Bullet Holes In My Self Esteem
Why does heartbreak decimate self esteem? Where does shame sit in this pain? Can we heal from it instead of escaping its lessons?
Mental Health In A Capitalist World
Our value as human beings is determined by how useful we are and how tangibly we can show profit. Where is there room for the things that make us human?
What’s True Love Like In Isolation?
The most poignant events of our lives still leave an impact that only lasts a couple of years at most. What do we make of ‘true love’ which has a kind of endlessness?
The One Who Brought Me Beauty
A gratitude note to someone from my past: The strongest of us may need someone to remind us that we also need beauty, love & harmony to make survival a life.
Welcome To The Real Mumbai Metro
Mumbai is a boardgame of big power, big money, big everything. A new metro network just changed the balance of all things that count. What does this mean for the city?
Confused Patriarchy Made Me A Feminist
Why does a woman have to earn a life of dignity through abuse & assault when men receive it as birthright?
The Economics Of Our Dining Choices: Morality Measure?
If we’re going to measure morality based on what we eat, let’s examine the food on our plates first.
People I Didn’t Want To Think About
The richness of women’s relationships with each other may be as much in the disrupted seeds as in the fruition.
2AM Lessons In Safety: The Insomnia Teacher
I woke up two nights ago, not knowing why I was awake. No sound had disturbed me, it wasn’t time to wake up.
2023: Comfort Is Served
We are all angry. Seething and out for blood. Where do we go from here? The pandemic has been the arsenic cherry on the difficult lessons of a decade.
A Beautiful Day In A Soft Neighborhood
There is an interesting thing about memory foam. It yields to your touch & pressure. Not fast, not reacting. More like an indulgence, a consideration. Later it pauses with the impression you’ve left on it, as if ruminating. Just as meditatively it returns to its original self.
Excruciating Intimacies: Navigating Through Poetry
It isn’t intimacy unless it feels a little tender.
BOOK: Home – Manju Kapur | Coming Back To Me
A lovely return to my late 20s where books absorbed me with a rigour I did not experience in my social or professional life.
Finding Myself In My Body: Reclaiming Pain
A house that is a warzone. A courtroom for custody battles. Dumping ground for other people’s pain. My body.
A Truce With Gender
If I were fifteen years younger, I’d identify as nonbinary. Or maybe not, I don’t know if the beaten gender path has beat me down too often mercilessly.
Two Cities I’ve Loved – Bangalore & Mumbai
Feeling the tug between two places – one that feels like home and one that is dutifully home.
Sympathetic Losses & The Empathy Monster
I have poems by old lovers,
not about me
not the loves,
not the poetry.
Second COVID Stupid – Smooth Egg Brain
The second dark COVID of my soul is here except it doesn’t feel quite as dark. I feel stupid and it is peaceful.
Focaccia & Fortitude – Healing From Scratch
The world still doesn’t know how & why death shows up. How can there be any answer to why people turn out the way they do?
BOOK | Fearlessly Flying With Erica Jong
Giving sex an easy place in my mind, required moving around the furniture inside my head – old traumas, inherited shame, cultural taboos. This book taught me flying.