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?
Body & Sex
Body image, Beauty perceptions & standards, Sex, Sexuality, Reproductive health, Physical fitness
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.
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.
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.
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.
Body & Sex | Culture | Home & Identity | Map Of Emotion | People & Relationships | Politics & Feminism
What Do We Owe Each Other In Shifting Normals?
After I wrote yesterday’s fan post about And Just Like That, I stayed up late reading reviews & the subreddit of the show. Well. There is so much vitriol. I believe most of it is the punishment our overly capitalist world is wrecking on anyone who hasn’t paid the requisite…
And Just Like That…I Found Friends Again
I’m liking where I am with regard to viewable content. I’ve spent a long time burrowing into books mostly because the video medium was garbage churned out by rich, privileged, inbred people who didn’t care about humans like me. But the streaming services are getting with it. And even if…
A Refugee From Amatonormativity
I’ve heard of asexuality, aromanticism and polyamory. Then a friend sent me this video talking about AMATONORMATIVITY. Well-meaning friends have gently (or bluntly) told me that my experiences of abuse turned me against men/marriage. There may be some truth to that. The very thought of weddings – invitations, over-the-top engagement…
The Unloving Wanting
I wonder if we fall a little too much in love with stories, especially ones we write ourselves. It’s a fallacy to call this love because this is an uncontrollable, desperate, choking stranglehold that is not loving, nurturing or caring. Love is not blind; it makes our vision clearer, if…
Sweet Tooth
This was written for the prompt Sweet | given by Girish Krishnakumar for Alphabet Sambar’s weekly themed mic room. ~O~O~O~O~O~O~ Sweet Tooth. I didn’t have one. There was no room for sweetness in my world that demanded the efficiency of kitchen logistics & transactions of nutrition. Or the speed of…
𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗗𝗜𝗗𝗡’𝗧 𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗡𝗘𝗫𝗧 𝗗𝗔𝗬
When you kiss a friend,they leak out of the chais, cappuccinos, white wines & long island iced teas & camaraderiepast the milestones of recognitionwhere the light switch flicks on in your mind& your friendship mode self turns onand that feels like it would look uncomfortableBut it’s notand you, overarticulate you,…
Body & Sex | Culture | Evolution | Examining Gender | Map Of Emotion | People & Relationships | Politics & Feminism
Gehraiyaan: A Good Galentine’s Day Release & An Okay Solo Date Watch
Spoiler alert: This post talks about the film Gehraiyaan & references several key plot points. If you haven’t seen the film & plan to, please do not read further. Trigger warnings: Childhood neglect, self-harm, abuse, infidelity. ~O~O~O~O~O~O~ Yes, I said that. I know today is Valentine’s Day & this film…
Last Mile Hope
The most uncomfortable thing about the pandemic has been living with Fearful Me. I never liked fear. I can’t even enjoy rollercoasters, speed or horror stories as entertainment. I’ve evaded fear with plans, efficiency, aggression. Because fear paralyses me, I’ve been scared of stopping & never being able to start…
A Peach For Breakfast
My Clubhouse room prompt for this week via fellow host Tareque Laskar was SPELLBOUND. For this I cheated (slightly) and blended two of my old posts together. It was an interesting exercise, personally than for my writing since one of the posts was written 15 years ago. I remember feeling…
Vanity Is A Superpower
I feel like I’m a different person out in the world. I enjoy dressing up because I love the reactions of the world to my style. It’s not always positive. I also find ridicule, envy, shaming & other things. Each is a reaction, a conversation with society, with humanity in…
The Unbearable Kitsch Of A Kundera Life
This is the book that set me on the cultural stereotype path that I would live out for the next 16 years (and still going?). The people I hungered to be around in the 2000s (MNC-employed, literature spouting, pretension-grooming) spoke eloquently about Milan Kundera and Haruki Murakami. Of course many…
Love Language
LOVE LANGUAGE – my journey deciphering my experiences through the words of love songs in different languages
Where’s The Flirty Party?
Flirting feels like a massive party I haven’t been invited to. A concert that’s playing all around me & everyone’s vibing to it, except me. I can’t hear it, I can’t see it. I can pick up when people are attracted to me but that’s from years of being the…
𝗟𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗟𝗘𝗢 👑
The month was full of learning. 2020 was hard, getting hit by a pandemic no one had seen the likes of. But 2021 was the slow, grueling grind back into a world that will never be the same. The soul-crushing realisation that all things break – stability, connections & worst…