I Also Think.... I Also Write

At the didi ko pasal I frequent, I've started to notice the quiet but persistent outlines of class difference shaping the space. The place itself is crammed into a tiny space in Lamodhunga, with three tables at the forefront and blue-coloured benches attached to them. The place itself is known for selling one of the best buff momos in the community [a pleasure in life I've abstained from]. The colour itself is hued with stains of smoke on the walls, but the real texture of the place lies not in the food, but in the social hierarchy it holds together. The people who gather here come from many walks of life and different material conditions: food delivery riders, daily wage labourers, tired mothers, corporate employees, and older men who have retired from government jobs. Among them, one retired man stands out. He seems to carry a different kind of ease- a financial cushion from being a petite bourgeoisie - that allows him to buy food, soda, raksi, and cigarettes for others. ...

  The paradox lies in the fact that as soon as I opened the door and walked out of their place, the existence of love that might have been there suddenly fled. It evaporated into the air, fragile as a whisper, leaving behind the ghost of a feeling I couldn’t fully grasp. Had I stayed a little longer, had we spent a little more time together, perhaps I could have found the words to embody what we shared instead of relying on metaphors. We were two rats caged in a room, our vulnerabilities pulling us closer like an invisible thread we didn’t know how to untangle. I thought about it long enough in my head to be left with words but not enough weight to fully convey all that I felt inside. How do I explain that a stranger I had known for only 67 hours became one of the most important people in my life? It wasn’t for the things they did, nor the things I did;  it was for the spaces we created together. The conversations where we unravelled the rationality of our thoughts...

How long can one call sex a mere distraction before admitting they enjoy it?   The answer seems clear for Lil Jhola, who famously rapped "5 mahina ma 50 lakh, 5 mahina ma 50 ota keti myachikney " in his song Myachikney . He figured it out long ago, embracing casual sex with a calculated ease that many, like him, eventually come to understand. His approach is so systematic that, to hypothetically achieve his goal of sleeping with 50 women in five months, he’d need to have sex with approximately 10 women per month, which breaks down to roughly 1 woman every 3 days over the five months.  For Pragati, though, the answer came much more slowly, buried under layers of denial and discomfort. There was a time when she hated everything about sex—the physicality, the emotions, the vulnerability. Pragati once dreaded the idea of her naked body being seen and judged by someone who couldn’t truly value it for what it was. But, like many things in life, her relationship with sex evolved it ...

  “Love, in its purest form, is unconditional”—is something I’ve believed for a very long time. It was a narrative I grew up reading especially in my favourite romance books where the lead protagonist passionately falls in love with the antagonist. But more than that, love is a force—so strong that it transcends time, space, and even the boundaries of relationships we form with others. While the idea of love seems to go against Newton’s third law, the constant acceleration it brings into life makes you believe there’s some equality involved, at least in the beginning. When you love someone deeply, that love doesn’t simply vanish when the relationship ends. It doesn’t magically dissipate into thin air; instead, it lingers, imprints itself on your soul, brands itself into your entire existence and continues to shape your experiences and emotions, even after the final goodbye. For better or worse, it changes you entirely as a person and for the time that you allow yourself to fully im...

  How does a 21-year-old person get over the fact that they were immensely sexualised as a child? This story belongs to Pragati, Pragati was an 11-year-old child who lived in a well-to-do household and was immensely ambitious. She was a student studying in grade 6 and loved playing hangman with her friends, eating chips for lunch and going on long walks with her grandfather. She was an extrovert with her primary interests being astrophysics and rocket science. She had always dreamt of being a scientist and loved watching shows like Art Attack, Spongebob Squarepants and Horrid Henry. Her days were bright and filled with dreams of touching the moon, travelling the world, and making art. She was one of a kind and was a very special and delicate child. As a 21-year-old Pragati is a very different person, she is lost in the monotony of her life which is moving at an unforgiving pace. She is stuck in the routine that keeps her busy from thinking about things that burden her. She now no l...

  It was the last Friday of December when Sujit a 19-year-old high school dropout who worked in a Chiya Pasal near Baneshwor was walking in the streets of Thamel hoping to buy lighters and cigarettes from a mini-mart near Trisara: The Baking Factory. On his walk towards the mini-mart, he kept hovering over Google Maps on his Nokia C1 that he had bought after saving his money for 3 months. It was his first time witnessing Thamel’s nightlife and its haunting beauty. He there observed people in all kinds of clothes doing all types of drugs, he saw people in their most fancy outfits going to clubs he never stepped foot inside, he saw businessmen talking about making an amount of money he’d never even heard of and he saw people in alleys in an altered state of mind participating in tomfoolery, to sum it all up Sujit who was new to Kathmandu witnessed lives of people that he’d never seen in his home town Ramechhap. As he further made his steps towards the mart he saw two parallel scenes ...

Amidst our clash of differing beliefs, I a highly religious person and Tike who’s an agnostic made our way to the Bhagwati Mandir which resides equidistance to our homes, there was a shared understanding between us, even perhaps a shared glimmer of hope that we might find answers from the divinity for our impending exams cause after all Bhagwati is known to grant wishes to those who gracefully pray to her. As we stepped inside the two tired square panned pagoda-style temple the morning sun which had just gotten up hit our faces, and right at that moment I felt as if I had found the yin to my yang cause they were everything I could never be and both of us bowing our heads down and clasping our hands to the Gadurbahini Bhagwati was a testament to the beauty of our differences. Right after we offered our silent prayers, Tike murmured “fuck I want a cigarette” a mantra that had become as routine as our morning rituals. The irony of seeking solace in nicotine amidst the temple's sanctit...

For a very long time, I debated putting these poems up on my blog, I wrote them about a guy who was my favourite person when I was 17 years old. For anonymity let's call him Rakesh, Rakesh was a leading activist, an actor, a writer, a film director and so much more. He to the world was a Marxist who was steeping his foot into mainstream politics and to me he was everything a man shouldn’t be. When I reflect back on time I feel as if my 17-year-old self didn’t realize the majority of what I felt was mere infatuation and everything that he made me do was both ethically and morally wrong. All that I feel when I think about him now is this burning pit of disgust that penetrates my stomach every passing hour. To further contextualize these poems try as hard as you can as the reader to picture energetically cheerful extrovert Dipta falling for someone they met in one of the first protests of their life and them being utterly disappointed to find out the kind of        ...

 In the dimly lit bar of Jhamsikhel on a Friday night, I engaged in conversations with friends about the constant monotony of life. I shared a bottle of Lindeman’s Bin 35 Rose, which contained 110 calories per 100ml and had a fruity and crisp flavour. As the hours passed, a friend cheerfully ordered another bottle, oblivious to my turmoil. With it came an astonishing amount of guilt within me. While he happily cheered for the lives we all shared, I sat across from the ghost that had haunted me for so long: the possibility of disordered eating. With every sip I took, I felt like I was fighting a silent battle—a battleground where everything edible around me started to become a wielded weapon against my own body. The maddening pursuit of achieving perfectionism echoed in the corridors of my mind, it was like a ball was constantly hitting the corners of my mind and with each bang, I mercilessly judged how my body looked in the mirror of the bar’s bathroom while simultaneou...

Did my ama feel as I did as she stood in front of her mirror gazing at the reflection that looked back at her? Does that image haunt her of all the struggles that women before her went through? Did she ever think about how fat she looked and how any jeans that she bought never fit well around her body, or does she not have to wrestle with her self-doubts and insecurities constantly as I do? I wonder if her reflection ever spoke back to her and reminded her that she was never gonna be enough; no matter how much weight she lost, or how thin she looked, or how little she ate, it would never be enough. Or does all she ever feel is the way her mom made her feel, just like she did to me? The answers to these questions made me realize I spent almost a decade wanting fairer skin, a thinner body, and a picture-perfect waistline. For a very long time, I envied people who had bodies that were very different from mine, and every passing day, was just a reminder of how "ugly" I've bec...

  "Fuck, I need a cigarette" is the first thought I have in my mind when I wake up. Is it the same for you? From the moment I open my eyes, I'm looking for reasons to go outside to hit a puff. It's come to a point where I've recognized myself as a functioning addict, and as shameful as I am to admit this, I think it's for the best.  These days I'm suprised by how people continue to go on days, weeks, months, years, heck, even lives without smoking. The thought of simply having a nicotine-free day is very amusing to me, and the worst part is I have no one but myself to blame when it comes to it. I remember when I deceived myself into thinking I didn't have a nicotine problem and that I was not an addict. But now that I reflect on it, I see someone afraid to admit their dependency on a substance that, in reality, was only harming them back. Despite knowing its risks, I still, to this day, cannot gather the willpower to begin to break free from this addi...

Two months ago, precisely on January 3rd 2023 I tried to kill myself...Looking back on it, I don't think it was an instant decision, but rather a well-thought-out step that I was just afraid to take before. It wasn't just one thing that pushed me to the brink, but a culmination of a lifetime of trauma and suffering. As far as my recollection of memories go, a lot of things contributed to my suicidal thoughts. From constantly being sexualized since the sixth grade to being sexually assaulted eight months ago and getting groomed by three different men when i was a teenager, life hasn't been very fair to me. I used to think that being a "woman" was the reason why I went through all of it in the first place but I was very wrong about it,it was men who were responsible for everything that i had to go through and not a part of me is even remotely liable for everything they did to me.Those moments in my life made me feel unworthy of love, unworthy of respect, and unworth...

It's just a phase, I say, lying to myself, taking another drag of the cigarette I've been holding. The nicotine buzz hits me, and I realize I'm no longer the same person. Would Dipta , a few years ago, even think of this as the right thing to do? Perhaps time really changes people; it changed me for the good and the bad. As time faded, the obligations on my shoulders have gotten heavier, and so has this unfulfilling void that always makes me feel empty. I dumped the ashes in an ashtray and sipped on my coffee.   The longer I stared into the smoke that passed out the window, the more I got in-depth with my emotions. Have I always felt this way? Have I always been an empty shell of a skeleton with nothing but the emotions that people around me fill up? Who am I, to begin with? Why am I here, and when will this stop?    Perhaps answering all these questions requires me to strip naked in front of the mirror and point out things that I see as flaws in me since August 8 . It'...

  As someone diagnosed with BPD around 8 months ago, I still have a lot to learn about my own diagnosis and how it affects the people around me and myself. From anxious attachment style, which steams from abandonment issues to the search for external validation that subsequently goes along with hypersexuality having BPD has made it harder for me to navigate relationships with myself and the people around me. This disorder has caused me to be a furious person who is full of rage all the time. The way BPD has shaped me to see the world in only black and white has made it profoundly difficult for me to understand the grey areas that come along with things in life. For as long as I can remember, I've always been someone who idolized people who I liked and moulded my personality in accordance with their likings. Later in therapy, I learned it was called; Mirroring. Mirroring is when someone with BPD changes their personality, attributes, identity or sense of self, to fit in ...

  It took us about three weeks to entirely fall for one another. We were practically still kids back then, but for what it was worth, we found each other at a place and time when we needed each other the most. We spent the following year and a half going out on cute little dates, buying flowers, and flooding each other's phones with sweet and corny texts. It was the most fantastic period of my life cause everything I did with him was wonderfully flustering and endearing. He simply felt like serendipity to me. But all I can afford to say now is, It was incredible both falling in and falling out of love with Peter. So this goes out to Peter and me You came along and swept all the woe away with your tender touch For you held me against your chest and made me feel I was enough I felt like a kid, wrapped up around your arms, learning how to walk and talk Your patience felt mellifluous while I simply laid there inert like a lifeless clock We both were lost in the labyrinth of...

  Life's uncertainty always baffles me. Last week I had a deeply traumatic experience that I'm still trying to work on. It's funny how the human psyche works cause in my mind, and I'm still trying to comprehend many ways I could have avoided the situation. On the other hand, my perpetrator is probably sunbathing while sipping a cup of tea. Here is a poem that I have been working on ever since then :  (Trigger Warnings:  mentions of sexual assault & violence) Do you carry any shame and guilt for all the horrible things you did to me? Or will I have to carry the burden of being touched by you for the rest of my life? Do you still see people with the same filthy eyes of yours as you did towards me? Or am I the only one struggling to get your perception of me off my body? Were those screams not enough for you to understand I have had enough? Or did you find immense joy in stripping clothes off of my body which I loved for so long Do you wonder how I must have felt when ...

The education system has failed queer kids all over the world. Private schools, colleges, and universities are best known for excluding queer kids from sports, invalidating a kid’s gender identity, and giving more validity to hetero-normality. For example, ever since I was a kid, I had been taught that marriage should only exist between a man and a woman and anyone who thought otherwise was “wrong.”And growing up in such an environment only made me push my queerness far away. Of course, it is constantly conflicting when one goes through a crisis related to their gender or sexual identity but having to experience that conflict in a homophobic region made it harder for me. It wasn’t until grade 6 that a teacher finally made me feel seen or visible in their class; else, I was always perceived as the kid who was not doing enough to get good grades but having a teacher who believed in me and encouraged me to do better truly made me feel secure and confident in myself. And that t...

Having been brought up in a Hindu household, I've always been accustomed to agreeing to be within certain boundaries, whether in my social or personal life. I still remember when I was three years old, my mom took me to Saraswati Mandir in Dabali, which is just 5 minutes away from my home. It was Saraswati puja that day & it also was the very first day when I was taught how to write the Devanagari script, my mom held my hands, and we together wrote: " क,ख, ग " on the walls of the temple. After doing so, we took blessings from the Pandit who was there & went home. For the three-year-old me, it practically meant nothing, and I couldn't comprehend why my mum would take me to a place as sacred as the temple to teach me Devanagari script, and what even was the point of scribbling into the walls? I often stayed in my Mamaghar in my childhood cause both of my parents worked a 9-5 job. On the days when my Aama was free from her household chores, she took ...

I sigh as I wake up early in the morning, I'm restless, and my body is aching everywhere. As I look into my phone, it's 5:01 am, and the voices of alarm don't seem to stop despite me trying to turn it off. It's such a cold day,  I say to myself as I finally get out of my bed to get ready for college. I do all the mundane tasks, including brushing my teeth, combing my hair, and changing into fresh pair of clothes. It was already 5:30 am, so I rushed out of my home & to my bus stop. While I stood there waiting for the bus, I started thinking about all the places where I had applied my resume last night and counted the probability of me getting in; the chance was zero; of  course, why would any company hire someone who's just passed their high school & has little to no experience.  As soon as the bus arrived, I rushed inside & sat in the cornered seat which was available. I began checking my emails, showing I had no new emails to open. I was dis...