When you first told this story to me, it made me sick. It still does, a bit, but the motif you have added to it helps. I love how the drowsiness of sitting in class seems to fade back into 6th grade (clearly inspired by reality) and the whole MDP bit (I knew you'd write about it when you first told me about the prof saying this in class). The voice you have adopted here fits perfectly with a student trying his utmost to not sleep in class, only to give in at the end, and there's a strangeness to it that I cannot place, which makes the piece so good. Reading all of this feels like a surreal version of Wallflower coupled with better writing and stronger motifs. I don't really know what else to say here, because I hate this story as much as I love your writing. Well done, great job and for the love of all your grades, stop sleeping in class (it is also an honor to be surrounded by so many good writers nowadays).
this is going to be a huge rant, so, maybe please bear with me like always. there are so many, too many layers in this, that when I first read it, it felt overwhelmingly raw and literally made me sick to my heart. like all your other pieces, it started with this nonchalant dude trying to recollect one his days but what's a great inculcated element was this drowsiness. i know you have douched this story with greek mythology references, and i cannot help but think of this drowsiness as related to Bacchus. you know, that effeminate being who first appeared in a ship and the sailors there made explicit comments on their preferred sexual transgression, almost mirroring your bullies. this almost felt like a dramatic irony that eventually sets the entire theme of this piece alive.
i kept eventually pondering on why the professor particularly called panda. like, why panda of all? they are the cuddliest, stupidest and adorably dumb animals to ever exist in the wild (im hesitant to use to word naive), then i tried to reason out that maybe it has to do with the fact that there was this huge bay of ignorance that separates the students and the teachers in the post modern word ("classroom represents an atom, mostly empty"). there were continuous mentions of how "detached" they were from everything, disinfectant classrooms, professor condemning insomnia, making a light comment on how death is preferred over pursuing greatest academic honourific: how the only way to know to escape this "indifferent horizon" is to be particularly agreeable to death and decay.
the next is the depiction of nostalgia. unlike what's commonly believed, nostalgia is presented as an "insurance", a compensation, like a deliberate ghost that is bound to come and haunt. this nostalgia isn't just sitting back and reminiscing the days, it comes with this sharp clarity that reveals the truth: truth as something that can only be attained after "introspection." hence, this nostalgia is only derived not just through retrospective ease but through thorough cross-examination of self. and it is through this "inspection" that one comes to this conclusion that childhood was a site of decay and death, like something "euthanised," while adulthood is a destination of clarity, precision and sincerity.
to me, this entire piece is a memoir on identity. all (children) characters seem to exhibit their sense of self through outward sources, as children should: learning through imitation. this is also where the narrator is set apart from the rest. while characters like Manav, who learnt drinking because his father drinks ("cheap bottles of liquor"), Maaz is aggressive because his father is (hinted), Gauransh's calmness or passiveness can be a mirror to his namesake (Gauri). the narrator (meticulously unnamed) is seen to filter out the bad through introspection, and it is through this filter that he learns to gain his consciousness or sense of morality. growing up, to the narrator is like a practice, a performance of precise use of logic, exercising atheism to counter helplessness: something he goes on to conclude is "a chore," and it is through the display of valour, or outright brattiness that one over comes it (think of the enamel and maaz's quick retort to his teacher).
an individual is not independent of his moral standpoint, which almost ALWAYS is influenced by his surroundings. similarly, the narrator's morales shift with his company. with maaz, all the bullies that was pertained to be showered over Gaurnash was laughed at, "until you think too hard of it." being a child, clarity was not on his side (understandably so), and so his morale is determined by his superior (maaz).
it is not until the very end that the narrator reaches the brink of his mind and realises the true binary of the situation. that is the moment of revelation where circumstances do not outweigh morality. in that moment, sisyphus wins.
okay, i feel like this is already long enough. i loved every bit of it and as atharv said, as much i hate this story, i love your writing. keep writing, genius.
hello, i love that I’ve found such a community of people who actually do give a shi. writing often is a solitary pursuit, not just the practice but even in its scope. writing, to me, often feels like shadow boxing but meeting atharv, you and a few other friends who actually give a shit about the craft - I feel like I’m finally sparring at a gym.
i’m in awe of your consideration towards my writing. your specificity in pointing out things that i took weeks distilling feels very satisfying to read. i’m also very glad you were able to dissociate the writer and the narrator - i was worried about that while writing in first person haha.
i was having this conversation with my sister a while back where she told me that i might get more likes if i wrote about things like love and all that shit. but like i honestly don’t care about all that validation. I remember being apprehensive about this idea coz of the whole SA and I didn’t want to be opportunistic. but then I read your sluthood piece and it was so beautiful, i was legitimately moved. and i knew nothing’s far fetched to write about.
thank you for taking the time. means the world, really! I’ll keep writing coz you keep reading!
This is so raw, one sentence I particularly liked was:
“Honesty is most sincere alone, but naked only while introspecting.”
It’s deceptively simple but reveals a layered truth about vulnerability and the ways we perform honesty differently depending on who’s watching. That line, much like the entire piece, balances poetic gravity with personal pain — a kind of intellectual vulnerability that lingers.
thanks a lot for your lovely comment. it means a lot that you read the piece with such attention to detail, I adore when people are so intricate. thanks again for being so thoughtful. appreciate it a lot!!
at the end of each one of your pieces, i have this moment where i almost don’t want to comment anything because i feel words won’t do justice. still, i’ll try
this was sharp, bold and unflinchingly honest. your most ambitious piece yet, i wanna say. there’s not a single line here that feels out of place. your brevity is something i’ve come to admire a lot, how brilliantly you’ve let the language hold so much weight without over dramatising or over explaining anything. and oh fuck man, i had to pause after reading the classroom scene. heavy stuff but so well written. everything is so raw and clever. using technology to make sense of trauma and regret is sort of a recurring theme now, i think. and im so here for it.
Ayy thanks so much taking the time to read this and commenting so beautifully. I’m glad you liked it. I wanted it to be horror and honest. Glad you were able to make it till the end!
Almost always, whenever a man divulges a nostalgic childhood story to me, it makes me squirm inside. As I look onto their face with the most concerning and questionable expression, they are lost, in a feeling of familiarity, recollection. Somehow it's these shared traumas, that either they were too young to realize is quite apprehensive and alarming, or had realized it, yet got it etched into their brain anyways, that shapes most of their childhood. Unknowingly and unwillingly, they lost a part of their innocence then. The way you worded it made me feel like a passive third person peeking through the corners- but at the same time it was like I was you, watching everything unfold in real time, if that makes sense. I always struggle to find words that can convey the depths of an emotion that I felt about a certain topic, but you beautifully succeeded in it; On top of being able to connect and retell two entirely different parts of your life. Loved reading it
hi, I’m so glad that you took the time to read this extremely long piece and leave such a thoughtful comment. i’m sorry and happy that you felt like a part of the story, hope some of my sardonic humour passed through too. thanks for being so considerate, this made my day!
Well definetly a difficult read both due to the vocabulary and the incidents mentioned. I don't know how to feel, because it brought back some bad memories which I don't want to remember anymore. I mean I'm still wondering what else I can describe about the way I feel about this write up.
Well as we know not everything is comfortable in our life. Some things are meant to be a part of life like they should be. It didn't trigger me just made me feel sad that such things exist :’)
I want to say something about the course of story what one could have done and what could have been avoided but nothing matters, wrongs and rights in childhood are like twisted personalities nothing gives the child a pleasure, they are not rigid they move constantly wearing different personalities.
yeah, I feel that’s what I wanted to write about too - the inevitable yet insignificant trauma and how it sort of stays with you forever, thanks for reading
okay so this had been sitting in my saved for a while, i was intrigued by the few quotes on my feed for and im glad i took the time to sit down and properly read on this my laptop, having time to process and absorb. like okay, the storytelling is so masterful and i admit i was happy to get the greek myth references. apart from that, the narrative pace, prose structure- just wow. disturbing but really, really, really good. keep up omg can't wait to read more of ur work.
hi, thanks for reading through this very very long piece, I’m grateful. keep it up on getting the greek refs. i’m so glad you liked it, would love to have more of my work read by you ;)
When you first told this story to me, it made me sick. It still does, a bit, but the motif you have added to it helps. I love how the drowsiness of sitting in class seems to fade back into 6th grade (clearly inspired by reality) and the whole MDP bit (I knew you'd write about it when you first told me about the prof saying this in class). The voice you have adopted here fits perfectly with a student trying his utmost to not sleep in class, only to give in at the end, and there's a strangeness to it that I cannot place, which makes the piece so good. Reading all of this feels like a surreal version of Wallflower coupled with better writing and stronger motifs. I don't really know what else to say here, because I hate this story as much as I love your writing. Well done, great job and for the love of all your grades, stop sleeping in class (it is also an honor to be surrounded by so many good writers nowadays).
Hahah, how will i ever dream if i don’t sleep in class babyboy - but thanks for all you said. This is a sick story. I’m sick af
this is going to be a huge rant, so, maybe please bear with me like always. there are so many, too many layers in this, that when I first read it, it felt overwhelmingly raw and literally made me sick to my heart. like all your other pieces, it started with this nonchalant dude trying to recollect one his days but what's a great inculcated element was this drowsiness. i know you have douched this story with greek mythology references, and i cannot help but think of this drowsiness as related to Bacchus. you know, that effeminate being who first appeared in a ship and the sailors there made explicit comments on their preferred sexual transgression, almost mirroring your bullies. this almost felt like a dramatic irony that eventually sets the entire theme of this piece alive.
i kept eventually pondering on why the professor particularly called panda. like, why panda of all? they are the cuddliest, stupidest and adorably dumb animals to ever exist in the wild (im hesitant to use to word naive), then i tried to reason out that maybe it has to do with the fact that there was this huge bay of ignorance that separates the students and the teachers in the post modern word ("classroom represents an atom, mostly empty"). there were continuous mentions of how "detached" they were from everything, disinfectant classrooms, professor condemning insomnia, making a light comment on how death is preferred over pursuing greatest academic honourific: how the only way to know to escape this "indifferent horizon" is to be particularly agreeable to death and decay.
the next is the depiction of nostalgia. unlike what's commonly believed, nostalgia is presented as an "insurance", a compensation, like a deliberate ghost that is bound to come and haunt. this nostalgia isn't just sitting back and reminiscing the days, it comes with this sharp clarity that reveals the truth: truth as something that can only be attained after "introspection." hence, this nostalgia is only derived not just through retrospective ease but through thorough cross-examination of self. and it is through this "inspection" that one comes to this conclusion that childhood was a site of decay and death, like something "euthanised," while adulthood is a destination of clarity, precision and sincerity.
to me, this entire piece is a memoir on identity. all (children) characters seem to exhibit their sense of self through outward sources, as children should: learning through imitation. this is also where the narrator is set apart from the rest. while characters like Manav, who learnt drinking because his father drinks ("cheap bottles of liquor"), Maaz is aggressive because his father is (hinted), Gauransh's calmness or passiveness can be a mirror to his namesake (Gauri). the narrator (meticulously unnamed) is seen to filter out the bad through introspection, and it is through this filter that he learns to gain his consciousness or sense of morality. growing up, to the narrator is like a practice, a performance of precise use of logic, exercising atheism to counter helplessness: something he goes on to conclude is "a chore," and it is through the display of valour, or outright brattiness that one over comes it (think of the enamel and maaz's quick retort to his teacher).
an individual is not independent of his moral standpoint, which almost ALWAYS is influenced by his surroundings. similarly, the narrator's morales shift with his company. with maaz, all the bullies that was pertained to be showered over Gaurnash was laughed at, "until you think too hard of it." being a child, clarity was not on his side (understandably so), and so his morale is determined by his superior (maaz).
it is not until the very end that the narrator reaches the brink of his mind and realises the true binary of the situation. that is the moment of revelation where circumstances do not outweigh morality. in that moment, sisyphus wins.
okay, i feel like this is already long enough. i loved every bit of it and as atharv said, as much i hate this story, i love your writing. keep writing, genius.
hello, i love that I’ve found such a community of people who actually do give a shi. writing often is a solitary pursuit, not just the practice but even in its scope. writing, to me, often feels like shadow boxing but meeting atharv, you and a few other friends who actually give a shit about the craft - I feel like I’m finally sparring at a gym.
i’m in awe of your consideration towards my writing. your specificity in pointing out things that i took weeks distilling feels very satisfying to read. i’m also very glad you were able to dissociate the writer and the narrator - i was worried about that while writing in first person haha.
i was having this conversation with my sister a while back where she told me that i might get more likes if i wrote about things like love and all that shit. but like i honestly don’t care about all that validation. I remember being apprehensive about this idea coz of the whole SA and I didn’t want to be opportunistic. but then I read your sluthood piece and it was so beautiful, i was legitimately moved. and i knew nothing’s far fetched to write about.
thank you for taking the time. means the world, really! I’ll keep writing coz you keep reading!
always <3
This is so raw, one sentence I particularly liked was:
“Honesty is most sincere alone, but naked only while introspecting.”
It’s deceptively simple but reveals a layered truth about vulnerability and the ways we perform honesty differently depending on who’s watching. That line, much like the entire piece, balances poetic gravity with personal pain — a kind of intellectual vulnerability that lingers.
thanks a lot for your lovely comment. it means a lot that you read the piece with such attention to detail, I adore when people are so intricate. thanks again for being so thoughtful. appreciate it a lot!!
at the end of each one of your pieces, i have this moment where i almost don’t want to comment anything because i feel words won’t do justice. still, i’ll try
this was sharp, bold and unflinchingly honest. your most ambitious piece yet, i wanna say. there’s not a single line here that feels out of place. your brevity is something i’ve come to admire a lot, how brilliantly you’ve let the language hold so much weight without over dramatising or over explaining anything. and oh fuck man, i had to pause after reading the classroom scene. heavy stuff but so well written. everything is so raw and clever. using technology to make sense of trauma and regret is sort of a recurring theme now, i think. and im so here for it.
i feel weird calling this beautiful, but it is.
Ayy thanks so much taking the time to read this and commenting so beautifully. I’m glad you liked it. I wanted it to be horror and honest. Glad you were able to make it till the end!
Almost always, whenever a man divulges a nostalgic childhood story to me, it makes me squirm inside. As I look onto their face with the most concerning and questionable expression, they are lost, in a feeling of familiarity, recollection. Somehow it's these shared traumas, that either they were too young to realize is quite apprehensive and alarming, or had realized it, yet got it etched into their brain anyways, that shapes most of their childhood. Unknowingly and unwillingly, they lost a part of their innocence then. The way you worded it made me feel like a passive third person peeking through the corners- but at the same time it was like I was you, watching everything unfold in real time, if that makes sense. I always struggle to find words that can convey the depths of an emotion that I felt about a certain topic, but you beautifully succeeded in it; On top of being able to connect and retell two entirely different parts of your life. Loved reading it
hi, I’m so glad that you took the time to read this extremely long piece and leave such a thoughtful comment. i’m sorry and happy that you felt like a part of the story, hope some of my sardonic humour passed through too. thanks for being so considerate, this made my day!
Well definetly a difficult read both due to the vocabulary and the incidents mentioned. I don't know how to feel, because it brought back some bad memories which I don't want to remember anymore. I mean I'm still wondering what else I can describe about the way I feel about this write up.
I’m sorry if it triggered you. That was not my intent at all — but thanks for reading it anyway. Appreciate it!
Well as we know not everything is comfortable in our life. Some things are meant to be a part of life like they should be. It didn't trigger me just made me feel sad that such things exist :’)
I want to say something about the course of story what one could have done and what could have been avoided but nothing matters, wrongs and rights in childhood are like twisted personalities nothing gives the child a pleasure, they are not rigid they move constantly wearing different personalities.
yeah, I feel that’s what I wanted to write about too - the inevitable yet insignificant trauma and how it sort of stays with you forever, thanks for reading
okay so this had been sitting in my saved for a while, i was intrigued by the few quotes on my feed for and im glad i took the time to sit down and properly read on this my laptop, having time to process and absorb. like okay, the storytelling is so masterful and i admit i was happy to get the greek myth references. apart from that, the narrative pace, prose structure- just wow. disturbing but really, really, really good. keep up omg can't wait to read more of ur work.
hi, thanks for reading through this very very long piece, I’m grateful. keep it up on getting the greek refs. i’m so glad you liked it, would love to have more of my work read by you ;)
likewise ! it's always a pleasure to find truly passionate writers on here.
coz after a few months i see the same king of think-pieces floating around 😭
very refreshing xoxo
i am not as eloquent as the others and honestly i am short of words, i'll just say: WOW
thanks shay
this was beautiful
jo bolta hai, vo hota
i wanted to comment 'BHENCHODDD' initially as an ode to the 'lauda' in the story but decided against it.
can never be too prudish for gaalis, the only original heritage former colonies were left with haha
ahahahaha yes
WHAT THE FUCK
im sick.
not more than me