I write about technology, culture, memory, and all the weird in-betweens.
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Read more: Wore-drobe
It is March again, and this year will be different. I know this because the spring-summer collections have begun dropping in my inbox, because a linen shirt has been sitting in my saved-for-later cart for eight months now, and because I am standing in front of my wardrobe having decided, once again, that I will…
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Read more: Malkosh
Life goes on. The TV is back on, even if something has shifted Nobody tells objects. That’s the thing. The package arrives at the door, scanned and sorted and dispatched through a chain of human effort so elaborate it borders on devotion, and it has no idea. The algorithm that predicted the purchase, the warehouse…
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Read more: Borrowed Words
Some years back, when I was in a Rumi phase, because who wasn’t, I used to quote: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field, I’ll meet you there. I said it like I’d discovered it. I said it like it was mine. Fifteen years ago, quoting Rumi was already cliché. But it was…
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Read more: Roll Call: Notes on Names and the People Who Get Stuck With Them
The annual pre-Independence Day office party. The night before I was born. Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu in the front row, with Appa. My name almost decided. I know, I know. What’s in a name? is the most overworked question in the history of questions. Shakespeare asked it, your motivational calendar asked it, and now I am…
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Read more: The Other People Who Weren’t There
The India AI Impact Summit started today. I know this because I have spent the last two months watching it unfold on LinkedIn before it even began. Every other post was someone announcing they’d be speaking, moderating, or appearing on a panel about how AI will change everything about AI, which is changing everything about…
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Read more: Listening for the Ciiii
On effort, expertise, and why invisible work goes unrewarded My mother could cook an eight-course meal for twelve people and the kitchen would look like she’d merely walked through it on her way to somewhere else. No splatter on the stovetop, no tower of tasting spoons in the sink, no panic-Googling “is dal supposed to…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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,…
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Read more: The One in Which Rachel Green Lied to Me
A personal essay on how Friends, a Louis Vuitton tote bag, and two decades of middle-class aspiration shaped a life in India. From navigating the Dadar fast local with a backpack to buying ‘dupes’ on Meesho, a look at the performance of adulthood and the gap between who we are and who we want to…
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Read more: User Research, But Make it Metabolic
(Or: What My CGM Taught Me About Human Behaviour) Exhibit A: The humble poha that broke my metabolic heart. The Accidental Field Study Every few months, I run a small, unapproved research project with a sample size of one: me. The apparatus is a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), a discreet sensor I stick on my…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: Episode 11: The Girl I Brought Home
The one who writes love stories to children who will never exist The girl I brought home, with her collection of becoming. I don’t have a lot of wealth, but I have a lot of crap. Earrings that I bought during various phases of optimism. Books that I’ve accumulated like some people collect frequent flyer…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: Episode 9: Tindexit (Or, The Beautiful Eyes Brigade)
In which I discover that being desirable to everyone is worse than being desirable to no one. For 7 weeks, I was a babe. Then I pressed delete. Image Credit On the wrong side of thirty, I finally downloaded a dating app. I’d held out through the early swipe years, but my family WhatsApp groups…
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Read more: Episode 8: The Boy from Tokyo (Who Was Actually from Osaka)
Five emails and a wedding invitation (to someone else) But at least we’ll always have the Pilot pens. Image Credit My family was full of wannabe economists who thought they understood currency markets. So when the proposal came for a boy in Japan, they got out their calculators. “500,000 yen per month!” someone announced, after…
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Read more: Episode 7: The Double L Guy
The one who existed perfectly in professional font The one I found through a typo and lost through an expired inbox. Some connections exist perfectly at 10pt Calibri. Image Credit This is about the boy I found through a typo and lost through an expired inbox. I’d just gotten my first corporate email address. An…
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Read more: Episode 6: The Star That Died Before It Reached Earth
The one who was better in parentheses The Star That Died Before It Reached EarthSome stories burn brightest before they ever begin. Image Credit Before the apps. Before the swiping. Before everyone turned into product managers of their own love lives.. there was the internet.And if you were young and a little lonely and halfway…
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Read more: Episode 5: The Boy Who Ticked All the Boxes
The one I had no good reason to reject The coffee was warm. The conversation was polite.The chemistry? Pure LinkedIn. Image Credit His parents had already met mine.Not in a vague, floating “let’s see” way, but in the full-blown exchanging rasam ratios, best-retirement-plans, and let’s-go-to-Kashi-together kind of way. Our fathers had both retired from the…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: Episode 4: The Boy Who Wanted To Save The World
And I was just trying to survive Wednesdays Worn into the neighbourhood like memory We lived in the same neighbourhood, but I’d never met him. Our fathers, however, were walking buddies, united by a shared fondness for early mornings, rising cholesterol, and spirited complaints about inflation and their adult children.Their daily route was short, but…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: How to Not Write a Novel: The Advice Chapter
Or, what I’ve learned from reading writing advice (and ignoring all of it) Credit The thing about writing advice is that it’s everywhere. Like glitter, or unsolicited feedback. It clings to you long after you’ve tried to brush it off. It shows up on podcasts, in Substack essays, at the back of MFA brochures. And…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: Episode 3: How I Met His Brother (and It’s Not What You Think)
The one who let his brother do the talking A quiet, sunlit apartment. A not-so-quiet surprise inside. Image Credit This one was hard to avoid. The boy was introduced to me by my favourite uncle, the kind of man who called me “child” well into my thirties, and always slipped an extra note into my…
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Read more: Episode 2: The Boy Who Objected to My Nose Pin
The one who said ‘Oh. Your nose. The arch, the traffic, the twilight. A fork in the road I didn’t take. Image Credit For the longest time, I believed the only thing standing between me and hotness was a nose pin.Not confidence. Not better lighting. Not therapy. Just a little stud on my right nostril.…
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Read more: Episode 1: The Boy Who Sang
The one who found me emotionally underqualified Dadar station, behind the grill. Like every near-miss, framed but unfinished. Image Credit Yes, he aspired to be a singer.Yes, which was a strange choice of profession for a good Indian boy. But the real surprise was this: my parents were the ones who set me up with him. I’d…
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