Expanding The Horizons

Stranger Things

January 1st, 2026

I have always been flayed by Stranger Things.

Not because of monsters or the Upside Down. But because it feels like childhood. The kind you do not realize you are losing until it is already gone.

Dustin is my favorite. Always has been. He feels real. He is brave without trying. Funny without forcing it. Loyal in a way only children are. When you see Dustin, you remember how friendships once felt effortless. No filters. No calculations. Just showing up.

The second half of the finale is pure emotional gold. Everything slows down. The noise fades. What remains are feelings. The kind you sit with quietly. The kind that do not ask for attention but stay long after the screen goes dark.

Watching Mike write at the end broke something in me. Writing what he could not say. Narrating what he could not fix. Sometimes words come easier on paper. Sometimes that is the only way we survive change.

And then that moment. Mike seeing Holly play D and D.

That was not just a scene. That was time folding in on itself. Childhood passing hands without ceremony. One generation stepping out while another steps in. No goodbyes. No announcements. Just a quiet understanding.

When the door shut at the end, it felt personal.

It reminded me of school friends. College friends. People who once meant everything. People I laughed with every day. People I thought would always be there. Now they feel like they are behind closed doors. Not gone. Just unreachable.

You know they exist. You know they are happy somewhere. But you cannot walk back in. Life does not let you.

Stranger Things hurts because growing up hurts. It is not loud. It is silent. It happens between moments. Between episodes. Between years you do not count.

The show does not say goodbye properly. And neither does life.

It made me think of Life of Pi. About how the most important goodbyes do not come with words. No hugging. No final look back. One day someone is with you. The next day they are not. And you never realize that was the last time you would see them.

Stranger Things ends the same way.

No dramatic farewell. Just a door closing. And you standing there. Realizing you have already said goodbye.

Good Night.
Vision Board 2026 : Same Trauma, New Font

December 30th, 2025

Every new year arrives with the confidence of a motivational speaker and leaves like a distant relative who promised to help but “got busy.” Vision Board 2026 is no different. The only real upgrade this time is emotional maturity. Which, in Indian terms, means carrying all your old trauma into the new year but with less guilt.

Earlier, trauma came with shame. Now it comes with context. You don’t say “I messed up.” You say “I was surviving.” You don’t say “I made bad choices.” You say “Generational patterns.” Therapy language has given us the gift of accountability without accountability. Same wounds, better vocabulary.

The vision board says “healing.” Reality says “same issues, different excuses.”

Indian procrastination deserves its own place on the board. Not as a flaw, but as a lifestyle. We don’t delay work. We marinate it. We let it rest. We believe deadlines are suggestions and pressure is for pressure cookers, not humans. January is for planning. February is for recovering from January. March is when the year actually starts. By April, you’re tired. By May, you’re busy. By June, it’s too hot to grow as a person. July onwards, you’re emotionally preparing for next year.

Consistency is promised annually and broken weekly.

Desi family problems, of course, get their own corner on the vision board. You want peace. Your family wants updates. You want boundaries. They want explanations. You want growth. They want marriage. Or a child. Or another child. Or a better job. Or someone else’s child as a comparison chart.

Every family gathering feels like a performance review where no one knows your job description but everyone is disappointed.

Then come the New Year goggles. The stupidest tradition of them all. Who decided that numbers should sit on your face like a failed geometry experiment? 2026 is especially cruel. No symmetry. No aesthetic balance. Too many straight lines. Not enough circles. Designers struggle because how do you make “2” look festive without it resembling a broken hanger? How do you celebrate a year whose digits refuse to cooperate?

Some years are just not photogenic. 2026 is one of them.

And yet, we will still make the vision board. We will paste words like “discipline,” “abundance,” and “calm.” We will screenshot quotes we won’t read again. We will save reels about morning routines we won’t follow. We will promise ourselves things we couldn’t keep last year but will confidently promise again.

Because hope, in India, is not optimism. It’s tradition.

Vision Board 2026 is not about becoming a new person. It’s about becoming slightly more self-aware while staying exactly the same. Same trauma. Same procrastination. Same family WhatsApp groups. Just better captions and lower expectations.

And honestly, that’s growth.

Happy New Year!!!???

Later.
Post Traumatic WASD Disorder

December 25th, 2025

All my life, I believed in a simple biological truth. My right hand was the chosen one. The hero. The enabler of all private joys and questionable late-night decisions. If evolution had a favourite child, it was clearly the right hand. Left hand existed only for balance. Moral support. Holding the plate while the right hand did the real work.

Then life broke my left arm. And with it, my delusions.

Because what did I lose? Writing? Annoying but manageable. Eating? Fine, I adapted like a raccoon. Brushing teeth? Awkward but survivable. What I truly lost was dignity in digital warfare. WASD. The holy quadrilateral. The left hand’s Magna Carta. The one thing that separates a civilized gamer from a man watching cutscenes like a Victorian child at a magic lantern show.

I am bedridden. Courts are closed. Justice itself is on winter vacation. And there I am, staring at the screen, knowing that Arthur Morgan is out there with a horse that needs riding, a gang that needs saving, and a world that needs morally ambiguous decisions. But no. Arthur waits. Arthur stares into the digital sunset because my left arm is wrapped like a shawarma and refuses to cooperate.

Helplessness hits you in waves. First denial. Then anger. Then bargaining. I tried remapping keys. I tried playing one-handed like a philosophical monk who has renounced violence but still owns a Gaming Laptop. Nothing works. The universe has rules, and WASD is non-negotiable.

Yes, I will binge-watch the second part of the last season of Stranger Things. I will pretend I am enjoying passive entertainment. But deep inside, there is a scream. Because I don’t want to just watch heroes. I want to be one. I want to jump off cliffs, raid tombs, and roll dramatically away from danger as Lara Croft does, while I sit here rolling from one side of the bed to the other like a disgruntled potato.

Adding to this tragedy is a cranky toddler. A tiny human with zero sympathy and infinite energy. He looks at my cast not as an injury, but as a challenge. A drum. A chew toy. A handle. He climbs on me like I am downloadable content. He demands stories, snacks, songs, and emotional availability, all while I am mourning my lost joystick autonomy.

He does not understand grief. He understands only chaos.

So here I am. A man who once thought his right hand ran the world, now discovering that the left hand was the real protagonist all along. The silent hero. The unsung legend. The hand that made digital worlds move.

Recover soon, left arm. The West needs saving. Tombs need raiding. And I cannot keep explaining to a toddler why Paapi is lying down like an injured NPC with no side quests available.

Later.

Jd
Vhuvhuavhu

December 20th, 2025

This is not a joke. I have genuinely broken my left arm. Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Proper orthopedic level damage. Plaster. Sling. Sympathy from strangers. And suddenly, the universe decided that this was the correct moment to unleash winter.

The temperature dipped immediately. Coincidence? I think not. The weather clearly saw my cast and said, perfect. Now let us add craving.

I am craving steaming hot momos. Not politely warm momos. I want them to go directly into my mouth so that I can make those completely undignified vhuavhuavhua sounds while trying not to burn my tongue and still refusing to let the momo go. The kind of sound that tells the momo, you will hurt me, but you will not escape.

Then there are those crispy brown aloo tikkis. The ones whose tawa gives off heat strong enough to restore faith in humanity. You stand near it pretending to decide whether you want chutney or not, but actually you are just borrowing warmth. The chole follows. Garam. Spicy. Mischievous. Playing table tennis with your tongue while you pretend you can handle it.

December cold waves are not weather. They are emotional manipulators. They whisper things like eat something fried, eat something hot, you deserve this, look at your arm. And honestly, after a week of this, I believe them.

At this point, my left arm is broken but my willpower is fully intact only when it comes to ordering food. I should have bought an automatic. Because managing winter, injury, and self control simultaneously feels like a manual transmission on a steep hill.

I love winters. I truly do. The clothes are better. The food is superior. The excuses are endless. And after thoroughly enjoying all these thoughts for a solid week, I have arrived at a very mature decision.

I will go on a diet. Later.
Pain & Nostalgia

December 17th, 2025

Pain does strange things to time, but inactivity does worse. When your hand is broken and your movement is restricted, the world shrinks to a bed, a couch, and a screen that obeys every command with a single click. Everything is available instantly. News. Memories. People you haven’t spoken to in years. Old photographs. Conversations you had once buried under “busy.” With nothing demanding your body, your mind starts wandering without supervision.

The past, oddly, does not arrive clearly. It comes in patches. Comfortable, distant, like a room you once lived in but cannot fully picture anymore. You know it was yours, you know you were safe there, but the details refuse to line up. That haziness is unsettling. For a brief moment, you wonder if something is wrong with you. If memory is slipping. If this is how dementia begins. Then you realise it is not memory failing. It is life moving forward so organically that it quietly overwrote earlier versions of you.

We expect the past to be sharp, like a photograph preserved in a frame. But it behaves more like a file that keeps saving over itself. Relationships changed. Priorities shifted. Responsibilities grew without announcement. One day you were free, another day you were needed, and somewhere in between you stopped noticing the transition. Now, lying still, you try to trace yourself backwards and find only fragments. Not because they are gone, but because they are no longer relevant to who you had to become.

This forced stillness exposes an uncomfortable truth. Life does not pause for reflection. Reflection happens only when life injures you enough to make you stop. Until then, everything feels continuous. Logical. Purposeful. But when motion halts, you see the direction clearly. There is no loop, no rewind, no alternate route. Everything is playing out in one direction only. Forward. Quietly. Relentlessly. Towards the end of it all.

The thought is not dramatic. It is factual. And strangely, it is not frightening either. It is sobering. You realise that the comfort you associate with the past was never about the time itself. It was about fewer decisions, fewer consequences, fewer people depending on you. Comfort was not happiness. It was lightness. And lightness rarely survives adulthood.

With a broken hand, you do not just lose function. You lose distraction. Without constant movement, you are forced to sit with thoughts you usually outrun. The screen offers endless scrolling, but even that becomes background noise. What remains is a quiet understanding that life is not meant to be fully remembered. It is meant to be lived, altered, and left behind in layers.

This is not nostalgia. It is not regret. It is simply awareness. The kind that arrives when you are still long enough to notice that time has not slowed down with you. It keeps moving, gently, indifferently, carrying everything forward. Including you.

Good Night.
Part 1 – The Girl Who Vanished With The Moon

December 5th, 2025

It is strange how people forget things.

Stranger how some memories return only when something inside you shakes awake.

Five years ago I was in Rishikesh.

I joined a Yoga class because everyone said it was spiritual and life changing.

Maybe for me it was, but not in the way they meant.

There was a girl there.

Fair skin, deep eyes, hair like wet river stones.

She never spoke much, but she always smiled like she knew something you did not.

One evening after class, she asked if I liked horror stories.

I said yes, even though I rarely listened to any.

She suggested a podcast.

The story was about a small city where people started seeing full moon every night even when the calendar said otherwise even during new moon when the sky should have been dark.

I remember very little of the plot but I remember how she and I spent the night; laughing softly, speaking slowly and listening for almost eighteen hours as the story continued with no ending.

Eighteen hours feels like a lifetime when you do not sleep.

Eighteen hours feels like magic when your heart is young and open.

We shared something intense, something I thought would stay with me forever. But then she disappeared the next morning.

No goodbye.

No contact number.

No Instagram.

Nobody in class had her credentials.

Some said she went back to Germany.

No one could confirm.

After a few months, I forgot her.

Like we forget dreams by breakfast. Like we forget names of people we loved too quickly. Life replaced her with routine, bills, work, plans.

Until now.

Because I am getting married in seven days. A beautiful woman, a beautiful life ahead. Everything is perfect.

Except something is wrong with the sky.

For the last seven nights, I have seen the full moon.

Every night.

Bright, round, white.

People say it is normal but calendars do not lie.

There should have been darkness two days ago. But the moon was full, glowing like a white wound in the sky.

Yesterday, while checking old photos, I found a picture I never remembered taking. It was the girl. She was standing behind me. Her eyes were looking straight into the camera. Her smile was the same calm smile from Rishikesh.

But the moon behind her was full and huge like it was watching us both. I felt cold, but I kept it to myself. I thought it was coincidence.

Until today.

I was trying on my wedding sherwani when I heard a woman whisper behind me.

The voice was soft, like someone breathing inside my ear.

“Did you finish the story?”

I turned. No one was there. Only the mirror. Only me. And behind my reflection the full moon bright inside a room with no windows. Tonight is the eighth full moon. My wedding is in six days. And I do not think she ever left Rishikesh.

I think she followed me.

I think she has been waiting for me to remember.

Because some stories do not end.

Not after eighteen hours.

Not after five years.

Not even after marriage.

And I just realised something terrifying.

In that forgotten podcast they had said that the moon appears every night for only one reason. Someone who never left you is trying to come back.

To be continued…

I love how when I used to write earlier I used to look for hours for an appropriate picture. Now I can do it with an enter.
Wedding featuring Moh & Maya

November 26th, 2025

Weddings are a great sport. You dive headfirst into a crowd of familiar faces who suddenly feel distant for reasons nobody will ever fully explain. You meet cousins you once shared secrets with. You laugh with people you have not spoken to in years. There are moments when something inside you feels repulsive and awkward. And yet, when the whole fiasco ends, a strange ache settles in your chest and you wonder where all the time disappeared.

I caught myself standing alone in the middle of the wedding crowd, quietly imagining that I am Shah Rukh Khan at NASA. The song “Ye jo des hai tera, Swades hai tera” playing somewhere in the background of my mind. Nostalgia was dripping from every corner like old photographs falling out of forgotten drawers.

Is this what we call Maya and Moh?

The strange attachment to people who have changed and to memories that refuse to change.

You return home. You smell coffee again. You stare at your own walls. But your mind is still stuck remembering the oily wedding food you have been eating every day. The way bitter karela arrived like an uninvited VIP guest inside mix vegetable sabji. The body reacts first. The heart reacts later. The stomach is still traumatised.

It is going to take days before I feel city normal again. Before routine returns. Before silence replaces band baaja. Before my pulse stops vibrating to the rhythm of dhol.

Something happens inside you at weddings. Something neither science nor spirituality can completely explain. You travel across cities and emotions. You hug people you thought no longer mattered. You say goodbye to people you wish you had spoken to more. You stare at your own reflection in hotel mirrors and realise you have grown older and softer and more sentimental than you admit.

Relationships stretch and bend at weddings. Nostalgia arrives quietly. It sits beside you like an old friend and reminds you of everything you thought you had moved on from.

Maybe that is what weddings are meant to do.

Break us open.

And send us back home carrying a small piece of who we used to be.

Later, I’m too emotional right now.
Chaos Yatra

November 18th, 2025

Private chat?

Today marks the beginning of our grand 7-day, multi-city, pan-India wedding journey. Noida → Jaunpur (Flight) → Nagpur (Train for Wedding Week) → Noida (Flight Back).

A trip long enough to qualify as a US visa interview answer.

You’d think packing for a week-long family wedding is straightforward. It isn’t. It’s a spiritual test.

The weather app says 14°C in Noida. Google says Nagpur is 31°C. Holy land of Jaunpur is somewhere in between, confused like the rest of us.

So now the question is:

Do we pack sweaters, jackets, shawls, monkey caps, sunscreen, shorts, vests, or swimming trunks?

We have reached a point where we are packing woollen socks and sunglasses together like a fashion disaster waiting to happen.

Packing with a toddler is a sport.

We folded clothes and he unfolded them. We packed toys and he launched them across the room like IPL fielding practice. We zipped the bag and he climbed on top like Simba claiming Pride Rock.And then, in the middle of total chaos, the little hero coughed twice, looked at us dramatically, and passed out asleep diagonally across the bed like a retired Bollywood villain.

Instant panic.

“Should we pack more medicines?”

“Nebulizer?”

“Steam machine?”

“Thermometer?”

“Portable air purifier?”

“Nikaal deodorant wali battery wala oximeter?”

Suddenly the bag started looking less like luggage and more like a mini ICU trolley. Along with clothes and chargers, the real decisions now include: Cough syrup, Paracetamol, Nasal drops, Vicks, Portable air purifier (yes, we actually considered it) Cooking oil?? (Because someone said Nagpur oil tastes different and now nobody is emotionally stable.)

And of course… The poetic masterpiece that somehow belongs in every suitcase: “…ek aadhi padhi novel – ek ladki ka phone number – mere kaam ka ek paper…”

For context this is not an Ambani wedding. No drone shows, no international performers, no chartered jets. This is a Middle-Class EMI-Bharat wedding featuring:

– DJ Chotu & Team

– Plastic chairs with attitude

– Room-temperature soft drinks

– Cousins practicing dance steps in lobby mirrors

– A midnight committee meeting about budget

Emotion: High.

Money: Low.

Decibel level: Dangerous.

And Then… The Plot Twist

Just as I was writing this b blog,

the missus looks up and says:

“Why don’t we go to Kashi Vishwanath for darshan first?

We can join the crew later , Saanu has to return her hoodie anyway.”

A hoodie.

A whole travel plan being redrawn around a hoodie.

In that moment, I looked at:

My toddler, sleeping diagonally like a squashed octopus The bags that barely agreed to close The medicines scattered like war leftovers My already-thin emotional stability

And all I could picture was:

My parents waiting back at village house at noon, with lunch and expectations… and us arriving at 11:45 PM saying “hoodie return tha.” 😐

My heart sank. My soul left my body.

I saw my future: a courtroom-style family meeting with me as main accused.

Women, man. Blessing and cyclone in the same packaging.

Final Boarding Call

Toddler snoring.

Suitcase locked.

Medicines packed.

Air purifier still under debate.

Hoodie diplomacy in progress.

And with zero clarity and full faith, we begin:

THE GREAT BUDGET BARAAT EXPEDITION

✈️🚆🎺🍼💸

If we reach on time, I will write Part 2 from the wedding.

If not, I will write “How I Explained to My Parents Why We Arrived at Midnight.”

Later.
Chaos Yatra

November 18th, 2025

Private chat?

Today marks the beginning of our grand 7-day, multi-city, pan-India wedding journey. Noida → Jaunpur (Flight) → Nagpur (Train for Wedding Week) → Noida (Flight Back).

A trip long enough to qualify as a US visa interview answer.

You’d think packing for a week-long family wedding is straightforward. It isn’t. It’s a spiritual test.

The weather app says 14°C in Noida. Google says Nagpur is 31°C. Holy land of Jaunpur is somewhere in between, confused like the rest of us.

So now the question is:

Do we pack sweaters, jackets, shawls, monkey caps, sunscreen, shorts, vests, or swimming trunks?

We have reached a point where we are packing woollen socks and sunglasses together like a fashion disaster waiting to happen.

Packing with a toddler is a sport.

We folded clothes and he unfolded them. We packed toys and he launched them across the room like IPL fielding practice. We zipped the bag and he climbed on top like Simba claiming Pride Rock.And then, in the middle of total chaos, the little hero coughed twice, looked at us dramatically, and passed out asleep diagonally across the bed like a retired Bollywood villain.

Instant panic.

“Should we pack more medicines?”

“Nebulizer?”

“Steam machine?”

“Thermometer?”

“Portable air purifier?”

“Nikaal deodorant wali battery wala oximeter?”

Suddenly the bag started looking less like luggage and more like a mini ICU trolley. Along with clothes and chargers, the real decisions now include: Cough syrup, Paracetamol, Nasal drops, Vicks, Portable air purifier (yes, we actually considered it) Cooking oil?? (Because someone said Nagpur oil tastes different and now nobody is emotionally stable.)

And of course… The poetic masterpiece that somehow belongs in every suitcase: “…ek aadhi padhi novel – ek ladki ka phone number – mere kaam ka ek paper…”

For context this is not an Ambani wedding. No drone shows, no international performers, no chartered jets. This is a Middle-Class EMI-Bharat wedding featuring:

– DJ Chotu & Team

– Plastic chairs with attitude

– Room-temperature soft drinks

– Cousins practicing dance steps in lobby mirrors

– A midnight committee meeting about budget

Emotion: High.

Money: Low.

Decibel level: Dangerous.

And Then… The Plot Twist

Just as I was writing this b blog,

the missus looks up and says:

“Why don’t we go to Kashi Vishwanath for darshan first?

We can join the crew later , Saanu has to return her hoodie anyway.”

A hoodie.

A whole travel plan being redrawn around a hoodie.

In that moment, I looked at:

My toddler, sleeping diagonally like a squashed octopus The bags that barely agreed to close The medicines scattered like war leftovers My already-thin emotional stability

And all I could picture was:

My parents waiting back at village house at noon, with lunch and expectations… and us arriving at 11:45 PM saying “hoodie return tha.” 😐

My heart sank. My soul left my body.

I saw my future: a courtroom-style family meeting with me as main accused.

Women, man. Blessing and cyclone in the same packaging.

Final Boarding Call

Toddler snoring.

Suitcase locked.

Medicines packed.

Air purifier still under debate.

Hoodie diplomacy in progress.

And with zero clarity and full faith, we begin:

THE GREAT BUDGET BARAAT EXPEDITION

✈️🚆🎺🍼💸

If we reach on time, I will write Part 2 from the wedding.

If not, I will write “How I Explained to My Parents Why We Arrived at Midnight.”

Later.
Diwali Chaos

October 21st, 2025

As I sat with my legs dipped in a bucket of lukewarm water mixed with Epsom salt, pretending I was in some kind of luxury spa and not my own bathroom with half-burnt diyas outside, a thought struck me. Every festival is just a well-decorated chaos.

We call it Diwali vibes. But what it really means is an emotional traffic jam with lights.

There is always that one person who wants to do everything. They want to clean the house, decorate, make sweets, host guests, light diyas, burst crackers, click aesthetic photos, and somehow also save the planet. Then there is another person, usually in the same family, who wants to do absolutely nothing and has already declared that “Diwali is overrated” while eating the sweets made by the first person.

Between these two categories live the rest of us. We are the people who just wanted a peaceful long weekend but ended up in a battlefield of expectations, WhatsApp family groups, and burnt phuljhadis.

The thing about festivals is that they begin with excitement and end with an existential question. You start by buying candles and end by asking yourself why you have so many relatives.

Somewhere between wanting to celebrate and wanting to escape, we end up doing both. We click photos for social media pretending we are having the time of our lives while secretly wondering if everyone else is also this tired.

And yet, in the middle of all this drama, there comes a small moment. Everyone sits together, the house smells of incense and fried snacks, someone cracks a lame joke, and laughter fills the room. That is the moment you realise that this chaos is the point.

Festivals are never about perfection. They are about doing everything together, loudly, imperfectly, and with far too much sugar.

So yes, as I sit here soaking my legs in Epsom salt, feeling like I deserve a national award for surviving another festive season, I cannot help but smile. Because no matter how much we complain, we will still do it all over again next year.

Only this time, I will invest in better slippers.

Happy Diwali