The Cosmic Scribbles

  Dear Sadness, My old friend. It’s been a while. How are you? I remember when you had found a comfortable home in my chest for two years. I remember how we both shared a sweet melancholy – me violently pushing you away and you pulling me back even harder. I remember the muffled cries, the heavy heart, and the all-consuming hollowness that you brought with yourself. I remember the long walks we took into nothingness with the company of sad songs. Sad songs that pierced my heart even further as all my facades dropped. I remember the haven of isolation and hopelessness that you made inside me. I remember all those nights you embraced me with your darkness. And I remember trying to fight you, with all my might, until I couldn’t anymore, and I gave up and you drowned me whole. As you solidified a place in my heart, I started believing that this is how the rest of my life will look like. But things changed between us, didn’t they? Once I stopped fighting and instead started treati...

You have to be intentional about your life. You have to get out of your bed and open the curtains to let the sunshine in. You have to pick up the phone and tell people you love them. You have to challenge your body to see its incredible potential. You have to sit with your thoughts to notice how your mind works in beautiful ways. You have to take the hard paths that lead you to beautiful destinations. You have to water your plants to be astounded by the blooming flowers.  You have to wear clothes you feel good in and appreciate the person you see in the mirror. You have to decrease your screen time and increase your sun time. You have to be generous with compliments and vocal about your feelings. You have to walk, step after step, through unknown territories, through uncomfortable patches to discover the beauty of being alive.  You have to laugh louder, smile wider, hug longer. You have to allow people in and give them the opportunity to love you. You have to be your favorite ...

Self-love is not about loving your best self. It is very little about loving yourself at your ideal weight, with a fulfilling job, a beautifully curated life and a happy relationship. It is more about loving the parts of you that you have been running away from. The parts of you that you hide, the corners that are too dark to peep into. Its about the day you failed in school, or when a teacher humiliated you in front of your batch, its the trauma of an abusive childhood, or the hurt of giving up your true passion, its about the day you found out you were being cheated on, or the days you cried because of bullies, its your first unrequited love or the day you lost a loved one to death. It’s about digging deep and finding these parts, the parts that if ignored become such a deeply rooted wound that corrodes us from within. It’s about facing them, accepting them, embracing them and loving them. It’s about setting high standards of yourself and holding yourself accountable first. Our id...

In the 25 years of existence, we’ve been a lot of people. We’ve been an under-confident kid in school, and we’ve been the popular girl in college. Sometimes we’ve been the shy girl who sits alone for lunch, and we’ve been the life of the party. We’ve spent months in isolation after a break up, and then we’ve spent 6 months of non-stop travel. We’ve been students, and we’ve been mentors. We’ve been fit and we’ve been unhealthy. We’ve been happy and we’ve been sad. We’ve been a part of communities and we’ve also been lonely. We’ve been careless and we’ve been responsible. Boring and we’ve been entertaining. We’ve rested, we’ve laughed, we’ve loved, we’ve lost, we’ve grieved, we’ve moved on. We’ve seen ups and downs and lefts and rights and somehow managed to power through this topsy turvy journey of life. It’s impossible to encapsulate the versions of us we’ve put into the world in the limited life we’ve lived. But it’s heartening to look back, isn’t it? It’s easy to be proud of the prog...

  ‘Life is the sum of the stories you can tell.’ I have truly believed and embodied this as a life goal: to be a storyteller, an explorer, a curious mind, and a wandering soul. To fulfill this, I have chased experiences, made 100s of friends, travelled to numerous places, seen endless documentaries, read 1000s of books and spent a quarter of my life trying to hear, see, observe, and know stories that make this world as unique as it is. While this rollercoaster has been truly exciting and has elevated my life, there was one little story that I missed discovering. This story is more important than any I have ever known. This story is one I live with every day. The story I sleep to and the one I wake up with. The story that I seek in discomfort and the story that makes me smile when I’m upset. The story that is being written for the past 26 years, within me, within my mind, my body, and my heart. The story of my life, my habits, my beliefs, my fears, my triggers, my insecurities, ...

If we get a chance to go back to the night we met, would you want to do it all over again? Because I think I would. I would hold your hand a little longer. I would let the alarm ring while you were wrapped around my arms. I would stare a whole lot more while you sang. I would steal a few more comforting glances and smiles. I would stay on the call a whole lot longer. I wouldn’t let sleep or time or circumstances spoil a beautiful moment. I would hold my tongue when I was angry, and I would love you a little harder even when I hated you. I would have asked for more sunrises, sunsets and long drives. I would have heard all the playlists you made and let you read all the letters I wrote you but never sent. I would take the whole wide world and move it to spend a day with you. Would you do the same if you met me for the first time again? Or would you rather turn away and leave?