अन्तर्मुख

“How does she look?” asked his friends. This is never meant to answer with honesty. You get to lie about that. Because no matter how she looks they are going to make fun of her and one might not have the appetite for that. “Square face, small forehead, eyes and teeth like a rabbit, straight nose, small ears like a kid, and with all this she looks full of life and excited about life all the time.” He thought but didn’t say a word, because he knew what would happen. “Man, say it. How does she look ?” another friend asked. “Just like another girl. Just that her eyes and teeth are like a rabbit.” He said. “Oh, rabbit means bunny. that’s a nice name.” friends joked and all laughed at the same time. He too smiled while thinking of her. Time flies. The family welcomed Radha as their daughter. Her excitement about marriage was on another level. Be it an invitation card or food menu or decoration of the ...

A few months back, I came across a  YouTube short  of  Slavoj Žižek . I don’t watch reels or shorts as it’s a rabbit hole. Once you’re in, getting out is hard. That reel was a part of his interview and had a story.  Žižek  is a Slovenian philosopher. A girl came to  Žižek  and told him that when his last lover saw her naked, he told her to lose a few extra pounds. Her lover thinks she will be perfect once she loses 3 -4 extra pounds.  Žižek  told her not to lose that extra pound. He said that imperfection is the cause of desire. This imperfection held him close to her. He might lose interest in her once she loses those extra pounds. It is called the objective cause of desire in psychoanalysis. That brought two things to my mind. First, we are humans and naturally wired to find negatives anywhere. It is just simple threat protection mechanism. So if the girl secrets the extra pound, his partner’s eyes would the...

Masan was the first movie they saw together. Then they decided to visit Kashi someday. After visiting all the temples in this magical city, they fell in love with this. They would go to a place, stay there for a few hours to absorb the vibes of the place and go to next. Now the only place that was left was Ghats for which Banaras is known. Something changed in them after visiting that place, especially Shivanshu. He could see all his vulnerabilities through his eyes and was having anxiety now. They spent more time in Ghats compared to spending in other places. Vulnerabilities are valuable. We realize that very late. A vulnerability has a cost attached to it. Each time you are exposed your value reduces so one has to be careful about that. Perhaps there is nothing more valuable than life for us. We realize its true value when we see death for the first time. That is what happened with them in Kashi Ghats. Now Kashi was the keyword for them. Anyone can ask to meet in Kashi but anothe...

First of all, India won Thomas Cup for the first time a few hours ago. Congratulations to all of you on this historic day. As a child, whenever I saw, heard or observed a father scolding his well-grown adult son, The first thought in my mind was that how could he not listen to his father. The son should always do what his father says. Some of you might have thought the same. That is what is taught to us while growing up in society. Isn’t it? But wait. It’s not how it looks. Now, if you think that My father and I had some fight, and I’m trying to justify that from my end by writing a blog, you are wrong, my friend. Just bear with me for a few minutes, and you’ll get what I want to say. The father is often the leader in some sense in almost every household. That’s why feminists call it patriarchy and emphasis abolishing it. But I don’t want to talk about that right now as this will defeat the purpose of whatever importance I think I have for...

The thing you need most is always to be found where you least want to look. I’ve been writing for a bit long now. I think my process to write is a little different from my friends who write. I let my thoughts go on and on, I let them evolve and counter them almost everything I can get my hands on, and then I just need the laptop or my notebook to write with the flow. For an overthinker, it is easy and takes comparatively less time to think. But yes, I can think. Knowing that ‘I can think’ is a different kind of fulfilment in itself. No matter what I write, It’s a story in some sense. If I write poetry, it is a story in some sense. I might be abstract but it’s a story and if you go through any of my poetry you can find one. Stories are important to me. Though it’s hard to get true meaning behind them. This can be subjective. Most of the time we are explained what a story should mean to us and we don’t rethink it. Its meaning might change...

A letter from 27 years old me to 25 years old me about.. marriage. I was in Gurgaon with a college senior who is also one of my best friend, Vikas Saini. We were talking about marriages. We tried to cover all the possible aspects for us to think about and tried to know why there is a problem. In the end, Vikas sir asked me how old I was. I answered 24 and a half, will be 25 in a couple of months. Then Vikas sir won the discussion by saying, “Joshi Ji, you are 25, and I’m 27 and believe me that a 27-year-old thinks a lot different than 25.” Later he told me that he used to think as I did at 25 but for some reason, it changes over the years. The very first question was why should one get married? There are many benefits to that if you come to think of them. First, there is peace of mind. Then it’s costly to live alone. Society functions in groups. Things are cheaper per head if there are more people. Akin to any distribution curve, there is a peak in a...

It was the title of my Business Management course presentation during 3rd year of college. It focused on how schools and society, together, are killing creativity. I just had a thought that the most common hobby among kids is to “Dance”. Why? Probably because parents don’t [want to] spend on other hobbies much. Kids can learn to dance on television, and they don’t have to go outside for that. Parents being overprotective is not better for kids, and the impact is not yet clearly visible to many people. Kids compelled to grow in a particular predetermined environment can’t blossom as much as they can in a free atmosphere. The positives and negatives of this are known to almost everyone thus it doesn’t need any explanation. The thing is what the impacts are. This constrained growth has not taught kids to accept failures. They become depress and get anxious when they fail. Kids expected to get full marks are doing well in that but they d...