outside my window, i stop to look at blue and green bugs, i lie down and touch any patch of moss i see, i sleep on rocks and old sycamore trees and the branches remind me of my grandfather’s skin, i pick up every skink, baby goats, puppies and cats who lets me, i spend way too much time looking at shiny glittery stones and the way the shadows of trees and leaves dances on different boulders, i always have mud on my fingernails either from collecting rocks so that i can gift it to my friends back at the village or from slipping and falling on muddy trails, and i sleep to the gurgling sound of a live stream right outside the sethan bouldering hostel.

pictured: rocks covered in moss (first forest area)

pictured: rock that i picked up for my friends from the river

on today’s episode of, if i were anything but myself, i would be -

there are things that i wish to be in sethan. i would close my eyes and imagine myself being them and then later make a note of it on my notes app, the heading of which read, “on today’s episode, i am -”

the smoke from the chimney at jango’s

vultures near the first forest

the shepherd’s dog

the tree that’s growing above the mantle matrix boulder

any baby goats, sheep, horses, mules

the silver lining in the clouds

the yellow lichen on the trees near lobsang’s blessing

a river, any live stream

the tap outside anjali didi’s with bubbling white water

the flying squirrels

the sandwich boulder

coco, the puppy at jango’s

a pomegranate that marc shared in between climbs

a fallen tree covered in moss

pictured: yellow lichen on the tree next to lopsang’s blessing

pictured: a fallen tree covered in moss

every friendship is romantic

you can listen to everything is romantic by charli xcx while reading this part.

i woke up one day in sethan to a text from a friend saying that we needed to establish some boundaries because they had recently gotten into a relationship and that they hoped that i would understand and respect where they were coming from. i didn’t quite understand it because i don’t get why a platonic friendship needed to change because one person had entered a romantic relationship.

later that afternoon, i was sitting in the meadow with my friends, and we got talking about how juvenile the whole thing felt. somewhere in that conversation, pritu said, “every friendship is romantic”.

not sexual. romantic.

because what is life if you can’t hold your friend’s hand, give them kisses, hug them for a little longer than necessary, and tell them that you love them?

perhaps sethan was the perfect place to arrive at this thought, because i spent so much of my time there experiencing love in the most ordinary but beautiful ways.

i could watch my friends climb trees and rocks for hours. in between our climbs, if we saw somebody shivering, we would huddle up for a group hug and whoever’s in the middle becomes a sandwich.

aditi and i were living together for a couple of days and some of our friends would come over for coffee and we would end up having long vulnerable conversations where you lose track of time and you forget that you have to go climb for the day.

on a rainy day, aditi wrapped me up in a blanket and told me that i looked like a tingmo and then we proceeded to watch arcane (ar-ka-ney as jorge would call it) till the rain stopped. after which we took a nice walk to see all the nearby mountains covered in snow.

i hate the word selfish because i feel like the word can be very selfish and unforgiving, so i always end up saying things like, “you are being a shellfish”. i said that to didu once while we were having an argument and she came up to me the same day, held my hand and thanked me for having the argument because it was necessary.

there were always these conversations that made absolutely no sense. on our walks to the crag, kaisü and i could have solid debates about the correct way to open a banana. on our walks back to the village, we’d all ponder whether the baby goats knew who their momma goats were.

and then there were the evenings where we would all gather and play card games and show each other magic tricks that we knew. we would play dumb charades but only with sethan boulder names.

once during a power cut at midnight, all the spanish men were scrambling around trying to fix the “issue” and we couldn’t stop laughing because how do you explain it to them that it’s a normal thing.

when nikitha wanted to go for a walk at 2 am to spot bears, i did accompany her even though i folded and ran back to my hostel within 5 mins. but i still think that the intention counts.

sree once asked pritu what their pronouns were and pritu said “it can be whatever comes from within” and that it can also be “oye, behen ke laude” if they felt like it.

somewhere between all of this, i got to give ninad one of my grandmother’s shawl and kaisü gave me his woolen spiderman cap that his mum knit for him. and i got my hair braided by shrey and netra in between climbs.

i don't have a particularly profound conclusion to any of this other than the fact that i am so grateful for sethan and everyone i met there and i have so much love in my heart.

pictured: the rainy day from outside the hostel window

pictured: a picture of the portraits that pritu drew of people in front of the sandwich boulder

it’s been two weeks since i’ve been back and there are still days where i wake up mistaking that i am still in sethan.

i am back to having an autonomy over my own life. i get to decide everyday what to eat, not anjali didi. i have options now. supermarkets with vast rows of shelves with things that nobody ever needs. 5 minute deliveries. i hear the sound of traffic. i sit with a laptop and spend 10 hours of my day in front of a screen. and i hate it.

there are probably a hundred more climbs that i would have liked to do. but for now i can be happy with the fact that this is the strongest version of myself that has ever existed and i would always have more and more reasons to go back.

like so many teenagers, i also grew up emo and worshipping artists who died young and naive and thinking to myself that if i also manage to die at 27, i will be remembered forever.

i think it’s a rite of passage for a young teen to obsess and drool over kurt cobain. the 1993 mtv unplugged video of kurt singing where did you sleep last night was life altering for me. i have spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at this poster of him with the slutty cigarette dangling from his slutty mouth.

then came jim morrison with his big blue eyes and a mouth full of beautiful nonsense. i so badly wanted to understand what he was talking about, even though I knew he probably didn’t either because of his out of control acid trips.

jimi hendrix’s voodoo chile is one of the songs that completely altered my brain chemistry. if i could go back in time to experience those 15 mins again for the first time, i would.

and i felt like i have never really tasted freedom and vulnerability till i heard janis joplin’s album pearl. there’s nothing more intimidating than letting yourself fall apart without trying to make any of it look graceful.

of course, there were other people who i romanticized and looked up to who did not die at 27 but died nevertheless. like jeff buckley drowning in a river despite knowing how to swim or anthony bourdain un-aliving himself.

there was something about dying that had this unbelievable grip on me, to the point that that was all i could think about. i spent hours and days thinking about the best possible ways to die. not that i would do anything to myself but just hoping that something would happen and all of a sudden, i would cease to exist. i really believed that if i really wanted to die, the universe would conspire and conjure up something that works in my favour.

insert the meme where a pretty girl believes that it’s all in just “manifesting”.

i think the disdain for living started when i was 12 and it metamorphosised into something much bigger with my grandfather passing. it’s a little bit of a cute story but mostly tragic how it happened.

the only cute version about this is the fact that he loved my grandmother so much that he worried himself sick to death.

the tragic version is what actually happened. my grandmother had to go through a heart surgery and my family staged a lie to my grandfather so that he wouldn’t worry. but he found out. which led him to get bedridden and pass away in the next 2 years.

the thing about my grandfather was that he was always a little anxious and apprehensive about everything. if we were all planning to take a trip or go to a family gathering together, he would be hesitant to leave the house because he thought that we were always at a risk of getting robbed. (we have never been robbed)

another thing about my grandfather was that he was my rock. he would try to protect me from things and situations i would put myself in where i would inevitably have to lock myself in a room for months or when i am dealing with a broken nose and a hairline fracture on a different finger every month. when he is at the dinner table, i don’t have to start inching away from the table with every bite i take until i am at a ridiculous distance from the table and it’s quite obvious that i am trying so hard to be a little further from a certain somebody’s one arm distance.

god knows that he has tried to take my side and protect me from all of these only to fail. but he would try nevertheless.

there is also something about seeing someone you love so much being bedridden. it starts with losing their ability to speak and then not being able to recognise anybody and being completely unresponsive and then it’s the sight and the smell of their skin decaying and rotting and random bruises because their skin is so very fragile.

apart from his passing, i still had a million other reasons why i didn’t want to live and i was tired. which is why i wanted to throw a big party for my 27th birthday because i really thought i would die. i knew it in my heart that it either had to be the universe or i gotta take matters into my own hand and do something about it. and i am a little glad that we both failed at it.

instead, i had a big party for my 28th year this month and i was surrounded by people who i love and people who love me. i remembered my grandparents and i missed my family who i couldn’t be with and people who weren’t in my life anymore.

don’t get me wrong, i still hate living with a burning passion but now i also have things to look forward to.

one of the things is this hypocrisy where i am constantly fighting the urge to have a cup of coffee after 4 pm but also contemplating the horrors of being awake and alive.

i think i’ve become more empathetic as a person since then. and i have never come back home from outdoors not learning something new.

i now know different kinds of bugs and mantis and i know how to spot birds and some bird calls. i have seen a peacock run at full speed last month and that was a sight. and i don’t think i would have ever come across flying squirrels and foxes and cicadas and snakes and snake skin at snake skin (6b) in avathi, bangalore if not for bouldering. heck, now i even know how to distinguish between bear poop and leopard poop.

today i got up at 6 am after sleeping for a total of 2 hours but i was so excited to go outdoors. the car ride to avathi was spent talking about how some woodpeckers imitates ants as a hunting strategy and how they interact with each other. once we hiked up the hill, we warmed-up for our climbs in the sun and between climbs we would try to identify birds. we heard jungle prinias, grey-breasted prinias and indian robins. and then we took shelter under a rock to protect ourselves from the rain and laughed about how we are all just living under a rock. and we spent the way back talking about stories from assamese folklore and mythology like bordoisila (a wind/storm spirit/goddess) and tejimola.

wishing everyone some outdoorsy time. go bonkers <3

i live in a concrete box. multiple concrete boxes in one giant concrete box. and hey, i have got nothing against apartment complexes apart from the fact that most of the time, it feels like a cage.

i come from assam where i also live in a concrete (independant) box built by my grandfather in the 70s but, at least, i am not defined by my walls there. house walls and boundaries do not mean anything to anyone and i learnt that as a five-year-old when i used to play tennis/cricket with my cousins and our ball would accidentally fall in someone’s frontyard/backyard. we would jump over the bricked wall/picket fences tying a piece of cloth in our hands so that we don’t get stung by thorns or get bitten by snakes. in fact, stealing people’s picket fences (literally the gate to people’s home) is a tradition during magh bihu (the harvest festival in assam) for meji (the communal bonfire).

on most winter days in assam, since the days are shorter and cold, i would follow the winter sun along with my lawn chair. i could start from the beginning of the verandah and end up with my chair in the middle of the road and that’s alright. i don’t think small towns has a lot to compartmentalise as well.

so, naturally when i moved to bangalore nine years ago, it seemed so strange and surreal to be so defined by your boxes.

i think the reason i am talking about it right now is because i live in a gated community and i don’t know how to ride/drive a vehicle or own one (ofc). and two years ago, i had given my parking space (which meant nothing to me, other than empty space) to one of our neighbor who really needed it. my landlord called me a couple of days ago, asking me why have i been sharing my parking space with another tenant. it did not make any sense to me. but at the heart of it, he would ideally like to profit from my inability to drive and the empty space rather than practise kindness.

would i rather live in a box with clean air and my chickens or a box with an illusion for freedom?

most of my days are working (my corporate-ish job) in/out of a box, using softwares and tools made by pedophiles. taking the metro box to go bouldering. and while i am in the metro box, i fill my time filling my sudoku boxes.

my mom is a part of a tight knit-community. a clique, if you may. in most middle-class households, a kitty party. and i can’t help but notice the boxes everywhere.

i’ve been asking people lately which animal they see themselves as. and most of the men usually respond with predators - tigers, lions, wolves. eagles, peregrine falcons. anything that can hunt, kill, dominate, be on the top of the food chain. most of the women usually have such cute answers. i am constantly sorting and labeling everything into neat little categories.

i realise that everytime i speak, i am also compartmentalising myself by using words. words are truly never enough but unfortunately, that’s mostly all we have. (can i just say that i have a soft spot for people who are descriptive with their hands and bodies when they speak. makes me feel like words are not so bad afterall and that it’s worth being alive)

and because i am a fragment of so many boxes and i am a combination of every media i consume and everybody that i have loved and lost and everybody i know, knows everybody i know, knows everybody i know; sometimes, it all gets a little blurry and it becomes difficult to tell which part of me belongs to which box.

most days, i don’t even feel like a real person. it’s like i don’t exist and i am not really myself and a mere observer of my own life and everything seems fleeting. but there are moments that pull me back to myself. in the last week, it has been - karaoke night, sreedu cuddling didu and didu cuddling me, having small talks with my auto drivers, playing frisbee and getting drenched in the rain with raman and just hours of talking to each other, listening and sharing songs.

and i am aware that these boxes are not real and but they also are in a way. idk how else to explain it so let’s call it schrödinger’s box of mental illness i guess.

anyway, i was listening to current joys 2018 album called a different age today while being in the metro and weirdly, i was thinking about this plant called stinging nettle and let me end my note there.

when i was in sethan in october 2025 for two weeks for bouldering outdoors, we would often get stung by stinging nettles. they were literally everywhere. it feels like pins and needles and it’s a little painful and itchy for a few hours. but soon we realised that the antidote plant for stinging nettles grows right beside them. for as many stinging nettles, there are as many antidotes, if not more, growing right beside them.

it’s all quite silly actually. i got on the right train in ghent. but apparently, in europe (or maybe this happens here as well; i’m sorry i have not travelled through trains a lot), most part of the train continues to go to one destination, but sometimes the last three coaches detach itself and head somewhere completely different. i still can’t believe that a single train can split midway and i still do not understand how that works.

i, of course, was in the wrong section of the train.

but before i realized that i was in the wrong part of the train and started panicing a bit, i was looking out my train window. it was a bright sunny day. i would often catch a glimpse of/from the other window through my window. a lot of reflections. i see a lot of houses but one i remember the most. red, slanted roof, humongous windows. in the middle of a big green grassy field. the reflection felt so real that i look out of my window. but the house was never outside my window. it was never really there. it was never really mine.

just a random video from the train

yesterday, somewhere between telling my friends about my week and what i have been upto, some miserable words slipped out of my mouth. i said, “i am tired of constantly losing to people’s exes”.

and the funniest thing is that it doesn’t even feel like it’s a competition. but all of a sudden, it feels like i have lost a game that was never mine to play.

in lana del rey’s ride monologue, she says -
“i was born to be the other woman
who belonged to no one
who belonged to everyone
who had nothing
who wanted everything
with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about it
and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me”

this is, nevertheless, a very watered down version of my own hell.

anyway, if you are reading this, also go read nebin’s “before chasing dream” on medium. it posed the question, “what did I love before chasing dreams entered the conversation?”, and i’ve been pondering ever since and so should you.

note: this article is entirely the consequence of listening to fiona apple’s album called extraordinary machine the whole day on repeat, especially oh well.

i’ve been dreaming about home. my family. spiders, lizards and snakes. the horrible flood and the people and the animals that have been affected by it. thinking about depak’s relationship with the chickens and the care that he has for them that when the murgi gorali (chicken coop) got washed away by the flood a few days ago, depak took all the chicken to his small single bedroom and he made his home theirs. and i think about the infinite times that he has saved the chickens and the baby chicks from getting eaten by the monitor lizards around. i love the things that love and care can make a person do. i don’t think we talk about care enough.

i still think about victor glover’s words everyday, “in all of this emptiness, we have this oasis”.

recently i was telling my friends how sometimes i get really scared thinking how i will only know the last version of someone, as they were with me, before i lost them. they could be constantly growing and evolving and becoming better or worse for themselves and i will never get to know that part of them. my idea of them would forever be this outdated version of them and that’s a particular kind of heartbreak.

later i told this to arpit because my fear was mostly revolved around how my idea of arpit is stuck on arpit from sept’25 and how i’ll never get to know the present-day arpit. but that’s life i guess. i also recently told him that i was walking around in lalbagh and I came across this 200 year old tree. the first time i saw this tree was six years ago with him by my side. he called me brave for going to visit the tree.

pictured: 200 year old tree in lalbagh

i’ve met very few people in my life who are space-conscious and more often than not, they have been women. i am done apologising to people as a passive-aggressive politeness warfare strategy and i am gonna start accepting that i am a human and i’ll take up as much space as i want.

i have been crying a lot the last week. but not happy crying like i was doing in kochi earlier this month. where i would cry seeing two canoes bobbling around in water and then i would cry again seeing an empty bench under a tree in the church and imagining myself as the bench. or like the time i recognised a singer at david hall from the biennale as he was spread across the couch leisurely and i went up to him and told him that i was a huge fan and that i saw him play the sax the last time i was there and sing can’t help falling in love with you by elvis while also petting a cat. he then proceeded to get up from his couch and sing the song for me. god, i love human experiences so much.

pictured: empty bench in churchyard

but i’ve been particularly wrecked the last week because i was feeling guilty and helpless seeing the protests at jantar mantar and the rest of the country and i was constantly feeling like i was not doing enough. for a person who keeps telling people that i am learning to regulate my emotions, it’s a big fat lie because i was surprised to see how easy i crumble under pressure and how i feel everything way too much and it’s not fun.

i also got my period (natural, not induced by any pills given to me by a shitty gynac) after 5 whole months. and i am sad about it now because i can’t say things like, “i was so heartbroken that i lost my period for 4 months” anymore. my heartbreak is not actively and physically disrupting my life anymore. and now, i just have to quietly live with it.

i have also been battling with the feelings of disgust and forgiveness.

i hate the word “situationship”, so i want to say i recently lost a friend, because they were more of a friend to me than a situationship, but idk. maybe if it was really a friendship, they would have acted differently towards me. anyway, i lost someone and every time i have an altercation with them and we brush against each other or when we shake hands, i feel this deep sense of disgust in me. i feel so much of it that i wanna burn my clothes and i want to wash my hands. instead, i just end up rubbing my shoulder or wiping my hands against my shorts. and i am aware that i am not really disgusted by them but i am actually disgusted by myself for trusting them and letting them into my life and i am constantly so angry at myself and i am sad. and i want to hold to these feelings of resentment and contempt and feel it like mud in my mouth. just as a reminder.

but then i tell myself about forgiveness.

i have to remind myself that the only person who feels the pain of resentment is the one who holds it and by choosing not to forgive them, i’m actively choosing to keep the pain close to me. and i also wanna be free from the burden of resentment. i feel stuck.

anyway, burden of dreams, v17, i’m coming for you someday. inshallah.

one of the things i’ve not been hating lately is the weather in bangalore. it’s getting a bit chilly, maybe just for me, but i’ve been liking the feeling of the warm coffee cup against my fingertips.

i am still grateful for my family and friends, and climbing and football, and rishon for carving me the most beautiful wooden fish as a bookmark and my runs with manoj where he casually talks and i struggle to complete a 5k.

to whoever’s reading this, quote of the day/week/month/year: never stop being whimsy. there can never be too much of whimsy.

also, it’s so much fun to try and mimic an inanimate object. go be silly and try to be your ceiling fan or think of yourself as a dinosaur sometimes and go rawr rawr rawr.

this weekend has been full of warm hugs as soon as i wake up, forehead kisses, kind words, samosa walks, testimonials, watching/playing football with my friends.

now that i have said this, i feel like a copywriter at costar.

do -

polaroids and photo albums

“would you love me if i was a -“ questions

pick flowers

don’t -

nitpick

gossip

get sad when friends leave

some beautiful beautiful things that happened this weekend and i wanna write about it so that i never forget them -

priya was right when she said that nebin wakes up with a golden retriever energy. he gives me the biggest hug every morning and he says “good morning” with the biggest smile.

pritu took me on a walk for chicken samosa in a beautiful small lane with a mosque and picked a flower for me on the way.

affie turned 39 and i have never seen anyone look more happier on thier birthday and it was adorable.

sree was sick and left football early saturday night. i called to check up on him and asked him whether he wanted some soup. he said, “no thanks, i just had my diet coke and a cigarette”. wait?! i have no clue why i am writing this down.

moin su and fareen took me and nebin out on a walk to see a tree and i found a cute stick along the way.

met akshay for lunch yesterday and he apologised for not getting me flowers and he said that he got me kaju katli instead.

watched prince fall while we were playing football and laughed a lot at him.

farheen, nebin and i had dosa with extra ghee from our fav dosa place every day of the weekend.

pritu asked me and azadi once what our inner dialogues sounded like so now i am on a mission to ask everyone i know what thier internal dialogue/monologue sounds like.

nebin was in town and we were insufferable together. since friday, we have just been giggling and laughing and doing this really annoying thing where anytime anyone says anything, we would look at each other and say, “you are (insert word)”.

“i saw a mongoose through my balcony today”

“you are a mongoose”

/

“you want some peanuts?”

“you are peanuts”

/

nebin burps

i ask him what’s the word for burping in malayalam

“embakam”

“you are embakam”

and everytime this happens, we laugh so hard and it does seem like we are high but we aren’t. it’s just the happiness of having all of your friends in the same place!

i was also telling nebin about how genius arundhati roy is and how once he leaves, hyderabad will be nebin-full and i will be nebin-less. but i love being nebin-full and hyderabad being nebin-less.

nevertheless, i would love all of my friends even if they were caterpillars or any card in a monopoly card deck.

i love the word “heartbroken”. it’s feels so whimsical. but i don’t like being heartbroken ofc.

i don’t think i understood how deeply it had affected me until i moved back home for a couple of weeks.

grief followed me almost everywhere. we would lay in my grandfather’s bed on lazy afternoons staring out the window. we would drink coffee together in the varandah every morning. it pulled up a chair at the dining table beside my family. it sat quietly with us in front of the tv every night.

it got a little bad for a while where i forgot how to sleep in the absence of substances. i would repeat to myself that i am okay and that i am safe and nobody’s out there to get me because my nervous system is that of a rat. i would squirm and panic and nothing felt real anymore.

i would be reading and re-reading Marty McConnell’s "Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell" -

“leaving is not enough; you must stay gone. train your heart like a dog. change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. you lucky, lucky girl. you have an apartment just your size. a bathtub full of tea. a heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. you had to have him. and you did. and now you pull down the bridge between your houses. you make him call before he visits. you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. don’t lose too much weight. stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. and you are not stupid. you loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. heart like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas. heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.”

once i was home, to distract myself from being miserable, i tried to focus all my energy on vegetables and my lunch plate. i didn’t grow up eating vegetables. i think it was mostly because i was a stubborn child and i felt the need to rebel against my dad since the age of five.

everything at home is farm to table. i would watch papa pick veggies in the mornings, watch depak cut it before lunch and i would sit with maa while she plays her favorite songs so loudly the whole neighborhood could hear, dancing and singing in between as she cooked.

pictured: rice, tenga dail (sour lentil curry), dangbodi bhaji (fried yardlong beans), bor (red lentil cutlets), lau bhaji (bottle gourd), bogori achar (indian jujube pickle) and dangbodi (yardlong beans) chutney

pictured: rice, tenga dail (sour lentil curry), bor (red lentil cutlets), bhendi bhaji (fried okra), pura bengena pitika (mashed roasted eggplant) and mosundori (boiled fish mint leaves)

pictured: rice, masor tenga anja (sour fish curry), baked fish, tita kerela bhaji (bitter gourd fry) and kunduli bhaji (ivy gourd fry)

pictured: rice, ou tenga masor anja (sour fish curry with elephant apple), fish fry, norohingho pator bor (curry leaves and red lentil cutlets), salad with cucumber, tomatoes and sprouts and raw mango chutney

in video: depak cutting morissa xaak (red amaranth leaves)

pictured: malbhog bananas from our backyard

pictured: dangbodi (yardlong beans), bhat kerela (spiny gourd), kaji nemu (lemons) and kaskol (plantain) that my dad picked in the morning

i don’t wanna say this but being at home with my family and the food made me feel a little better. i was almost forgetting that i cry in the metro and most my auto rides. i didn’t grow up as grateful as i would have liked to be. i started being more mindful and present. i was constantly learning and un-learning old habits. my discipline crumbling and crashing but a new one forming. still no moral-compass pointing to the north but maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world.

grief still creeps up on me in ridiculous places. last saturday while i was playing football, i had to pass the ball to an old friend of mine which led me to acknowledge their existence for a second and and that felt like its own kind of heartbreak because we do not talk anymore. i spent the rest of the evening trying so hard not to cry about it. maybe i was just pms-ing. maybe grief is just embarrassing like that. earlier that evening, i screamed and announced to everyone at toit (my fav bar) that i got my period after four months.

my thoughts are in no particular order and i apologise for that.

sometimes i wish there was a god i believed in. will my life have more meaning and will i finally feel purposeful if there was a god i prayed to that doesn’t exist? my friend, loya, was recently recalling a story from our climbing trip to sethan, himachal in oct’25. she apparently asked all our friends what living-being we would be if we were not humans. and everybody had the coolest answers where somebody said tiger and somebody else said eagle and somebody said a whale. i apparently said that i would like to be a moth. they seem to have a purpose.

i have decided to go home, to assam, for a while. it sort of came to me like an awakening. like how on the second season of fleabag this old man has an awakening at the quaker meeting where he gets up from his seat and says “i think i am gonna go home in november”. it was sort of like that apart from the fact that i have a heavy heart and i don’t know what to do with it and if i stay here any longer, i would explode.

i am also going home because my younger brother, adi, is turning 18 and i would like to be there for him. sometimes i feel bad that i have not really been around him in his formative years. i left home when he was 9. i found myself asking him a couple of months ago if he feels like he is an only child because i am never around. he called me crazy and cut the call. i felt like it was a fair question because i was an only child till i was 10 and i used to get so lonely sometimes.

been thinking a lot about chungking express by wong kar-wai. i happened to rewatched it with my cousin, meghna, on the first of may. it has become a first may tradition now. “actually really knowing someone doesn’t mean anything. people change. a person may like pineapple today and something else tomorrow”. why does every line from this film feel like gospel?

just remembered that about a month ago, my cousin sisters were over, meghna and pahi, and meghna said this really beautiful thing to pahi and it’s etched in my brain now. she said, “i wanna do life for you so that it’s easier for you”. i could give more context here but it’s alright, not everything needs interpretation.

i miss my my mom.

i think i have been reminiscing a lot lately. i remember a summer night in may 2021 when arpit and i danced to walk with me by taba chake at 3 am on the dalmia circle flyover.

the last couple of months feel like a blur. i have not had a day to myself to reflect or to process anything that has been going on. i always have a phase like this in december but i usually tell myself that everybody goes all-out in december. it’s the year-end and everybody’s excited for the new year. but it has been 5 months since december and i feel like i have put myself in a party that never stops. my flatmate and also my bestfriend, farheen, thinks that i am self-sabotaging.

a couple of tattoo ideas i have had lately are - a ladybug, a gulmohar tree flower in memory of my gulmohar tree (2010-2026) and a matching dumpling tattoo with my friend, pritika.

i recently lost a friend. not because anything happened to them. but because they subjected me to a lot of disrespect and dishonesty. they could have prevented it and i guess, that is a particular kind of wound. not incapacity. not ignorance. choice.

more that anything, i am just wondering about how i would never get to see one of my fav trees in bangalore again or how i would never get to see the rock they got me from their hometown. i wish so many things didn’t have to remind me of them.

i smoke a cigarette in my balcony thinking to myself that cigarettes are just adult pacifiers.

been having a day/week/month. hold me in your thoughts and prayers if y’all believe in god or something or anything.

i live on the first floor in a gated community and from my balcony, i can see people waking up to the jackfruit tree with hopes that a jackfruit would magically fall into their hands. i have seen kids trying to make a human pyramid so that they can climb a wall and get a jackfruit, all chaos and excitement and very little planning.

our help, malar akka, asks me to give her a call her every time i see a jackfruit fall. she has been lucky a couple of times, where a jackfruit falls off the tree right when she is over, and she asks me if she can quickly run outside to get it. my friends and i become accomplices, helping her sneak the jackfruit in through our balcony so that she can take it home to her family and kids.

funny story about malar akka - for the longest time, i used to call her mala aunty, mostly because i thought her name was mala. i only learnt last week that her name is malar. i’ve known that she is a tamilian woman and her name means flower in tamil. isn’t that so beautiful? i stopped calling her aunty the day i learnt that she was in her early 40s. as a 27 year old, it feels illegal to be calling anyone an aunty except for my blood aunties. can there be blood aunties? i googled, the answer is yes if any of your parents have a sister.

two weeks ago, i saw a small girl come next the jackfruit tree and she kept a potted plant beside it and left. the next day, she came again to water her potted plant. i called out to her from my balcony and asked her what plant it was. i heard her say “robert plant” and for a second i just accepted that as fact. then i googled it and it said rubber plant and it looked exactly like a rubber plant and suddenly everything made a lot more sense. she told me the rubber plant was not doing very well indoors so she is trying something new, and that when her dad comes back during the weekend, he is going to help her plant it somewhere close by. i had a lot of questions about the plant and her father but i held them back. i instead chose to tell her about how i planted my first tree with my grandfather when i was 10, and how it became my favourite tree in the whole world. i told her that she is going to have so much fun watching hers grow. she then told me that she is 10 years old right now, which felt like a small, perfect coincidence. we didn’t introduced ourselves but she went away telling me that she will come back the next day again to water the plant. i didn’t see her or the rubber plant last week, so i am assuming that she must have planted it with her dad somewhere. i don’t know why, but i had this deep urge to be part of that experience, even knowing that it would be selfish and that i would be intruding on something very intimate.

i sometimes work out of my balcony during the afternoons and i often find a cat sleeping, taking shade under this humongous jackfruit tree. today is one of those days.

there are a lot of things that are quintessential to my childhood home. like papa’s vegetable garden which was earlier tended by koka (grandfather), the pond in the backyard with algae right now where i have early childhood memories of learning how to fish, maa’s bookshelf with over a thousand books, the white and red tiles in the living room that have been there ever since i was born, the corridor between the living room and the dining hall where koka used to tell me countless stories while sitting on the floor, and the dining table which has seen food at all times of the day and, since 1974, held conversations, laughter, arguments and my cousins playing ping-pong on it improvising a net out of my agatha christie books.

pictured: papa’s fresh produce from the vegetable farm

pictured: the white, red and black tiles in the living room

but let me start with all the trees that are important to my childhood home. my favourite is the gulmohar (flamboyant) tree that i planted with my koka's help when i was in fifth grade. it bears bright red flowers in the summers. there is a night jasmine tree which is near the garage and it comes to full life during winter nights. every winter morning, maa would proceed to pick up all the night jasmine flowers from the freshly dewy grass, either to keep it as a showpiece in the living room because it smells heavenly or to dry it up later so that she can make night jasmine stir-fry for lunch that my family absolutely loves. there is also a lemon tree in the backyard. but this is not the lemons you know about. lemons from assam are bold and fragrant and beautiful and unique. i will find a different opportunity or article to talk just about these lemons but for now, this lemon tree is important because there is something about the lemonade that maa makes on hot sunny afternoons. there is a guava tree in the flower garden but the squirrels have a claim to it before we ever can. every year papa comes up a new plan to shoo the squirrels away which involves a catapult but it has never worked. i could also tell you about the tulsi plant in the garden out front that maa prays to but i'm not religious and the tulsi plant doesn't necessarily hold a place in my heart but since it does in maa's, i'll mention it.

pictured: night jasmine flowers that maa picks up every winter morning

and of course, there are the chickens. their existence is entirely my brother’s doing. when adi was five, papa got a live chicken for dinner. adi took one look at it, burst into tears, rolled on the floor, and declared that he loved the chicken and wanted to keep it as a pet. the next day, papa tried again with another chicken. same results, same tears and same protests. that was a lesson for papa to never get a live chicken again into the house. thirteen years later, we have seven grown chickens and four baby chicks roaming in the yard. but the chicken story isn’t complete without mentioning the monitor lizards that lurks in our backyard and prey on the chicken eggs and the baby chicks. our help does his best to keep the chickens safe and the chickens absolutely seem to adore him. some of the more memorable visitors were the myna birds that would arrive at the verandah near the dining hall every morning at seven. koka used to feed them small bits of roti (flat bread) or grains. then there were the fireflies on summer evenings. when there was a power cut and even the automatic backup failed, we would sit in candlelight and step outside to stargaze, the entire house would be surrounded by these flickering yellow lights. i also remember the pigeons we once kept as pets when I was a child, and how koka built a small wooden house for them. but i am not sure whether koka kept the pigeons to eat them because he used to be particularly fond of pigeon meat. the less memorable creatures are the ones I’d rather forget about - the deafening crickets at night, and the unexpected appearances of snakes, frogs, and hairy spiders pretty much everywhere around the house.

pictured: one mama chicken and two baby chicks in our backyard

pictured: a monitor lizard in the verandah near the living hall

one of the most unique spaces in this childhood home of mine is the front verandah. i have the fondest memories of my cousins and i playing cricket and football there or turning the small metal main gate into a makeshift net for badminton or tennis. the verandah is also home to my first swing set, which koka had built for me when I was two, and to all the flowers maa carefully tends to, along with the green watering can with the red cap. on winter mornings, our help lays the mattresses out in the sunlight, and the verandah becomes our spot for sunbathing through the day. by night, we would cozy up around a small bonfire in the same verandah.

the house has seen a fair share of changes and renovations over the last 52 years, walls repainted and spaces reshaped. but its core has never shifted. i truly truly believe that it has a soul of it’s own. every conversation, every burst of laughter, everybody who has ever been there feels as though they have been permanently etched into the walls, woven into the memory of my childhood home and mine.

pictured: home. a december 2020 winter morning where adi and our help, depak, pumps air into the cycle tires, and our late-dog, loki, basks in the sun.

author’s note: special thanks to joachim trier for starting sentimental value (2025) with this line “in sixth grade, nora was told to write an essay as if she was an object. she knew at once that she would be their house” which helped me write this today.

come over, pretend

come over

hold me close

just pretend that you love me

just once and for all

come over

lie in my bed

look into my eyes

pretend that this is forever

just one more time

come over

gently rub my back

tell me that i look like a movie

pretend that i matter to you

but do i?

come over

hold me so tight that it hurts

hold me so tight that i am fighting for air

pretend like you want to hold me tight

and say that you will never let me go

come over

let’s play pretend that we are happy

we’ll cuddle in the couch

let me fall asleep in your arms afterwards

come over,

pretend

to love and loss

to never hearing you say my name again

to never smelling you before i sleep

to never sharing a meal with you again

to never having you pick me up and walk around the house

to never taking a bath together

to never looking into your eyes

to never sharing wired earphones before football

to never having you tickle me

to never seeing you wear my grandfather’s blue pants again

to never having to worry myself sick wondering if you like me or if you ever will

to never -

i want to reach out to you everyday

but i don’t.

i wanted to text you

to tell you a little more about sethan and climbing and how i spent my last couple of days there,

i wanted to call you

and tell you how i miraculously made it to my flight back home after waking up an hour before it,

i wanted to text you

and show you a picture of the roselle jam that my nani made for me the day i reached home,

i wanted to video call you

to show you the family house, the home i grew up in, my father’s vegetable farm, our chickens, the lemon tree in our backyard and probably my childhood room which is now my brother’s,

i wanted to call you

to tell you about the song that my cousins and i came up with for my grandmom, to keep her entertained a bit. she’s in her late 80s and in a wheelchair; i would have liked to sing it to you just to make you laugh,

i wanted to text you

to tell you about the heart shaped cloud i saw and how it reminded me of you.

i think eventually, i just want to tell you about how painful this is for me,

hoping that it’s just as painful for you.

i think i’ve only been anxious ever since i have known you

july was me liking you so much that i could physically throw up,

august was me being a nervous wretch thinking if i pushed myself on you or if you actually like me back,

my heart was torn apart in september wondering to myself if you are okay and if what we have is real,

october was me fighting for my life not to reach out to you because i thought you are no good for me

it’s november now and i feel a dull familiar ache where i know we have been through this thousands of times and the thought of you not being in my life sits with me, an angel on my shoulder,

i think december me would miss you during the cold winter days and my heart would ache for you when the day breaks and the cold is going to sting my bones and the thought of you would leave my heart wrenching and beating in all sort of weird ways.

and i feel so silly saying it out loud

but i have loved you through it all

will you please stay this time?

will you please not break my heart?

fuck you, with love

fuck you

i have so much of love for you in my heart

but i can’t give it to you

because you woke up on a random thursday morning

and decided that my love wasn’t for you

i have so much of love for you in my heart

where do i put it now?

where does all of my love go?

what do i do with my hands?

where can i lie my head?

i feel like i am a heap of piled clothes on a chair

and nobody to sort it out

i had so much of love for you in my heart

fuck you

there’s something about this song that makes me feel like i am being hit by a ten tonne truck and i keep thinking to myself that god i love music and i love people who create art and are not scared of being vulnerable.

the first line goes like this -

“you are scared of a world where you are needed

so you never made nice with the locals”.

and later in the song, it follows with -

“and i know you are tired

well, i am tired too

but every time i try to make lunch

for anyone else, in my head

i end up dreaming of you”.

i heard the entire album - ants from up there back in 2023. the album itself was released in 2022. there were a couple of songs that i really loved back then but this song didn’t resonate with me then. and now 3 years later, i am so happy that i revisited this album and got to experience this gem of a song. my fav song from back then was concorde. and that is going to be my next point.

b) sharing the same sky reference from aftersun (2022) by charlotte wells and concorde by black country, new road from the album ants from up there (2022) -

i happened to rewatch one of my fav films, aftersun, last month which has this beautiful line - the director, charlotte wells, makes the 11 year old protagonist, sophie, played by frankie corio, say out this to her father, calum, who is played by paul mescal -

sophie : i think that it’s nice that we share the same sky

calum : what do you mean?

sophie : well like sometimes at playtime, i look up at the sky and if i can see the sun then I think about the fact that we can both see the sun, so even though we’re not actually in the same place and we’re not actually together, we kind of are in a way, you know?

rewatching this scene made me think of the song concorde and one of the lyrics goes like this -

“and you, like concorde

i came, a gentle hill racer

i was breathless

up on every mountain

just to look for your light

but for less than a moment

we’d share the same sky”.

i cannot stop thinking about how both charlotte wells and black country, new road came up with both these masterpieces in the same year.

c) my best friend’s wedding -

back in 2023 february, my college best friend (and now my flatmate <3) farheen and i decided to take a trip to varkala, kerala. we decided to stay in a hostel called soul. we became friends with two people the moment we arrived there. let’s call them friend n and friend m. friend n happened to become one of my best friends whose wedding i attended two days ago in kochi, kerala. and friend m went from being just a friend to becoming my colleague as well. i couldn’t be more grateful for both of them in my life.

friend n is the kind of person who feels like home. i have never met a better man in my life and i am so overwhelmingly happy that he found the love of his life. his wedding was quite an emotional one for me, firstly because he’s the first of my best friends to get married and secondly, i’ve never seen a love so pure and gentle and kind and patient like theirs. the moment both the bride and the groom started reading their vows, i became a ugly crying mess. but hey, all the professional photographers were having a field day with me there.

d) fort kochi -

something about fort kochi’s air makes you feel like the kindest thing you can do for yourself is to move there for few months - to live by the sea and be surrounded by art. right before my best friend’s wedding, farheen and i decided to spend a couple of days in fort kochi exploring the kochi-muziris biennale (2025-2026) and it was nothing but incredible. we just got back home yesterday but i can’t help being nostalgic about everything. from all the art exhibitions to the cafes, bars, the people that we met - made us feel so welcome and whole. i will never stop thinking about the kathakali show, the exhibition at monsoon culture (shoutout to my friend pritika for telling me about it), the cold brew with coconut water at pepper house or the fresh fish thali at vellakkanthaari and sitting with a beer at seagull and hearing the waves crash and the fisherman and the seagull’s hunt for fish.

e) entre-nous -

happened to rewatch the holdovers by alexander payne and learned this french word which means “between ourselves” and isn’t it so beautiful? maybe all of you need to watch the movie for more context.

f) pink panthers -

recently learned that pink panthers are not real. pink panthers are basically leopards with pink/reddish fur due to a condition called erythrism. like, who would have thought?!

the other things i’ve been pondering over are things like -

what my next meal is going to be,

wondering if i should make myself another cup of coffee or should i get myself a beverage,

dreaming about my next cigarette,

torturing myself thinking that i should read more and watch more films and get back to painting again,

how do i get to doing ten pull-ups (currently at two) and hopefully one muscle up (currently at zero) by the end of this year,

my next bouldering and football session,

thinking to myself that i am genius because i got my nyt wordle at second attempt today and got connections without making a single mistake,

impatiently waiting to get on my one hour metro ride so that i can solve all my sudoku,

thinking about my fav tree in koramangala and that i need to go to parks more and actually touch grass because that’s when i’m the happiest,

and most importantly, thinking about my friends and my family because i have so much love in my heart for them and i miss my parent’s home in assam.

being a hot girl is being attracted to the emotionally deranged and unavailable ones rather than settling for the ones who likes me more than i like them. because where’s the fun if i am not challenging myself to see if i can make an adult man with a single braincell change and fall in love with me?

being a hot girl is suffering from violent body dysmorphia where everyone keeps on telling me that i look good but somehow it all seems like a big fat lie and my internal monologue somehow reminds me what my mom used to tell me when i was a kid, “people who are extremely nice to you want something back from you”.

being a hot girl is having a hundred different hobbies and interests and trying to do everything at once.

being a hot girl is cooking an elaborate meal for the people that i love but making instant noodles for myself when i am famished.

being a hot girl is getting annoyed at the fact that everyone keeps saying that they love my eyes but i keep wondering if anybody can actually love me for who i am.

being a hot girl is falling in and out of love every other week.

being a hot girl is often thinking about the industrial robot that keeps on sweeping the blood like fluid and thinking to myself that that’s all of us.

being a hot girl is pondering if i will quit the socialist act once i become rich. i often have this conversation with my flatmate over coffee.

being a hot girl is constantly thinking about the deaths of certain people like sylvia plath, nancy spungen, virginia woolf, brittany murphy and her husband, chris cornell and chester, my grandfather and the list goes on and on.

being a hot girl is the internal rage amongst us. rage for our fathers, rage on behalf of our mothers, rage on behalf of all the other hot girls succumbing to a disinterested man and internalizing his ambivalence as her own fundamental unworthiness.

being a hot girl is thinking about this one quote from sylia plath which goes like, “being born a woman is an awful tragedy” and the fig tree analogy. maybe getting a fig tree tattoo on myself was not the best idea.

being a hot girl is wanting to decentralise men from my life and wanting to abandon all the shame that we all carry within ourselves.

being a hot girl is nothing but wanting to be heard or seen and being confused by being desired by so many and wanted by none

author’s note - don’t come at me saying things like “but neha, you gotta be a hot girl first to write this article”. these are my thoughts, my hot takes, my opinions and my personal experiences only. but am i calling myself a hot girl? yes. do i have to justify it to you? hell no.

i have barely mentioned this to people but everytime i do, people have asked me if i was close to her.

my answer is no. i say “i was not as close to her as i was to my grandfather”. but i have lived with her for the first eighteen years of my life.

you see, my aaita was an evil woman. my memories of her have been biased from the very beginning. my very early memory of her was when i was two and my dad’s youngest sibling (my khura) was getting married. aaita took out the portable gas stove and was frying ghila pithas (sweet rice fritters, you could say), a traditional assamese sweet. as she was frying them, i was polishing them off so fast that she barely had time to fry the next one before the previous one was already gone. inevitably, i fell sick afterwards. later, i overheard my mum confronting aaita about why she would let a two-year-old eat as many ghila pithas as she did. naturally, i ended up developing an aversion to them for the next twenty-five years.

my other childhood memories of her include her arguments with koka (grandfather) which were very one-sided. koka was a gentle, soft spoken man defined by his humility. i had never seen him raise his voice or get angry at anyone. and i remember aaita getting really angry at him and shouting at him from the kitchen, while he would sit there silently and not say a word. in hindsight, i suppose i would lose my mind too if i had a man who barely communicated.

i also vividly remember how much aaita disliked telling stories. as a child, that felt shocking to me because i genuinely believed all adults loved narrating stories. i know koka did. nobody had a knack for storytelling as much as koka.

what stands out the most is how differently my pranks and my general menace were received by my grandparents. koka and aaita used to sleep in two separate beds in the same bedroom, something that i never got my head around. afternoon naps are a big thing in assam. people usually end up eating a large portion of rice for lunch and go for a big fat siesta. i was five when i realised that that was the best time for me to be a menace because a) i was unsupervised and b) everyone was napping. koka was always a good sport and would usually laugh it off when i tied his feet together with strings and i would then tie it to aaita’s, to connect the two together while they were sleeping. while aaita would sometimes be deeply disappointed, even angry, when she woke up to her face painted with the sindoor i had found. no matter how angry or annoyed aaita would get, the pranks would never stop. it never ceased to amaze koka about how far i could go. i think the point of being a menace was to keep koka entertained and annoy aaita a bit.

the most important reason why i believe that aaita was an evil woman is because of how indifferent she was to my mother. i don’t think she was the kindest person and had the nicest things to say. i think she was a bit too honest about whatever she felt which can be perceived as cruel sometimes.

but i can’t stop wondering about everything that ceases to exist, now that she has passed -

her undying love for her four children, but mostly my father

the way she makes a mean masor tenga anja (sour fish curry) that i am convinced that nobody in the world can make, not even my mum

her love for knitting beautiful woolen sweaters and scarves to keep the family warm during cold winter days

her hatred for stray cats who would sneak into our kitchen and steal fish

her love for local sunday produce and chopping up vegetables for the entire day

the way she hated electronic devices, especially the washing machine with her whole heart that she continued to hand-wash all of her clothes till she was eighty and lost all the strength in her arms

and most importantly (and my favourite), both of our love for sitting in the porch taking in the warm winter sun the whole day eating bowls of polemo salads and waiting for the nightfall so that we can do the same thing but with bonfires and fish fries

she was consumed by her sickness and bedridden the last three years. but she was truly herself to the very core even during the sickness. she would hurl abuses at the physiotherapist who used to try to get her to walk everyday and invariably, one day the physiotherapist stopped showing up.

i was with her just a month ago. she nearly stopped talking to anyone. but every morning i wake up, i would say good morning to her. she doesn’t understand it entirely or she probably doesn’t want to say it back. but i said good morning to her for twenty-one days while i was there and on my last day being home, she repeated the words back to me with a smile. another thing that used to make her smile was when i would get dressed up to go somewhere, i would make her feel the fabric of the clothes that i was wearing or i would make her feel the texture of my cherry earrings and i would give her a twirl and do a runway walk for her. my cousins and i also came up with silly little songs for her with dance routines just to keep her entertained on her last couple of days.

that is the story of my aaita.

i am attaching the last picture of her that i took on my phone exactly a month ago alongside a picture of a cat that was sleeping on our front porch from the same day.