There is something almost cruel about the way we remember people after they die. While they are alive, we measure them in achievements. Records. Photographs. The next thing they are going to do. Then they die, and we stop asking what comes next. We begin looking backwards. Nirmal Purja—Nimsdai, as he was known—died on Broad Peak in Pakistan this week, caught in an avalanche alongside nine other climbers. He was 43. It feels virtually impossible to write those words about a ma

Very close to my home in India, people my age — my generation — are getting hurt for wanting something better. I am half the world away, worrying about exams and apartments. That's where my problem begins. Not with the distant, abstract concern reserved for a country you were born in but no longer live in. Not with the convenient patriotism that shows up on national holidays and disappears the moment the country becomes hard to defend. This is guilt. The kind that sits quietl

There is something uniquely humiliating about feeling unwanted by people who once made you feel seen. Not abandoned in the dramatic sense. No slammed doors, no final speeches, no cinematic endings. Just a gradual quietness. Replies slowing down. Plans becoming conditional. Conversations shrinking into logistics. You wake up one day and realize you are no longer woven naturally into somebody’s life — only appearing at the edges of convenience. And the cruel part is that nobody