I once read that the hardest part of a butterfly’s life is not learning to fly, but breaking out of the cocoon. I believe it to be true, for I have shed an old identity. Its remnants still cling, like the final threads of silk on new skin, fragile and unfamiliar. I am no longer who I was, but I have not yet learned how to be who I am becoming. I find myself returning to a question I have always carried, though it no longer sounds the same. Once, it asked me what I was meant t

A notification pops up on my phone, telling me I have reached my one-hour limit on Instagram. I close the app, almost absent-mindedly, my thumb still hovering where the screen was moving just seconds ago. As the screen goes still, my brain is flooded with thoughts. There are so many ways to speak now. You can write, and the internet will read you. You can record, and the world will watch you. You can post, and your thoughts can travel faster than you ever will. And yet, the

A few months ago, in a moment that felt cinematic in its clarity, I realized I was living my dream. But that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Dreams, like in Inception , distort reality. They exaggerate the good, blur the cracks, and convince you that what you’re seeing is exactly what you want. They feel vivid and intentional, but they’re not real. They’re curated illusions. I decided to wake up. Took the red pill, so to speak. And I have been miserable ever since. For years

It had just started drizzling when I left for the Bangalore airport. It was the kind of drizzle that turns into rain before you even realize it. And Bangalore rain has this strange personality: the faster it moves, the slower everything else becomes. Within minutes, the road had turned into a quiet line of headlights, everything inching forward in small, reluctant steps. It always amuses me how nature does exactly what it’s supposed to, yet the entire city pauses as if holdin

I walk out of the plane, sleepy and tired, flights always seeming longer than they are. My eyes are half-closed as I follow the slow-moving crowd through the jet bridge, the air suddenly thicker, warmer. It is familiar in a way my body recognizes before my mind does. And then I see the familiar sign, the one that feels like the pyjamas I wear every day. Letters welcoming me to Gujarat, in words I fail to remember but never fail to recognize. Something loosens inside me, just