Posts from the relationships category.
There is a particular kind of love that looks beautiful from a distance.Someone waits.Someone remembers.Someone notices everything.Someone keeps showing up.And because they ask for nothing, we assume their love must be deeper.The Unsaid made me question that assumption.Kartikeya Dhar places Kabir Sharma in Shimla in 2003, a schoolboy with an unusual ability to notice what others miss. He sees unha...
We call someone a stranger when we know nothing about them.But perhaps the more accurate definition is this:A stranger is someone whose story we haven’t heard yet.Jay Divyam’s None of Us Are Strangers begins with a little girl, an absent mother and a man who never intended to become responsible for either of them.Veer Mehra is at a Mumbai party when a woman asks him to look after her daughter, Aar...
What if having it all is not about getting everything?What does it actually mean to have it all?More money? A successful career? A happy family? Good health? Inner peace? Meaningful relationships? Freedom from regret?We tend to imagine these things as items on a checklist. The more boxes we tick, the closer we are to a great life.Gaur Gopal Das’s You Can Have It All made me question that definitio...
There are some books you finish.And there are some books you escape from.Not Without My Daughter belongs to the second category.Because while reading Betty Mahmoody’s account, I kept thinking about one frightening question:What happens when the person you trusted most becomes the person you have to protect your child from?Betty travels from America to Iran with her Iranian-American husband, Moody,...
There is a particular kind of guilt that doesn’t arrive with an accusation.It arrives disguised as concern.“Are you eating too much?”“You should lose some weight.”“You’re getting too ambitious.”“Don’t you think you should spend more time with the family?”“Why are you so sensitive?”And because the person saying it is often an aunt, a parent, a colleague, a friend — or simply someone who believes th...
There is something almost irresistible about a young person who refuses to give up on a dream everyone else considers unrealistic.Especially when that dream involves Bollywood.Because Bollywood has spent decades teaching us to believe that somewhere between struggle and success, there will be a turning point. A phone call. An audition. A lucky break. A stranger who notices us. A game show with a l...
There are conversations we avoid because we don’t know what to say.And then there are conversations we avoid because we know exactly what we want to say.The second kind is often harder.We rehearse the words in our heads. We imagine how the other person might react. We worry about sounding rude, confrontational, insensitive, or simply being misunderstood.So we wait.Tomorrow becomes next week.Next w...
I pick up my phone to check the time, but put it down say 22 minutes later. I had laughed twice, maybe, learnt nothing (usually), and still did not know what the time is.If you are reading this and smiling, then you have done it too.We keep saying the kids these days can't focus. Have you looked at us? The kids at least are honest about it. We adults have a list of genuine excuses to justify it, o...
There are some questions that are asked because we don’t know the answer.And then there are questions we ask because we are afraid of what the answer might mean.Am I a Dalit? belongs to the second category.Vijhay Sundar K.G.’s novel begins in a world where caste is not an abstract idea discussed in textbooks. It is present in families, relationships, social behaviour, humiliation and the choices p...
We often imagine that the most dangerous secrets in a relationship are the ones someone tells us.Perhaps they aren’t.Perhaps the more dangerous ones are the secrets someone successfully keeps from us.That thought stayed with me while reading Anubha Gupta’s The Almost Perfect Wife. Because beneath the murder mystery, the twists and the ancestral house in Mashobra, this is really a story about somet...
