Every single relationship, whether it is based on age, status, gender, or family, must be built on mutual respect and equality, and I must never expect more from someone than what they have actually given me. As I walk this path, I am unshakable as a woman and do not want to ruin myself for anyone.

When people disrespect me or exploit my trust, I refuse to offer them my sympathy; instead, I protect my peace.

I sever access by blocking them from my phone and erasing their presence from my life.

If they are relatives, I do not even save their numbers. When compelled to cross paths, I maintain a facade of absolute emotional detachment: cold, formal, and devoid of excitement or vulnerability.

I recognize manipulation for what it truly is.

If an older figure attempts to exercise control under the guise of mentorship, I identify it as predation rather than guidance. While I can offer a safe harbor to those genuinely facing hardship, I will never permit anyone to weaponize my empathy against me.

I never forge superficial relationships with the world under the guise of a brother, friend, or sister. I respect everyone directly with formal dignity, never entangling myself in fabricated family dynamics.

We cannot choose our blood relations, but I refuse to recreate those exhausting, restrictive bonds outside the home.

Not everyone is a friend. Those who do not check on me are merely self-serving souls inhabiting my periphery. They are acquaintances surrounding me, and I deal with them strictly on their terms; matching their energy precisely as they match mine.

Furthermore, another person's achievements have nothing to do with me; no individual's success or status defines my worth or my path.

I vow never to seek refuge or healing in men; I will mend my own fractures completely before ever stepping into a partnership.

I cultivate a rich inner world through deep immersion in literature, poetry, classical music, and purposeful hobbies that anchor my spirit.

I construct rigorous personal goals and pour relentless effort into achieving them.

I read those books that give me substance to speak and understand this world, discarding those hollow fictional works that merely peddle false hopes.

I seek out cinematic art that reinforces resilience and portrays authentic, self-governing women.

I pour my raw thoughts onto paper through uninhibited journaling, pinning empowering affirmations to my walls to systematically reconstruct my internal monologue.

Grooming and self-care are never performed for external applause or male validation; they are sacred acts of self-preservation.

I embrace my natural body type and skin tone, looking upon myself without judgment, capturing my own image, and dissolving every potential insecurity a manipulator might target.

Hair carries the heavy sediment of memories; thus, I step into the salon to shape a cut that honors my own reflection and heralds a clean slate.

I maintain a deliberate daily skincare ritual, protecting my complexion with simple, grounding care.

I wear garments that echo my authentic personality. If an article of clothing makes me feel exposed or diminished, I discard it entirely. My footwear remains minimal, practical, and unfaltering.

A discerning woman does not merely react; she watches, analyzes, and learns from human nature across every profession and background.

By deeply studying human psychology and behavior, intricate relational conflicts dissolve before they can take root, rendering me immune to toxic patterns.

I stand complete within my own sanctuary, bound to no one's terms but my own.

I will never compromise my core values for any individual. I remember precisely who I am

We are women, not girls.

I purge every hesitant, self-doubting word from my vocabulary. I will never utter a phrase that lacks conviction, nor will I lend an ear to anyone who attempts to diminish my worth.

I remain entirely independent, fierce, and unshakeable as a woman, unwilling to ruin myself for anyone.

When you take back the reins of your life, remember that strength is not the absence of pain; it is the refusal to let that pain define your boundaries or dictate your worth.

You are not building a wall to hide from the world; you are building a fortress so that you can live inside it with absolute peace, absolute dignity, and absolute sovereignty.

Do not apologize for the boundaries you set. Do not explain the silence you offer to those who earned it.

The journey of transforming your life is lonely only until you realize that your own company is the most grounding, powerful presence you will ever have.

Walk into every room knowing that your standard is non-negotiable. You have already survived the worst of what attempted to break you; everything from this moment onward is your construction, your rhythm, and your triumph.

I stand complete within my own sanctuary, bound to no one's terms but my own. I will never compromise my core values for any individual.

I am the architect of my own silence, and the warden of my own peace.

I don't look for a rescue. I am the fortress.

Let them call it cold; I call it self-preservation.

A woman who requires no validation is the most dangerous force in any room.

My life is not a draft to be edited by anyone else.

I surrendered my need to be understood the moment I learned to govern myself.

No title grants access to my space; respect is the only currency I accept.

I am not a harbor for broken men; I am a self-sustaining world.

I owe the world nothing, least of all a smaller version of myself.

Unapologetic, unbothered, and entirely unshakeable.

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And one movie that holds something extraordinarily deep for me is Piku.

It is not just a story on screen; it is a mirror that reflects the exact thoughts, struggles, and values I hold as a woman.

The character of Piku, played by Deepika Padukone, is a wonderfully hard working, ambitious, and complete workaholic. But she isn't painted as a perfect, glossy heroine she has so many raw flaws inside her. She gets irritated, she gets annoyed, she is constantly exhausted, and she is clearly not entirely happy with her life, yet she keeps doing what needs to be done.

Her independence is captured so beautifully without being loud or performative. A simple character who tells you so much about herself just through her dressing: simple kurtas with jeans, plain footwear, and that iconic black bindi on her forehead. She is grounded, fierce, and never compromises her standards for anyone.

When Rana played by Irrfan Khan enters her life, the romance they share is breathtaking because of how unspoken and subtle it is. Piku likes Rana, and Rana likes her too, but the romance they do is done almost entirely through their eyes.

The compatibility between them is insane. Rana understands her so well because his own relationship with his family isn't good same as Piku, who feels indifferent and isolated from her own family dynamic. He sees past her outer irritability, understanding the heavy burden she carries every single day.

I crave a romance and a compatibility like Rana and Piku's where two people don't need grand declarations or empty words, but simply understand each other's silences, respect each other's standards, and offer a quiet, steady presence amidst life's chaos.

Bhaskar plays a deeply crucial role in this film. His philosophy around women is insanely progressive for his time, continually pushing against societal expectations. He never wanted his wife to sacrifice herself in love, and he fiercely refuses to let Piku sacrifice her life, ambition, or freedom for any man.

His core philosophy around marriage is brutally honest:

"Marriage without purpose is low IQ."

He constantly reminds us that most people do marriages because of society, family pressure, age, or fear of loneliness. Marriage is not what is necessary it is purely optional. But for a woman, it is absolutely mandatory to stand on her own two feet first. Being independent, financially stable, and self-sufficient before ever considering a relationship or marriage is non negotiable.

Bhaskar’s views on death are hauntingly beautiful and profoundly peaceful. He explicitly expresses that he wants a peaceful death he doesn't want to end up hooked to machines on a ventilator in a cold hospital room. Death shouldn't be loud or agonizing; it should be quiet.

When death finally finds a person, it should feel like it gently whispers: "Come, your suffering is over," and wraps its arms around them in a warm embrace. Death should be an arrival of ultimate peace.

When Bhaskar finally passes away peacefully in his sleep after a liberating bicycle ride through Kolkata, Piku’s acceptance of his death and her deep respect for their ancestral home, is incredible.

There is no over the top, hysterical melodrama. Instead, there is quiet dignity, honor for her father's memory, and an insane strength in how she accepts his death and chooses to move on with her life. Seeing her cycle through the streets at the end shows a woman fully in command of her life, carrying her love and grief with grace.

Piku is not like other Bollywood movies. It doesn't rely on cliché tropes; it is a peaceful story that boldly tells you to be comfortable being different in society.

It delivers a clear message every woman should be ambitious, workaholic, and firmly independent on her own feet before getting into relationships or marriage. Every woman needs to watch this story at least once to remember never to shrink herself for anyone else.

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For five or six long years, I lived with a storm inside me that no one else could see.

I remember crying constantly in front of people, in crowds, while sitting at my desk trying to study. Sadness didn’t just visit me; it lived on my face. It felt as though something quiet and relentless was systematically killing me from the inside out. My health deteriorated, my weight dropped, my mind lost all stillness, and my academics slipped. But instead of empathy, the world offered judgment: "Why are you behaving like this? Why are you so angry? Why are you so small for this?"

When I tried to speak to my family about mental health, hoping for a safe harbor, the response was a wall of brutal ignorance: "What is this idiot term you're introducing? Oh, so you're mental? Let's admit you to a mental hospital." They dismissed my excruciating agony as mere "overacting." Even therapists couldn't grasp the complexity of my thoughts; their surface level answers couldn't reach the depth of what I was navigating.

In the darkest, most terrifying hours of those years, suicidal thoughts became a constant, haunting whisper in my head. When the weight became unbearable, ending it felt like the only escape from the noise.

And then, a fierce, protective truth broke through the fog.

I looked at my own pain and realized something fundamental: I did not choose to come into this world. I was brought here because of someone else's choice. I was not a burden on anyone. My existence belonged entirely to me, and no one else was ever going to live my life or choose my path for me.

Why should I commit the ultimate crime against my own individuality; why should I destroy my own life for people who lacked the capacity to care for or love me properly?

That realization changed everything. I stopped waiting for a savior. I accepted the brutal, liberating reality that no one is coming to save you: not your mother, father, brother, partner, or friend. If anyone is going to build the life you want, it has to be you.

I turned away from the crowd and retreated into solitude. While others craved noise, I found sanctuary in a dark room, in retro music with irreplaceable depth, in books, and in absolute peace. I began to write everything down in a journal dissecting every thought, every emotion, asking myself: What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? Is this in my hands? If not, why am I stressing over it? On those pages, I became my own anchor, my own therapist, and my own healer.

As I wrote, I started noticing patterns within myself the hidden machinery of how my mind was wired:

I saw how easily we slip into copying our same gender parent as intimacy grows, inheriting their unhealed battles. I realized why children bear the brunt of their parent’s blocked dreams, and why I had to learn to parent myself before ever letting those cycles touch my future. I had to accept that my childhood wiring left scars that won't just vanish, but I possessed the power to draw fierce boundaries around them and choose my own path. I even had to unlearn the dangerous pull of seeking partners who mirrored the exact traits of my opposite gender parent, saving myself from walking backward into familiar chaos.

Because I had to decode my own mind from scratch, I began to see through people's daily distress. While my own mind felt like an unmapped ocean, other people's problems looked so simple to dissect in two seconds.

I learned that love does not come from the outside; it originates within your own chest. If you do not love yourself, you have nothing to give anyone else. Healing wasn't a concept I read about; it became my daily survival stepping away from toxic noise, moving my body, protecting my peace, and taking myself on quiet solo journeys to explore this vast world.

So, fuck off to the world's version of mental health. Fuck off to the useless buzzwords, the clinical labels, and the unsolicited advice from people who never stood in the dark. I didn't heal because of a system; I healed because I chose to survive myself. I was dealt a hand of broken cards, but I hold the power to play them. I am no longer waiting to be saved. I am the architect of my own life.No one saved me. Not my parents, not therapists, not the world. I pulled myself out of the dark, word by word, boundary by boundary. I didn't just survive the fire. I built my own sanctuary out of the ashes. And nobody gets to take that away from me again.

If you found a piece of your own story in this, share it with someone who is currently drowning in the dark. Tell them to pick up the pen.

and above all, tell them to love themselves, be themselves, and fiercely care for themselves.

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I am a student of life

My education was never confined to the four walls of a classroom or the structured pages of a syllabus. I earned my degrees on rain-slicked footpaths, watching families fight for a single tarp over their heads. I learned resilience from a rickshaw driver who looked back at me and confessed his heart’s quiet grief that he longed to study, to reach for something higher, but was halted after the tenth grade because his family had no money. I learned the fragility of human promises in courtroom corridors where relationships dissolved into ink and paper. I learned from every drop of suffering I witnessed, from every stranger’s story I held gently in my palms. Books give you knowledge, but life, observation, and the soil beneath your feet give you wisdom.

I am an observer.

I notice the microscopic shifts in a room's atmosphere, the sudden drop in a person’s tone, the subtle hesitation in their breath, the quiet changes in how they move through the world. I read human beings the way scholars read ancient manuscripts, savoring the hidden layers of their unspoken stories.

I am a paragraph person.

I am a writer whose ink flows more freely for other people’s heartbreaks than for my own. When I see someone carrying a quiet burden, my instinct is not to turn away, but to translate their silent agony into words, giving form to what hurts them so that they might finally feel understood.

I am a voice of many languages.

I carry three languages in my pen and on my tongue: English, Hindi, and Sanskrit, writing and speaking them with ease. I speak Urdu with the same warmth, feeling the poetic weight of its syllables even if my hands have not yet learned to write its script. And through the ancient roots of Sanskrit, I carry a quiet, intuitive understanding of so many other tongues. Language is not just a tool for me; it is a bridge to human emotion, history, and consciousness.

I am a lover without a lover.

The love inside me does not wait for a partner or demand a romantic destination. It flows outward, boundless and unconditional, toward every soul I cross paths with. I walk through this world with deliberate kindness, grounded in the quiet certainty that everyone I meet is fighting an invisible battle I know nothing about.

I am a polymath.

Do not ask me for my genre, because I read the universe itself. I devour history, geography, physics, chemistry, psychology, philosophy, biology, and civics, refusing to see them as isolated disciplines. To me, every subject is simply a different branch of philosophy trying to answer the same sacred questions of existence. I interconnect them all. I am a polymath driven by an insatiable curiosity for truth.

I am an artist and an old soul.

I am a retro lover. I am drawn to vintage songs that carry an irreplaceable, profound depth within their notes. I love gazing at ancient architecture, seeing every line and structure as pure art. I am an artist who sees everything as art: the light, the silence, the pain, and the resilience of human life. I want to learn so many art forms in this lifetime; I want to read thousands of books.

I am a researcher and a healer.

I don't have a rigid, fixed corporate goal in my life. I want to be a writer. I want to be a great researcher who dives deep into the unknown. But above all, I want to cure people's suffering and their pain. I cannot stand seeing people hurt; it physically hurts me; it aches inside my own chest.

So, who am I?

I am a student of the streets, an observer of human souls, a writer of unspoken pain, a lover without a lover, a polymathic mind, a retro heart, and an artist who wants to heal the world.

I am not a static answer. I am a living, breathing journey, and I am finally at peace with holding it all.

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How much I love you, why don't you see it in my eyes?

How much you love me, why don't you see it in your eyes?

When you see my notification, how your mood changes, can't you see that?

When I flirt with you, how your cheeks warm, can't you see that?

How much time will these eyes take to confront each other?

When these eyes confront, have you noticed that a deep-seated future is there?

When will you accept your eyes' truth, that those eyes have placed me there?

When will you be a lover of love, and not a lover of wine there?

In a crowded room, why is it just your voice that carries?

When the world is speaking, why do we communicate in glances?

How many unspoken sentences are hiding in our silence? Can't you hear them?

How your heart pumped when you saw me, can't you feel that?

How your hands were hesitant to hold mine, can't you see that?

How your body reacts to mine, can't you see that?

What is this, if this is not love?

What is this, if this is not a joke made

by you in love?

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If Buddha Were a Woman

If Buddha had been a woman, stepping into the cold stillness of midnight, leaving behind a sleeping husband and a newborn child to wander in pursuit of ultimate truth, this world would never have honored her departure as a supreme sacrifice.

They would have branded her an apostate. A disgraced woman who trampled her family’s honor into the dust and cast an unforgivable shadow over the sacred bond of motherly love. By countless vile epithets she would have been condemned, but never, not once in history would she have been named Buddha.

Instead of bestowing enlightenment upon the world, she would have been dragged to public crossroads, forced to defend her innocence and endure a trial by fire just to prove her purity. When she raised her voice to preach truth and non-violence, the crowd would not have gathered to receive her wisdom. Instead, they would have assailed her virtue, her lineage, and her fragile flesh, demanding to know: In whose arms was she wandering through the dark forest at midnight?

When a man forsakes his home, he is crowned a holy ascetic, a sacred seeker. But when a woman dares to claim her freedom, she is condemned as the eternal ruin of her bloodline.

In this duplicitous society, a man’s desertion is enshrined as divine renunciation. Yet the unyielding truth remains: across the ages, countless luminary souls must have walked among us, only for your patriarchal dogmas to ensure that no woman was ever permitted to become a Buddha.

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You saw me at school. I was in that room to collect my ID card, and you asked me, "Who are you?" I didn't reply to you; my classmate did. You asked me again, "Were you here before?" I didn't reply. My classmate did. You were continuously asking me, and I didn't reply. I only replied when she said I had a very great school. I said, "No, I didn't. No one ever understood me. Maybe this will end sooner." You said, "I don't know, we all are from school, we had a very great experience." Then I left you there. You were looking at me from behind. I noticed you. Then we went to school to submit our work. You were wearing a black woolen cap, which I didn't like. I was with my classmate. I saw you, and after seeing me, you stopped there for a second. Your heartbeat pumped for a little while. I noticed you. You were looking at me with suspicious eyes. One day, I was in a room full of papers. A PTM was going on, and you were showing answer sheets to your students. When I entered the room, your heartbeat stopped for a while. You saw me with suspicious eyes. I noticed you. When I was checking my files paper by paper, you were showing copies, looking at me out of the corner of your eye. I noticed you. I left the room after submitting. You were watching me from behind. I came back again to tell the other teacher that I was leaving, and you interrupted, "Are you coming to the farewell?" I said, "No, I'm not." You asked, "Why?" I said, "I don't know anyone here." You said, "Come, you must come and enjoy here." I asked you, "Who are you to say this to me?" You said, "No one." Then you asked, "Why are you not coming here?" I said, "I don't like crowds. I'm a person who likes to be alone." You asked, "Why?" I answered, "It's because my BP is always low, I'm a patient of panic attacks, and I'm having anxiety all over the day." You said, "I'm also having a problem of low BP, it's genetics." I said, "No, it's not genetic. I'm having it because of stress and my life." You said, "Now stop, otherwise I will touch you with my cold hands." You touched it. That wasn't so cold, mine were colder than yours. You lied that you had a BP problem; after some time, you told me that you didn't even know how to measure BP. When you said this, I said, "Okay." When I was standing there, you all were discussing the 90s era. I also said that era was very different, very nice, my mother told me about that, and I'm also a retro person. An old soul with new blood. You said, "You are just a kid, you don't know anything about that. You Gen-Z kids are so bad. Experience comes with age. You always act like you know everything." I stopped there and left the room because I didn't want to argue with you. Because I understood you were an idiot in this world who says that age gives you experience. Pain gives you experience. So, I left you there, with your fucked up mind. Then, because of you, I came to the farewell. I bought a white saree which I liked, looking like an apsara in that. Everyone was looking at me, praising me so much. I arrived late, so I couldn't meet you. However, you were looking at me from behind. Gents and ladies were sitting separately because of the patriarchy in their heads. I noticed you. You were looking at me. When I passed by your side, there was a hurry in your actions to talk to me, but you couldn't. So, you left early. The next day, I was waiting in your area for some work. I arrived in a hurry and heard you when I was saying that I write poetry. You showed interest and exchanged numbers; you gave me your number. I didn't ask. After my work, I messaged you, "It's me." You said, "I got you; your DP is there." I answered, "Okay." You asked me, "Rashi, I have two questions for you: what problem are you having, and why?" I replied, "It's my life, I don't want to share mine." You ghosted me. I thought I would send you some poems so you would get out. So I chose the worst one, which I wrote about sex workers, in which men were shown disgustingly. You replied, "Nice. I asked, "Why?" You said, "Reality of society." I asked you, "Don't you have some male ego?" You said, "No." I sent you more. You replied with "Nice" to the second worst one, which I wrote as a feminist. Then I showed you my worst sides that I have panic attacks, that I consume caffeine a lot. You said, "I also do," but you didn't. I was very impressed by you when I saw you match my habits. Then I told you about so many things. Then I left, struggling with three things at a time: preparation for my exam, chatting, and music. When you were teaching in your class, a teacher asked me to go and check for whitener in the other class. I was there with one more person, not coming in front of you. You noticed me. You were writing with chalk with your head tilted towards me, watching me. I noticed. I left that place. I posted a quote regarding my life on WhatsApp. You replied, "Sorry, I was busy so I couldn't message you, I'm not ignoring you." But that wasn't about you, still you popped out all of a sudden. You were telling me about something, and I took interest in you. I asked you so many questions because I am a child full of questions. Then, some questions were left that I wanted to ask, so I messaged you. You asked me for a call because you were unable to hold on chats. There was some misunderstanding that happened when I got to know about your career and asked you. You said, "How do you know this? With whom did you discuss this?" I said, "Someone saw my phone, she told me." You were angry with me, so I called you. You said, "It's nice to clear misunderstandings." You started telling me about your life; I wasn't interested. You asked me for a walk on a call, and I talked to you. You said, "You are unique. What's your true age? I can't think you are this age. Your voice is very good on phone calls, you have depth. A great depth." So, I started writing for you, because when I saw you, I felt so much pain inside you. That was true when I got to know about you; you were in great pain, but you didn't consider it as pain. When I was waiting for my brother at school, you were very hesitant to call me. So, I saw you. You were making hand signs, so I came to you. You stood very close to me. Your mind was completely filled with me. When I said something, you were blushing. You had come in a suit that day. We had eye contact. Your height was so perfect for me, your eyes sank me so deep. My eyes still crave that. You asked me for a drive. I said, "Okay, let's drop me home." When we were in the car, you were looking at me through the mirror while I was sitting beside you. The song played: “Abhi kuch dino se lag raha hai, ki badle badle se hum hain, iss dil par shaq mera, isse pyaar ho raha hai...” It hit me so hard. I closed my eyes, keeping your eyes in my mind. I wanted to hold your hand, but I never asked. When you dropped me home, you wanted me to never leave. You were watching me from behind. When Holi arrived, you invited me to your house with your friends. I arrived, and you hugged me from the side. It felt like heaven there. I met your friends and was talking to them. You were looking at me out of the corner of your eye, blushing inside. Your friend was blushing from inside, seeing us both sitting side by side. I found peace there; I fought for a long time. However, time was up. Again, when you invited me to your place, I was hesitant to breathe. You had done so much preparation for me. When I arrived, you were looking from the main door, and in nervousness, you stepped inside. Your friend received me. You were inside a room, wanting to give me comfort without asking my choice. I asked to meet you alone because I wanted to be only with you. You went against me. You wanted to give me a place to sit, but I got anxiety. I spent my whole time in your bathroom. That was white-tiled, with a mirror in which I saw myself broken. Whether the mirror was broken or I was, I couldn't find out. I was crying and craving you in your bathroom, but you didn't come, hesitant out of shame. You asked what happened to my friend, but you never asked about my pain. She didn't know anything about me. My health deteriorated, so I left. I wanted to hug you so tight. When I told you about my pain after that incident, you mocked me so badly: "Rashi is the great! Rashi the great! Everything happens on your terms! Everyone is going to talk your way!" You were jealous, laughing from the inside. I cried, and you cut the phone. That was our first fight. I tried to make you understand the situation, but you wouldn't understand. "Listen to me! Listen to me!" You weren't listening. I said sorry for the first time. When we were on a two-wheeler, you were so close to me. Your shirt in my favorite turquoise color was full of perfume, smelling so strong. You were very close; you wanted to get so close. I was feeling your skin, you were feeling my skin; clothes didn't feel like they were between us. Your friend and mine took a different path to the destination, and we took a different one. A speed breaker came, which was so hard to believe. I jumped and came so close to you. You said, "Sorry." I answered, "It's okay." Then on that thin road, with so much traffic, you said, "Rashi, see, one day we will remember these days. Isn't it fascinating? These days are so beautiful." You were saying this while I was sinking into your shirt because of the sounds of horns there. Traffic was too much. I held your shirt with my hands, and my head was buried in your shirt from behind. I was very afraid of the sounds there. Everyone was watching me, and you were saying these things. You were telling me, "Rashi, see this man, he is not from here, so he doesn't know how traffic works here. See me, I will do it in 2 minutes." You drove very gently. I was feeling the speed, the calmness of your driving, the way you handled the bike from one side to the with other. That was so amazing to see; I had never seen a person before who drove like this. You were very creative with your driving, just as you were creative in your life. You knew how to play guitar, you knew how to sketch, but you forgot it because of the traumas you got from people surrounding you. You had changed completely. The inner child inside you were craving when I saw you, your eyes were saying to me, "Rashi, please save me! Rashi, please save me, I can't breathe like this! I'm hurting, please hold me in your arms!" You never said this directly, but your eyes always talked to me. You knew how to do deep talks; you knew how to handle me gently. But when that day hit, I failed my exam because of circumstances, for the first time. I was crying so hard. You asked me, "Rashi, come, let's meet." I came to your space, which you had set up for yourself, but your friend was there. I wanted to hug you so tightly, I wanted to get into your skin so deeply, I wanted to pour my pain into your every bone, and I wanted to transfer my tears into your shirt. I wanted your shirt to be filled with my tears. But I couldn't, because your friend was there. My family was so angry with me, calling me continuously, so I left. Then I fought my house. Mummy was mocking me. So, I left my house in tears, calling you. I said, "I'm coming, wait there for me." I was crying while saying this. You said, "Why do you always behave like a psycho, Rashi? Behave properly! Say directly what happen!" I was crying. I kept saying again and again, "I want to meet you, I want to meet you." You said, "But Rashi, I want to leave, we are going somewhere." I was saying, "I want to meet you, I want to meet you, please, please, please!" You said, "Meet me at the place beside there." We were there. Your friend was at a distance from us. I was telling you that my family told me I am the main problem in their life, that I should kill myself. They always say things like this. I don't know, without doing anything, how am I a problem in their life? How can I be a problem; in someone's life without doing anything? How is this possible? You said, "Rashi, this happens with everyone. We can't do anything about this. His father, my mother, they say these exact things daily to me. We can't do anything about this. Now we are going somewhere, so go." I said, "I'm not going home." You said nothing to me. I left you there without saying anything. I thought you would come to me and ask, "Rashi, come, we will sit together for a second." I was looking at you from behind. I was walking and looking at you there, but you stayed there you didn't come. This is not the way to talk to someone when they come to you for help. You must hug them tightly, you must be with them, you must listen to them. No one wants your advice there; no one wants anything just your presence. I wasn't expecting these words from you. We had a very good time after that. I thought, let the past be in the past, don't overreact. Then you wanted to meet me. I came and sat beside your friend. I was talking to him because I had never talked to him nicely what was his fault in all this? I had never talked with him; my focus was always on you. I always felt like a third person in their space, I felt bad for him, so I didn't talk to you. I came and sat beside him, telling him about something. As a reaction, you called some random girl and started telling her that a tree fell on you and some random girls helped you. You were talking to her in the exact tone you always used to talk to me. You acted very well. I was in shock. Are you playing with me? I am a very possessive person who wants my person, my space, my time for myself. I hate being around more than two people. If you don't give me peace after I leave my solitude, then I don't like to be with anyone. I was so frustrated with your friend; I was so frustrated with you; I was so frustrated with that random girl though her mistake was nothing in that. It was you who created the mistake. You created an environment where I always feel unlike myself. I can't sit with other people; it's not in my nature. I want to give every person special time, special memories with them. I feel energies; it's not good for me to sit with four people at a time, my mind goes into a black hole. I was completely silent. I told you this thing so many times. When I told you, you gave me an unusual critique of that, which you had already created in your mind through overthinking. What you create from overthinking isn't always true. Every person carries different pain, a different childhood, a different way of living you can't impose your way of living on them. So, I left you, blocked you. I was bleeding on the floor with your thoughts, with your actions, but you couldn't hold me. You didn't call me. You had said, "If a person leaves you, then don't beg them to come back to you." It's not always true that the door is closed. We always want someone to come, back and hold us tightly. But you couldn't come. So, after some days, I came and asked you, "Are you okay?" You said, "I'm awesome." I replied, "Okay," then said sorry to you, that I didn't mean that. You said, "Don't worry, I didn't read that." But I know you never left my messages unread. You always read them, irrespective of how big a paragraph I wrote; you always read them. So, I apologized to you and said, "I'm saying sorry for my behavior, but not for my words. Those words were really true." After this, I left you. I was busy in my life, attending classes and planning for my career. I was traveling on public transport when you sent me the song Bewajah (Coke Studio Season 8) by Nabeel Shaukat Ali. I was so angry with you while listening to that. My tears started falling from my eyes; I was crying on public transport. I didn't want to, so I covered my face with a cloth I had and cried inside it. I didn't reply to you; I just reacted to it. After some time, I asked you, "Why are you doing this to me? Can you please give me clarity regarding us? We are still in a vacuum; we don't know what we are. We talk for hours, we talk regarding our problems, we talk regarding your life, but still, we don't know who we are. Can you please clarify?" We again fought. I said, "I don't know why you are doing this. Maybe when I get to your age, I'll understand why you are doing this, but at this time you are running from me it's not well, it's not correct. I'm not feeling good." You replied, "Rashi, stop messaging me. I'm on a trip, don't ruin my mind." I stopped replying to you. I was in a car traveling to my hometown. You posted photos of your trip; I saw them but couldn't look. I posted a photo of a sunset, and you came and liked my status. After that, I saw your status and left it unviewed because I, was angry over the words you said to me. The tongue has no muscles, but it can hurt you more than a hammer. After some time, you again appeared without acknowledging your actions. I thought it's okay, you're just not comfortable enough to share with me. So, I forgot everything and talked normally. We again had a fight because of your actions. One day in the morning, I was doing some work and your message popped up on my screen. You sent me a video from Latent in which a girl who doesn't know how to speak English is speaking with an attitude. You said, "Rashi, after seeing her, I always remember you." I was so frustrated with that. I mocked you with so many messages in your chat: "Are you mad? What are you saying? She doesn't know how to speak, she is saying 'mans' instead of 'men', and you are comparing me with her? I got 96 in English, are you mad? In just one day, don't you see that?" I was so frustrated with you. Then we didn't talk. Again, you sent me a song, and I again mocked you with a song that was opposite to it. I was frustrated, so frustrated because of you. Then after some time, I sent you a reel regarding how to behave as a man. I took the total blame on myself and sent it to you, saying that I ruined your childishness through my actions, but that reel was meant for you. You said, "Don't believe in a man's words who doesn't have hair on his chest." I mocked you: "How dare you? What's the definition of masculinity, according to you?" You ghosted me. I tried so many times to teach you, to get you out of this hell, to get you out of your hypothetical world, to make you the person your eyes craved from me. But you didn't listen. You said, "Rashi, you are so young, you don't know anything about the world, so don't give me knowledge. I have more than you." But the question arises: who decided that age gives you knowledge? Age and experience are two different things. Age gives you time, but experience gives you depth and experience doesn't always come from age. So, I stopped telling you anything. I still tried in different ways to change you, but you didn't listen and always mocked me because of my age. Still, one day I wrote from the start: "Sorry I did that, sorry my traumas hit back, sorry I did that, sorry, really sorry. I should not do this to you. Sorry, sorry, sorry." You called me and said, "It's okay." But you couldn't see your own mistakes in that. Still, I left your past actions in the past. I let the present be the present, and we were talking. After that, you were behaving like a child. When I wanted to say something, you always interrupted. I have always been nervous around you. I told you so many times, "I'm not able to speak in front of you, it feels like an interview. I have to prepare my thoughts before saying anything to you." I told you all of this one night when I had a panic attack so hard, laying out that you did this and you did that because you had told me, "Rashi, you can tell me directly what happened, what you are feeling. A person should say directly if they have a problem." So, I said it directly to you, but you mocked me. You said, "I want to sleep peacefully, don't message me. We will talk tomorrow, not now." I was panicking. My anxiety was so hard, I was crying, I was craving you, I was crying so hard, but you didn't listen to me. You left me. I messaged you so many times. You said, "Rashi, leave. Leave now." I had a panic attack the whole night, so I couldn't stand when you called the next morning saying, "Rashi, what happened to you last night?" I said, "I don't want to talk now, I need space. I need space." You mocked me: "Behave properly! Learn to behave properly first, then talk to me! Now don't talk with me, you don't have basic etiquette. You always behave like a psycho." "Don't talk now." My anxiety proliferated. I still called you 3 or 4 times, and you mocked me so badly. Still, I texted you. I wanted to change you because you are not fit for any relationship in this mental state. You are never going to handle any relationship in the future. Before marriage, before any relationship, you must know yourself your habits, your mental state is not fit for human relationships. I told you this so accurately. Then I told you about my mental state, what the exact problem is with me. After hundreds of messages, you replied, "Talk on phone." I didn't talk with you because you hit my traumas so badly. I was in so much distress, unable to breathe properly. After some days, when I was relaxed, I messaged you: "I want to talk." You said, "I'm doing my work." This cycle repeated so many times. Whenever I said, "I want to talk, I want to meet, we must have a conversation sitting in front of each other “We both never imagined we would take this this far, it was unexpected, we have to talk," you always said, "I'm doing work." I said, "Okay." Then after this, I said sorry to you. We had a great conversation, you were telling me about yourself, we were discussing things. Again, your actions hit my traumas. Your actions repeated again. I complained so badly about that. You mocked me, you abused me by saying so many slurs. You were abusing me while I was crying, having my panic attack so hard. I was crying, unable to breathe properly. You cut the call. You called me 3 or 4 times. When I got my senses back, I called you: "What happened?" You said, "Nothing happened." I asked you, "What do you want to say? Why did you call me?" You said, "You wanted to say something, that's why I called you." I answered, "I don't want to say anything to you." But inside me, I had a guilt for choosing you in my life. I thought, why did I choose you, for abusing me like this? And you don't have any guilt for your actions either. You can't even say sorry for your actions. Why did you abuse me so badly? So, I left you. After some days, we got connected again. I commented on your status: "Wow, nice work." I was craving you so badly it was an attachment, an anxious attachment between us. So somehow, I flirted with you. You drew a line between us a professional line, which we never had. Not even at the time when you said, "Rashi, you look good, your figure is so perfect, you are so perfect, your height." Everything was so perfect. We had these types of conversations so many times. I don't think we ever had any line between us especially, we never had a professional line. I behave differently with everyone. If I have a professional line, I behave differently. But you were never a tutor to me, you were never that I cleared it on the first day, I cleared it on a single day, we never had that line. A teacher, to me, is a very important and very different image in my mind. They are the only ones who shaped my life. I have never disrespected them till now behind their back, so I don't consider everyone a teacher to me never, because it's a disrespect to them. I told you about this, yet you still abused me so badly. You said, "Rashi, I like people in their limits, in their boundaries." I called you so many times while you were abusing me for saying my words, for expressing my perspective. So, I said sorry, that it was my mistake. I said, "Write it in chats, I'm unblocking you, write it." I said, "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I will never do that again." You said, "Okay." After this, I asked you, "Sir, can you please tell me my boundaries so I will consider them in the future? So, I will know where I stand, and ultimately never cross my line." You said, "Why are you overreacting? What did I say like this?" I asked, "Sir, please tell me what's my line so I will never cross it in the future." You said, "Rashi, we will talk tomorrow, not now. I'm busy doing my work, talk to you later." I asked you so many times. You said, "If your message comes after this, I will block you for sure. Just say bye and leave." I said, "Bye," and left, while crying on the floor so hard. I hit another panic attack. I was mentally disturbed by you. And you didn't call me the next day. So, after two days, I messaged: "Now I hope you got my answers, it's two days now." You said, "Don't want to tell." I insisted on you. You said, "Let me call you, wait, I'll call you in 2 minutes." I said, "I'm doing some work, please text me." You mocked me so badly for that as well. You said, "If you are doing your work, then why did you message me? Why are you messaging me? Do your work, and next time don't message me while you are doing your work." I said, "Okay." I didn't message you after that. But tell me, what did I want from you? Nothing. I invested so much of my time in you. I just wanted to change you for you not for me. I was not changing you for myself; I wanted you to change for yourself, for your better mental health. When I see you, I feel pain. Your eyes say, "Rashi, please hold me. Please save me. I want to cry, please come with me, please help me." I wanted to change you for you, not for me. Then why did you do all this to me? I always said, "Okay, it's his trauma response. Okay, let it be. He will be better one day for sure." What's my fault? What about those questions you left behind? What about those talks when you said it was for forever? What about me? My clothes are not fitting me. My health is not well. I lost so much weight, so much time in you, so many emotions in you, so many hopes in you. I was a very happy person before you met me. I was very good; I was doing good in my life. Now I have nothing I lost everything: my face, my hair, my body, my mind because of you. When I see myself in the mirror, it feels like it's not me it's someone else whom I lost in someone else. When did I leave you? Not in your bad times, not with your bad habits, not with your anger, not with anything. When did I leave you? In your mind which always gave threats to mine? When did I leave you? In your heart which was always on the opposite side? When did I leave you? In your eyes which wanted to stop mine? When did I leave you? In your hands which were always in trouble holding mine? When did I leave you?

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There was something different in his eyes,

A familiar truth in a quiet disguise.

A sudden value in his sudden smile,

That held my heart for a little while.

Something was different when he blushed,

When the world around us softly hushed.

When he stared from behind, and I turned to see,

And an electric spark passed silently.

A subtle magic in his unconscious touch,

A strange new feel that meant so much.

The ache of jealousy deep in my chest,

When I reached for his hand and felt at rest.

His shirt had a fragrance I couldn't forget,

Drifting through smoke from his cigarette.

Even his hangover held a strange grace,

A different shift in time and space.

His room was a space I already knew,

His eyes held a sight I was grounded to.

His words and his voice had a familiar tone,

Like echo and sound I had always known.

His sudden anger, the stories he told,

The weight of the years he was forced to hold,

His deepest experiences, clear to my sight,

Like memories whispering into the night.

And beneath every shadow he tries to hide,

I feel all his pain carrying deep inside.

It pulls at my heart, heavy and true:

I feel it even more than he seems to.

Like a rare, luxury cup, not an ordinary line,

Something felt different when his presence met mine.

What was it all? I don't know, maybe love…

Though I'm not the one he is dreaming of.

He will never reach out; the silence is set,

He left no space for a gentle regret.

He cared for himself far more than for me,

More than the bond we were supposed to be

He never loved me, nor pictured my face

In a future filled with a quiet embrace.

Was I not beautiful enough in his mind?

Not beautiful enough in his sight?

Not beautiful enough for his heart to find?

Or was he just a soul so deprived of grace,

Couldn't he accept love in a sacred place?

I loved him in every conceivable way,

Put his comfort first at the end of the day.

I thought of his peace before my own,

And cared for his heart while mine stayed alone.

I apologized endlessly just to keep peace,

Hoping the distance between us might cease.

Yet he looked in my face, completely blind

To the boundless devotion I left behind.

For he wasn't a reader of eyes or of art,

Just a survivor guarding a broken heart.

A crumbling ship with a hole in its floor,

Taking in water, retreating from shore.

And I was just standing upon the coastline,

A hopeless romantic who thought he was mine.

He wasn't mine; he wasn't anyone's at all.

He wasn't even himself behind that wall.

Roaming lost through the darkest of night,

Pretending it shone like the first morning light.

A soul completely deprived of a lover's grace,

Still trapped forever in a teenage place.

She may be far, far away from his side,

But her ghost is the one where his thoughts abide.

He convinced himself that to love is naive,

A childish act he no longer could weave.

He never learned it's the ultimate key,

The only true way to set a safe space free.

For lovers, love isn't a joke, and we aren't the fools,

Playing at games with disposable rules.

It is heaven itself, a sacred design,

Whether held in two hands or left to align.

With or without him, the truth stays the same

We carry the lover, unextinguished by shame.

That warmth inside us is humanity's spark,

Walking on burning coals, surviving the dark.

If this piece resonated with you, consider subscribing to me or sharing your thoughts in the comments. Let us keep the warmth inside us alive.

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We are children from broken homes, never having experienced a father's love.

I never found my mother’s embrace; all I got in return was loneliness.

When I was sick, my mother wasn't there to care for me, and when I was in trouble, my father wasn't there to protect me.

While everyone else was praising, we kept searching for the root cause of their strained relationships.

The hardships they endured in their youth cast a shadow over our own youth.

I didn't get to experience childhood, nor youth, and I didn't get a share of any love.

We searched for love outside, and ended up growing older.

People tend to judge based on age before they get to know someone.

I didn't find love, and it wasn't in my destiny: neither in my childhood, nor in a companion.

We are children of a broken home.

They have all learned to do things on their own.

On the road, no one seems to need you, but when you break down inside, you wander around a thousand times, looking for a shoulder to lean on. Even today, I don't understand emotions; there's a pile of suffocation in my chest.

Society kept praising us for being sensible, and we continued to suffer and die under the guise of that very sensibility.

selflessly, shared his love with others, losing himself in their concerns.

We grew up before our time, but fate didn't grant us the years or the life we deserved.

It was just a journey of loneliness.

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When I was just a little child, everyone around me judged me because I was so thin. It was just my genetics; I am still thin today. But back then, it was all a game to them, a casual way to make fun of me. Every single thing I did became a joke for their entertainment. I was just a small child who didn't even understand what judgment meant. I would smile and laugh right along with them, making fun of myself, just wanting to feel loved and included.

Whenever the family gathered for festivals, the mocking would start. If I sang, they laughed. If I studied, they laughed. If I danced, they laughed. If I sat quietly reading a book, they laughed. Whatever I did, it was met with laughter. It broke something inside me, so I became desperate for their attention at any cost. I just wanted to be loved by everyone. I didn't care if they judged me; I only cared about being seen.

But as I grew up, life hit me. Reality hit me.

All those things that were harmless jokes to them were my body, my mind, my real actions. The memory of their laughter started haunting me from the inside. As I began to learn how to love myself, a deep hatred for what they did to me started to grow.

First, I hated my nose because they called it too thin and pointed. But years later, when they saw famous actresses getting plastic surgery to get that same nose, suddenly they were like, "Oh, Rashi’s nose looks just like hers!" Second, I hated my lips because they said they were uneven, until I learned how makeup could bring out their natural beauty. Third, I agonized over my lean figure, wondering why I couldn't gain weight, until I watched Game of Thrones and saw women with my exact body structure looking powerful and beautiful. That was the moment I finally started feeling confident in my own skin.

So why should any of us change for a world that only knows how to tear us down?

We are only here for a short time. Try new things, do stupid things, love yourself, win, lose, and unlearn the painful things you were taught. But please, never judge anyone. You never know what hidden trauma you might trigger inside them, or what kind of pain you might cause.

Be kind. Love normally. Never judge, because almost every single one of us was judged in our childhood. Almost every child was made fun of by the very people who were supposed to protect them.

When you stop begging for attention from others and give all that love and attention to yourself, everything begins to change. Real progress doesn't start with other people; it starts within you. Progress starts when you embrace your quirks, when you stop trying to fit in, and when you dare to just be you.

Be unique. Don't chase attention. Be yourself, love yourself, and never judge anyone. People who judge and bully others didn't learn that from a healthy place; they learned it from being bullied themselves. If you pass that same cruelty forward, the endless cycle just keeps repeating. Break the cycle. Don't bully anyone. No one wants to carry trauma.

Instead, build a safe space for deep conversations, for real joy, and for genuine love.

When you miss a train at the station, you don't give up: you wait for the next one. Life works the same way. And sometimes, missing that train is the best thing that could ever happen to you. After all, Geet found Aditya after leaving the train.

So never judge anyone. You never truly know how much pain someone is carrying, or who the real victim is in the end; sometimes it's you, sometimes it's them, and sometimes it's both. Stop chasing applause, stop judging, and just, bravely, be yourself.

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“To the unknown man, wherever you reside, be safe in the world on the other side. I miss you with every other breath that I take. Sorry for the mistakes and flaws that I make. I'm not perfect, not perfect at all. And tired of watching my world start to fall. It began with my father, who didn't show love, not to my mother nor to me. My mother made me her partner too soon; now my mind and my body walk under a different moon. My age doesn't match the weight that I bear, yet inside sits a child who just needs someone there. A little girl longing to be held in your arms, safe from the storm and protected from harm. Here stands the girl with a heart full of scars, who hides in the shadows away from the stars. Sensitive to noise, with an anger so deep, standing strong for the world while in private I weep.

In the quiet of my room, I collapse on the floor, in too much pain to ask for help anymore. When men come along and claim love is the goal, they only want skin while ignoring my soul. I turn them away, for physical touch without real devotion will never mean much. I tried so hard to find where I belong, only ending up with those who are emotionally wrong. I know it sounds heavy; I know it seems tough to care for my spirit when times become rough. So love me like a flower, untouched on the stem, enjoying its sunshine, not breaking the gem. Do not pluck or destroy what is fragile and small; just let me bloom safely, protecting it all. I hope that we meet, though I know I'm a strain, not everyone's cup of tea through the rain. I'm a reader, a mind that thinks deep, an extrovert by mouth with promises to keep. I'm a writer of letters, a paragraph friend; I'll write them for you until the very end.

I hesitate to speak for fear of the stone, so listen to my voice and read through my tone. Yes, I'm hard to love, this much is true, but those who are hard need it more from you. I built up these walls to keep out the night; please take them down slowly with patience and light. It will be hard for you, but remember my plea. It was never, ever easy for me.

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Instead of understanding, my brother started mocking me. "She always behaves like this," he sneered. "She wants everything done on her own time. Why can't you just go and do it now?" I told him quietly that I wasn't comfortable doing it right now, that I would do it later. But he kept mocking me, pushing me. I said no again. That was when my mother stepped in and demanded, "Do it now." When I stood my ground and said I’d do it tomorrow, she stepped up and slapped me across the face.

I told her again through the pain that I didn't want to do it. That was all it took for my brother to start poisoning her mind. "She’s going to ruin her life," he told her. "She’s so careless."

I walked up to him with the document on the screen and said, "Look, read this. Tell me what it says." He couldn't understand it. He pulled out his phone and started searching on ChatGPT. I looked at him and asked, "Why? If you know so much, why are you searching it on AI? Read it to me, word by word."

Enraged, he snatched my phone out of my hands, grabbed me by the neck, and squeezed until I couldn't breathe.

My mother stood right beside him, watching him choke me, and said to me, "Why don't you just listen to him? Why do you always say no? You are going to ruin your life by saying no."

I gasped for air and looked at her. "He took my phone, but no one ever takes his phone! Why? He has a girlfriend, he roams around all day on a scooty, he never studies, and all he cares about is enjoying himself. Why does no one say anything to him?"

My mother’s excuse? "He does work for us. He brings vegetables from the market. You do nothing."

"He just put his hands on my neck and beat me!" I cried out. "Why can't you say anything to him?"

She just repeated, "He does work for us."

At that moment, the chest pain and panic overwhelmed me. I screamed, "Mumma, I’ll kill myself! I’ll commit suicide!"

My brother ran to his room, locking my phone away. I ran after him, crying uncontrollably, trapped in immense anxiety. "Give me my phone! I need my phone!" I tried to reach for his phone to trade for mine, but he kicked me away with his leg and raised a cup of hot tea, threatening to hurl it right into my face.

I ran out of his room, sobbing to my mother. "Mumma, I need my phone to do my work! He doesn't even understand basic English, Mumma! He can't even read his own schoolbooks; how is he supposed to read an official email?"

My mother looked at me with cold eyes and said, "Kill her. At least then she will listen to us. She never listens to us anyway. She always talks about 'my choice, my choice.'"

And the horror of it all? He is in the 10th grade. He has never scored more than 50% in his life. He knows nothing about the real world. Everyone knows he has had a girlfriend for two years; my father knows, my mother knows, our relatives know. Nobody says a word to him.

When I asked my mother why he gets a free pass while I get hit, she said, "Men are more suicidal and emotionless than women. We can't say anything to him. We cannot lose a man in this house."

I stared at her. "Why? If I do something, it’s wrong, but if he does it, it’s right?"

She said, "You are our respect in society. People will talk about you, and no one will marry you. We have to marry you into another house, so we have to keep a good reputation. You cannot act like this."

I rebelled against her with everything in me. "I can, and I will! I will never do an arranged marriage; remember that. In fact, why would I marry at all? Marriage without independence, without a career, is a complete waste of time. It’s just about sex and producing two more children; How can anyone marry without healing first? How can anyone marry without understanding the world or learning how to parent? I refuse to ruin my life or someone else's life.

She told me, "Children are the responsibility of parents, and parents are the responsibility of children."

I challenged her: "Why? Who told you that? You had the choice to use a condom. You chose to bring a child into this world. How can you say children are just a burden and a responsibility? Who gave you this logic?"

She had no real answer. "Society tells me. Everyone does it, so we did the same."

Tell me, how am I their responsibility when they treat me like this? I was crying on the floor, begging them to stop harassing me, telling them I couldn't live like this. And they were saying, "Kill her," just because I dared to say no. What kind of justice is that? Am I not their child too?

While I was sobbing alone in my room, hyperventilating, they were sitting outside casually discussing life, while my brother was on the phone talking to his girlfriend.

I had no one to call. I have never had anyone. Children my age never understood my depth, and whenever I tried talking to older people, they accused me of faking it or making it up. So I kept it all inside. I started writing in a journal. But when my mother found my journal, she slapped me again, telling me I was wasting time and not studying. My mother is barely home anyway; she stays far away for her school job and only comes back at night. No one ever listened to me. When she took my journal away, I stopped writing completely.

I became emotionally numb.

That numbness wrecked my health. My periods became irregular because I kept every single emotion buried inside. I never cried. I held onto my ego and forced myself never to shed a tear, no matter what they did to me. I turned into a stone. And now, it has reached its breaking point.

I lie on my bed, unable to breathe properly. Panic attacks tear through me. Whenever someone walks into my room suddenly or makes a loud noise, I jump in terror. I spent years trying to understand their perspective, trying to find the "positivity" in their abuse, and all it did was destroy my mind. I lost 10 kg in four months because my body is consuming itself under the weight of unexpressed pain.

I am brilliant in academics. But my parents never supported my mind. All they wanted was to keep me contained until they could ship me off to another family. Meanwhile, my brother, who fails his exams and uses my mother’s money to enjoy his life, is worshipped just for being a male.

I never cried back then...

Now, the tears won't stop...

Now, I am finally healing...

It breaks my heart to ask this: if I am academically gifted, shouldn't a family support their child mentally and physically? They never did. Why did they even bring me into this world? Just because they wanted to have sex?

My mother’s son teased me and said, "You are just a product of lust."

Am I a product of lust? Yes. Maybe I am. They never cared about my soul. They never tried to know my mind. All they cared about was their own desires. My brother doesn't want to work hard, so he manipulates my mother the same way his father does. He even tells me, "Don't bother telling Mother anything; she is completely blind in love with her husband." He uses her, and she lets him, while I am left to bleed.

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I have walked through so many talking stages: a two-year stage with one, a one-year stage with another, and another, and another. Through all of them, I spoke about sex normally, plainly, purely to educate. I never had a crush because I never found a single man possessing high SQ, EQ, or IQ. Never once. So I rejected them all, trying to nudge them toward awareness, but patriarchy refused to let them change. I never promised permanence, never offered false hopes. On day one, I laid my cards on the table: I deal with panic attacks; I live in constant anxiety; my blood pressure drops. This is who I am, and this is what I require. Sex and love are not games to me. I refuse to play trial-and-error because I know myself down to the last fiber. I explored my own mind and body before ever letting anyone near my life. I never had sex; I only ever wanted to teach the world what it actually means.

My education on the matter did not begin in romance; it began in survival. When I was in the 8th grade, my father started abusing me sexually. I remember crying, shattering inside, wondering what had happened and why this horror had landed on me. That was when my mother told me about sex while I wept inconsolable tears. When she couldn't answer the deeper questions that burned in my mind, I turned to books. I had BYJU'S in 8th grade, and I studied sex education from its digital pages, visually understanding every part of the human body.

Soon after, that exact chapter came up in school. The female teacher stood at the board, and when I raised my hand to ask questions, she shut me down. I am not teaching this chapter; read it yourself, she snapped. I walked straight up to her and asked why. You are a biology teacher; you must teach this in class.” Her excuse? I am ashamed to teach this because of the boys here; they are making fun of me. I walked back into the classroom, mocked those boys hard across their mocking faces, and turned to her: Now teach. She finally taught us the basics of adolescence.

By the 10th grade, the chapter on sexual reproduction appeared again. This time, it was a male teacher. But the dynamic had flipped; he wasn't ashamed of the boys; he was terrified of the girls. They teased him mercilessly, calling out from their desks, “Sir, tell us how to insert a Condom; we don't understand!” The next day, the teacher walked in holding a condom, showing them the rubber, the ring, and how it fits over the penis. The girls finally fell silent, though they giggled the moment he left.

By the 12th grade, we were learning in an online class taught by a woman. Both boys and girls flooded the chat with unnecessary, crude comments, harassing her until she had no choice but to disable the comments just to teach in peace.

Observing all of this taught me a grim reality: people today are learning sex education from Chrome instead of books, turning human anatomy into a sick joke, destroying their lives through ignorance, and mocking their own bodies. That is why I began talking openly with my friends. Because of my articulation and understanding, men and women gravitated toward me. I normalized sex education for them. Whenever they turned it into a joke, I stopped them dead in their tracks. I told them to close porn sites, open books, and seek real knowledge. But the more I talked to them, the more I realized a terrifying truth: none of them knew a thing. They were all fumbling in the dark. So I taught them, if only for the sake of the partners they would one day hold.

It breaks my heart to look at India and see how far we have strayed. In 1951, India was among the very first countries to introduce programs for a reproductively healthy society. As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), a reproductively healthy society means total well-being in physical, emotional, behavioral, and social aspects of reproduction. Yet look around us today; we are nowhere near healthy.

Later, the government introduced Reproductive and Child Health Care (RCH) programs, relying on families, teachers, friends, and media to build awareness. But in the name of culture, everyone stays silent. Today, genuine sex education has vanished from daily life. People drown in pornography, ruining their futures. Governments once promoted smaller families, raised the marriageable age, and chanted slogans like Hum Do Hamare Do. But step into rural areas, and you find a complete void of facilities. People have five or six children out of sheer terror that an infant might die, or because they desperately need a son to bring money, a home, and a surname, while daughters are viewed as temporary residents meant for another man's house. They bear children as living insurance policies for their old age.

When I try to tell them about modern medical treatments, they look at me with hollow eyes. We have no money. The nearest market is seven kilometers away, and the doctors there know nothing; they let children die. The big city hospital is a suffocating crowd where we can't even get a bed. They tell us to go to Delhi, but we have no money for a stay, no money for food. We must work every single day just to buy our next meal. Hearing those words shatters me. It strips away my strength to teach.

The numbers haunt me just as much as the stories. At independence, our population was 350 million; by 2000, it crossed 1 billion; today, it stands at 1.4 billion. Natality rises while mortality fails to drop at the same pace. We have a massive youth population, and a population heavy in reproductive age only multiplies the size.

And then there are the crimes of rape, a ghost that haunts my every waking thought. People remain completely ignorant of STDs like HIV/AIDS, swallowed whole by absurd sexual myths. They believe a kiss leads to pregnancy, completely blind to the reality of biological reproduction. Men force women into unprotected intercourse under the suffocating guise of love. A known acquaintance once told me how her boyfriend demanded unprotected sex for the feel, and when she panicked over a potential pregnancy, he washed his hands of her: I don't know, it's your body, you said yes, it was your consent, not my responsibility. I don't want a child. And he walked away, leaving her to cry alone.

The cycle repeats endlessly. Men boast of treating women with cold detachment after having sex, cheating on them in the name of jawani (youth). They shatter a woman's life, and when she seeks comfort and a shoulder to cry on from someone else, the cycle spins again. Then those same men cry betrayal: She cheated on me out of nowhere after we were intimate.

They refuse to examine their own callousness, their own refusal to offer emotional connection, their obsession with pure physical gratification. When women finally break and look elsewhere for a safe harbor, men brand them as dramatic, aggressive, and delusional. They abandon women their own age, turn to grooming impressionable teenage girls for uncommitted sex, and repeat the destruction.

Where is the RCH awareness on contraceptives? Why do men stubbornly refuse to use protection just to save a few rupees, relying instead on coitus interruptus, the method with the highest failure rate? Condoms are cheap, easily available, reversible, and protect against both STDs and unwanted pregnancies without interfering with the act. Yet married men force surgical burdens exclusively onto women. Why won't they undergo vasectomies? Instead, they demand tubectomy, forcing hormonal IUDs and oral pills onto women's bodies, breaking their health with disease and hormonal collapse. When unwanted pregnancies happen, they resort to MTPs and amniocentesis for female foeticide.

Shame on this society. Without women, not a single one of you would exist. Yet you use female bodies for fleeting pleasure and discard them like trash, all while screaming that women are the aggressive ones. You groom teenagers, you let teachers prey on students, and you justify every atrocity under the banner of culture.

The root cause of rape is not a woman's clothes, her bra strap, her short dress, or her lipstick. The root cause is the male mindset. If you lack the courage to teach your sons decency, then do not spare them in the womb; perform male foeticide instead, because the poison lives in the male mind, not the female spirit.

A woman is infinitely more capable than men give her credit for, yet you clip her wings and claim she is weak. You demand that she serve silently while you protect your fragile ego. The problem starts with you, and it ends with you. If someone inflicted this system upon your daughter, would you dare blame her? No. The system is broken because you are broken. If you want a world where women are free, change the system. Change yourselves. Learn to see women as human beings, and finally, learn how to support them.

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When I was born, I didn't have any clothes on my body. Society gave me clothes; society told me to cover myself; society told me to save myself from men, and yet society tells women how to be viewed. I was never born fully covered. Society covered me. I am a human being, not just a social construct of a woman. Society made us men and women.

Biologically, the earth is divided into two sexes, male and female, and reproduction is a part of that. But when we have work, dreams, and aims to achieve, why should I crave sympathy? I have everything: a fully functioning brain, a body which I can use for work, hands for cooking and eating. I don't belong to any man not my father, not my brother, not my husband, not my boyfriend, nor any stranger who wants to show cheap sympathy toward me. I belong to no one; I belong to myself.

Society made laws for men and women, but both truly need each other for love. If you don't love a woman with your heart, if you aren't loyal to her, you will end up roaming the streets searching for love, engaging in double-dating and extramarital affairs, and ruining a woman's life.

Men do arranged marriages for a family, while leaving their actual emotional life outside, staring at them. But tell me one thing: will your family always be with you? One day they will also pass away or build their own separate lives. Your parents are not more responsible than your partner. Your partner listens to you when you are angry; your partner listens to you when you are silent; your partner listens to you when you are sitting alone in a dark room. But your parents often denied your sufferings. So your partner should be your priority.

You can't just sit there, silenced, when your parents abuse her, saying, "They are my parents, I also have to deal with them, okay?" Then what about her parents? She works in your house, wanting to contribute to every single task and share every pain with you. And your parents and relatives abuse her while you stand there like a clown. What about her emotions? You can't abuse her or silence her when she is asking you for a safe space, asking you for a shoulder, and you dismiss her by saying, "I don't want negativity in my life."

If she is listening, doing things for you, loving you, and investing her soul in you, how can you say that sharing pain is "negativity"? Sharing pain is what deepens a bond. With whom we share our pain, our bonds become truer. But that doesn't mean she is craving sympathy. She trusts you more than her parents; she has more hope in you because her parents never loved her; they only thought about her brother's career, never wanted her to earn money, and expected her to just be shipped off to another house.

She studies only because some men now "need educated women." Her father never loved her mother, never made her a true partner. Her mother always shared her secret pain with that daughter, thinking her son would one day grow up to be just like her husband- uncaring and dominant so she never shared her grief with him, instead sharing it all with her daughter. What was that daughter's fault in all of that? None.

So when a woman speaks, she never craves your sympathy; she just wants you to listen. To listen to her pain, to give her comfort, to give her one hope to stay alive in this world. One single gesture can protect a person's life; one smile can protect someone's life; one uncomfortable, honest talk can protect someone's life. One real shoulder can protect someone's life.

Women don't want sympathy; all they want is hope. Hope to be alive. No woman wants sympathy; no man wants sympathy; no one wants pity. Every person who has experienced trauma just wants to let it out of their heart so they can live freely. But remember: no one craves sympathy. Especially not a single woman.

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In history, there were Imroz and Amrita Pritam. Amrita Pritam was a Punjabi writer, and Imroz was a painter. Imroz read Amrita's writing and fell in love with her just through her words. This shows that writing tells you about the human soul and connects with it like a soulmate connection. If you love the writing of a person, then you will never be apart, because writing comes from depth, and depth comes from reading; it is like a river and glaciers. If reading is merely performative, you have no depth; you will grow bored after some time. Those who truly read must also write; otherwise, the mind begins to buffer with too much data.

Reading can never be performative; the more you read, the deeper your soul becomes. True readers live in a different, hypothetical world, far away from their surroundings, in a sanctuary where no one hunts them. Every pain in their body flows through their hands; readers live within their own world, tending to their pain, turning it into something profound. Pain is no longer just pain; it becomes a gain for the reader. So many in the market today are performative readers, displaying things they cannot truly feel. A piano is beyond their reach, so they merely pluck at the strings of a guitar. Reading is heaven amidst this hell; you cannot be performative and truly live in this sanctuary.

I have met so many people, as I write in both Hindi and English. At first, when they met me, they felt a deep calm by my side. But after some time, they grew wounded, lingering in my peaceful world. They tried to ruin my depth with their jealous faces, wanting nothing more than to steal it from me. Fortunately, that was impossible, because I resisted them and walked my own path. They wanted control over me, yet my feathers still yearn to fly.

There is still a flicker of hope left, like sitting by the ocean's edge, craving the sea. The water touched my feet, and my feet sank into the sand, leaving footprints that someone will come and erase after I leave. Performative readers possess no depth; they merely display a grand vocabulary and show off books in a crowd to fake it.

Real readers love solitude; they want to listen, they are more understanding, more caring, and more loving. They know how to love, yet their true lover is still missing. Therefore, if you do not read, do not come near me. I love to write, and I pen my pain in different languages; sometimes my pain spills onto the paper like ink slipping from my fingers. On the paper, it is blue, blue, blue. I hate performative readers. Sometimes I am in so much pain that I cannot express it through my voice, so I write it down on paper or send a paragraph with tears in my eyes.

Yes, I am a paragraph person. I love writing my pain, the pain of people, the pain of the world, and your pain. I want to write everything. And if you are a performative reader, then you must leave. Because I am a paragraph person, and I despise performative readers.

Reading has no age, no gender, no religion. Reading is heaven; if heaven ever existed on this earth, it is reading itself.

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I tried for two years, visiting various libraries in this area, trying to find a normal space. I encountered men from every community and caste, and all of them wanted women to cover themselves up. I would talk to them normally, and immediately they’d think I was giving them signals for sex. If I laughed, they thought it was an invitation. Every other man in that library wanted to date me, but none of their natures were fit for anything real. They would come to me asking for help with their studies; I would help them, and then they would turn around and tag me as characterless, roaming around my house and destroying my peace just because I rejected them.

When I finally wanted to date, I tried with a guy whose reading habits matched mine, but after some time, all he wanted was sex. When I said no, he started making up all these hypothetical, vulgar stories of a sex life we never had and spreading them to his friends. When I met his friends and just talked normally, they looked at me and tagged me as characterless too. So I left him.

Then I met a doctor. I thought he would understand because he was the first one who listened when I talked about my panic attacks and anxiety. But after we started dating, he suddenly wanted complete control. He would show up at the library daily, ignore me, and then snap and accuse me of '“chasing boys " just because I was talking to someone else. After we spent time together, he demanded sex, saying my actions proved I wanted it. When I slapped him and ran away to save myself, he went around telling people I was characterless.

I tried one more time with a guy I had known for two years who had never spoken a word out of line. But after we decided to date, within two or three days, he too demanded sex. That was the moment I completely lost hope in ever finding a decent choice around here.

Then, after three years, I met someone whose views mostly matched mine. We talked for eight or nine hours straight. But after a while, his mask slipped too; he started manipulating me for sex. When I drew a firm boundary and said no, his behavior completely changed. He became aggressive, started playing mind games, and wanted pure dominance. When I left him, I heard from his friend that he was calling me characterless too.

You can't be yourself here. These men aren't men; they are monsters and potential rapists roaming the roads freely. They are the reason I feel terrified, the reason I get crushing anxiety, and the reason I have lost all hope of a life in this place.

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Yes, women crave sex. We need sex, we need sex. But we don't need it from a person who only wants sex. Yes, women crave sex. Why not? We are also human beings. We crave sex... but sex with an expression, not with lustful eyes. A woman's body belongs to herself, not to a man whom you protect from the outside world while the same person lives in the house beside you whom you see with lustful eyes. Sex is not penetration; sex is an expression of love. We need sex, but not from lustful eyes; we need sex, not from some other woman's plate. We need sex with loyalty. We need sex with groundedness and vulnerability. Sex is not something that you have to crave or that women need. Yes, women need sex, but love as a priority and sex as an expression. True intimacy is never about power, fear, or domination. For a human being, and especially for a woman whose mind and body had to survive a war zone, sex isn't a base craving or a weapon of control. It is an expression of safety and emotional truth, where love is the foundation and physical closeness is simply the language of that safety.

When I visit outside my house, I don't want a 60-year-old man having a daughter of my age see me, see me just see me... it feels very awkward. I feel frightened by these boomers and millennials. Gen Z are more comfortable for me. All Gen Z are not bad, but all millennials and boomers are bad (not categorizing a whole generation, not all). They never gave love to their wives. They did arranged marriage to a girl whom they can control. A man who wants dominance will never love a woman. You can't tell a woman what she is facing; you can't tell a woman when she says, "I don't feel comfortable." That shopkeeper will say something to me when I pass his shop. That shopkeeper will say something. That shopkeeper asked me about my boyfriend, a man with two children. You can't say that you are delusional. When women say that a man with a child is seeing her through lustful eyes, you can't say you are delusional; when she says that a school teacher, her brother, your friend, your brother, your father, her father, or her cousin sees her through lustful eyes, you can't say that you are wrong. If she says you harassed her and now she is afraid of you, you can't say, "What did I do wrong? You are delusional." You can't dictate your actions to her. She knows what you did, what you are doing.

You will never understand society because society is designed to harass women. Society is made for men. Women always play a secondary role. But women don't belong to anyone. We belong to ourselves; we don't belong to anyone. They belong to themselves. They don't want a man who stares at them. A woman can see dreams inside the veil, and you are saying that they can't see your eyes.

If a woman rejects you, she is not characterless. She knew that you are not fit for her; you will never be going to match her. If a woman says to you, "Please change, please change," then she is not saying you are wrong; she loves you more than anything, and she wants you to grow. Feminine energy is for filling colors; without feminine energy in life, every man's life is not worth living, roaming road by road, not able to find comfort and peace in life. You can't say women are lazy; you can't say that they don't know how to work and are asking for period leave. They are asking because a woman's body needs rest. If they work during those times and do the exact same as Stayfree and Whisper pad advertisements, then it's not worth it. A woman's body needs rest; those ads are for promotion, not the reality. A woman is not characterless if she abused you or said you harassed her; they knew the reality of who harassed them; you don't. You can't decide anything for a woman. You are no one; she is equally a human being. You can't decide anything for her, not her dress, not her choice, not her friends, not her boyfriend, not her husband. You are no one to decide that.

Yes, women need sex. But:

If she is wearing dark red lipstick, it doesn't mean she is craving sex.

If she is wearing a western dress, it doesn't mean she wants sex.

If she is in a bar drinking alcohol beside men, it doesn't mean she needs sex.

If she is asking questions, it doesn't mean she needs sex.

If she is not agreeing with you, it doesn't mean she needs sex.

If she is roaming with a boy at 12 AM, it doesn't mean she needs sex.

If she is sitting beside you, it doesn't mean she needs sex.

If she is asking for help, it doesn't mean she needs sex.

If she wants to cry on your shoulder, she doesn't need sex.

Sex is a woman's choice. You can't ask her for sexual favors. You can't ask her to show you her body at 4 AM because you are craving sex. You can't ask her to undress because you need sex. Consent is mandatory in every kiss, in every liplock, in every intercourse. Consent is necessary.

You can't dictate to a woman who is independent, bold, and intelligent that you don't know anything about the world. She knows more than you; she knew her mother's pain, she knew your mother's pain, she knew pain, she knew pain. You don't understand anything, because no one taught you that women are not like this. If a woman is saying "all men," she is not pointing a finger towards you; if you feel frightened by her words and become aggressive, then she is not wrong. You are the problem. If you don't agree with her and she is pointing out your mistakes, then she loves you; a woman will never point a finger towards anyone if she doesn't care. When she is saying, "Please change, please change," she is thinking about your future with her. She doesn't want control over you. But it's your mentality that makes you think in this society men will always be students of a woman if you want to learn, if you want to understand society. You always have to ask for women's help. This is a male-dominated society; you can't see the harsh reality of a male-dominated society if you are seeing through men's eyes. This society harasses women at every single point—every step, every joint of her body. You can't dictate society to her. You are no one to dictate to her how society works. You can't say they play the victim game. Firstly, change yourself; try to see society from women's eyes.

No one is saying to provide. No one is saying to provide for her. She doesn't need your money. She needs comfort; she needs a space where she can cry, and no one judges her. She needs a safe space and sex with an expression, not as lust. If any woman is craving sex as lust, then the men before you destroyed her life, with no commitment. If she says she is craving sex directly to you, it means they love you. Women crave sex, but with the person they feel comfortable with, they feel lovable with not with lust. And after having sex with you, if she says you are harassing her by your actions, she is right; you can be. If you talk with her the whole day, then she can say to you that you harassed her. You can't say she is characterless or needs sex. It's her choice if she needs sex. Not your duty to say anything about her body, her words, her actions, her clothes.

Women need sex, but not every single action of a woman is born out of sexual desire.

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My father is a rapist.

Yes, yes, my father is a rapist; my father is a rapist. I was frightened because of him, and I thought he raped me.

When I was just 5-6 months old, able to sit, my mother was studying. She gave me a notebook and a pencil; I was drawing Jalebi. My father came home and slapped my mother. When I was 1 year old, he took things for me, and I became happy, but he left my mother behind.

Then one day, my mother was cooking food wearing a saree on a chulaha. My father came and hit her head with a cup. Blood was everywhere, flowing from her head like oil during marriage, flowing on a woman's body after the groom. I was crying, a small girl asking everyone, "What happened?" My sister held my hand, took me outside and said, "Nothing happened." I said, "Blood is everywhere; what is happening?" She said, "Rashi, shut up; otherwise, everyone will laugh at our home."

People passing by asked me, "Why are you crying? What work did you ruin?" My cousin answered for me, "Aunty gave her milk, and she didn't drink it, so she slapped her." I was crying and saying, "Blood is there, blood is there". A neighbour asked, "Blood? What happened?" My sister said, "Nothing happened, first stop crying, then I'll tell you." Then my cousin told me, "Rashi, it's every household's story. It's men's job; everyone does the same. We are women, they are men."

I went to my mother and asked, "Mumma, blood is flowing through your hair; what was that?" She said, "Nothing happened. Why are you lying?" My questions were left unanswered.

So I started going to the temple every day, doing pooja 4 times a day, always praying, "I want a brother; he will protect my mother." Because I thought if a man has the strength to beat a woman, then the same man will save her. When my mother got pregnant, I was making toys for my brother, saying, "My brother is coming". Everyone praised me, "She is saying brother is coming, so now brother will come."

When my brother arrived, my father came drunk and slapped my mother. Mumma said, "Rashi, go outside; dadi is calling you." I said, "No one is calling me." She said, "Go", and the gate was closed behind my back. My father started beating her. I ran to my grandmother. "Save my mother; Papa is beating her", she said. "No one is beating anyone; shut your mouth." I ran to my bua; she said, "No one is beating her." I ran to my uncle; he said, "Nothing is happening." I ran to my grandfather; he shouted, "Rashi, stop it, shut your mouth!" Everyone silenced me while I was crying. The next day I saw marks on her body. I asked, "Papa beat you, mummy?" She slapped me and said, "Shut up, no one was beating me!"

Then everyone was saying, "She ate poison, she ate poison. Get out of the throat; if she died, her parents will file a dowry case against us." The next day, the rat poison was missing. I asked, "Mumma, did you eat poison?" She said, "Why do you always talk nonsense? I ate nothing."

My mother got a government job, waking up early, doing all household work, and going to school by public transport. When she came back and cooked food, my father arrived drunk and beat her again. Mumma started telling me, "Rashi, everyone's husband beats them. Every woman is struggling." I asked, "Why, Mumma?" She said, "I don't know, now shut up."

One day my bua threw the whole chappati box and started beating my mother. I cried, "Why?" Bua said, "My husband said she does a lot of hard work; how dare she talk to him?" Mumma cried, "I wasn't talking; he asked about school". But everyone was laughing; no one stopped her. Another day, Mumma was cooking Maggi for me; my grandmother snatched the utensils, started beating her and said, "Go ask your father for money; you don't belong to us". I asked Mumma, "Why did she say this?" She said, "I don't know."

When I had a high fever, Mumma had no money. She said Go with Dadaji to the doctor. Dadaji said, "Go ask your mother for money," and left me there with his high fever. When mumma's salary came, she ran to the ATM for money for me. Grandmother lied to my father that she ran off with a lover. My father ran after her, brought her home, beat her brutally, and broke her debit card while everyone was laughing. I was crying in fear; no one was watching me.

Mumma said, "We will go anywhere, but we can't live here". We shifted near Nani's house in a small room. My father came there too, beat her brutally, saying, "Give me money". My brother and I were crying, "What is happening?" I called maternal relatives. They gathered and started laughing. Her parents took only her, leaving two small children alone in a big room with black walls.

My brother (4) and I (6) ran towards Nani's house alone, crossing the heavy-traffic highway road with our small footsteps, crying. When we reached, they closed the door in our faces, saying, "Send them to their father; they don't belong to our lineage". Mumma came out, held us and cried, "I am not going to leave them". My father brought us back, and the loop repeated every 8 days. My father never visited my school. Teachers asked, "Where is your father?" Mumma lied, "He lives out of town."

When I hit puberty, seeing my body, my father started abusing me too. He assaulted me, gave me rape threats, called me a prostitute, and said I was having sex. I was a child, crying that no father says this to a daughter. Mumma stopped me, "Don't speak; otherwise, society will question your character." I asked her, "Mumma, papa also forces you for sex?" She slapped me.

Whenever I restricted my father, saying, "You can't beat her, it's domestic violence," or when I said, "I will not stop my education, I want an equal life," he threatened me, "Shut your mouth, I will ruin your life by raping you". He called me a prostitute because my voice was loud and he couldn't handle the mirror. I went to the police station, but the police said, "It's a home matter." When I forced for an FIR, my father's political connections stopped it.

I told mumma, "I can't live with this alcoholic rapist," but she started justifying his actions, using the same words my father used against me. She built her own house, earns a great salary, but still doesn't leave him because of 'culture'. She gained respect in society, and I am the one left behind, wrong in everyone's eyes.

Now I am suffering from anxiety attacks and panic attacks. I built myself into iron, becoming man more than a man himself. I can't tolerate any man's voice louder than mine; every man feels like competition. This independence is haunting me... I want to be soft, I want to feel feminine, I want love. But whenever I try to fall in love, trauma hits back like a bullet hole.

No one understands me. Not that rapist, not my mother.

I'm afraid...

I'm scared...

I'm scared of that rapist…..

He raped me…

My father raped me….

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Lord Ram is admired across generations for a kingship defined by supreme sacrifice, humility, truth, and the unwavering protection of the vulnerable. In contrast, today's political leadership does the exact opposite, dividing citizens for political gain and building corporate monopolies. Modi and Lord Ram can never be equal. And if anyone desires an exclusive, divisive "Hindu Rashtra" where fellow human beings are discriminated against, they are seeking something that goes against the very soul of this land.

To understand how our history and culture are being distorted today, we need to look back at how Indian society actually evolved, step by step

The epic Ramayana is not a single book written on a single piece of paper. As the scholar A.K. Ramanujan highlighted in his famous essay Three Hundred Ramayana’s, the epic is a fluid civilizational narrative. From Valmiki’s Sanskrit text to Tamil (Kamba Ramayanam), Jain (Pauma Chariya), and various tribal folk traditions, regional communities across India wrote and sang their own versions of Ramayana with deep love and localized values.

In the Early Vedic period, society was open and flexible. The original Varna System was based purely on occupation and personal merit, not on birth.

In the Rigveda (Mandala 9, Sukta 112), a person explicitly writes

“I am a singer, my father is a physician, my mother grinds corn on corn mills. With various thoughts, desiring wealth, we follow our paths like cattle. Flow, Indu, for Indra.”

This proves that family members could belong to different professions and social categories.

Modern archaeogenetic research such as the landmark DNA study led by archaeologist Vasant Shinde on ancient skeletons found at Rakhigarhi (Haryana) (published in the journal Cell in 2019) proved that South Asians are a deeply blended mixture of diverse ancient populations. Genetic science shatters the modern political lie of pure racial or caste lineages.

Languages naturally changed over time. Early texts were oral (Shruti). Later, scholars like Panini circa 4th Century BCE codified grammar in the Ashtadhyayi, standardizing Classical Sanskrit.

As Sanskrit became the language of kings, priests, and scholars, common people spoke regional dialects called Prakrit and Pali. In famous Sanskrit plays like Kalidasa’s Abhijnanashakuntalam, royalty and priests spoke Sanskrit while women and common citizens spoke Prakrit. Over time, Prakrit evolved into Apabhramsha, which eventually gave birth to modern languages like Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Punjabi.

During the Gupta Empire (4th–6th Century CE), kings began giving tax-free land grants (Agrahara system) to Brahmins. Normative texts like the Dharmashastras and Manusmriti gained royal patronage, gradually locking the flexible Varna system into a rigid, birth-based Jati (caste) hierarchy.

After the Great Revolt of 1857, where Hindus and Muslims fought together against the British East India Company, the British realized that Indian unity was a threat to their empire. They actively implemented a policy of Divide and Rule.

British officials like William Jones elevated the Manusmriti, a regressive normative text, and codified it as universal Hindu Law, ignoring local customs and traditions.

Under Census Commissioner Herbert Risley, the British officially categorized people by rigid caste hierarchies in the 1901 Census. He believed that every social group in India could be measured, categorized, and ranked from highest to lowest based on social precedence and traditional occupation.

Nicholas Dirks gave his critique of this:

He explains in his thesis Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. He argues that caste as it is understood today is not an unchanged survival of ancient India, but rather a specifically colonial product born out of the encounter between British administration and Indian society.

Furthermore, the British systematically dismantled local gurukuls and indigenous learning systems, replacing them with Thomas Macaulay’s education model (1835), designed explicitly to produce obedient clerks rather than independent thinkers.

In his own famous words from the 1835 Minute:

"We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”

He replaced the education system by saying this. He believed that replacing indigenous gurukuls, pathshalas, and madrasas with Western education would alienate Indians from their own heritage and make them loyal subjects of the British Crown.

In a nutshell, his educational model was never designed to foster critical thinking, scientific innovation or self-reliance among Indians. Instead, it was an intentional administrative strategy to produce a subordinate class of clerks, interpreters, and loyal subjects who would help sustain British colonial rule at minimal cost.

Moreover, when the second major mass movement for independence, “the Civil Disobedience Movement”, erupted under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi, people from every corner of India stood against colonial oppression. Farmers, workers, women, students, and leaders across diverse communities joined together to challenge British authority.

Fearing this widespread unity, the British Empire again trusted its divide-and-rule policy. Announcing the Communal Award of 1932, they decided to grant separate electorates to different communities, most dangerously extending this separate status to the Depressed Classes (Dalits). Their calculated plan was clear: permanently fracture Indian society by separating marginalized groups from the broader social and political fabric, ensuring that Indians would remain divided along communal lines rather than united against British rule.

The friction happened between Gandhi and Ambedkar.

Ambedkar strongly advocated for separate electorates to secure real political power, autonomy, and safeguards for Dalits who had faced centuries of severe caste oppression.

However, Gandhi viewed separate electorates as a calculated British plot to permanently fracture Indian society and alienate Dalits from the broader social fabric, prompting him to go on an indefinite fast unto death at Yerwada Jail in Pune. Realizing that colonial forces were exploiting their differences to undermine the freedom movement, the two leaders reached a historical compromise known as the Poona Pact of 1932; they abandoned separate electorates in favor of a system of joint electorates with reserved seats for the Depressed Classes, thereby securing guaranteed political representation for marginalized communities while thwarting the British strategy of permanent division. Simultaneously, Muslim majoritarian politics led by Jinnah fueled the flames that ultimately caused Partition.

In his presidential address at the Lahore session of the All India Muslim League in March 1940, he declared

"The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures. To yoke together two such nations under a single state must lead to growing discontent and final destruction.”

Simultaneously,

At the Hindu Mahasabha session in Ahmedabad, Savarkar declared

"India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary, there are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the Moslems."

As Dr. B.R. Ambedkar famously observed in his book Pakistan, or the Partition of India (1940)

"Strange as it may appear, Mr. Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah instead of being opposed to each other on the one-nation versus two-nations issue are in complete agreement about it.”

While the Indian National Congress launched the Quit India Movement (1942) with thousands of freedom fighters going to jail demanding complete British withdrawal, the Hindu Mahasabha under V.D. Savarkar and Jinnah’s Muslim League actively chose political collaboration over anticolonial resistance.

Despite the intense pressure from both Jinnah’s Muslim League and Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha, who both insisted that, Hindus and Muslims were two irreconcilable nations, the mainstream leadership of the freedom movement rejected this divisive ideology outright.

Gandhi argued that India had always been a land of syncretic cultural exchange where people of different faiths lived together as neighbors for centuries. He famously remarked

"If the Hindus believe that India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in dreamland. The Hindus, the Mohammedans, the Parsees and the Christians who have made India their country are fellow countrymen."

While Jinnah demanded a religious state and majoritarian groups wanted a Hindu state, leaders like Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar fought to ensure that the newly independent nation belonged equally to everyone.

When drafting the Indian Constitution, they explicitly chose civic nationalism over religious nationalism

Equal Rights (Articles 14–16): Guarantees that every citizen, regardless of religion, caste, gender, or birthplace, stands equal before the law.

Freedom of Religion (Articles 25–28): Guarantees the fundamental right to practice, profess, and propagate any faith, or no faith at all, without state interference.

Universal Adult Suffrage: Granted every adult Indian the right to vote from day one, a revolutionary step that many Western democracies took decades to grant to all their citizens

Mahatma Gandhi paid the ultimate price for his unshakable commitment to secularism and communal harmony. His stance that a democratic India must protect its religious minorities made him a target of extreme right-wing majoritarian ideology, culminating in his assassination on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse, a former member of both the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha.

When the Constituent Assembly under Dr. B.R. Ambedkar adopted the Constitution of India on November 26, 1949, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) openly criticized and rejected it. Instead of embracing a democratic, secular document that guaranteed equal rights to every citizen, their official mouthpieces explicitly condemned the new Constitution for not drawing its laws from ancient religious texts like the Manusmriti.

Just four days after the Constitution was passed, the official RSS publication, Organiser, published an editorial titled "The Constitution,” where it stated

"But in our Constitution, there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Athens. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing."

In addition to rejecting the Constitution, the RSS leadership initially opposed the adoption of the Indian Tricolor (Tiranga) as the national flag, favoring the Bhagwa Dhwaj (saffron flag).

An editorial in Organiser on August 14, 1947 (on the eve of Independence) declared

"The word 'three' is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will quite naturally produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country."

Note: I wrote about RSS’s actions after independence in my previous article; for more information, you can visit that.

Today, a dangerous mechanism operates in full public view: those who abuse the sacred name of Lord Ram for political leverage, privatize public assets, and dismantle constitutional protections claim the sole monopoly on patriotism (Desh bhakti). Meanwhile, any citizen, whether a student, farmer, journalist, academic, or everyday worker, who dares to ask basic questions about unemployment, economic inequality, or constitutional rights is instantly labeled a "deshdrohi" (traitor), "urban Naxal," or "anti-national."

Today, they push a homogenized version of religion, forcing people to abandon their rich regional traditions to become performative Hindus whose faith is defined by political aggression rather than spiritual compassion.

Today, performative patriotism has been turned into a weapon. The sacred name of Lord Ram, a figure historically admired for supreme sacrifice, truth, and the protection of the weak, is routinely deployed as an election slogan to consolidate votes. Yet behind this loud display of faith, the same political machinery works quietly to chip away at the very constitutional safeguards designed to protect the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the unemployed. While political speeches focus on religious division, economic data shows massive exploitation. According to the World Inequality Report, India is now among the most unequal countries in the world, with the top 1% holding roughly 40% of the wealth and the top 10% commanding about 65%. India has the largest youth population in the world, yet urban youth unemployment (ages 15–29) remains high at around 19% according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS).

In a healthy constitutional democracy, asking questions about rising youth unemployment, inflation, wealth concentration, or administrative accountability is the ultimate duty of a patriot. Today, however, asking questions is treated as a crime against the state.

Anyone who speaks up for the Constitution, demands social justice, or critiques ruling policies is immediately branded as an "anti-national," a "dimagi/urban naxal," or a "traitor to the nation."

The ruling political apparatus has engineered a system where loyalty to a political party or a single leader is deceptively equated with loyalty to the nation (Bharat). If you love the leader, you are a deshbhakt; if you love the Constitution and hold power accountable, you are branded an enemy.

This is a complete inversion of what our freedom fighters fought for. Bhagat Singh, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, and Mahatma Gandhi did not defeat a foreign colonial power just so citizens in an independent India would be terrified to ask their own government for jobs, dignity, and equality.

True patriotism does not lie in performative aggression, waving flags while ignoring the hungry, or abusing fellow citizens. True deshbhakti lies in protecting the rights of the weakest citizen, upholding the Constitution, and having the courage to speak truth to power.

Long before independence was born, thinkers like Mahatma Jyotirao Phule fought for women's education and Shaheed Bhagat Singh saw through the illusion of a superficial transfer of power. Phule warned “Gore Angrez chale jayenge, toh Bhure Angrez aa jayenge.”(The white Britishers will leave, and the brown Britishers will step in; only the hands on power will change) Decades later, writing from prison in 1931, Bhagat Singh echoed this exact warning to young political workers: “If Lord Reading is replaced by Indian elites, it does not mean any change for the masses.” Both recognized that political freedom without economic equality, public education, and social emancipation would merely swap foreign masters for domestic oppressors.

Our Constitution was designed as a revolutionary social document. In the eyes of the law, every individual, regardless of whether they are a man, a woman, or part of a historically marginalized community stands on equal footing. It promises not just legal equality, but the structural foundations of dignity, quality, public education, accessible healthcare, and real economic opportunities for every household.

Yet today, instead of fulfilling these constitutional mandates, the ruling political machinery deploys a very different strategy. The sacred name of Lord Ram is co-opted to consolidate electoral power, public and national assets are systematically privatized, and the energy of our youth is weaponized through communal hatred. When millions of young minds are systematically denied employment, security, and a dignified life, their legitimate frustration is deliberately diverted into religious hostility.

We stand at a critical crossroads. When hollow rhetoric replaces real opportunities, and political interests trade away the peaceful, prosperous future of our youth, we must ask ourselves What kind of nation are we truly building?

A nation’s greatness is not measured by the loudness of its slogans or the performative anger of its mobs, but by the dignity of its poorest citizen, the strength of its public institutions, and the truth of its constitutional promises. It is time for the youth of Bharat to reclaim their future not as foot soldiers for political aggression, but as architects of a just, equal, and democratic republic.

Today, when political machinery uses blind religious devotion (bhakti) and the name of Lord Ram to stifle questions, privatize public assets, and demand blind obedience to power, Ambedkar’s prophetic words remind us that democracy dies the moment questioning is replaced by blind devotion.

"Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship."

"How can people divided into castes, high and low, be a nation? These classes can never be a nation. They are a collection of castes. Each caste is conscious of its existence. It is jealous of its own status and is inimical to the other caste... If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in our to-do list is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives."

Our constitutional framers led by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, ensured that in the eyes of the Republic of India, your dignity, rights, and citizenship do not depend on your caste, your religion, your gender, your wealth, or the language you speak.

Key constitutional articles enshrine this radical equality:

Article 14: Guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the laws to every person within the territory of India.

Article 15: Explicitly prohibits the state from discriminating against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth.

Article 16: Guarantees equality of opportunity in matters of public employment, ensuring that state power is open to all citizens regardless of their background.

In the eyes of our Constitution, every person stands completely equal; no caste, no religion, no gender can ever diminish a citizen's right to dignity, freedom, and justice.

Yet today, instead of honoring this sacred promise by providing quality education, healthcare, and jobs, the ruling political machinery uses the sacred name of Ram to buy political power, privatize national assets, and distract young people with communal hatred. When young minds are denied employment and dignity, their energy is deliberately diverted into religious hostility.

We must ask ourselves

What kind of nation are we building when hollow rhetoric replaces real opportunities, and political interests trade away the peaceful, prosperous future of our youth?

History exists to help us learn from past mistakes, so we don't repeat them not to fuel division or conflict in the present.

Viewing history as a lens for learning rather than a weapon for conflict is one of the most powerful ways to build a better future.

When we treat history as a tool for self-reflection rather than resentment, it helps us avoid past missteps and focus our collective energy on the challenges that directly shape people's daily lives today.

A society’s focus should be on building a better future by addressing immediate, pressing issues:

• Youth Empowerment & Skill Development

Channeling the potential of young people requires aligning education with the demands of an evolving, modern economy. Fostering critical thinking, practical skills, and multi-disciplinary learning prepares youth to thrive globally.

• Job Creation & Economic Opportunity

Addressing unemployment means building robust systems that support entrepreneurship, technological innovation, sustainable manufacturing, and research infrastructure. Creating meaningful employment ensures long-term economic stability.

• Women's Progress & Equality

A society's growth is directly tied to the status and freedom of its women. True progress means ensuring personal safety, equal access to higher education, economic independence, and representation at all decision-making levels.

• Constructive Civic Engagement

Shifting the public conversation away from historical grievances and toward healthcare, civic infrastructure, quality of life, and social cohesion creates an environment where everyone can flourish.

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

— George Bernard Shaw

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I look at the state of my nation today, and a deeply painful question haunts me: How did an organization that sat on the sidelines of our freedom struggle, burned our Constitution, and refused to fly our national flag for over half a century manage to turn around and call every dissenting Indian an "anti-national"?

When Narendra Modi’s government aggressively crushes public protests, declaring students, farmers, civil society members, and ordinary citizens as enemies of the state, I am forced to confront a profound historical irony. The very organization that fuels this regime, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), built its entire political capital through relentless, destabilizing agitations against India's democratic institutions. Today, as women's safety decays, corruption reaches unprecedented heights, and minority communities face daily harassment, they sell us the illusion of a Hindu Rashtra. But what kind of nation are they truly building?

To understand the tragedy of our present, we must re-examine the history they desperately try to rewrite

When I read the speeches of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Bhagat Singh, I see a vision of an India bound by secular brotherhood, fighting as one against the iron grip of the British Empire. Yet, while our freedom fighters were risking their lives, right-wing Hindu nationalists were busy cutting deals with the colonizers.

The ideological clash between Netaji and the Hindutva ecosystem was uncompromising. In 1938, as Congress President, Subhas Chandra Bose spearheaded a resolution barring members of communal organizations, specifically the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, from holding elected positions within the Congress. On May 12, 1940, addressing a massive public gathering in Jhargram, Bengal, Netaji publicly denounced the Hindu Mahasabha:

"The Hindu Mahasabha has entered the political arena by taking advantage of religion and has desecrated it. It is the duty of every Hindu to condemn it. Banish these traitors from national life."

The tragic betrayal reached its peak during World War II. While Netaji forged the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army), bringing together Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians to wage armed war against the Empire, V.D. Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha openly advocated for a strategy of "Responsive Cooperation" with the British. Savarkar launched recruitment drives across India urging young Hindu men to enlist in the British military. At the exact moment Netaji’s INA soldiers were dying on the northeastern front fighting the British Empire, Hindutva ideologues were helping the British army recruit personnel to crush that very rebellion.

We are taught in school that Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the sole architect of the Two-Nation Theory. But historical documents reveal a far darker truth: the idea that Hindus and Muslims were two fundamentally incompatible nations was formally declared by V.D. Savarkar years before Jinnah’s 1940 Lahore Resolution.

In December 1937, during his presidential address to the Hindu Mahasabha in Ahmedabad, Savarkar explicitly declared:

"India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary, there are two nations in the main; the Hindus and the Moslems in India."

Savarkar had already laid down this framework in his 1923 book, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, defining a Hindu as someone who considers India both their Pitribhoomi (Fatherland) and Punyabhoomi (Holy Land). By this definition, Indian Muslims and Christians were instantly framed as outsiders whose loyalties lay elsewhere. Ironically, Savarkar himself was a staunch utilitarian who held deeply controversial views on Hindu traditions in essays such as Vigyan Nishtha Pratibandh; he openly mocked cow worship, writing that treating cattle as divine degraded human intellect and advocating for rationalism over orthodox dogma. Yet today, his modern ideological heirs discard his rationalism while enforcing an aggressive, exclusionary dogma in his name.

I feel an overwhelming sense of anger when I remember how the RSS treated the very symbols of our sovereignty. When Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and the Constituent Assembly gave us a Constitution rooted in equality, freedom, and human dignity, the RSS rejected it outright.

Why? Because it wasn't based on the ancient, caste-hierarchical Manusmriti.

On November 30, 1949, just four days after the Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution, the official mouthpiece of the RSS, The Organiser, published an editorial declaring

"The worst feature of the new constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bharatiya about it... To this day his laws [Manu's laws in Manusmriti] excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing."

Nor did they accept our national flag. In his book Bunch of Thoughts, M.S. Golwalkar, the second chief of the RSS, openly criticized the choice of the Tricolour, insisting that only the saffron flag (Bhagwa Dhwaj) represented the true soul of Bharat. For 52 years after independence, the RSS headquarters in Nagpur refused to hoist the Indian National Flag on Independence Day and Republic Day until three courageous young activists forcibly hoisted the Tricolour on their premises on January 26, 2001, forcing an official change in policy by 2002.

The hatred nurtured by this ideology bore its ultimate bitter fruit on January 30, 1948, when Nathuram Godse, a direct product of the Hindutva ecosystem and a former RSS worker, fired three bullets into the chest of Mahatma Gandhi.

Following the assassination, Union Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel banned the RSS. On September 11, 1948, Patel wrote a scathing letter to Golwalkar, explaining the government's stance:

"All their speeches were full of communal poison... As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji."

When the country tried to move forward under Dr. Ambedkar’s guidance by reforming personal laws to give Hindu women fundamental rights the right to inherit property, seek divorce, and ban polygamy through the Hindu Code Bill the RSS mobilized on the streets once again. They formed the Anti-Hindu Code Bill Committee, burning effigies of Dr. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru, claiming that granting equal rights to women would "destroy the Hindu family." Broken-hearted by the intense political stalling driven by conservative resistance, Dr. Ambedkar resigned as Law Minister on September 27, 1951.

My own family members have attended RSS camps where they were told that Godse was a visionary who saved the nation, and that Nehru and Ambedkar ruined India. But I ask a simple question: If Godse and his ideologues were so brave, why did they turn their weapons against an eighty-year-old unarmed saint and not against the British colonizers?

The hypocrisy runs even deeper. When the V.P. Singh government attempted to empower backward communities in 1990 by implementing the Mandal Commission (granting 27% reservation to Other Backward Classes), the RSS and the BJP turned against the government, withdrawing coalition support and launching the aggressive Ram Rath Yatra to divert public attention away from caste equality.

Yet today, under the Modi government, the RSS ecosystem claims that anyone who protests against the government is a traitor. The same political machine built entirely on street agitations, government-toppling, and public strikes now condemns every student, farmer, and activist exercising their constitutional right to protest under Article 19.

I ask you to look around India today and tell me: Which Hindu Rashtra are they building?

Where are the headlines showing that vigilante groups like the Hindu Raksha Dal have protected a woman, built a school, or ended caste discrimination? They do not exist. Instead, the news is flooded with horrific headlines: mob lynchings of innocent citizens, state-sanctioned harassment of interfaith couples, systemic violence against minority populations, and the brutal intimidation of dissenting women online and on the streets.

Is this the righteous nation our ancestors fought for? Article 14 of our Constitution guarantees equality before the law. Article 21 guarantees the right to life and liberty to every single person living on Indian soil. Every citizen matters. Every woman matters. Every life matters.

When rape cases hit horrifying peaks, when political corruption reaches staggering scales under the cover of blind nationalism, and when the constitutional rights of ordinary people are shredded, the illusion falls away. The RSS promises a sacred Hindu Rashtra, but the historical record proves they have delivered only division, historical betrayal, and an assault on the democratic republic our martyrs died to create.

Key Historical Primary Sources & Archival Citations

Subhas Chandra Bose’s Speech: May 12, 1940 (Jhargram, West Bengal), public address condemning the Hindu Mahasabha.

Savarkar’s Two-Nation Address: Presidential Speech, Hindu Mahasabha Session, Ahmedabad, December 1937.

RSS Editorial on the Constitution: The Organiser, November 30, 1949.

Sardar Patel’s Letter to Golwalkar: September 11, 1948 (Union Home Ministry archives on the post-assassination ban).

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s Resignation: September 27, 1951 (Official parliamentary record on the Hindu Code Bill deadlock).

The Nagpur Flag Prosecution: Nagpur Sessions Court, Case No. 176/2001 (pertaining to the arrest of activists for hoisting the Tricolour at the RSS headquarters on January 26, 2001).

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