Ray didn’t send a reel today. Did he die?
Ray’s days begin with a familiar, mechanical pattern. He wakes up, checks his notifications, ignores every single one, and migrates to Instagram. There, he is met with the hypnotic, fractured world of “Reels.” He likes to think of himself as one of the few souls blessed by the algorithm gods, making his feed a truly unpredictable theater of the absurd. One moment, he is watching a somber analysis of a 19th-century ghazal; the next, if he makes the mistake of scrolling into th
Jan 224 min read
Who was Ms. K?
The day was just beginning in New York. Like usual, I had brewed my morning coffee and was scrolling through the news when my mother called. 'Ms. K passed away today.' I set down my coffee and made polite inquiries about the funeral before hanging up. I stared out the window at the familiar, jagged skyline, but my mind was already thousands of miles away. Who was Ms. K? To the adults, she was a set of symptoms and a source of pity. They spoke about her 'condition' in hushed t
Jan 183 min read
Cracks
Mr. Jana was cleaning my apartment the week he was fired. He and I, we used to have small chats whenever he came there to clean, which was usually once a week. That was probably because I spoke manageable Hindi, enough to be at par with his cocktail of Bengali and Hindi — which probably was more than what most people he worked with could do. After his first day of work and what was expected of him was well established, he would walk in quietly upon being let in, open the balc
Jan 37 min read
Hotel Room Service
Cancun was supposed to be easy. Spring break, turquoise water, wristbands, all-inclusive meals, a week of not thinking. That was the deal. You fly in, put on your shorts and fancy shades, and forget who you are for a while. The city is built to make that happen. Every street bends gently toward American comfort — dollars accepted everywhere, menus translated before anyone even asks, music loud enough to drown out anything that might feel complicated. I stayed in a huge proper
Dec 31, 20254 min read
Bouquets I’ll Never Send
There comes, I think, a strange kind of clarity in life — the mildly inconvenient kind you don’t earn intentionally, but stumble upon after a long season of misunderstanding yourself. And from that clarity grows a new, problematically precise longing for things you’re now convinced will finally make you happy. Meeting someone at that exact stage of your life — someone who seems to check all those freshly discovered boxes — is what I can only describe as a momentous disaster.
Dec 14, 20253 min read
Essentials of FLAT-ITVA
"They are our enemies,” they said. They called it an ideological war — a war to right wrongs. The residents of the flat were not to have any kind of relationship with the residents of complex no:6. And when Rahul from the 4th floor went to meet his lifelong friend Dev from the 5th floor of complex 6, the former was branded as anti-flat-ional, and it was established that he was, in fact, a danger to the other residents of complex 5. Then came Mr. Thamburan, president of the r
Dec 12, 20253 min read
Would Love Go Better With a Side of Paperwork?
It is often easy to think of marriage as a culmination of love — but was love ever truly enough to sustain a marriage? Marriage as an institution is something that has baffled me of late. Growing up, I used to think of marriage as something you just do in life — you know, just like how you are expected to go to college, get a job, retire, and die. The basics. I don’t know whether to blame the societal thought that made it seem so, or something else altogether. But as your
Dec 12, 20252 min read
