your innie has a self fulfilling little life and maybe two friends

your outtie, on the other hand, is fucked. very badly. like really, lip balms at udit narayan concerts have it better than this.

aaalrighty. we will pick up right where we (or atleast I) left off. This is what happens when you slack off for the better part of a couple of years and then come back magically expecting people to still have the same kind of enthusiasm for you (I am something of a Bobby Deol myself)-

So true. He was so real for this. Honestly, gun to my head? Out of all writing that came out of this substack that week, this was possibly the best. Also most probably the most eloquent.

So until I get to the level of literary infamy where your average fans are mostly stalkers and assassins (mostly reserved for leftist journalists and Colours TV soap opera actresses, but somehow never for J.K. Rowling), I have to contend with this cute little BKL. Like a little linguistic turd born in Gurgaon gutters out of spite and lazy Haryanvi colloquialism fuelled by Royal Stag and whatever new Fortuner model they just rolled out. It’s not that deep actually, but I made it. Word count aise hi bharna padta hai bkl. See, again? That word is like condescending but also weirdly welcoming. Like a side hug from the office H.R. You think it’s well meaning and friendly, but the way it ends just makes you feel like a “quick call before we start our work on Monday” is just around the corner. Like if you ran into BKL on the road you would genuinely smile at them but maybe not necessarily eat any chocolates they offered. Like a wannabe frat podcast bro that you know needs defense for his right to free speech but also on a deeper level just really deserves to burn in hell (or worse) for the years of bootlicking and yes-manning he did for his fascist overlords who pimped him out to peddle their propaganda and lather their lies until he was milked so dry of all likes and views and other inconsequent metrics that the only thing left to be done was to hang his cancelled corpse out to dry so that every other equally wannabe pimp knows that they better get on their knees and wag their tongue before the whip is cracked.

Omg that’s like, so slaaaaaay, right?

So in case it hasn’t been obvious yet- I’m sort of having a meh day. It’s middle of the week, I’m trying to work, and the new Severance episode is not getting any closer. There is something so devilish about slow Wednesday afternoons when you’re employed because the lethargy comes at you faster than Rajkummar Rao at scripts set exclusively in North Indian small towns and laced with social satire around a taboo we forgot about twelve years ago- it is tempting, weirdly seductive, and will most likely set you on a path of eventual financial ruin. So now it is your struggle to fight the goddamn sleep. Men used to go to wars, now they fight nini time on company dime. That makes no sense, but writing is lonely and sometimes an off tune rhyme is the only thing standing between your sanity and this turning into a twenty thousand word dissertation about how Anora was really boring and I will genuinely break things (only the insured ones) if it wins Best Picture over Conclave in two days. I actually typed treatise in the last sentence but I replaced it with dissertation at the last moment because like any self respecting writer I don’t really respect my audience. Did I have to google the word twice to make sure I was sure about the number of S’s in it? Hell yeah. But that’s besides the point.

Coming back to the, well, point. So this day is drowning me into a half baked existential crisis when I snap, get out of my chair, and then (no surprises here, sadly) fall face first into my bed for a fifteen minute nap that will twist my chakras and fix my crippling need for external validation and maybe give my stuttering internal monologue a moment’s shut the fuck up. My eyes begin to shutter down and I’m almost there- there is a lightness around me and my brain is quiet for some reason. The shuteye is doing wonders as I slowly cease to remember where I am, for now my conscience is floating in a sea of disposable slumber broadcast commercials like those incomplete ads they run between two overs of the Champions Trophy (cricket is expensive when everyone is happy to stay and play in Lahore but that one mfkin rich kid wants a bed and breakfast in Dubai for fuckall ego reasons), and I’m almost at peace. And then the snooze bubble is burst by a shrill spear of ear fucking hydrochloric acid laced acoustic bullet known as the iOS default ringtone. The eyes jolt open as I realise it’s someone from work, calling for a minuscule thing that would literally take 30s of my time and should’ve probably been done sooner by me, but I get mad anyway. How dare they expect me to carry out my bare minimum work obligations, that too during work hours? Preposterous or something idk I ran out of wrods. So I do the thing, but now my sleep is gone. So annoyed the fuck out of my mind (for no one’s fault by mine own), I take a stroll down my phone gallery to revisit my weekend from last, uh well, weekend. I’ve been obsessed with this one rapper since the end of last year and a week ago I finally got to see him live. As I replay the shoddily shot, involuntarily imposed dutch angle footage, there’s a little dopamine explosion in my brain. Like a little serotonin IED going off at the wrong time. Like a small dynamite stick of- yeah well okay yall get the image. The videos make me happy. I play that little snippet of a song over and over again, and it does something to me. I could just listen to it normally and it should ideally be much better, less fried and sounding like it’s not coming from three floors above. But no. This, somehow, some way, feels better. So much better, so close to… dare I say… comfort. And that’s when I finally get it- documentation fucking slaps man. Recording stuff, clicking things, just the stupid throwaway act of rapidly pressing a tactile little button in some misplaced sense of desperation to trap time- is really goddamn sweet. It matters, and it makes things matter. Going down the memory lane is a slippery slope (down, slope, see what I did there?? sigh.) but it is so essential to just having a past of any kind. I can’t believe how long it took me to really just document simple, odd, fuckin nothing seeming moments. Because it, like any other habit, compounds over time. At the risk of sounding like another frat podcast bro right now, the compounding is helpful. One stupid day you stop and look back and suddenly you have a kaleidoscope of the last four years worth of joy and sadness and just life that is now distilled into one annoying as fuck iPhone Storage Full notification that forces you to uninstall google fuckin maps just so the 5923th sleepover can be “memorable”. But it’s worth it. Be it the extra second lost when you divert your eyes from the last two surviving pangolins in the Sahara desert just so you can slap the Cairo filter over your story, or the odd seven figures you eventually end up splurging annually on iCloud- in the end, it’s all worth it. Because the next time when life seems like just another endless cycle of Wednesday afternoons, annoying nasal tone mein gyaan chodne wale influencers and that one Slack notification that refuses to go away, you’ll always have your Memories. And by Memories™, I mean that one video collage of horrendous, constipated, ass boil infested life moments that your phone always decides to show you at the right fuckin moment.

Oof. Anyways, I think that’s all for this week. Thanks for reading. And if you still managed to stay till here (or if you scrolled all the way to the last paragraph because fuck rules- I’m not judging), uhh, maybe, you’d like, kinda, sorta, lowkey want to share this or something? YUUUUCCK. The ask itself gives me the ick. I hate to do it. I would never ask you to copy 23 mismatched characters to your clipboard and embed them in another text box. Absolute calamity.

But also, here’s the thing. I haven’t really been promoting this thing anywhere since a while- in some way I still feel a lil bit of sharam for repeatedly saying that I’d be consistent with this, and then just not doing that. So for the last few pieces, I’ve just written these, and sent them out to your inboxes. No stories, no tweets, no fighting overprotective Marwari moms for ad spaces in the Mumbai Mirror matrimonial section. And I still don’t know if I will, with this one. So all I’m saying is, that if there’s a far fuckin fetched chance that you liked this (ew, virgin), maybe send it to a friend and ruin their day. Or maybe to your extended sanghi family whatsapp group (if those people can read, that is). Or the office Slack channel. idk man. No pressure if not.

Because also, at some level I know I’m not doing this for the feedback, because god knows I would’ve listened to it then. And validation - of any kind- is a monstrous bastard. At its most aspirational, that thing is like opposition parties before 2014- warm, approachable, and almost trustworthy. Until you get too close and the air starts smelling of chloroform and that really cozy couch you wanted to take a mid work nap on suddenly starts looking a lot like the backseat of a Maruti Omni.

So, I don’t really know. But I like to do this. So I’ll let it be, at that. See yall next week, and I hope March is kinder to you, because this summer will not. Cheers.