Pages From Her Diary

Almost three months in Bangalore, and I hadn't really gone anywhere. Office and room. Room and office. Weekends spent entirely within four walls, telling myself I'd explore the city once I felt like it — knowing perfectly well that feeling like it was never going to arrive on its own. Then a friend called. Come to Indiranagar. Let's meet. And I went. Which, for a man who hadn't stepped out socially in twelve weeks, was a bigger thing than it sounds. It was a good evening. Easy conversation, the kind you don't have to prepare for. For a few hours I stopped being a stranger in a city and was just a person sitting across from another person. And then his phone rang. His wife's name was on the screen I watched his face. Something in it just… closed. The ease left. He straightened slightly, glanced at the screen the way you glance at an email from your boss on a Sunday, and said quietly — "she's calling." Not warmth. Not "oh, on...

Watched Wake Up Sid last night. I've seen it before — everyone has. But some films don't stay the same film. You change, and the story quietly rearranges itself to meet whoever you've become since the last time. It ages like wine. At twenty it's a fun coming-of-age story about a spoilt Mumbai boy. At my age, three months into a city that doesn't know me, it's something else entirely. And it made me think about Ranbir, honestly. He has one of the strangest, most specific filmographies of any mainstream Indian actor — Sid, Bunny, Jordan, Ved in Tamasha . A whole career built out of men who haven't figured themselves out yet. Nobody else was consistently choosing that. Most stars want to play the man who has the answer; he kept playing the one still looking for the question. The first time, all I noticed were the t-shirts I'll be honest about what this film meant to me the first time around. I wasn't thinking about family, or ambition, ...

I spent last night reading about death. Not in a morbid way — in the way you do at 1 a.m. when the flat is quiet and the mind has nowhere left to hide. Audio playing in the dark, one article leading to another, all of them circling the same question: Why are we so afraid of the one thing that is absolutely certain? We whisper about it. We change the subject. We postpone difficult conversations because some part of us assumes there will always be more time. It's the only appointment every single human being is guaranteed to keep, and we've collectively agreed not to discuss it. Epicurus had an answer that's logically perfect and emotionally useless. Where death is, you are not; where you are, death is not. So there's nothing to fear. Airtight. And it has never once comforted anybody. What Osho does differently I've been listening to a lot of Osho lately — usually late, usually in the dark, which is probably the only correct way to listen to him. And he does something...

Moving to a new city is a lot like getting married. You arrive full of hope. You promise to adjust. You tell yourself the difficult parts are temporary, that it takes time, that everyone says it gets better. And like most marriages, it either makes you or breaks you. Mostly, in my experience, it breaks you first. Not with anything dramatic. A city doesn't fight with you. It simply refuses to know your name . It lets you discover, slowly, how much of your identity was built by the streets you knew, the people who greeted you without asking who you were, and the places that once felt like home. But the real damage doesn't happen on weekdays. Weekdays are merciful. There is an office to go to, meetings to survive, deadlines to chase. Routine keeps your mind occupied and convinces you that you're doing okay. It's the weekends that expose the truth. The festivals. The evenings. The birthdays. The days when your phone is full of pictures of people laughing over dinner with fa...

 I believe in God . Or something like Him. A force. An order. A hand beyond my control. Call it God, call it the universe, call it whatever your grandmother called it. I believe in it. Here's why. There's a point in everything worth doing where your effort runs out. The 5 a.m. alarms, the planning, the polished version of yourself — and still, nothing moves the way you willed it. The job doesn't land. The room stays cold. The plan falls apart on a random Tuesday, no reason attached. And right there, hands empty, something in you looks up. Not weakness. Instinct. Okay. I've done my part. Now you take care of me. That's not defeat. That's hope . The most underrated force we have. Not the sit-back kind. The kind that keeps you showing up to a life that isn't cooperating, because some part of you still believes it's going somewhere. Take hope out of a person, and watch the fight leave with it. Which is why I've never understood people who let it go. Not ...

It was Father's Day last week. I didn't post anything about it. I posted what I always post — something honest and a little unglamorous. This time it was about how I write for myself , and how it's perfectly fine with me if not one single person ever reads it. A friend read it and said, almost like he was doing me a favour: "It was Father's Day, yaar. You should've posted about that." I just smiled. Because I don't chase the trending thing, and I don't write for views. Never have. But here's what I didn't say to him. The truth is — I did want to write about Father's Day. I sat down to, more than once. And I couldn't. Not because I had nothing to say, but because I don't actually know what a father's emotion feels like. I have never, in my whole life, seen my father emote to me. Not once. No "I'm proud of you," no tears, no open arms — just a quiet man and a quieter love I had to learn to read between the lines....