Some things you should know about me:
I am always looking for the next good deal, and can be very tunnel vision about protecting my material safety
I write like a poet and not like a novelist, which is to say potency and ambiguity come more naturally to me than a structured approach to narrative arcs. This mirrors the way I think
I sometimes think about my last relationship and how all consuming my need for his time was: no matter how much he would have given me, I would have always wanted more. Observing that childlike and insatiable hunger left an imprint on every single thing I have done after that
If I needed my addictions less, I would have talked about them more.
After a few dabbles, you realize that writing is just like any other task: after the bursts of emotional overwhelm lead you to your first few creations, you trust practicality more. You sneak a minute in between emails and note down the string of words that unexpectedly arrived in your brain. You write with a sore throat and tanned hands and the back pain, and you no longer wait for the perfect moment to arise. After a few more posts you realize that 70% of the time you sit down to write, something ends up crafting itself. You say thank you to the forces.
I keep writing about the same things over and over again because I am haunted by them.
Recently I have been thinking about the concept of marriage and what it does to people. I have been observing married people closely, their happiness levels and freedom levels and limitations and privileges. I am reading a book about it from my favorite writer, watching a humorous take on it in a korean drama, listening to the lyrics of taylor swift’s lavender haze carefully when she talks about brides and sexism. I am remembering the images that traced my frontal cortex all those years ago, a temple and thunder storms and eloping and coupled solitude.
Why, you ask? No reason, intuition, research.
Why now, you ask? I am really sensitive about being 25.
I took to heart recently that I should not just be an emotional writer, but a polished one. To not have simply wallowed in my joys and sorrows but to have made something useful of them. Not letting anything get lost on me, as they say. I have been eating a lot of taco bell and listening to a pirated version of “hits different” and putting a berry lip mask on my lips any and all times of the day.
I believe very strongly that one of life’s core purposes is rest and relaxation. We are not meant to run on the hamster wheel, rinse and repeat, till we reach the finish line. The small moments of presence and nothingness are what constitute actually living.
So much of life can be autopilot if you don’t intervene.
Smelling like bergamot and amber feels so right and good. I miss Delhi like a child, the food and roads and metro and strangers and my house and my mom’s foamy coffee. You intervene most importantly by telling it how it is. A lesson from back in high school: put in the hard work, don’t stress about the results, whatever best is meant to be will be. I crave warm bournvita milk. How did I get here? Will life afford me the temple during the storm? Do dreams outgrow the dreamer?
Maybe something more magical than our wildest dreams awaits.
It is already here.
Hi Regs,
I imagine you writing poetry in a sweltry apartment by your window that opens to a view of a neon lit alley at sunset time with a fan running by your side. And this gives me the joy of travelling to a more analogous early 2000s. Thanks.