That Sarcastic Writer

  You’ve known for a long time that you would always prefer a nine season long drama series over a sitcom, but you’ve only recently discovered why. Between you and your therapist, a conclusion has been reached. They’re just too happy for you. That’s why you were very surprised to find that New Girl, is in fact, one of your comfort shows. The reason was quite a simple one. Unlike a lot of other sitcoms, in New Girl, not only are the characters super relatable, the happiness they experience also does not seem quite out of reach. You’re already halfway to being Nick Miller with the combinations of writing and procrastinating you do and with a little bit of luck, Sydney will achieve Pepperwood levels of fame. You have Cece’s dry humour and Jess’ enthusiasm for life provided everything is going exactly how you want it to. From Winston, you’ve acquired the amazing ability to enjoy being a side character in your own life armed with the realization that main characters are life’s favouri...

  You’re just five minutes away from achieving REM sleep when you hear it, the faint sounds of your phone buzzing. Through bleary eyes, you squint at the bright screen, snapping awake as you register the name. You swipe right, “hello, hey what’s up?” “Where is it?” the voice at the other end does not sound amused.  Your brows knit in confusion, “huh?”  “The blog post? The short story reel? How many chapters of your book are ready?” “Uh, I’m working on it” you say, trying to reconcile yourself with the fact that you’re probably not gonna get any sleep tonight.  “It’s been a week. Do you enjoy disappointing your followers? Is that it? Do you think we don’t deserve nice things?” “I’m sorry?” You can feel her exasperation through the phone, “less apologizing, more writing” You smile as you end the call. She’s one of the most annoying people you’ve ever met but she’s also the reason you’ve made it so far in your writing journey. Like Luke Dunphy, instead of asking the que...

  The one consequence of having a terrible memory is that your past often feels just out of reach. You remember the feelings you experienced but not the stories behind them and a part of you thinks that its for the best. One thing you do remember is how getting your first social media account opened up a whole new world for you. Making friends was hard but existing in fandom spaces made you realise that it didn’t have to be. One year into fully immersing yourself in the fandom experience, you met her, your first and longest lasting internet friend. It started off simply enough with a text message. You were so new to the whole idea of replying to a stranger’s stories, but you’d been following her account for a while now and you knew exactly how it felt to doubt your own art simply because it was yours. So, you told her the truth about how beautiful her creations were and how important her art was to the fandom. She replied and you thought that was it, because in every other attemp...

It’s finally over. Three years of blood, sweat and lots of tears has finally led to this. The end of your college life. Its beautiful, bittersweet and melancholic and you don’t feel a thing. It does bother you how unaffected you are because these three years have changed you in unimaginable ways. You’re stronger, more confident, more sure of yourself, or at least better at seeming more sure of yourself and most of all, you’ve learnt that the real you is someone a lot of people like knowing. Its not been a smooth journey, that’s for sure. You’ve done a lot of things that you wish you hadn’t and are now part of the ‘most embarrassing moments of your life’ highlight that runs in your head on the days you just can’t fall asleep, but you’ve also done a lot of things that taught you that there is still a lot  you’re yet to discover about yourself. And if you could do it all over again you probably would do all of the same things again because what you do is influenced by who you are an...

  This isn’t my first novel. My first novel, ‘Dealing with diamonds’ is in a word doc in a folder that hasn’t been opened in a long time. It is an interesting book, with characters who were screaming for their voices to be heard, only quieting down once the words started appearing on the blank screen, a plot that’s planned out but messy, a flow that wasn’t perfect but moved and a writer who was very unsure of herself and the stories she wanted to tell. I knew everything about the book, cover to cover. The only thing I didn’t know was whether it was good enough. I couldn’t bring myself to find out either. All of that changed with ‘She told me’. I knew that if I didn’t start putting it out there from the first chapter itself, I would never do it. So, on February 24 th , armed with a vague plot idea and a strong first chapter, I began telling Lucas’ story on Wattpad. I wasn’t very regular with updates, but I knew I had to and that I would finish the book, whether just one person read ...

  You remember watching the Barbie movie like it was yesterday, mainly because it was nothing like you expected while being everything you needed. It wasn’t perfect but if you squinted, it could be. It was made for women by women and was funny, thought provoking and above all, it made you really glad to be a woman. There was solidarity in the theatre that day, almost everyone wearing a shade of pink or any other color that screamed Barbie. You laughed through the first part, were silent through the second part and got teary eyed during the last part. Barbie dolls were your childhood, but the Barbie movie made you feel seen even as a young woman who just wants to exist in a world where she’s allowed to breathe. Everyone has a different idea of what it means to be a woman but instead of recognizing that there is no single way to exist as a woman, there are now hundreds of rules to live by. And most of those rules involve walking a very very thin line. Womanhood is a spectrum, t...

 It doesn’t really hit you till it is a minute past midnight and people have started calling. You’ve never really looked at age in terms of numbers but more in terms of what you can and cannot do. Eighteen gave you a lot of freedom, nineteen gave you a chance to get used to that freedom and apparently twenty is supposed to make you use that freedom responsibly. It is not an abrupt change like going from seventeen to eighteen but a gradual one. It is going from staying up late to finish the last episode of the third season of YOU because of one Taylor Swift song that’s supposed to feature in the episode to staying up late to start your prep for that super important assignment. “How do you feel?” one of your favorite people asks, “you’re one step closer to death”. It’s a joke but it also makes you think. Not about death but about what else you’re getting closer to. A job in the field of your choice, an apartment of your own to decorate as you please, grocery shopping on your own, pus...