I Also Think.... I Also Write

  “Love, in its purest form, is unconditional”—is something I’ve believed for a very long time. It was a narrative I grew up reading especially in my favourite romance books where the lead protagonist passionately falls in love with the antagonist. But more than that, love is a force—so strong that it transcends time, space, and even the boundaries of relationships we form with others. While the idea of love seems to go against Newton’s third law, the constant acceleration it brings into life makes you believe there’s some equality involved, at least in the beginning. When you love someone deeply, that love doesn’t simply vanish when the relationship ends. It doesn’t magically dissipate into thin air; instead, it lingers, imprints itself on your soul, brands itself into your entire existence and continues to shape your experiences and emotions, even after the final goodbye. For better or worse, it changes you entirely as a person and for the time that you allow yourself to fully im...

  How does a 21-year-old person get over the fact that they were immensely sexualised as a child? This story belongs to Pragati, Pragati was an 11-year-old child who lived in a well-to-do household and was immensely ambitious. She was a student studying in grade 6 and loved playing hangman with her friends, eating chips for lunch and going on long walks with her grandfather. She was an extrovert with her primary interests being astrophysics and rocket science. She had always dreamt of being a scientist and loved watching shows like Art Attack, Spongebob Squarepants and Horrid Henry. Her days were bright and filled with dreams of touching the moon, travelling the world, and making art. She was one of a kind and was a very special and delicate child. As a 21-year-old Pragati is a very different person, she is lost in the monotony of her life which is moving at an unforgiving pace. She is stuck in the routine that keeps her busy from thinking about things that burden her. She now no l...

  It was the last Friday of December when Sujit a 19-year-old high school dropout who worked in a Chiya Pasal near Baneshwor was walking in the streets of Thamel hoping to buy lighters and cigarettes from a mini-mart near Trisara: The Baking Factory. On his walk towards the mini-mart, he kept hovering over Google Maps on his Nokia C1 that he had bought after saving his money for 3 months. It was his first time witnessing Thamel’s nightlife and its haunting beauty. He there observed people in all kinds of clothes doing all types of drugs, he saw people in their most fancy outfits going to clubs he never stepped foot inside, he saw businessmen talking about making an amount of money he’d never even heard of and he saw people in alleys in an altered state of mind participating in tomfoolery, to sum it all up Sujit who was new to Kathmandu witnessed lives of people that he’d never seen in his home town Ramechhap. As he further made his steps towards the mart he saw two parallel scenes ...

Amidst our clash of differing beliefs, I a highly religious person and Tike who’s an agnostic made our way to the Bhagwati Mandir which resides equidistance to our homes, there was a shared understanding between us, even perhaps a shared glimmer of hope that we might find answers from the divinity for our impending exams cause after all Bhagwati is known to grant wishes to those who gracefully pray to her. As we stepped inside the two tired square panned pagoda-style temple the morning sun which had just gotten up hit our faces, and right at that moment I felt as if I had found the yin to my yang cause they were everything I could never be and both of us bowing our heads down and clasping our hands to the Gadurbahini Bhagwati was a testament to the beauty of our differences. Right after we offered our silent prayers, Tike murmured “fuck I want a cigarette” a mantra that had become as routine as our morning rituals. The irony of seeking solace in nicotine amidst the temple's sanctit...

For a very long time, I debated putting these poems up on my blog, I wrote them about a guy who was my favourite person when I was 17 years old. For anonymity let's call him Rakesh, Rakesh was a leading activist, an actor, a writer, a film director and so much more. He to the world was a Marxist who was steeping his foot into mainstream politics and to me he was everything a man shouldn’t be. When I reflect back on time I feel as if my 17-year-old self didn’t realize the majority of what I felt was mere infatuation and everything that he made me do was both ethically and morally wrong. All that I feel when I think about him now is this burning pit of disgust that penetrates my stomach every passing hour. To further contextualize these poems try as hard as you can as the reader to picture energetically cheerful extrovert Dipta falling for someone they met in one of the first protests of their life and them being utterly disappointed to find out the kind of        ...

 In the dimly lit bar of Jhamsikhel on a Friday night, I engaged in conversations with friends about the constant monotony of life. I shared a bottle of Lindeman’s Bin 35 Rose, which contained 110 calories per 100ml and had a fruity and crisp flavour. As the hours passed, a friend cheerfully ordered another bottle, oblivious to my turmoil. With it came an astonishing amount of guilt within me. While he happily cheered for the lives we all shared, I sat across from the ghost that had haunted me for so long: the possibility of disordered eating. With every sip I took, I felt like I was fighting a silent battle—a battleground where everything edible around me started to become a wielded weapon against my own body. The maddening pursuit of achieving perfectionism echoed in the corridors of my mind, it was like a ball was constantly hitting the corners of my mind and with each bang, I mercilessly judged how my body looked in the mirror of the bar’s bathroom while simultaneou...

Did my ama feel as I did as she stood in front of her mirror gazing at the reflection that looked back at her? Does that image haunt her of all the struggles that women before her went through? Did she ever think about how fat she looked and how any jeans that she bought never fit well around her body, or does she not have to wrestle with her self-doubts and insecurities constantly as I do? I wonder if her reflection ever spoke back to her and reminded her that she was never gonna be enough; no matter how much weight she lost, or how thin she looked, or how little she ate, it would never be enough. Or does all she ever feel is the way her mom made her feel, just like she did to me? The answers to these questions made me realize I spent almost a decade wanting fairer skin, a thinner body, and a picture-perfect waistline. For a very long time, I envied people who had bodies that were very different from mine, and every passing day, was just a reminder of how "ugly" I've bec...