Redhya

I Had to Be Somewhere—Kasol Saturday evening. The time was 6:50 pm. I was restless in my room; my thoughts were racing. I had to figure out what I was going to do on the 25th and 26th. Finally, I decided that I had to be somewhere. I just couldn’t stay in my room and hurt my keyboard for my three inconsistent readers. So, around 7 pm, I booked a ticket to Kasol. Approximately five hours before departure. I booked through RedBus. It was a FlixBus semi-sleeper. It cost me around 800. The departure time was 12:20 am. Around 12:30 am, I was still standing at the HP petrol pump opposite Chandigarh ISBT 43, waiting for the bus. I was a little anxious that I’d miss the bus. I spotted a group of young men; they looked excited. So, I asked if they were going to Kasol. Indeed, they were going to Kasol, but on a different bus. I talked to them for a while. They were studying engineering at LPU. I mentioned the recent protest and they all started laughing. They asked me what I did. I lied. One of ...

The Death of Observed and Observer What Does it Mean to Be Dead? Freud says the human mind has three different access levels: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The conscious is what is happening right now—our awareness of the present moment. The preconscious is information that we can recall whenever needed. The unconscious is a deeper level—can’t be accessed or very limited access. These levels are not separate compartments of the mind but merely the abstract accessibility we have to the mind.  The conscious is near, the preconscious is farther away but can be reached, and the unconscious is disconnected. However, the unconscious, according to Freud, manifests itself in forms of dreams, emotions, slips of tongue, and behaviour without our being aware of the underlying reasons. The levels aren’t an inherited phenomenon. On the contrary, in my opinion, the formation of accessibility to levels happens over time as the humans experience the internal and external wo...

“It’s been ages. Tell me when we will meet again.” Why does she behave so childishly with me? “Ages?” I absolutely hate her exaggerations. “I don’t know. Around दीवाली, I guess.” A moment of silence. Perhaps, she is calculating how many days remain until the festival of lights.  Exactly a month. “Ummm… Okay….” I know what she wants to say. But neither of us says it, because we both know it isn't possible at the moment. Before she says something, I say, “Alright, I gotta go now—have to do laundry and then I have to complete the story. We will talk later. Bye.” “Take care. Bye.” The call ends. Her bye sounds different this time. She wants to talk longer, but she knows we cannot. The bye continues to echo in my ears. The screen displays the call duration—1 hour, 52 minutes, 20 seconds. Wow! The app asks, “How was the Quality of the Call?” Bad connection. Voice drops in and out. Interference on the line. I almost tap Not Good . But then it hits me—the bittersweet of it all—the pain of ...

I carry a world inside my head— A world of expectations and regrets, And of course a few dreams, breathing their last breaths. Yet I smile When asked how I am. Some nights, it’s difficult to sleep The ceiling seems like a door  to my haunting past. And I want to run away. The urge to escape engulfs me It usually begins With some Instagram notifications. My screen time tells how I survived the night I waited for a message until the last light. “The XXX amount credited to your bank account” You, on the other hand,  seem to be doing okay. The posts on your profile  I see are really in HD. I remember— you posted a story at 3 a.m. You deleted it within a few seconds. How do I know? I was waiting for my salary to come. The next day, I asked If you were okay You smiled as though you were me. Your smile Hides the pain  that haunts you  every now and then. I know what you feel The pain leaks from the corner of your lips. How do I know? Because you are me And I am you. I ...

The Sweetest Part of Depression is Solitude Our upcoming generations will never be able to taste the sweetest part of depression — the core, the fruit — i.e., the solitude. Strange, isn’t it? As we grow, our personality diverges like a beam of light from a torch in the dark. But when we’re depressed, it converges. It returns to the source, the deepest point of our being. In that return, the layers of illusions are shed off. The layers once we wore proudly to hide the raw nakedness. Returning to the beginning reveals the internal structure — the bones — the personality of humans. The flesh on the bones is just decoration, imposed by society, demanded by culture. When depression is felt strongly and analysed meticulously, we find ourselves surrounded by the intricate interconnected structures that shape our life. We who've been subconsciously driven by pleasures and pains since our birth. Between comfort and discomfort, we’ve got far away from our true nature — from our true self. Fr...

He may jump. Shit! I wish I had seen this before—in real life—and not only in movies. I wish I had someone beside me—someone who could respond promptly, unlike me, who over analyzes every possibility just to avoid getting involved, for I fear taking responsibility for how things turn out. Thus, setting aside myself, I see events from far away—from someone else’s eyes, from someone else’s perspective. It’s a disease. Thinking on someone’s behalf is a disease. Sometimes, after intimate sexual activity, I ponder upon the woman’s expectations of me. Then, the pleasurable moment turns into a pang of guilt that enslaves my indifferent mind. Is this behaviour just to neutralize the pleasure I get after ejaculation? Is it normal? Am I normal? Perhaps. I remember the last time I betrayed someone. One last stroke. I pulled it out and quickly laid it across her abdomen. I pressed my groin as hard as possible against her body until my ankles weakened and my body was filled with sensations. The nex...