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?
People & Relationships
Navigating Family, Friendship, Marriage, Colleagues, Companions & other social connections
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.
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.
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.
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.
Evaporation – The Marie Kondo of COVID
I used to think fearlessness was a solid feeling. COVID made me think it is a void.
Wayfarer On An Open Road
Post COVID, life is uncertain but it’s an open road. Everything is a lesson, every meeting is a gift.
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…
Modern Love: The Quest For Identity First
What were the brutal experiences of fear, grief & unexpected connections in the last two years but lessons in love & relating? The lockdowns forced me away from my usual coping mechanisms & distractions. What is left when all assumptions are stripped away? Love & Identity As a metropolitan Indian…
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…
Culture | Evolution | Examining Gender | Home & Identity | People & Relationships | Politics & Feminism
The “Do They Treat You Well?” Play
I was watching an episode of ‘Kim’s Convenience’ where a concerned (possibly over protective) family is talking to their daughter about her love life. One of them asks, “Does he treat you well?” And I realised no one had ever asked me that. Not family members, not friends, not classmates,…
Lesson
My friend Saurabh referenced the idea that when the student is ready, the teacher arrives. He said when the teacher is ready too, the student arrives. I think student, teacher, lesson, these are all part of something more complex and yes, when they intersect it feels dramatic because it’s a…
The Bureacracy Of Time Travel
In 2019, I matched with someone on a dating app. We were having a great conversation, which in itself was surprising. Trying to find anything (companionship, laughter, connection, fun, attraction) via the interwebs designed to turn human response into capitalist touchpoints – is counterintuitive. What made it extra surprising was,…
Learning From Echoes
The thing about living through abuse, especially its public forms, is that after you get out, you start the process of surviving the memories of other people. You have to live through the echoes of the things you couldn’t hear. You remember the ones who saw you suffer & never…