@agentsofishq’s ‘An Evening of No Regrets’ gave me pause. Do I truly have no regrets?For most of my teen years & adult life, I’ve tried to live a life free of regret. Early on, this meant being cautious about navigating gender pressures & unrealistic expectations. The thing about growing up…
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…
Some nights are a turquoise tango, some days are an orange solo. Flashback 12 years. I wandered down bookshelves that I’d been glazing over for weeks. It seemed wrong to be there alone. The environment matched my mood. What was earlier opulence had run into decadent indifference. Books lay piled on floors,…
I found this in my Drafts folder. I don’t remember who I wrote this about. But I do remember feeling this way. And today, it feels like a message from another one of my selves, telling me what I need to hear. ~O~O~O~O~O~O~ I did something I feel terrible about….
I’m forty this year. I’m told I don’t look that age (though I know other people who look similarly so). But I’ll take the compliment because I understand that’s what is meant, under the assumed ageism. Because 40 is when I’m liking the way my world looks. It hasn’t been…
Let’s think about regret. Decisive people rarely seem to have regrets. As a decisive person myself, I weigh what a situation is worth & if dithering will help. Regret seems to not be worth it. Who has time to regret the past when a lesson can be gleaned for the…
Today is the last day of The Thirty Diaries, a series I started a little over a decade ago. Tomorrow, I turn 40, a number that brings its share of weight in the form of platitudes and stereotypes, some of which I’ve already encountered and battled. I am not sure…
A classmate called. He said he missed true friends. I said, “It’s early mid-life crisis after the disillusionment of the 20s. We are all in it.” The 20s are a maniac’s dream. Everything is available & possible. There is an unrealistic shine on everything. It takes a few knocks to realise…
I met him at an event I was hosting. The growing crowds and reactions told me I was doing well. It was welcome respite from the morning’s fight, a common occurrence in the horror story I was living inside. I was aware of him through the whole day, even as I juggled…
Hello 2015, Welcome in. You are going to occupy my life starting now. And I’m welcoming you in. I have been looking forward to seeing you for a long time now. You see, you end with a 5 which is a very nice satisfying number to be. I wouldn’t call…
When you miss someone, you think of all that happened And wonder, Should I have said something then? Should I have laughed openly at that? And raised hell over this? It might have caused a fight, you realize, and say That’s why I didn’t. But if I had, I wouldn’t…
My phone buzzed with a message. It was from a classmate who had once been a friend and then done something that made me not want to be friends with him again. He said he was sorry, asked how I was doing and said he was missing true friends. I…
So it’s that time of the year again, the time to take stock and look back. Funnily enough, for a compulsive organizer/list-maker like me, it isn’t coming naturally this time round. Even funnier considering it isn’t just year end but decade end and actually end of the first decade of…
I wasn’t a cool kid. I wasn’t a hip teenager. I was perpetually confused, secretly angsty and with no Lakshya. I had no life. But I had a plan. A decade later I look back and wonder, How ever did things turn out so differently?! Here’s how. I dropped out of…
The thrill of her chase used to be about impossible dreams in the future And wrestling them into submission Now that nothing’s impossible anymore, She finds herself thinking often of the past Conjuring visions of how life would’ve been, if it hadn’t gone the other way Nothing spells unachievable Like…
She proposed. He declined. You’re too intense for me. He said then. A few years later, they met. He was older, she wiser. He frowned, I don’t like what you’ve become. You didn’t like me the way I was! She wanted to cry when he said I did. I miss…
The first day of August More than half the year has gone by I’ve lived a quarter of a century And what have I to show for it? ~ Ate reluctantly ~~ Played badly ~~~ Studied resentfully ~~~~ Prayed fearfully ~~~~~ Slept badly ~~~~~~ Worried incessantly ~~~~~~~ Thought belligerently ~~~~~~~~…
