That Sarcastic Writer

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The Life You Build

Having a strong internal locus of control means believing events in your life are primarily the result of your own actions. It’s funny to think about how you didn’t even know what a locus of control was two months ago, and now it’s possibly one of the most important things in your life. You’ve had this image in your head for the longest time. You’re standing on the sidewalk on a crowded street with the wind blowing through your hair and the sound of traffic horns wreaking havoc on your eardrums, and you’re happy. Now, it’s a reality, and you’re not quite sure how you got here. You remember sending in the application and prepping for the exam. You don’t think you could ever forget that. The planners, the notes, the *cough* legally downloaded textbooks, the study techniques, the time blocks. You’d never studied this hard before and a part of you wondered whether this would even be worth it. After all, you were smart but you weren’t that smart, were you? Your fears were realised twent...

The Friends We Make Along The Way

Cleaning out your cupboard has always been one of your favorite activities. Not because you particularly like cleaning, but because you’re always bound to find some old dusty diary that you’d used and discarded years ago. For you, discarding something means shoving it onto one of three shelves and rediscovering it a year or two later. This particular diary falls into your hands five years after you’d put it away, and out of idle curiosity, you flip through the pages. There are at least six different types of handwriting in the diary, but none of them are yours. That’s when you realise this isn’t just an ordinary diary, it’s a culmination of ten years’ worth of friendships. You barely remember the day you bought the colorful diary to school, but you do have a distinct memory of peering over your friend’s shoulder, trying to read what she’s scribbling inside. She glares at you, and you take a step back, giving her her privacy. Another friend takes out her packet of colored ...

I Think They Call This Love

It was 4:30 am on a beautiful January morning and for once you didn’t have to drag yourself out of bed. The day was a special one because it was the day someone you’d looked up to your whole life was starting the next chapter of hers. As you put on your cotton dress and grabbed your bridesmaid stuff, you couldn’t help but feel excited. You always loved the idea of love, and in a couple of hours you were going to see two people who were crazy in love finally make it official. You had a sense of déjà vu as you walked up the steps to the bride’s apartment. Six years ago, you’d trudged up these very steps, tired and sleepy, mentally cursing the guy who’d invented Math. Yeah, you could multiply, divide, and recite the first six digits of Pi but at what cost? You don’t miss the 6 am Math tutions but you have to admit that you do miss coming here and hanging out with your favorite teacher even if it meant having to act like decimals were even remotely interesting. The bride w...

Truth and fiction

When you were a little girl watching cartoons, you believed everything they told you. Everything will be okay if you just believe in yourself, you can fix anything with the power of love, and your personal favorite, just be yourself, nothing else matters. A few years later, you knew better. It was a story, like the adventures you read about and the mysteries you solved before the big reveal. Beautiful but fictional. Believing in yourself wasn’t going to make you prettier or more popular, your love was restricted to the things that didn’t have to love you back, and being yourself was the most excruciatingly painful feeling in the world. Life wasn’t like the movies, and you had no plan because you’d picked up a novel instead of a guidebook. Somehow you got through it simply because you had to. You couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, but your fear of the dark was enough to keep you moving and when you finally stumbled out of that tunnel with leaves in your hair, dirt on your ch...

The intimacy of being understood

They say that you don’t know the value of what you have until you lose it. You don’t agree, you know the value of what you have when you’re sitting in a café with your best friend and a good friend and you laugh at a joke and she looks over at the friend and says, “I know it looks like she’s being fake but trust me, that was genuine.” She’s known you for three years and she already knows when you’re happy, when you’re trying to be happy, when you’re sad, when you’re annoyed, when you’re restraining yourself from having an all-out argument with someone, when you’re complaining about not having something you don’t even want, when you’re talking about something simply because you want to talk and when you’re nonchalantly talking about something that you would trade a kidney for. It’s what being understood feels like and it’s enough to make a grown woman with a heart cry. Everyone wants to be loved, it’s natural, but being loved can hurt. It can cause immeasurable pain and conflict bet...

Mumbai ki baarish

Ever since you watched the Bollywood movie Wake up Sid , you’ve wanted to experience the Mumbai monsoons and this year you finally did. You woke up to the sound of the wind whistling through the windows, a sure sign of what was to come. When the first drops of rain hit the roof, you were already sitting in the balcony, feeling the cold breeze through your flimsy cotton T shirt. You closed your eyes, finally the rains were here. Two minutes later, the sun was out, and you felt like you’d imagined the whole thing. It was now the perfect weather for a morning walk, but you were disappointed. The next time you saw the dark stains on the grey road you looked up at the cloudy sky and smiled. You’d had an exhausting day, and you were ready to finally slosh through the puddles of muddy water with no regard for your safety. You tucked your umbrella under your arm and watched the tiny droplets hit the ground. The world was silent with the only audible sound being the crunching of leaves ...