Ananyamously.yours

  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...

  Endings aren’t great. Some say they are means to new beginnings but statistically speaking most endings are always sad. They are almost always unannounced. Unpredictable. Very hard to accept, hard to cope with, to understand, to justify. But promise me. Just this one thing. If we ever end. Be it a relationship, or a friendship. And become these people that used to know each other. People that have a few inside jokes, a few moments of belly-deep laughter, a few intense moments, all buried between them.  People that know how you take your coffee and know what makes you feel better on a 3 am night when nothing feels right. People that know your fears and yet opened their arms, people that know your worst and opened their hearts. Without judgement. I hope you remember the warmth as we sat beside each other. The kind that made me lean just a little bit closer. I hope you remember the peace. I hope you remember how soft I was. Pliant, delicate, and breakable. But only for you thou...

  Maybe it's just me or maybe it's you too, but have you ever felt like sinking into your couch after watching a romantic comedy? Especially one of those cheesy, disgusting Netflix ones that are themed around the holidays. Miracle of true love, finding the perfect one, yada yada yada. I know I said disgusting and cheesy, but Jesus do I love them from the bottom of my stupid, foolish heart. You bet I do. The whole point of writing this is to find out if you feel the same way as I do after watching one of these. I’m calling it the Rangover (romance hangover). For a few hours after watching this cute shit you’re hearing things in this one voice. Ya know? The fairy godmother voice or the calm narrator with perfect pauses and spot on tone? The one dude, the one that says, “ Once upon a time in a far away land”. YEAH, that. Suddenly you want to hold someone's hand and just laugh. You want someone to run across the airport for you too. Maybe look up at someone in the falling snow....

This is the one thing they made me repeat after them.  “Don't make homes out of people”,  “Don't make homes out of people”,  “Don't make homes out of people”,  “Don't make homes out of people”,  What they conveniently forgot to tell me was to not become a home for somebody. Don't become a home for someone who thinks the warmth that radiates inside the house  is a blessing from the sun and not your passion that keeps the fire alive. But I did just that. I made myself a home for someone who was looking through the window to stay for a night and I, in my naivety,  built them a house with the exact specifications they wished for because why wouldn't you become a home for someone who stood outside the door everyday despite the rain and waited patiently for an invite to come in. I painted the walls yellow and opened the windows to let the light in. I vacuumed the floor and kissed them goodbye everyday at the door. I hand picked the lights, rearranged the cha...

Once upon a time, on the same planet we all live on, I came into existence. Wasn't really my choice but hey, it really isn't anyones. Like everyone else, I too stumbled through life. I’ve had my incredibly stupid moments, emotional breakdowns, happiest days of life and whatever else. I’ve always felt I could do more, be more. Not more in the sense of getting my life together but more in the way of feeling. My head is a weird place to survive in, not gonna lie, it's fifty different trains of thought, all running together, all leaving the station late and all of them narrowly avoiding each other. I'm talking extremely narrow here, a hair's breadth narrow. In this continuous cacophony of anxiety, dissociation, anger, sadness, curiosity and whatever else, there is one space. One space where when I look at a word, or a picture or feel something in a weirdly specific way and words align themselves into sentences in my head. Sentences that rhyme themselves in a poem. I swe...