AMEETHYST

That old man is alive and kicking in living rooms, at dining tables, in family WhatsApp groups where people send “ Good Morning ” flowers and emotionally blackmail them in the same breath. Shakespeare wrote the story in the 1600s. Four hundred years ago. Imagine that. No WiFi. No motivational podcasts. Yet he somehow understood Indian families in 2026 better than most of us understand ourselves. For those who do not know who the hell King Lear is, here’s a short recap.  An aging king decides he wants to retire in style. So he asks his three daughters to publicly declare how much they love him. Whoever flattered him best got the biggest piece of the kingdom. Goneril and Regan go full drama. Poetry. Buttering. Corocodile Tears. Cordelia refuses to perform. She says she loves him as a daughter should. No fireworks. No fuss. Lear gets offended. Throws out the only honest child. Rewards the performers. Chaos follows. Obviously. Now tell me this doesn’t sound familiar. Generatio...

Every time someone in my circle says, “ I am not a writer like you, ” I want to check behind me to see which award-winning novelist they’re talking to. Because it can’t be me. Friends say it with such respect that I feel like I have been felicitated with a shawl and a fountain pen, by the President of India. Colleagues say it like I have a secret room where I manufacture metaphors in bulk. And people who barely know me look at my sentences the way villagers must have looked at the first drone, thinking “ What creature is this? ” Relax. I am not a peacock in a crow universe. I am, at best, an okay-ish writer . The kind you clap for reluctantly. The kind who Googles spellings and still gets them wrong. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Nothing to frame on the wall either. When someone tells me, “ I am not a writer like you, ” I try to act wise. I nod. I smile. I say, “ Please don’t be. You can be better. ” This is not false modesty. This is fair advice. Because if you ever climbed into my...

That’s what my brain tells me every time I meet someone new.   I don’t know if it’s a blessing or some weird defect. Every time I meet someone, my brain doesn’t say “ nice to meet you. ” It says, “ Hmm. What can we do with this one? ” I don’t see people normally. I see material. Plot twists. Character flaws wrapped in good perfumes. And I swear it’s not fully in my control. I can be warm, smiling, offering snacks, being a decent human. Inside, my mind is already outlining Chapter 4: The Family WhatsApp Meltdown. My wife knows this disease. Before introducing me to her friends, she gives me a safety briefing. “ Please don’t write anything stupid about them. They all follow you. ” I tell her very respectfully, “ Ask them not to behave stupid around me. I’ll cooperate. ” She doesn’t laugh. I think that’s unfair. It’s not always about unresolved childhood trauma, okay. Yes yes, a little bit is there. We all have some masala. But sometimes I just want material. Sometimes...

I have a theory. Old Indian cinema raised us to believe that parents were above scrutiny. That family was sacred. That obedience was love. That if something hurt, you adjusted. You endured. You waited for the emotional background music to fix it. Then those children grew up. They became writers, filmmakers, storytellers. And suddenly the script changed. It stopped saying, “ Parents are always right. ” It started asking, “ But what if they’re not? ”  For decades, mainstream films worshipped hierarchy. Look at Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham . 4 A father disowns his son for marrying someone “ beneath ” his status. The emotional weight of the story never truly questions the father’s ego. The son leaves. The son suffers. The son longs. The climax is not accountability. The climax is reunion. The message was subtle but clear. Disobedience disrupts harmony. Return restores it. Then came Baghban . 4 Here, the children were the villains. Ungrateful. Selfish. The parents were pure sacrifice...

Staying happily married when so many around you are divorced, or quietly unhappy, is not some heroic achievement. It is work. It is daily. It is ordinary. And maybe that is why it matters. People say love never fades. I don’t know about that. I think it fades and returns and fades again. What keeps it alive is not intensity. It is choice. Choosing the same person on days when nothing dramatic is happening. Choosing them when you are irritated. Choosing them when you are bored. That is less poetic, but more honest. I’ve noticed something about how we talk about marriage. Many men I know keep it brief. “All good?” “Yeah, all good.”  End of discussion. Many women I know go deeper. They process. They share details. They compare notes. This is not a rule. Just a pattern I’ve seen. Some people speak to understand their lives. Some stay silent to protect them. Neither is superior. But the gap in communication does shape marriages quietly. What I have come to believe is this: the secret...

My Playlist Needs Therapy. And So Do I. If you ever unlock my phone and open my playlist, please sit down first. Hydrate. Inform your family. Because what you’re about to witness is not a playlist. It’s a psychological documentary on Vicarious Trauma. It starts sweet. Soft. Harmless. You meet the hopeless romantic version of me. The one who believes eye contact in a grocery store is destiny. There’s Amit Trivedi playing in the background like life is an indie film shot in golden hour. When Chai Met Toast telling me everything will be okay. Prateek Kuhad gently breaking my heart for sport. AP Dhillon making me feel like I just survived a situationship. Then Sonu Nigam and Sanjith Hegde show up and suddenly I am staring out of a window like I own property in Manali. The lyrics whisper, you matter. You are loved.  Meanwhile, my bank account whispers, behave . Before you recover from that emotional spa session, shuffle hits hard. Now I’m a 40-year-old philosopher balancing...

A son’s home. Sounds warm. Sounds welcoming. Mine is a budget lodge. My parents don’t come to see me. Not their grandson. Not without bribes. Toys, sweets... Not even scraps for their daughter-in-law. She's invisible furniture. But their neighbour’s sister’s family doctor’s son’s wife's best friend's cousin brother's uncle's daughter delivered a baby in Pune... so suddenly our address becomes a prime location. Their car rolls straight into my parking spot. It sleeps better than my family does. Months pass. I park my bike like a thief in the common parking while their metal ego sleeps peacefully under my roof.   Then one day, they suddenly disappear. No bonding with us. Not even pretending. They go on a tour to meet relatives who never bothered to ask if we were alive. We are just the storage room between their social visits. Free security. Free electricity.  A free Airbnb with emotional taxes. Sometimes they pay rent in milk and curds. Grocery bags dumped like ...

My son has entered the “WHY” phase. The one where every word, every action, every ritual is met with a relentless question. And with every “ Why, Baba? ” he asks, I find myself questioning my own existence. I suppose all fathers go through this. Once, I was the child in his shoes, throwing the same relentless “ whys ” at my father. My father, a man of deep-rooted traditions, spent hours in the pooja room, lost in rituals I barely understood. I’d ask him why. Sometimes, I'd get silence. Sometimes, a vague explanation. Most times, just a rabid response saying, " Don't ask stupid questions. Get lost. " Maybe he did it because he believed in it. Maybe he did it for us, to keep our lives safe, prosperous and blessed. But as a child, answers didn’t matter as much as the curiosity itself. And as I grew, the questions faded. Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking. But life has a way of circling back. Now, the roles have reversed. My son questions things I never even though...

I don’t remember a single journey that didn’t leave a mark on me. Some memories still make me smile like an idiot. Most of them sit heavy in my chest and refuse to leave. Railway stations never meant adventure to me. While everyone ran for seats before the train decided to zoom away, I ran to that quiet little Higgins Bothams stall tucked in the corner. I would scan the shelves like a man looking for oxygen. I looked for one name. Always the same. Khushwant Singh. I didn't read his novels though. I should be ashamed. I was more into his " Joke Books " that played a huge role in shaping my personality. His words were loud, shameless, unapologetic. I was not buying his joke books. I was buying time away from my own thoughts. I was trying to stay afloat without anyone noticing I was drowning. Humor was never a cute personality trait. It was survival. It was the only thing that kept me from breaking in public. I came from a family that never raised a hand on me ( well, so...

TRIGGER WARNING! If you are fragile, fake, or still worshipping toxic loyalty like it’s a religion, close this right now and go sip your denial tea. This is not for the faint hearted or the fake hearted. Some conversations rot inside you. They sit there like unpaid debts. You keep living, smiling, showing up at birthdays and festivals while pieces of you die a gruesome death. One day you look back and realize there are a hundred dead versions of you buried under years of silence.  That was me. The certified Momma’s Boy. The obedient son. The good little puppet. Until I got married. Then suddenly I was Public Enemy No.1. The looks changed first. Cold. Measured. Like I had betrayed some secret cult. My wife and I still feel like guests in my house where my parents live. Ten years later and we are outsiders. Yes WE. Because they threw me out emotionally the moment I stopped crawling back for approval. Only son? My foot. They have an elder daughter who is treated like the golden chil...

I used to hate travelling when I was a kid. Not because trains were boring or new cities felt scary. Those parts were fun actually. The problem was always the same. Every trip meant leaving her behind at home. And that felt like betrayal. Her name was Sandhya. Yes, weird name for a cat. People laughed when they heard it. Some assumed she was named after a distant aunt or one of my mom’s strict school friends. Truth is way simpler and way more random.  She earned that name. Our house had these tiny corners where sunlight barely reached. She would disappear into them like a spy on a secret mission. In North Karnataka Kannada, a corner is called Sandhi . So, Sandhya it became. The cat of corners. Ruler of weird hidden spaces. Tiny domestic ninja. We were a proper Brahmin household. Still are. Which meant routines were sacred. I’d come back from school half tired half hungry. Bag thrown dramatically on the sofa. Shoes, somewhere they didn’t belong. Then the best part. Opening a packet ...

Year: 1998 I was a bubbly, skinny schoolboy with a newfound love for poetry. No one in my family had ever penned a single verse, except for my melodramatic grandmother , whose wildly outrageous tales defied logic. Some were laced with divine interventions, like the one where Goddess Marikamba took the form of a pig to swallow the poison my parents had allegedly served her while she lay bedridden with a fractured leg. Then there was the unforgettable exchange between my two deaf and tone-deaf grandmothers: Naani: "It's so cold today." Daadi: :No, no, no. I had my breakfast. Your daughter served burnt dosas." I grew up among such endearing eccentricities. Yet, there wasn’t a single poetry enthusiast in sight. So, who or what inspired me? Despite having in-house storytellers, their exaggerated tales failed to captivate me. But what I did learn from those enthusiastic 70-and 80-year-olds was that one could fall in love with words... deeply, irreversibly. The first poem I...

This one's from the treasure chest of my childhood memories. I don’t remember when I first fell in love with Rasam. All I know is, my mother used to make the best rasam in the entire universe. As a child, I was less of a son and more of a permanent kitchen intern. Wherever my mother went, I followed... like a loyal pup with big eyes and a runny nose, sniffing for spices. The moment she’d begin tempering, that magical sizzle of mustard seeds hitting hot oil, I’d start salivating like a dog, tongue half out, eyes full of hope, stomach already celebrating. Rice would be spread on my plate like a sacred offering. And then, the moment of truth... I’d look up at her with all the drama of a Kannada film hero and say, “ Amma… pour it all. ” And oh, when she did... my God. The first sip was a symphony. Tangy tomatoes, fiery chilli powder, that subtle hint of jeera and garlic (sometimes with no garlic, because my father didn't like it)… each flavour fighting for first place on my tongue....

No one tells you when the world decides you’re expendable. There’s no announcement. No WhatsApp status update. Just a slow withdrawal of grace.  You wake up one day and realise everyone is disappointed in you, for different reasons, all of them unfair. Your wife resents you for not standing beside her when her world was collapsing, even though you were buried under your own wreckage, choking on responsibilities you never asked for. Your mother grieves the boy who once needed her. You grew up. You grew away. And now your independence feels like betrayal. Your father despises your concern. You tell him to rest, to slow down, to stay in. But he doesn’t hear love, he hears weakness. He wants movement, noise, proof that he still matters. Not a chair by the window. Your son doesn’t know yet. But one day he will. That you missed his toy stories, his breathless “ Look, Baba! ” moments, not out of indifference, but because your head was crowded with bills, broken promises and a hollow ache ...