Guftuguu

The older you grow, the more you start realizing that you have been fed so many lies by the world, by movies, by books, by teachers, even by your parents, and by each other. You wish someone had told you so many things before, you wish you didn’t have to live and learn.

Is there going to be a day when we have outgrown the world around us ? With age, will there be a day that the world around us no longer makes sense to us; when we are 'overmatched', the world has moved on and the idea of the world we had no longer represents what we see around us..? If yes, what would that age be ? I have never actually seen this theme being touched upon before this movie. The mov...

„I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world“ - John 17:11, 14-15. How do you be, participate and act in the world, and not get swept away by it? Not believe this is all there is..?

"Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl......Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl........Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.” " - Gone Girl, Gillian...

The world is a Jungle and it is each man for himself and each woman for herself. What would be the place for ideals like compassion, love & peace if we accept this model of the world.

Is there such a thing as a ‘friend for life’..? A lot of religions of the world say things come and go. But a part of us wants to believe at least some things will last for at least one lifetime.

Meeting people has its perks, but in my experience, the number of people whose lives you touch deeply enough to be missed after you are gone… that’s very rare, regardless of how many you meet.

This is just a personal journal/podcast. My experience of being in a woman’s body in this world and the thoughts, insecurities, fears, etc that come with it.

Do we really want a Prince Charming?

Kisi ko ghar se nikalte hi mil gayi manzil, koi hamare tarah umr bhar Safar me raha - Some found their destination right outside their homes, while some others, like me, kept looking all their lives.

I relocated from India to the US at 17. Now at 26 I’m about to move to another continent altogether. I saw and felt such stark differences in how I went about the entire thing at both times, and this particular relocation has been such a peculiar experience in my life, that I wanted to record it in time.

A section of Hindu philosophy divides life in 4 stages (or Asharams) - Brahmacharya (Disciple), Grihastha (Householder), Vanprastha (Forest Dweller) and Sanyasa (Renunciation). This was supposed to be the ideal life cycle of a man as he transversed through the material realm while keeping 'Dharma' and 'Moksha' (ultimate liberation from the cycles of birth and death) at the center of it. It is a ve...

Who decides how we deal with our pain? Pain is the most fundamental reality of life. Can somone outside of us truly tell us how to deal with our particular pain, to forgive or not, forget or not, drop the pain or not, to make peace with it or not ? (P.S. Continued prayers for Afghanistan, as the world already seems to have moved on to the next piece of sensational news.)

Prayers for the people of Afghanistan. A significant part of the population, especially women, have so much to lose .

What’s the place for regrets in life? How important is Self respect and Dignity ? And why is integrity so hard to obtain?

Just heard something interesting on whether mere careers can bring women the satisfaction and meaning that they need in life , or is having children and getting married necessary to fulfilling life's ultimate purpose (especially for women). These are some thoughts on the same.

I have experienced debilitating anxiety myself, and from that space I thought I could provide a few insights on how a partner (or even a friend), who wants to help, can play a part in creating an environment of some kind of healing for their partner so that eventually their mind has some space to resolve or calm the patterns creating anxiety. The idea is not to be a saviour or enabler or justify a...

A lot of us are in and / or around a lot of dysfunctionality as we grow up, and therefore what to expect out of healthy and well functioning friendships or relationships can be next to impossible to picture at first. In this conversation, I’m primarily talking about , the possible scenarios of what happens when our personal values ( as we grow up) severely clash with those of our ‘friends’ , or we...

I always found this quote so fascinating. Just some Friday night thoughts on why they say this. And what kind of actions might entail actions that are genuinely meaningful.

Not an exhaustive conversation by any means. Just a few key thoughts and observations about how I feel we treat sex, what would be the correct approach towards sex and then the difference I saw in the way it is approached in my ‘own’ culture vs where I live currently.

Carl Jung said, in one of his interviews from 1959, 'Man Cannot Stand a Meaningless Life'. Victor Frankl, in his book, 'Man's Search for Meaning', says that when people have a why, they can endure any how. He also says that every age has its own mass neurosis, and the neurosis of our age is the neurosis of meaning. He developed his own school of psychotherapy, and his approach towards psychoanalys...

For several cultures where Arranged Marriages are an alien concept, the entire set up can be looked at as quite outlandish, and sometimes with a bit of condescension. This is my attempt to demystify what really happens in the process of an arranged marriage, strictly as I have seen it around me, and to humanize the entire concept a little bit. The reality of an arranged marriage set up , though wi...

Shame is a very primal human emotion, which I feel isn’t talked about enough in comparison to how big of an influence it has in our personalities, decisions, public demeanor and even the relationship it has with some very serious and chronic mental illnesses. This is my two-bits on shame and how it’s relates to depression and other mental health illnesses, based on my own experience and what I end...

How I think Pain, Conflict and Art are related. P.S. All the Urdu poets I have mentioned in the podcast ( Faiz, Faraz and Ghalib) are dead. Apologies if I spoke of them in the present tense !!! The podcast is in English, except for some pieces of Urdu poetry. And since the topic is too abstract, I have had to take more pauses to formulate my sentences !!

Constant thoughts of fear and panic relating to a possible sexual assault, even when a person is in places where they feel relatively safe. This is my experience with what I can call 'Rape Anxiety', and how shockingly common the phenomenon seems to be amongst all genders.   P.S. I really hope I spoke sensitively enough for the conversation to not be triggering. But the topic is a difficult on...