Should gender matter in friendship? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself my whole life. After all, gender is a social set of rules (a construct as some call it). Some people follow the rules more vehemently than others. Rules exist to contain & direct human behaviour and almost always…
I think we yearn for our blank slate states, for our most pristine, untouched selves. It’s why we romanticise childhood even though it’s most likely had its share of hardships & knocks. Tattoos are a curious borderline point between our most fearful, vulnerable selves that want to look back &…
The way I relate to men comes from some toxic experiences I’ve had with men I cared about. It has been hard to see past those traumas & rise above the gaslighting of being a ‘man-hater’ just for having a strong sense of my own identity. There is some notion…
When shame defines you, it takes root in the fertile ground that is you, to propagate more of itself. Thus, the ashamed becomes the shamer.
On body policing & the censorship of our personal stories because of it.
I love colour. Bright, vibrant hues lift my mood. What’s on the outside is connected to what’s on the inside and I like them in harmony. I’m a summer child. A Mumbaiker lives with a permanant layer of humidity on the skin. And that’s as good as my city hugging…
I have tasted jealousy. I have been served jealousy in cut glass flirtations & fancy silverware.
This post was written on Christmas Day, 2020. This picture is one of the last ones taken in December 2019. I had a Christmas Eve date (hence the colour theme). It was with someone I’d matched with on the same day I had a run-in with my past. I would…
I turned 21 in a world that promised much even for an averager like me. Then a plane flew into the twin towers & all millenium dreams crumbled. Things they never teach you about in a boom economy b-school: how to spell RECESSION. I landed a job, found harassment, ran…
Remember the emotional breakdown scene in QUEEN where Kangana bemoans wandering the streets of Paris by herself instead of with the new husband are thought she’d have? I thought I’d have a wedding & a honeymoon in December 2012. I didn’t. They turned out to be fairytales, the kind that never turn into achievable dreams.