Prose before hos

Have you ever fallen ill in a foreign country? It humbles you. 

Knowing time is money and the INR isn't exactly giving the best returns at the moment— it really gives you perspective. I spent 10 solid days thinking through whether I'd go home alive, whether I'd get a chance to wear the handful of new clothes I bought over antibiotics and whether I'll get to see the next chapter of my life healthy. 

I'm scared; I've quit my job. I could do it with the muscle memory, and now along with the flu, with my depleting will to live, I've forgotten it all. The 0 period of my life did a number on me; at work today, my second last day, I was even more clueless than how I was on my first day at this job. It feels like yesterday, I was armed with notebook, pen and a million questions and oh the entitlment. Working for oneself really brings the nails out approach and I've spent four years taming through that. 

How do I feel exiting this? I guess the trip got me numb. I have no good or bad feelings, no remorse or regrets. Just lingering disdain that kicked in today, Also, so much unfamiliarity. I came back to work after a month today and saw some more (new) checkpoints, familiar juice/fruit chaat counter disappeared, new faces on the floor who do not know me and neither did we bother to familiarise with each other; it all feels remote. I guess travel does that to you. I've seen more Dharma films in the last 10 days than in my life over these years, just to feel familial comfort outside home. 

This numb typically translates to feeling hyper and feeling audacious with new cycle; I'm wondering if it'll bring anything new this time. I hope it's exciting and a fun learning curve but besides that, I'm open to all possibilities. 

Closing all books, all old chapters and hopefully old versions this time around. Going on a limb and a prayer to the new cycle of life. Wish me luck. 

July has meant some insane new things in the past— getting hooked to KUWTK, starting one college, starting second college, starting third college, starting a job, finishing a thesis, starting a job, ending one job, ending another job, getting visa. 

This time around too, it didn't disappoint. One Nolan film, one Spider-Man film and one resignation, some stories appear in patterns and we call those patterns signals in Product.

Am I excited about what comes ahead? Yes. 

Am I shitting bricks about how will I do this? Also, yes. 

Am I detaching myself from my current identity? Yes and no. 

Am I doing things to upskill? Yes.

I've a cousin whose bio says "You build it better the second time around" and while I sincerely believe she means that in context to her partner who she is now married to, I do think of this line once a day, when the belief of patterns and failure takes over. 

In 2019, I quit a job where I was comfortable, I could have lasted a life there but I decided to take a plunge. A Spider-Man film was playing when I put in my papers.

In 2026, I quit a job where I was comfortable, I could have lasted a life tehre but I decided to take a plunge. A Spider-Man film is playing now that I've put in my papers. 

Am I scared that any new thing will end up like the great disaster job of 2019? I am. Do I think I've reasonable grounds for worrying? Perhaps. Can I do anything to help it? Maybe upskill harder and call my therapist and book in a vacation? IDK. 

I'm hopeful and counting on my maturity to lead the way. I'm hopeful that patterns break and new things emerge so we can see them in a better light. 

 In so many ways June and Summer Solstice roll an early backward count. If you pay attention, and are curious, you'd see the days start getting shorter by a minute first and then a little while later by a whole hour.

This Summer, I stayed at home. The stay at home daughter. It's been a year of surprises. I surprised myself with the resilience I've shown (or shamlessness?) after being subjected to entire arguments leading to chatter about asking me to leave home. I'm still here. Heart is shut, head is shut- I'm numbing myself, one distraction, one candy at a time. I've spent afternoons watching films, night reading and days doing word games. I've learnt 0 things, unless you count new ways of selling content via Social Media; my career is deadbeat and my personal relationship chart is torn. I've been out a sum total of two times and each of those have been a disaster big enough to swear me off men. I think daddy issues coupled with dating an avoidant in the past have really outperformed this Summer. The only thing that could compete with longer hours with daylight was simply the amount of shit I dealt with. 

Last weekend was another one, for the books, but the lesser said the better. Each day, I wake up, telling myself I'm so done and so through and then someone reminds me I've taken on the family gene on anger and there's no looking back. 

But the thing is, I do not want to pay my therapist for resolving a generation's worth of trauma. Why should I be the only one to work on myself when I'm destined to be in a dysfunctional family set up, dysfunctional work set up and then expected to be better? Why should I take the onus to self improve if everyone around me has a designated role, to be at their worst behaviour. 

I'm closing a chapter that lasted four years, one with my boss, my mentor who gave me a new lease of life professionally by taking a chance on me and hiring me. With him gone, I feel like the girl who was out of a job one Friday morning, not knowing what to do and who to go to. If anyone from my family or people at work lived a day of my life and the emotional burden I'm carrying dealing with this all alone, they wouldn't last an hour. 

I'm expected to upskill, outperform and learn in adversity; most of the times getting out of bed to comb my hair is the most I can do in a system designed to overfunction without compensating for it. 

I'm okay. I'll be okay. I write that in my journal and fake myself into believing it day on day. 

Writing just doesn't feature. Which is sad and beautiful. 

Beautiful because writing is a form of mental illness, maybe I am healing. My hardcopy journal that I carry along wherever I go will say otherwise. Sad because I have lost any and all discipline to life. I should ideally force myself to read and write one page every day. Maybe I'll do when I quit my job and be unemployed. 

Do I want to be unemployed? No, I am ovulating and I thrive when I work. I hustle hard and I don't hesitate in going the extra mile. I am tooting my own horn but it's my page and not a talent council meeting where people will decide my worth. This year I'm told I'm soft and I've started listening; they couldn't capture the checked out, they took my silence for change. Cute. 

Maybe I am silent. I've not said much here. Tonight, at 3:05 AM I've forced myself to write. To acknowledge that I don't feel the dark cloud I felt the last three years. 2023-2025 were tough, I was a person who I liked and disliked in equal measure. I am not sure if I like the version I am today but I definitely don't hate her. That's a change, a promising change. 

It hurts that when I think of sentences, I mockingly think through how GPT or Gemini would frame. Maybe this is the real crises. Maybe doomscrolling has brought me to a point where I cannot impress anyone, not even myself. 

I am not being hard on myself. Contrary to popular belief, I've been fucking soft on myself. A little too soft. I am finally understanding the balance to strike, not that I've done it, but trying to be there has been interesting. 

Things have changed in the last 19 years. I would celebrate this day and now I barely even write. Is it that it was talked about and performative and now that I don't surround myself with new people. I don't feel it a reason enough to talk about things? 

There's not a lot of new experiences left, in the circumstances life has allowed for me to explore. Sure, a photo-booth at work for new professional headshots is good but can it really compare to brining an air fryer and marinated herbed potatoes for fried wedges? I think not. I feel all cool things have happened and I'm in a downward slope. 

Strangely, I've never been more optimistic about mediocrity than I am today. I enjoy giving 4 stars to average films on Letterboxd and then don't understand when a film averages 4.2 that what was so 4.2 about that?

Weirdly, the passion I felt for writing changed and transformed into passion for walking. It doesn't come easy and I lose my breath but god I enjoy the sights and smells in a 2.4 km trail at Lodhi Garden. It's the only thing that kept me sane last year. Delhi has been getting harder to live in with each month and the surprises it brings so I haven't been there in a while but I wish I could incorporate that in my day to day this year the way I did it last year. 

Flexibility, comfort, convenience are all things of past at work and increasingly I feel choked at work, like I have no agency and whatever is left is sucked out of my veins on a daily basis. Taking everything from a person except their agency. 

I want to commit back to this page and my writing but I'm in my slut situationship era and the only thing I am actively doing is shooting reels with little or no planning or thought and just having fun; raw, rugged and doing for the sake of doing. The way I once was handling this page. 

I don't think I'll stick to doing videos for 19 years but it's surely fun to imagine- what if? 

This page will always be special to me. You, dear reader, may not hold the same place but the fact that I can come back to something I've made my own is a fact that nobody can change, not even my lack of motivation to do something better with my life. 

If you're here still, thank you for staying with me. If you're new here, I'm sorry- why even? If you're gone, I wish you never showed up. 

Next year this page will be 20, officlally not a teen, but a grown adult page. I will be 36, officially past my mid-30s. It'll be a huge shift, hopefully I'll talk about better things than my ex and shitty job in that part of my life. 

Here's to turning old together. 

The cool kids call it "locked in," I call it discipline. 

Which means, there's a bedtime; ironic that I am breaking it to write this. There's a regime; certain amount of work, extra work and surround work needs to go in the day. 

There are rewards; micro-luxuries, Uniqlo outfits, jewellery 

Heartbreak too, knowing I'm on a backward count cause life now wants to close this chapter and I should honour that ask in a way that I feel good about it. I need to save, for I don't know what's next and when's next but all I know is that this chapter was messy, confusing, and fun; I learnt a lot but it's time to go big and before that, go home. 

I am doing everything in my capacity to recuperate. Some days it looks like eating for a family of three, on other it looks like watching 8 hours of uninterrupted Office re-runs; all while being employed. The crash? Also, because of employment. 

I wish I knew that cutting alcohol and decentering men wouldn't mean drama ends. It only means the subject of drama shifts to areas where I like my life relatively drama free. 

Enough thoughts for a while. Might go back to drinking who knows. 

To mark one year without you, I snagged a job offer at over 100% increment on my salary, met the girls closest to me, and bought myself the most beautiful Diamond bracelet that I could afford. 

All because you told me that you didn't think this was it. For nearly a year, we negotiated our terms, and couldn't come to a conclusion we both liked. It had to end one Wednesday morning for you and it had to end one Thursday evening for me. It's been a year of turmoil and pain. 

Now imagine if you had thought this was going to be it. Just imagine what we'd do and what I'd be capable of doing.