Ananyamously.yours

There is one sentence I keep coming back to. Not the breakup. Not the men. Just this one,   I wonder if I've swiped past my person to keep scrolling toward a hypothetical one,   because it names something I don't think we've fully admitted to ourselves yet: we didn't get worse at love. We just got worse at appreciating what is right in front of us. I want to tell you I'm above it. I'm not. I have opened an app in the middle of missing someone real and let a hundred strangers' faces flatten the missing into something manageable, something scrollable. Spoilt for choice, screwed for life.   It sounds like a joke until you sit with it. The apps promised abundance. More people, more options, more chances to get it right. Somewhere in the architecture of infinite scroll, we stopped meeting people and started auditioning them. Stopped asking Do I like this person?  And started asking,  Is this the best that is available to me?   Those are not the same question. On...

  Validation is a high you cannot beat. Take it from me. To be seen for what you are and even liked for it. To be wanted for it. Gods. I couldn’t begin to tell you how euphoric that feels. The high of belonging somewhere without having to ask. To be fucking enough to be good. But before we get to the reward, let’s start at the beginning.   When you grow up in a house that has only one child you learn to do it all. Making room. Making space. It all becomes instinct after a while. Cutting corners and cutting off more of yourself to squeeze into places that you don’t belong to. Pacifying, perfecting and playing the part to keep the peace. No ripples, no rocking, nothing to shake the flimsy sense of self-worth that comes with, “Could be better, Can be more.” An almost. A could have been. One that falls short of just enough to never be enough.   So it becomes a performance. An act, if you will. To take on these expectations, to shoulder this responsibility and make a productio...

December walks in.  Cloak billowing around her, she struts through the door, swinging it shut behind her and you swear to god, the world has never gone quiet like this before. A dark burgundy smile quirks up to greet you, midnight blue nails wave hello and the fairylight sparkle in her eyes is one you’ve always known. She smells like vanilla and feels like the warmth whiskey leaves behind. Her tinkling laughter trails goosebumps down your spine. And when she slams her mug down and roars, “Another!” you think to yourself, “My god, I’ve never met anyone quite like her.” She sits at the bar counter with you, one leg atop the other, hands moving, hair swaying, eyes dancing, as she reminds you of the other Decembers. You laugh, you smile, you reminicsience and relive the stories together. You changed and she changed along with you, both inevitable and irreversible. She holds your hand and you smile at her. The smile only a rare few see and a choice few hold close. She folds you into her...

  Before you begin reading this, are you a 20-something? You know what? It’s fine. Read it anyway. And if it resounds with you, please send it to your other 20-something friends, not because I need the exposure, which I totally do by the way, but because they need to hear this. And they need to hear this from a 3 rd party that does not sound patronising.   Babe. Darling, Meri jaan. My dude. Whoever you are. It’s happening to all of us. It doesn’t matter if you’ve graduated from one of the top colleges in the country or if you’re a product of a shitty college in the city. Every one of us is having a crisis max ultra pro. Sadly, this too comes with regular upgrades of shittiness added by bosses, Mondays, co-workers, parents, family as a whole and in general assholes scattered around the city waiting to fuck your day up. Social media is painting you just a bare-bones picture of what people around you are doing and sometimes, you can't help but compare yourself to that level of a...

    This post is two days late because nostalgia is a hard high to get out of.     Do you know what June smells like to me?   It smells like the brown cover on books soaked with Camlin glue. It smells like fresh ink on new labels which soon gets smudged. It smells like the dalcha steaming on the stove in my grandmother's house and like the hot piping poori we’re frying together. It smells sickly sweet, like the aroma of overripe mangoes left overnight on the table. It smells like the burnt wick of the candle I blew out in the evening once the power came back in our house. It smells like petrichor from the scattered summer rains that shook the mango tree in our yard. It smells like sweat, anticipation, and the sweet taste of victory while hiding behind doors during hide and seek.   It smells like shoe polish gleaming on leather shoes, aligned straight near the front door ready for the first day of school. It smells like the steam rising from a freshly i...

  The city is under a cloud bank and there’s a breeze that reminds me of a bike ride 5 years ago where a friend and I were racing against time to make it on time for a movie. It looks like the skies will pour at any moment and it takes me back to a dimly lit classroom where my professor stood at the helm and spoke of the Mughal warriors that ruled the lands. She walked from one end of the classroom to another, her saree swishing back and forth but her tone, her voice, and her words held all my attention. She weaved triumph, loss, conniving cruelty, war, and glory around us like a spell that could only be broken if she wished it to be. The breeze holds the fragrance of the earth, the rain falls in rivulets outside, and the soft light that streams in through the floor to ceiling windows takes me back to school. This was the same breeze that playfully ruffled our skirts and chased goosebumps down our arms. It was under this weather that we sat in the field for lunch, near a grotto a...