LU Chronicles
There are moments in every person’s life that begin and end with a conversation. About this, a trembling voice was heard outside an interview room, but a late-night phone call from home. A quiet confession between friends sitting beneath old trees. I mean, a farewell at a railway station where […]
“Find something you love and let it kill you.” There are certain quotes you do not merely admire. You return to them repeatedly, almost unconsciously, at different stages of your life, and each time they reveal another layer of yourself back to you. For me, this quote by Charles Bukowski […]
It always starts like this. You pick up your phone to take a break. Before you know it, you are scrolling through a never-ending feed of everyone’s best moments. It seems like everyone has their life under control: the perfect job, nice coffee dates, easy weight loss, friend groups that […]
Exhaustion is glorified in our society. People parade their sleepless nights and their emotionally draining experiences as a sign of extreme ambition. The need to be perfect was once considered obsessive behavior, but today it has been wrongly interpreted as self-discipline, productivity, and “high standards.” It is praised by society […]
I walked through the gates of the University of Lucknow for my Physics practical class at 7:30 AM. Waking up at 6 in the morning, and getting dressed half asleep was a battle that I used to fight every day this semester. I remember running through the metro station to […]
I’ve been thinking about this more than I’d like to admit. Not in a dramatic, “the world is doomed” way, just in small, quiet moments. Like when someone shares something vulnerable, and the response is a dry “same.” Or when bad news feels… distant. Seen, processed, and cleared in under […]
Family. What is family? Family is the place where you belong, a place where you feel loved, feel welcomed wholeheartedly, and feel the warmth and care of your cherished ones. Families are supposed to stand up for each other no matter what, be there for one another at the lowest […]
The state of the world right now can only be described as a hot mess – wars, calamities, global crises and much more. During these trying times, fear and polarization often take hold. However, it manifests in varied ways. Sometimes, it’s from self-fulfilling prophecies and sometimes; it’s extremism decorated and […]
For most of my life, I believed an ordinary day was the starting point of existence. Waking up, moving through the day, studying, working, laughing with people, returning home tired but stable. It all felt like the baseline of life. But illness changes the way you see the world. […]
“What are your hobbies?” It is one of the most common and simplest questions people ask out of genuine curiosity about you. It appears harmless, even friendly. The question shows up in first conversations, on dates, in classrooms, during interviews, and sometimes in the middle of casual small talk. Yet […]
Whenever I talk about directors who significantly changed the traditional Hindi cinema, Anurag Kashyap’s name always comes up. He isn’t a typical Bollywood director like others who focuses only on big stars, grand sets, and commercially successful formulas. Instead, he focuses more on the script of the story, the characters, […]
Last week, in my ecology class, while handing out an assignment, my professor said something that paused me mid-note: “At least sit with the assignment, even if you’re not able to solve it.” Sit with it? In a classroom increasingly anxious about AI-generated content, about students blatantly outsourcing even casual […]
In the lecture halls of Canning College and along the corridors of the Old Campus, we are often taught that the “civilized” mind is a quiet one. Tell a woman to “Calm Down,” and she will hit you back with, “Who are you to tell me what I’m supposed to […]
Dear reader, It has been a while since we caught up. And because I’ve promised myself to stop oversharing, I’ll simply say this: I was busy, and writing had to wait. Now, as I nurse my way out of a stubborn writer’s block, I thought I’d share a story from […]
My life: the perfect opening montage to a 2000s coming-of-age rom-com. Me, the golden star of my family, twirling through whimsical outfits, dragging around a bag so heavy it could double as a personality trait, and carrying that unshakable, naĂŻve main-character belief that people are inherently good, and that love […]
In Lucknow, the sounds that mark a life are ordinary: the cycle bell at dawn, the sputtering of an auto in traffic that refuses to move, the azaan threading through loudspeakers at dusk. For me, the one sound missing for about two decades of being born and raised in this […]
They never tell you that most good things start in fear. And that is the problem. Not the dramatic, life-or-death kind of fear, but the quiet, shaky, what-if-I’m-wrong kind. The fear that sits in your stomach when you try to do something bigger than yourself, something uncertain, something uninvited. The […]