My friend and I haven’t spoken for more than three years. There was no rift. No misunderstanding. No conspiracy theories. We just got busy with our lives in different countries. His promotion has taken him places, the shy bigshot that he is. Before this, the longest we went without contact was a month. Again, no reason. But it never felt like an absence: just a delay that would inevitably end. I never realised that I was missing something until we got on a call and chuckled at mutual updates.

The emotional invisibility of our bond was both convenient and reassuring. He’d usually be the planner of the overdue catch-up sessions. We would invariably do it on Tuesdays, despite the time difference, because Tuesdays were special to us. Back in our early-twenties and post-college era, it was our designated “mid-week weekend”: the prospect of a post-work drink or three always cushioned those Monday blues.

But three years is an eternity. It’s not normal. Tuesdays have come and gone. Mondays are depressing because there’s nothing to look forward to. Messages have dried up. It’s probably a matter of time before we reconnect.

Or at least that’s the story I tell myself. My friend died in March 2023. A lot of my grief since has revolved around my inability to process the permanence of his absence. That’s because I was never really conditioned to his presence. So much of our relationship was rooted in the comfort of knowing that the other person is somewhere on this planet. He was always there, even when he wasn’t. We didn’t have to text every day; we didn’t need to consistently think of each other. We planned adventures in a new country once a year. We existed apart, but the togetherness truly registered only when we met.

I also didn’t see him pass away. Yet, I’ve had to gear through the psychological rituals of a loss. “Death” is still a meaningless word to me — it’s no different from “see you later” or “be right back”. I attended his funeral like it were a reunion of friends and family: a bittersweet celebration of an individual with the individual unable to make it. I spoke of him on a pulpit, but I was really just trying to do the job I was entrusted with. I would glance at his casket with a confused smile, and only the sights and sounds of mourners in the church suggested that something wasn’t right. Maybe I was forcing myself to feel bad because I had to fit in. I don’t think my brain fully understood that I’m never going to see him: he’s just away, not gone. I keep writing about him in the hope that reality hits me like a stray brick. But subconsciously, I think I’ve tried to preserve this glitch in my matrix. I’ve tried to sustain this delusion through strange triggers.

For instance, I’m obsessed with those “best friend reunion” reel compilations before bed every night: the feel-good clips that capture adult men and women flying thousands of miles to surprise their buddies and elicit primal reactions. I love watching them, but not as someone who yearns for what others have. It’s more as someone who imagines experiencing the same elation after a gap of more than three years. Deep inside, I still expect that moment to arrive. The longer we go without speaking, the more promising those videos feel. It’s going to be legendary, I suspect, when someone records us approaching each other as notoriously hug-averse and awkward men. Sometimes I watch that scene from Sherlock on loop — the one where Benedict Cumberbatch’s fabled detective returns after faking his own death and disguises himself as a French waiter to shock Watson in a restaurant. I often rehearse my own responses, just in case my friend were to choose such a theatrical (and tone-deaf) comeback. He’s too low-key to do that, though. He’s also not a sociopath.

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There’s been another significant change in my life. In the last few years, I’ve managed to sever many old attachments. Chapters have been closed; friendships have ended. I’ve walked away from some, I’ve cut off others. Interestingly, they all came from the same college gang as us. The rapport became a nostalgic policy rather than a genuine desire to stay engaged. By erasing this generation of belonging, it’s as if I were camouflaging his absence. Not seeing him anymore is an extension of not having them around anymore. Given that I used to miss him after we chatted, the deficiency of him does not feel terminal.

If I turn separation into a habit, grief becomes just another gesture of dissociation. If I sense that my paths will cross with the others again, I can trick myself into believing the transience of his void too. I suspect that’s what we all do when confronted with an inexplicable reality — we seek refuge on the lower floor of an intimidating skyscraper of truth so that the fall is not as steep. We then break into selective pieces and shards to reduce the impact of the splat. It’s not that I’m lying to myself, it’s just that I’m rearranging my grammar of longing.

There’s also the little detail of anticipation fuelling our friendship. Some of our most memorable moments feature the imminence of him — the act of waiting. I would wait with bated breath at the airport when he’d visit Mumbai for a jet-lagged week. Even if I didn’t have a car, standing outside the arrival gate became a tradition of sorts. I wanted to be the first person he saw on his return; it made me feel important that he stayed in my apartment while honouring other social commitments. For those few days, I was his home. I waited at bus stops, bars, metro station exits and Airbnb doorsteps for him to arrive during our travels together. I waited for him to activate a profound spark in my head during our video calls so that our conversations got more stimulating. I waited for his level-headed reply to my frantic text messages in a crisis. I waited to reach him in hospitals and houses during his chemo cycles. I waited for him to get better. I waited to hear from him when he didn’t. Waiting became the cornerstone of our gravity; the motion was often worth the pauses that preceded it.

Maybe it’s this visceral instinct to wait that tempers the heartache. It has distorted my perception of bereavement, lending a sense of ambiguity to our distance. It’s the only blueprint I have to deal with a love that’s in search of proximity. The vacuum unfolds at a micro level — having to spend another day or week, and not a lifetime, in pursuit of a tomorrow. This allows me to employ grief as a language of mundanity: as an everyday itch rather than a crippling scar. His company was always intangible, so there’s no reason for his departure to be absolute.

So I wait for that future where we finally live next door to each other, childless and creaky, recalling the time we climbed Table Mountain with no water in the middle of a heat wave; or the time he saw me tear up at the sight of those vivid landscapes on our drive from Utah to California and he just let me take it all in; or the time he asked a friend to “take care of Rahul” before he went home for college summer breaks. I wait for us to walk into each other’s apartment as old men who’ve wandered the world and accumulated tales. I wait for us to attend funerals together with bottles of Fireball tucked in our blazers. I wait for the day he co-writes his memoir with me about the time he beat cancer. If and when this future doesn’t come, at least I’ll have waited for it.

The city carries that weight. I’m so haunted by our spots in Mumbai that I keep revisiting them to domesticate those ghosts into spirits. I convince myself that I’m continuing our legacy of town walks — a Sunday stroll around South Bombay, passing by Xavier’s with misty eyes, pretending to notice the architecture like it’s new, ‘earning’ those cold beers at Cafe Oval — in his memory. I tell myself that I take more Central Line trains in his memory. But this memory is still in progress. Nobody told me that I’m supposed to do things to remember him. I just do them because I can now summon up the nerve to forget him. It’s no longer about trying to live without him; it’s about living to try without him. To paraphrase his favourite verse: I am the master of my wait, I am the captain of my toll.

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Every time I argue with my ailing mother, I end with a distinctly unpleasant thought. Sometimes I even say it out loud. It goes along the lines of: Stop holding me back, please let me live. An accusation disguised as a plea; a statement posing as the last word. As an only child in the throes of caregiving for a separated couple, it’s hard to not be resentful. It’s hard not to not feel like my future has been compromised by the very people who nurtured me to dream of one. It’s hard not to stage my love as more of a favour than a duty. In essence, I blame my parents for daring to grow old. The mind is relentless: I’m capable of so much more, but here I am.

I remember disliking Baghban in my teens because it coaxed a young country into believing that responsibility is a cultural contract, not a personal choice. The hypothesis was that being a human retirement home is a privilege; there is no scope for individualism. One of my moral conflicts as an adult trapped in a son’s body has been my inability to accept that my parents have nowhere else to go. They have nobody else to lean on. The guilt is worse because, unlike many of their peers, they do not act entitled to my custody. It isn’t a matter of simply believing that their problem is my problem; that their illness is my illness. They take no pleasure in asking for help. I occasionally find myself wishing that they took me for granted and aggressively expected my support so that I’d have legitimate grounds for lashing out at them. If they were arrogant, my arrogance would be justified. But they’re painfully undemanding. Why can’t they make it easier for me to leave?

There’s also the sobering reality that almost everyone goes through this. It’s a common rite of passage for a society that’s wired to romanticise the circularity of life. The sacrifices of caregiving are seen through the same lens as the sacrifices of parenting; it’s normalised to an extent where nobody makes a big deal out of it or expresses a sense of uncertainty. It’s the job profile. The suffering has to be done with quiet dignity and grace…or else. The trenches must remain private; the strength of wading through such crises is reduced to a mundane deed: a matter-of-fact existence that rolls with the blows. I’ve seen plenty of acquaintances and strangers do it without complaint for years, silently withering away in the corridors of performative reverence and anticipatory grief. Now that I’ve reached here, I wonder: Is that all I had? Is the autonomy of living just a transient phase between being raised and raising?

As a result, someone like me then searches for reasons to be aggrieved. I envy those with siblings that share the haul. I begrudge those with close-knit families, extended communities and cousins. I look longingly at those with the resources and generational wealth to handle the decline. I get jealous of those with parents who are independent, friendly, self-sufficient, happily married, or too proud to impose themselves on anyone else. I get triggered when I watch rootless young explorers on screen — the hero of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, for example — who are empowered to break free by indulgent parents whose funerals they are allowed to miss. I feel stifled when I see former classmates moving to new countries, untethered by obligation, working far away, and sifting through the gears of change. I feel unfortunate when I conclude that my parents’ mental isolation and health are the only things standing between me and all those alternate realities. It’s the only thing keeping me from soaring, I imagine.

I did have the opportunity to soar, years ago. One particular night is seared into my head. Early twenties. New laptop. Fresh from a fourth viewing of The Dark Knight on an IMAX screen. Standing on the platform of Wadala station. A job to go to next morning. My phone rings. It’s mom. She’s a few hours into her overnight train. We had bid farewell to each other earlier that day. A mutual decision was made that she would stay with her cousin in Goa while I would pursue a future in Mumbai in a shared apartment. We couldn’t afford the rent after my father was packed away to rehab. The situation had escalated quickly, so this sudden severance was the only solution.

I answered her call with a cheery hello, buzzing with a boy-in-big-city energy. It was the beginning of the rest of my life. But her voice cracked. It had suddenly dawned on her that our time together was over. “Is that all we had?” she asked, before promptly apologising for losing control. “There’s no more?” she asked again, tears rearranging themselves into broken syllables. I consoled her, pacing up and down the platform; local trains arrived and left. She broke down repeatedly, and I assured her this was just a natural progression. She did her bit: it was time to set me free. This is how it should be. A few years later, this scene replayed in my head on loop when I watched Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and its definitive moment: a teenager is leaving for college and his single mother viscerally confesses, “I just thought there’d be more”.

At the time, I couldn’t understand why mom was sad. That’s because I saw myself as the protagonist, not her. I could not fathom that she was a woman prematurely catapulted out of her motherhood; that she was a homemaker who made the brave choice of leaving a bread-winning partner for a son who was too young to be a provider; that her abandonment anxiety had kicked in because she was unprepared to be alone; that she had no place or people to call her own anymore. Most people leave home, but home had left her. I even encouraged her, cruelly, to think about moving back in with my dad if she didn’t like Goa. Never mind that she had hated the marriage so much that she left without a plan. All I could think of were the possibilities ahead for myself — a live-in relationship with my girlfriend, the fabled Bombay hamster-wheel hustle, weekend house parties, no more mollycoddling. I didn’t want any roadblocks. I just wanted the world that all those coming-of-age movies and slice-of-life books had sold me. I wanted my fancy’s worth.

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A little more than a year later, I moved into a small flat with mom. She was back. I was told by a relative who had visited her in Goa that she was unhappy there; that she drank a lot and became reclusive. Her cousin, too, had complained to me that she retreated into her shell and rarely helped preserve the cottages they were renting out. I had sensed this change in our phone calls as well. So when friends asked me why I made the move (the “downgrade”) to live with a parent again, my explanation was ready: she needs me. She was drifting away; it was my job to be the Good Son. That’s the story I told everyone — including myself.

But this fiction couldn’t be further from the truth. It was difficult to admit that adulting had almost destroyed me in that year: a messy breakup, rotating flatmates, rising rent, no stable income, a perpetual sense of failure and anxiety. The rose-tinted glasses barely lasted beyond a month. I was battered and bruised by the Bombay that indies explore. So when my mother offered to return, I convinced myself that she was the one who needed it. I knew what I was doing. She did, too, but she didn’t say a thing. She had sensed me falling apart on those phone calls. She let me feel like the hero; she made it seem that I had rescued her. She did not refute my narrative.

We’ve survived together ever since. When I had resigned myself to a fate of aimlessness through my twenties, I decided to extend this habit and use her presence as a social shield. If someone asked why I’m not doing much with my life, I’d cite my mother and my role as an impending caregiver. Who could find fault in such nobility? I would seek refuge in my reputation as a ‘burdened’ only child. I’d visit my father for weeks and pretend to be busy with his health issues. I was going to be the mature home-keeper in the eyes of a society that scrutinised my squandered potential.

Once I found a career and started making a living, though, I curated the convenience of this alibi. If I stumbled at a roadblock or got frustrated with myself, I’d act like a superhero whose kryptonite is attachment and family. I can’t afford an education? My father’s fault for making bad investments. I can’t sustain a relationship properly? My mother’s fault for smothering me and taking away my privacy. I can’t review a propaganda movie? Her fault for depending on me to keep my job and not get fired. I can’t write a book? Her fault again for making me require a monthly income and not take a sabbatical. I can’t quit it all and move to the mountains? Her fault for needing — and loving — me. I didn’t study or work abroad? His fault for not encouraging me, and hers for alienating her family members and making me her priority. I’m socially awkward and camera shy? Their fault for failing to protect me from their volatile marriage. I can’t do drugs or drink too much? Her fault for mattering. I can’t grieve in moderation? Their fault for trivialising grief masquerading as marriage. I can’t hate? Their fault for teaching me how fleeting love can be.

Blaming them for my limitations is the most socially acceptable thing to do. I can reverse-engineer every problem and trace it back to them. I can vent and curse my stars, and wax melancholic about caregiving and sacrifice, and make it all about myself. Yet, deep inside, I know I’m the one who’s still leaning on them when the going gets tough. I’m the one whom my mother chose to support when she could have found companionship again. I’m also the one who secretly loves looking out for her because it makes me feel like the belated adult I once failed to be.

Now that my mother suffers from Alzheimer’s, the refuge is even more customised. I can wield it for micro-evasions: a wedding I don’t want to attend, a friend I’m too tired to meet, a birthday I want to leave early. The macro-evasions come harder. Sometimes I’m not fooling myself when I postpone a chat I’m nervous about, or when I skip an event that my journalistic integrity is at odds with. I genuinely would rather stay home and argue with her about why she thinks I’m too critical of her. I would rather hear her call me a killjoy and team up with my partner to tease me. I would rather look at her blank face and remind her that she has nothing to worry about anymore.

It’s like standing on a platform in my early forties. New laptop again. After one of many movie screenings. A review to finish next morning. On the brink of the rest of my life. And my phone rings: it’s mom. She’s forgotten why she’s at the station. I talk her through the confusion; trains come and go. I find her on the opposite platform, hold her hand and lead her home. She follows. Is this all we had? This is everything we have. There’s no more? This is more.

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For millennials, this is a sequel to a cultural moment. For The Devil Wears Prada Stans, this is a renewal of the license to rewatch a comedy (and its reels) for 20 straight years. For cinephiles, this is necessary nostalgia. For weekend viewers, this is a return of that Iconic Meryl Streep Does The Voice character. For Bollywood enthusiasts, this is the Hollywood equivalent of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’s Poo making a comeback. For the fashion world, this is a mainstream boost of identity. For modern journalists, though, this is a horror movie.

It should arrive with a trigger warning. There are jumpscares (award-winning reporters out of a job), creepy breadcrumbs (advertisers and brands holding editors hostage), sinister ghosts (corporates overhauls and editorial cuts), high-tension strings (legacy publications battling to stay afloat), paranoia (‘serious’ writers having to take lifestyle jobs), and supernatural twists (hope). As someone in the thick of the profession’s haunted demise, I cringed and nervous-chuckled and nodded and sighed and finger-wagged through a film that cuts alarmingly deep for a “good time at the movies”. The popcorn has never tasted saltier.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 takes off in real time, 20 years after an idealistic and wide-eyed Andy Sachs (Hathaway) walked away from Miranda Priestly (Streep), the high priestess of fashion publishing and the editor-in-chief of Runway Magazine. Things have changed, of course. Andy has been around the world and back; she and her scrappy team are fired by text on the day they win a prestigious award. As it turns out, Runway is struggling a bit too — it’s a dying magazine that must rely on social media traction, ad money, online presence and clickbaity cover-spreads. It’s the final gasp of the old guard, or as Miranda chillingly puts it, “the last plank of wood floating next to the Titanic”. It’s not Adapt or Die so much as Compromise or Die. So, all too easily, Andy becomes a credibility hire as the new features editor; she goes from viral rant to paycheck misfit convincing herself that she can do ‘good work’ at a place she’s wired to sneer at. The mini-reunion is imminent: Miranda rolling her eyes at Andy’s optimism, Andy yearning for validation, Nigel (Tucci) as an agony-aunt-cum-guardian-angel, and Emily (Blunt) turning the tables of power as a Dior executive handling the Runway account.

If the first film ended with Andy choosing to believe that she’s different from Miranda, this one marks the convergence of their spirit. Their clash of ideology is consumed by a shared battle for survival. They are forced to occupy the same side because the media crisis has democratised their field. Lifestyle, investigative, culture, sports, cinema, politics, serious, unserious: the borders don’t matter when irrelevance is knocking on the door. It’s as if Andy did her time for two decades to become — but also revise the meaning of — a Miranda Priestly. They may have a lot in common (workaholism, ambition, talent, passing companionships), but Andy was perhaps destined to be an update of the old-school authoritarianism that Miranda represents. It’s a bit like Hathaway’s character from The Intern getting built at the altar of Streep’s character from The Post.

The essence of The Devil Wears Prada 2 lies in how the genre duality of the film reflects the professional duality of the characters. Just as Andy is a weighty journalist trying to do her kind of writing at a glam outlet, the movie dresses up devilish themes in the Prada-coded fabric of a catwalk. It’s a wonder that the storyline manages to be crowd-pleasing and truth-spitting at once. It all but defines the irony of a Snackable Journalism Movie: a paradox in a previous era, but a neon-lit sign of our times. This is also a survival drama posing as a rom-com, where the Fourth Estate is the protagonist in pursuit of a vintage love story. Given the template, there’s the danger of a feel-good ending: a solution that ‘rescues’ and fixes an entire vocation for the sake of a narrative. But it does well to stay rooted, with an exchange where the phrase “for now” becomes a disclaimer. It’s a warning that the little wins are temporary; they only delay the inevitable in an AI-forward and post-truth economy. If anything, this is very much a feel-good tragedy. Despite the tropes, the vibe is that of a Happily Never After: a cautionary tale wrapped up in the couture of transient success. Whatever Andy and Miranda do, it’s clear that even if the day is won, the night is here.

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For any new-age media resident going through the flux, the pretty predicaments in the film are almost too personal. Perhaps my generation of writers and journalists see themselves in Andy Sachs, the 40-something scribe forced to abandon her bubble and find a midway point between what she is qualified to do and what is available; between her brave traditionalism and the dystopian ground reality. You could blame the film for romanticising — or worse, trivialising — the trade-off in integrity and sugarcoating a defeatist future. Andy is driven by an inherent anxiety about the fate of those like her. On the contrary, you could admire the film for normalising the trade-off without downplaying the gravity of the situation. It’s Miranda who is driven by the desire to protect Runway, her legacy and her vision — which, in this world, amounts to the preservation and sustenance of the free press. She becomes the bigger picture by default: a toxic boss humanised by the totality of market shifts.

That’s where Streep’s performance chisels the adventure into shape. She was so mesmerising as Miranda Priestly in the first film that the character became counterintuitive — almost aspirational — in hindsight. I remember watching it in the middle of my first job-hunt and vowing to work under any kind of boss it takes, no matter how unpleasant. It never occurred to me that Andy chose to leave and not quit. All the wrong lessons, of course. It’s like watching the Joker and getting inspired to be a vigilante. In this film, Streep somewhat course-corrects, sacrificing cultural effect for a real-world fragility of sorts. It finds both humour (HR clipping her un-woke and business-class wings) and sympathy (a dude-bro CEO half her age) in Miranda’s plight. You can tell that Miranda is dying to be her performative self again, but the film makes her look slighter and sound smaller. It cuts her down to size, to the extent where she is reframed as the underdog trying to unlearn new tricks.

It’s to Meryl Streep’s credit that the fleeting glimpses of Miranda’s withering meanness become more like a reclamation of agency than a franchise aesthetic. It appears like a fading cape (particularly with Andy), often as a reminder to herself that she can still shift the air in a room, even as her younger employees don’t fear her as much. As the audience, it’s hard not to cheer for those rare moments she scoffs at someone. “She’s back,” you think, but is she really? Can she afford to be? She summons the aura and ego indoors, because she’s just another editor scrapping for funds on the outside. There’s a dissonance between the Miranda Priestly and the woman who’s running out of runway and vogue. In a non-fictional universe, one can even imagine her as a David Remnick in The New Yorker at 100, one of the last remaining bridges between paper and the written word.

Perhaps that’s the context of change; yesterday’s cautionary tale is today’s fairytale. 2006 Miranda Priestly believed that being a genius was impossible without being a monster; Whiplash’s Terrence Fletcher took a cue. But this Miranda is a caged monster whose genius unfolds an act of resistance in an era of mediocrity, content, and contentment with mediocrity. Her attitude doesn’t look as ‘problematic’ this time, which isn’t a sentence I thought I’d be typing in the hypersensitive tides of 2026. But a haughty boss is better than no boss at all. That’s the nature of the vanishing beast. A good-looking satire on journalism is now a definitive journalism movie.

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I turn forty today. I’d like to believe it’s just another milestone. It probably is. But something about this year ending — the decade ending — feels different. It’s more discernible. It’s like I’ve been waiting for this birthday as an excuse to diagnose myself. Don’t we all? The big four-O and all. I usually don’t need an occasion. I’m not one for absolutes. But time is a ready tool to measure the intangibility of who we are. Most of us wonder why we couldn’t detect a change while it was happening. Hindsight is a fluent rearview mirror. For once I can sense the transformation, live. If my life were a movie, reviews would fixate on the sudden tonal shift after the interval: “the frantic fury of a coming-of-age drama gives way to a second-half slump in search of momentum and purpose…”. And I’d promptly troll the critics for not getting the essence of my journey. Or for being biased and paid, because what the hell do film critics know anyway?

The truth is I’m a bit tired. That’s the overwhelming emotion. I need a long nap. Which is another way of saying: I’ve lived a lot, and very hard, in my thirties. I worked relentlessly, reviewing thousands of movies and shows across multiple publications. I loved long; my partner and I have been together for more than 7 years. I wrote millions of words: essays, columns, blogs, features, citations, speeches, eulogies, you name it. I traveled far and wide, exploring countries and skies as if my passport were a stampbook. I made a living out of thinking and opinionating in India’s most expensive city. I made new friends, lost old ones and cultivated bonds beyond boundaries. I grieved, grew, stagnated, soared, struggled, earned and exercised with the intent and intensity of a student protest in the final semester of a government-run art school. I compressed decades of growing and exhaling into a single decade. Not even a lockdown locked me down.

At this moment, I feel the fatigue the way a professional athlete might during the final game or race of their career — a career that bloomed late, peaked for a hot second, and crammed in as many miles as possible before the looming retirement. Evidently, my fast and furious thirties are a result of two converging reasons. One: I needed to make up for lost time. I wasted much of my twenties delaying my reckoning with a future. I escaped adulting for as long as I could. I spent years wondering what to do and how to be, like a confused protagonist searching for a story to inhabit. I didn’t work consistently; I stayed uncertain about my identity; I sought refuge in the cinema of wandering without aim and ambition; I put too much pressure on the relationships I forged; I drifted along, one excuse at a time. It’s not like I had generational wealth to fall back on, either. I’m not sure what I was thinking. Or if I was conspiring to think at all.

So once I found a sense of direction, I tasted blood and almost hurt myself with the speed. Stopping was not an option. I had rested for too long. Everything I felt and pursued became a vengeful reaction to the void of my twenties. I even worked two jobs for a full year, creating at double my capacity; I joked about functioning like the protagonist of The Pursuit of Happyness having to finish his internship hours faster than others because he had to maximize his days. If I got lazy or dared to consider a “hiatus,” I’d remind myself that I no longer held the license to chill. Even the chilling came with an urgency, whenever I took holidays. Walk more, climb more, know more, drink and eat more, see and seek more. The moreness of it all bestowed my boat with a moor.

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Making up for lost time is one thing. Perhaps we all subconsciously go into overdrive when driven by iterations of middle-class guilt and missed opportunities. But the second reason is more relevant: making up before time is lost. I’ve spent my thirties with the rhythm of someone who expects the music to stop. At the back of my mind, I’ve always sensed that forty for me is the glass ceiling of agency and individualism: the age I stop seeing myself as the tortured hero and start becoming the supporting character in other narratives. Specifically, my parents. Or whatever’s left of them: aging, unwell, separated, lonely, with just the one son to lean on. Given that I chose writing as a profession, I knew that I’d have to save money quicker than most to be in a position to pay those inevitable hospital bills. I traveled at half the budget and freelanced at double the volume. Every breath had a stopwatch; every memory had a limited sale. Weekends became precious — I pestered my partner to step out with me and make the most of the little freedoms. Let’s do something new. Let’s go somewhere else. Let’s not bed-rot all evening. I was, to put it crudely, hoarding the sunlight of existing before the clouds arrived.

And the rains are here. As anticipated, it’s pouring. Not a day too soon. My father can barely walk; my mother can barely remember. I try to be in two places at once. For the first time in over a decade, I don’t have a break planned this year. I can barely recognize the version of me who sprinted through schedules and potential destinations with my (late) best friend. I’m on the defensive, retreating into a shell of impending duty. I don’t even know what I’m doing next week, except keeping an eye on my mom and holding down a job in this fragile market. I wait for phone calls about my dad having another stroke. I am trying to forget what it is to feel free and boundless. The switch has been flipped: I’m in my Caregiving and Weight-on-Shoulders Era, which means I was working towards this endgame of social retirement all along. I’d be lying if I said the transition is abrupt. It has been underway for a while, but I did manage to slip in a last dance or two before curfew.

But the exhaustion is hard to ignore. It’s in my bones now. I’m almost too jaded to be responsible. Those ‘wild’ thirties have even erased my age dysmorphia: everything hurts, my lungs burn. The stamina is shot. There has to be another way. Sometimes I wish I could just write my parents a parallel and joyful twilight, and then will this alternate reality into being through words alone — an author’s version of Superman turning back time and undoing the death of Lois Lane by reversing the earth’s rotation with his flying. Maybe if I’m good enough with these essays, I can reframe my dad as someone who does get his dream job, pays off his debts, stops smoking, quits alcohol, and manages to buy a house for us before passing on. His funeral would be attended by everyone who underestimated him and ate humble pie. Maybe if I’m obsessive enough with my sentences, I can put a smile back on my mom’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted face; I can turn her into someone who ages comfortably, proudly, and in full possession of a family that stuck together through thick and thin. She can have a garden of her own here, where she tends to her favourite plants and doesn’t forget her phone in the bushes.

Perhaps I can reimagine their endings on paper so deeply that it will alter — and reverse — their actual destinies. I’ve always believed that words have the power to change the world. But I want my words to only change theirs. I want to write them until they are rewritten. Even in this parallel universe, though, I wouldn’t want them to stay married. They can wish the best for each other from afar, be on pleasant terms: all while finding the energy to make friends, be curious and explore communities in their respective lives. They would not become reclusive old people who rely on their nervous son and dated memories to keep them psychologically afloat. They would not do that, for sure.

And yet here we are. The son has resisted the genetic signature of his parents for so long that he sounds just like them when he’s asked about his faded spark: “I had my fun back in the day.” Nostalgia is his crutch. He hides behind the sureties of compassion, oblivious of one cruel irony: he lived so hard in preparation of this moment that he can no longer connect to the parents he had vowed to insulate. A whole decade of attachment has been compromised; they slowly shriveled away while he kept collecting his gold coins and defeating those castle dragons. All that remains is a forty-year-old man who’s hoping to remember the love that accelerated his spirit. All that remains are the remains of a retro-fitted future and a hurried history.

Maybe if he writes vividly enough, he can become the funny and chatty boy who breezes through his twenties, makes his parents proud in his thirties, and buys them a house each in his fifties before settling in the mountains to wait for their weekly calls. Maybe if he is creative enough here, he can revoke his grief and keep embarking on adventures with a healthy best friend. Maybe if he finds the right cocktail of fiction and truth, he can hug his father and hold his mother every time they say goodbye. Maybe if his words are undeniable, his little world would end with him dying a happy man without regrets and resentments. And maybe his final vision would be of himself at forty, writing the essay that persuaded him to continue living and not start dying.

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Every morning, I see a different stranger. Someone’s anxious. Someone’s confused. Someone’s complaining about the number of clothes in the washing machine. Someone’s triggered by a notification on the phone. Someone snaps at the househelp. Someone keeps knocking on my door to ask about grocery lists. Someone’s in bits at the thought of what to cook for lunch. Someone gets cranky when I give a curt reply. Someone gets stressed at the prospect of visitors. Someone frets that they don’t have enough money in their bank account. It’s been ages since I finished my first coffee without tending to multiple emotions. Or a few emotions multiple times.

Most of these strangers vaguely resemble my mother. Some of them look like her; others sound like imposters of her. Before this paragraph wades deeper into oedipal territory, the context is that my 69-year-old mom has Alzheimer’s. She was diagnosed a year ago, but the deterioration is palpable now. Every morning, I worry about which version of her might emerge. Every morning, she’s a stranger I’m supposed to love. It’s not that she’s forgetting names and places and conversations and numbers. It’s more that she’s forgetting how to be human. How to feel. How to react. How to be pleasant and secure. How to talk to people normally. How to be happy. How to listen. How to not get upset at the tiniest of disruptions.

I’m usually the one who upsets her. As a son she’s doted on for more than half her life, I struggle to stay patient with her fading mannerisms. I find it frustrating to notice that she’s devolving into a child; I often catch myself speaking to her in a strict tone — like a disapproving parent — to ensure that she understands every word. It’s unnerving when she visibly seeks my validation (“See, I cleaned the sofa”), and sheds tears at the drop of her hat when I brush her off. It’s disorienting to hear her fixate on insignificant details of our exchanges and sulk with a nobody-loves-me huff. The circularity of life has never felt so literal.

But the truth is that I’m actually frustrated with myself for treating her like it’s her fault. I get annoyed for making it about myself and not about the person who goes ashen-faced every time she remembers that she can’t remember. I feel guilty for getting embarrassed about her in social situations; she senses this and stays in her bedroom when guests come over. I feel sorry for getting provoked by her slurred voice as if she’s still drinking; she quit the day she got diagnosed, and yet I’m reminded of all those nights of boozing and self-pity. I feel small for lecturing her about her smoking and threatening rehab if she carries on despite the doctor’s orders. I feel selfish for expecting her to still be my mother. The anticipatory grief of losing a parent has slowly morphed into the moody heartache of combing through the rubble of parenthood. The more I interact with her, the harder I miss her. The harder I miss her, the more I grieve the loss of her agency to be alive.

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We often wish we had the chance to say goodbye to those who depart abruptly. But what about those who depart one day at a time? What about those who have left without fully leaving? It’s like rehearsing for their absence in slow-motion: their lives shrinking to the point where the bed becomes an open casket. So many lasts have already happened without me realising it. Nobody told me I’d never see her laugh at a certain pitch again. Nobody told her she would never see me relaxed again. Nobody told me that Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani would be the final film we watched together in a cinema hall. Nobody told her that she would be afraid to leave the house again. Nobody told me that we would never ‘travel’ together again after an emergency trip to hospitalise my sick father.

Nobody told her that she would never feel like walking on a beach again. Nobody told me that she would stop surprising me with chocolates from the market again. Nobody told her that she would isolate herself and prefer watching the world from her window. Nobody told me that she would never sound confident again. Nobody told us that we would never be able to communicate again beyond queries about meals and bills and chores. If I had known that those were our lasts as they unfolded, I’d have done better to immortalise them. I’d have preserved a few mental souvenirs. Who am I kidding, though? I hate goodbyes, so maybe I consciously avoided freezing those moments in the hope that they might occur again. Perhaps she will wake up some morning and be a familiar stranger: wanting to step out for a dosa breakfast, or in the mood to explore Juhu and identify celebrity houses.

There are days when I don’t blame her. Or myself. There are days when my exasperation is shamed into empathy. My attention then turns towards the people in her life who have chiseled away at her heart with blunt scalpels: all those who have broken her under the guise of shaping her. I’ve villainised each one of them in my head. The greedy brother who ceased contact because she kept probing about her share of the family inheritance. The wayward sibling who calls to say he’s dying to emotionally blackmail her into sending him money. The tight-fisted older sister who pretends to care but can’t think beyond securing her own South Delhi-coded future. The cocky friend who disappears and drops in on their own terms, winning over my mother with a flashy gift. The acquaintances who fell out of touch after discovering that she left her marriage. The well-wishers who promised the universe to her and never delivered.

Ironically, the very disease spawned by years of accumulated trauma is the disease that insulates her from that trauma today. She does feel wronged, but she often forgets why. She does look defeated, but her mind refuses to delve deeper. The cognitive dysfunction is almost a shield that protects her from a crippling persecution complex. Sometimes I look at her and rage about the injustice of how those responsible have suffered no consequences. They’re all going about their existence without an ounce of remorse. They’re all peaceful and prosperous. And there’s nothing we can do about it. I feel like a victim on her behalf, the science of it all be damned. Eventually, I circle back to the character whose complicity in her decline — she is stranded at a stage between invisibility and anonymity — is absolute. The one character who is neither peaceful nor prosperous. The husband. My father. The former companion who has refused to legitimize their separation after a decade apart. The ex-partner who can give my mom an anxiety attack with a harmless phone call.

But it’s complicated. When I was younger and less informed, or more in denial, I used to blame my mother for his alcoholism. I felt bad for a “flawed man” who was too talented for a world that thrived on mediocrity and anti-intellectualism. At least that was the narrative I chose to believe; blame it on all those Bollywood masculinity dramas. He was the perfect victim. It would always hurt to imagine one parent relegated to the debris of memory — ageing, abandoned, left to fend for himself — while the other could live with me. So I visited him as much as possible, almost willing myself to sympathise with his wasted life. Whenever I felt distant and resentful towards him, I’d hop onto a bus and go see him in person. And I’d soften, watching him amble around the flat like a belated bachelor. It’s like seeing a dreaded gangster grow old and frail and meaningless (think Robert de Niro in The Irishman), humanised by the linearity of time and tide. I’ve made two such trips since the beginning of this year alone. Spending a few days in my childhood home with ghosts of our history. Reliving the past and fixing the future.

But something has changed since my mother’s diagnosis. I’m no longer there to care for him or do my duty. It’s rarely about checking in on him. Nostalgia and compassion are crutches for something darker. I find myself there as an estranged son turning every visit into an act of revenge. A quest for justice. I’ve come to realise that watching him fade is a source of perverse pleasure. It’s difficult to admit that the pathetic sight of him insisting that he’s healthy — when he’s clearly not; when he has the worst eating habits, smokes like a chimney, and looks like a hobo after his long naps and coughing fits — gives me a sense of catharsis. It’s like I go all the way to see him pay the price for failing as a husband. I go all the way to watch the live consequences of damaging my mother; this is atonement for his sins. The house is barely inhabitable, it has the atmosphere of a gas chamber, the food is not hygienic, and he walks like a baby who is learning how to walk. It disturbs me that I enjoy his plight of speaking with dentures, lisping and plowing through sentences like someone who refuses to heed his own decline.

Instead of sorting things out and improving his situation, I just sit passively and observe. I watch him pretend to be fine and lie about his reports and job applications. I try not to scoff at his totally misplaced arrogance. I listen to him speak about being positive when I mention her Alzheimer’s. I bait him into fights when he asks for money because it gives me a sense of control over his fate — the same control he abused with my mom. I remind myself that he nearly emptied her bank account last year, by forcing her to “return” a sum he once paid for her surgery. She’s been a homemaker all her life, so even by the bleak standards of patriarchal liberals like my dad, it felt like a vindictive move. A desperate one. Unfair doesn’t even begin to cut it. There’s not a day my mother doesn’t recall the money she returned, and how it’s left her with nothing. She misquotes the number every time she mentions it, too.

My spite is inexplicable, I know. I’m not the greatest son. My love is rephrased as the language of karma. But my father is the most accessible and tangible entity to blame. I don’t care much for my aunt and her heart problems, or my uncle and his failing liver. I don’t care much for my urges to see them fall. I do care for my dad enough to be cruel about him. I’m not proud of the way I feel, but I’d like to believe that perhaps my visits are more than an excuse to taste his defeat. Perhaps the ‘revenge’ will become a front to give him some company in his final years. Perhaps the rancor will become a ruse to ensure he doesn’t die alone. Who knows? As of now, however, I always come back to Mumbai like a triumphant soldier relaying victory to a sick queen. She doesn’t like to hear of him, but she inquires about his health; she wonders if he has any resources left to survive.

It’s magnanimity as much as muscle memory. She remembers his issues without dismissing my relationship with him. Funnily, it’s one of the few times my mother sounds coherent. It’s one of the rare instances she and I have an adult conversation without succumbing to sensory excesses. She perceives my conflicted attachment to him and resists criticism; speaking about him makes her nervous, but she does it for me. The grace she shows — towards the man who lifted us up to let us down — is what briefly connects us. It’s the kind of grace someone I know can learn to embrace. Someone who wakes up every morning and sees a new stranger. Someone who wonders how to love these strangers without reducing them to a tragedy. Someone who knows he needs to process the truth of these strangers before fully recognising them. Someone who will never be a stranger to a mother who is destined to forget.

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I stood over the grave of my best friend and struggled to eat his favourite cream roll. It was his third death anniversary and my fourth visit to his hometown. I waited for the lump in my throat to choke me, but the cream roll was so disgustingly rich that gagging was a better option. The aftertaste lingered and I cursed him a bit. He was trolling me from his grave. Maybe I should have gotten a flask of Old Monk along. I clicked photographs of the moment. It wasn’t too emotional; I imagined there would be more cinema. I spent the rest of the week with pieces of him: his parents, sister, childhood friend, the quaint medical campus lanes, the idyllic home he spent his last month in, the dining table he ate at, the room he quietly occupied. He was everywhere. I found a sense of belonging and routine. His presence posed as his absence. It wasn’t too cinematic; I imagined there would be more emotion.

I watched Project Hail Mary a week later. I enjoyed seeing Ryan Gosling again play an astronaut whose individualism and inner-space conflict hijack the stakes of an outer-space miracle. To me, his kooky Ryland Grace felt like an alt-reality Neil Armstrong (from Damien Chazelle’s First Man). Both of them find catharsis in distance; they fly light years away from Earth to feel seen. The success of their missions is almost incidental to their journey of emotional liberation. How can you not love a sci-fi spectacle that calls out the whole genre and its traditional interpretation of hope and heroism? There’s something so refreshing about a typical save-the-world story morphing into a feel-good man-alien buddy movie that calibrates a single truth: Saving humanity is not the same as saving humans.

I kept thinking about the movie. Oddly, it felt like more than just a “poignant” watch. The plot felt familiar. The former molecular biologist is sent to the depths of the vast beyond in a spaceship to stop the sun from cooling and prevent mass extinction on his planet. It’s a one-way trip. But when the lonely misfit bonds with a spiky rock-like alien who is also the sole survivor of an identical mission, he finally finds the sort of humanity that almost died when he was drugged and forced into space by his own people. He finally finds a mate and fellow misfit that Earth never afforded him; he was always the rejected alien among his own. The two join forces and minds, but it’s their wasted hearts that get activated.

Grace ultimately does the needful for the planet that consistently let him down: not as a conventional space-movie saviour, but as a gesture of friendship to Rocky. And then he chooses that intergalactic friendship over a civilisation that is perhaps no longer worth returning to. He does his “duty” but also chooses himself — his new relationship with compassion and loyalty — over his home. It’s a joyful little rejoinder to all those lion-heart and slick-spy narratives, where grassroots humanity is sacrificed at the altar of glorified emotions like patriotism and suffering.

It’s why I loved Sandra Huller’s portrayal of Eva Stratt, the head of the international task force. The pain of being a manipulative and ruthless leader for the ‘greater good’ is etched across her deadpan face. When she briefly drops her guard by singing Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” during a karaoke night, the reason it’s so moving is because it feels like an obituary of the very civilisation she has been hired to protect. Words like “When will we learn” and “We gotta get away from here” acquire the musicality of mourning; she is admitting that the empathy of living died long ago and maybe it’s time to cry about it. It’s almost a prescient apology to Ryland Grace, the only one who gets away from their broken planet. He is being set free in a way, on a mission to resuscitate the idea of goodness from the loneliest corners of the galaxy. She wishes she could be better, but the responsibility of saving her petty little world is thrust upon her.

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Her song is the first of many times I cried while watching the film. It’s strange how compulsively we resonate with fiction when we are in a vulnerable space. Everything becomes a metaphor; even a stone (or cute rock) is relatable. It’s not just the fullness of the moment or Huller’s performance, or the way Gosling looks at her from beneath those daddy-scientist glasses at the bar. I was suddenly transported back to the tombstone of my friend and my serendipitous trip to his hometown a week ago. Mumbai often makes me feel like Huller’s character: stoic, robotic, repressed, a survivalist devoid of magnanimity. The visit to the cemetery in Vellore felt like my own spiritual rendition of “Sign of the Times”: a brief passage of self-expression and freedom in a time of crisis. The feelings of that morning spilled out in the dark movie theatre. But it didn’t end there. The worst (or best) was yet to come. I found myself in bits during the blossoming bond and banter between Grace and Rocky.

The easy thing is to blame it on how madly I miss my friend and the adventures we were yet to have. The simple thing is to assume that the human and alien reminded me of both our past and the erased future. Rocky offering to stay 6 more years in space to give Grace the fuel to go back to Earth really got me — it’s exactly something my late friend would’ve done if he knew I was stranded somewhere and pretending to be fine about it. And he would want no recognition or thanks for it. Though I have to admit that I was the needy and intrusive alien in our time together. I was always the one with the more enthusiastic language (“amaze, amaze, amaze”) or an Adrian by my side, while he adapted to my atmosphere without any fuss.

But the truth is that the whole week in Vellore felt like a last-ditch mission. A Hail Mary. For perspective. For answers. For silence. I hadn’t planned this trip. I hadn’t timed it either. The desolation of a big city — Mumbai, in my case — had pushed me away. I don’t think it was my choice. A growing sense of professional disillusionment and personal responsibilities took their toll on me. If I had to save my future in the city, I needed to spiral away from it. The fate of my world hung in the balance. I thought it would be sad and introspective; I felt betrayed by Mumbai for ejecting me out of its orbit. But I didn’t expect to find so much love and purpose in my escape. I didn’t anticipate finding solace in the gravity of grief. If my friend were alive, I’d have traveled straight to him. Instead, I just traveled to the memories and people that made him.

The best part is that his family never once made me feel selfish or hopeless about it. They expressed so much gratitude for my company that it became more about being there than not being in Mumbai. They made sure to need me just as much as I needed them; they became the grace in my rocky voyage to nowhere. By the end, I couldn’t imagine a calmer place to float through. Two entirely different trajectories of grief intersected to form a shared rescue mission. I had spent three years missing him profusely. Raging against the void. Feeling sorry for myself. On the brink of imploding. Wondering where my screams went. That week, it felt like I was meeting a new friend in a corridor connecting drifting spaceships. Grief as an unlikely companion. A loyal ally. A long-term mate. A safe space that, ironically, erased the very loneliness it once generated.

Seeing Grace settle on Rocky’s planet in a biodome made so much sense. It validated my own instinct to be defined by a good person — his life, legacy, family, the airtight biodome of befriending his loss — rather than a planet of distress and desperation. It solidified my decision to sleep every night in the hope that we meet in my dreams. It helped me make peace with the fact that I had chosen to live in his afterglow instead of “moving on”. And it made me feel seen in a space where the light of memory travels faster than the sound of sadness; where courage is not about surviving and fighting for the next pay-check but about belonging and barfing up a cream roll; where the intimacy of sleeping to be watched beats the heroism of working to be remembered. After all, what is grace if not the rocky copilot of love. Question.

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We were always going to meet here.

As a writer, starting a Substack these days almost feels like an act of resistance. To an extent, it is. Journalism is shrinking. Free speech is diminishing. Holding politicians and powerful figures accountable is a dangerous pipe dream. Freelance budgets are a myth. Liberal and legacy publications don’t pay much; their right-wing counterparts pay for your soul and destroy it for a price. Invoices are missed. Serious reportage is an inconvenience. Fan service is the norm. Seeking truth in a post-truth world is like looking for elegance in the tweets of Donald Trump. Most tellingly, the culture of opinion is rapidly being erased by kingmakers for whom running a newsroom is a tool of appeasement and complicity. Thinking for yourself is a no-no; saying what you think is a go-go.

Opinions are why I’m here. I’ve been a film critic in India for 14 years, and I can safely declare that the profession has never been as systematically targeted and demonised as it has in the last four months. Let’s not kid ourselves though. This isn’t an overnight phenomenon; it’s been years in the making. The working critics who don’t acknowledge this are either protected by legacy bubbles, operate in sold-out spaces, co-opt influencer patterns, exist as glorified PR mouthpieces, fear institutional backlash, or reverse-engineer their principles (and sensibilities) to stay agreeable in this hostile environment. I can’t blame them; it’s a matter of survival for some, a battle of relevance for others. The outspoken and ‘controversial’ ones are mostly out of work.

You could argue that Indian film journalism is on the brink of devaluation, extinction even. A generation of citizens is being brainwashed into believing that criticism — the right to probe in general — is toxic for society; that it is all about negativity and personal agendas, not passionate analysis or cinephilia. The general consensus is that it’s not a movie’s fault for being mediocre anymore; it’s now the critic’s fault for pointing it out. It’s not a film-maker’s fault for selling insidious ideas under the garb of entertainment; it’s the critic’s fault for daring to call them out. Shooting the messenger has never been trendier.

I’d argue that, on the contrary, never has this profession felt more urgent — and important. I used to refrain from calling myself a “proper journalist” when I started reviewing Hindi cinema for a newspaper in 2013. Journalists don’t sit at home and dole out verdicts about fictional stories; they go out, touch grass, dig into the roots of humanity, and find factual stories. They do the groundwork and read the pulse of places and people. But what I didn’t realize then was that, sometimes, reviewing a film or show was akin to reviewing the country. Sometimes, asking for more from a movie was like reporting on the inadequacies of a society. The “sometimes” has expanded these days. Fearless film criticism (I have to prefix a job title that should, by definition, be fearless) transcends the medium of commentary, deconstructs intent, and investigates reality through the magnifying lens of fantasy. When done with integrity and curiosity, film criticism becomes the most accessible form of dissent. It may not trade in the currency of fact, and it’s never bigger than the movies it examines, but it is now burdened with the responsibility of “courage”. When did an inherently subjective craft start requiring traits like honesty and strength, you ask? The answer is everywhere and nowhere.

I’m not romanticising things. It’s human nature to convince ourselves that our work is more essential than it is. It provides a sense of worth in an age where silenced voices ring louder than careless whispers. Earlier “Pressure from Above” only meant inflated celebrity egos, angry producers or compliant newspaper bosses. But a new-age film critic who takes their job seriously — someone in it for the love of the game — is forced to flaunt a spine. They are no longer default owners of these backbones. Orders from above mean far more now. Author disclaimers at the bottom of pieces aren’t enough. There’s a risk of defamation, intimidation, termination, or worse, financial ruin. And it’s always going to be the writer that takes the fall; an organisation rarely defends these views in the face of even the slightest digital trolling or social threat. Writing what you really feel is suddenly seen as a foolhardy kind of idealism, the kind you’d associate with the silly cricketers who refused bribes and stayed straight during the match-fixing scandal. It is not recommended to go against the grain, lest the grain devolves into a field that normalises rotten crops and stigmatises fresh produce.

In other words, this used to be just another public-facing job. Now it is, for no fault of its own, a public-confronting mirror: at its best, a totem of free speech and independent thinking. I think this crisis-riddled identity of modern film criticism is a blessing in disguise. Without placing ourselves on a pedestal, it’s worth noting that a review that places films in context of the India they reflect is no less than a custodian of history. And historians — not revisionists, not opportunists, not marketing executives — are the need of the hour. If the gravitas of chronicling is something we must adopt, then perhaps genuine art criticism is not as parasitic as they claim. Call me self-serious, but in this era of opinion-scrubbing and arm-twisting, some of these reviews will serve as evidence and archival memory of a sectioned India decades later.

If these words stand the test of this bruising time, future readers will be in a position to excavate remains of the truth through pieces that question blockbusters like Dhurandhar and Chhaava instead of worshipping the fires they spread. They will be in a position to wonder if a country forged its new and aggressive image through cinema and cricket. It is not an act of resistance; it’s merely an act of preservation. It’s not that those who admire these titles and buy into the noise are misinformed; it’s that those who scrutinise are being phased out. A side is no longer a choice if the other side ceases to exist.

That’s not to say I’m starting this Substack only for “unfiltered movie reviews” and “brutally honest takes”. I am already attached to an outlet for Hindi film reviews. And I have never compromised on the way I think and write (yet). But it does feel like the clock is ticking. The freedom to be myself is dwindling. Nothing is permanent in this media hellscape. So I need a space to be autonomous and share my musings about cinema, life, sports and everything in between. I recently lost my gig of Hollywood/global film essays because, you know, the website shut down. The usual no-warning exit. I’ll start with this lost byline; it will allow me to write about things other than the same old problems with mainstream Bollywood. It will allow me to not depend on the humiliation ritual of rejected pitches, ideology conflicts, corporate diktats and salary negotiations. Oh wait, it will also allow me to not wake up every Monday and worry about which new historical biopic, mythological epic or “inspired by real events” thriller might get me into trouble for painfully crafting an opinion.

I suspect this space is going to expand to accommodate more than the plurality of film criticism. I hope it does. Some weeks it could be an anticipatory ode to The Devil Wears Prada 2; others it could be a ‘constructive’ takedown of Gautam Gambhir. Some weeks it could be a loving rant on difficult parents, others it could be an intimate account of grief and modern love. There will be many personal essays. There will be stream-of-consciousness stories. And in time, I hope to publish other talented freelancers, critics and writers — not just formal film reviews, but also op-eds and profiles that commercial publications might be wary of carrying.

This space is the long-term plan to stay hungry, untarnished, skilled, sustained, followed, and, well, brave. If this sounds like some Jerry Maguire-style mission statement, let it not be that. If this sounds like a reaction to stirring journalism documentaries like The New Yorker At 100 (seeing a timeless Richard Brody pop into the office with his tote bag did make me misty-eyed) and Vinay Shukla’s While We Watched (the rise of an independent Ravish Kumar is a sight for sore souls), let it be that. This is an alternate avenue to liberate the audacity of writing and, by extension, the agency of storytelling. This is no revolution; it is the ethos of evolution. For better or worse, authenticity is now a subscription-based value.

We were always going to meet here. Now it’s just you and me.

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