Native Human Experience

Delhi-Gurgaon commute, in its truest sense, demands patience. A test of endurance, an exercise in shared suffering. You sit, you wait, you form a silent kinship with fellow travelers who have been with you for the last three kilometers and thirty minutes – same cars, same exhausted faces, same dull acceptance of fate. The only…

Dungeons & Dragons seem like the nerdy wetdream resonant of living a life not yours, completing adventures you wouldn’t dare embark on, swinging swords and dicks in equal measure – a Tolkien fan fiction wrapped in math homework. It’s the kind of thing I imagined being whispered about in high school lunches between kids who…

As Creedence Clearwater Revival tells me to run through the jungle, I carve a path through this concrete one. It rained a few hours back; the cold wind tickles my face as my shoes catch the grime and splashes of a post-rain Mumbai. Perhaps Pheidippides, in his legendary marathon, had his own puddles to contend…

Another trip ‘around the sun. Another year spent juicing the last drops from the overworked well of dopamine. I have been down with fatigue and headaches the past couple of days, as my body tires of another cycle of indulgence. The screen, work, booze, smoke, exercise—all rejected, all impossible—so I sit in bed, unmade, much…

Horns are going off competitively, each car trying to outdo the other in pitch and persistence—some sharp and abrupt, others drawn-out and wailing, creating a symphony so chaotic you have no choice but to wake up. I live on the third floor above a restaurant on a commercial street in Bangalore, alarms are for people…