Essays
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To Have Known a Love Like Bombay
My earliest memories of Bombay are stitched together with delays, derailments, and the kind of chaos that becomes funny only twenty years later. The first time I travelled to the city, my mother, my aunt, and I boarded a train from Chennai, a simple journey, three days of sightseeing planned, my Maama waiting for us Continue reading
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Performance Review: Universe, 2025
Employee: The UniverseReviewer: One human who just discovered their antidepressants aren’t strong enoughOverall Rating: Meets Expectations (barely, and only because we expected violence) Executive Summary Congratulations on another year of consistent underperformance. Your commitment to treating human suffering as a growth metric remains unmatched. We’d fire you, but apparently you’re union. Core Competencies 1. Global Stability Rating: Actively Continue reading
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120 Under 120
On Living Forever With Nothing To Do An AI-generated reconstruction of a lunch that had already ended. At a recent family lunch, three generations agreed on exactly one thing: none of us cared for AI. This consensus lasted approximately fourteen minutes, at which point we realised nobody had photographed the food. We had committed the Continue reading
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The Kal Paradox
Why Indian English Isn’t Broken, It’s Running on a Different Backend Woman and Clock, Louise Bourgeois (fair use) Salman Rushdie once observed that no people whose word for ‘yesterday’ is the same as their word for ‘tomorrow’ can be said to have a firm grip on time (Midnight’s Children). He was talking about the Hindi word kal, Continue reading
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The Lives I Didn’t Live (But Asked AI To Render Anyway)
AI-generated image: my mother and me at the Taj Mahal, a trip we never took. Forgive me, for I have mid-journeyed. I asked the machine to bring my grandmother back, not as she was when she died.. frail, sharp, and opinionated, but as a young woman standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, a place Continue reading
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Episode 10: The One Who Was Always There (Until He Wasn’t)
The recurring character who was almost the main character, until he wasn’t. Some loves don’t take center stage. They light it. Image Credit Some people enter your story as guest stars. Others are series regulars from the pilot episode. The Regular was cast before I even knew there was a show. Our mothers practiced Rabindra Continue reading
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Without Her
Five years ago, fifty-five days after my mother passed away, I made a video I never planned to share. This is what I understand now, watching it again. Grief doesn’t announce itself. It brews tea. Lights incense. Scrolls Instagram. Five years ago, fifty-five days after I lost my mother, I made a short film. It Continue reading
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Fall, Pico, Alteration: The Tailors Who Don’t Make Clothes
Unsung, unseen, but always on time.. almost Somewhere in Mylapore, Chennai They don’t design, cut, or create. They don’t have Pinterest boards or boutique signage. But they are the ones who make sure your clothes live, long after you’ve outgrown them, shrunk away from them, or simply changed your mind. These are not the tailors of Continue reading
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Dressed for Silence
On disappearing, dressing down, and choosing clothes that don’t speak for you A dress is just a kurta that went to therapy.A personal essay on what I wore, what I refused, and the quiet power of dressing for no one. In my twenties, I wore clothes that let me disappear, loose kurtas that blended into Continue reading
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