ON WORDS I HATE
Like Oxford has a word of the year, I have a word off the year. Every year, I get tired of a word and thereon, it becomes my mission to actively work on eradicating it from my vocabulary. I start to mentally scold myself everytime it spills out of me, either in writing or verbally.— % &Generally it is a shop-soiled word, run down by its prevalent usage, and usually does not mean much. A common characteristic of this "Word Off The Year" is I inadvertently always encounter its overuse by writers I detest the most, and before I know it, it has spread. Like bad writing usually does. Suddenly every bad writer is using it. And yes, there are bad writers!
Anyone who thinks they're good enough to insist others to read their work is bad.— % &In 2016, my word off the year was "petrichor". Internet was marred by its chronic usage by shit poets. It was and continues to be the ugliest word I encountered. Neither does it sound nice, nor does it look nice. I broke up with everyone that used it. It remained the most desecrated until I encountered a different kind of ugly. The word "hustle". Something which sounded nice and looked nice, but stood for something terribly obnoxious. Almost like a criminal in disguise of a samaj sevak.
It was 2019 when the word "hustle" knocked my door and got instantly ostracised. The word took itself too seriously and I hated the tech-bro (the worst writers of the lot!) cult popularising it. Never used the word since, unless it had "anti-" prefixed.— % &Right now, in 2025, the word off the year has evolved into a phrase off the year. And the award goes to: third space. Third Space, in title case. There's no other phrase I find more annoying and more ghisa-pita than this. The moment I encounter it, I cry, not again. Get a life, learn to write, come up with something new. As a creator of multiple third spaces in the city, I never wanted to use it. Why? What's wrong with it, you ask? Because the phrase takes itself too seriously. It somehow never sounds like you're talking about the space itself but about yourself.— % &Third space was fresh perhaps only when it was used the first time. But when everyone starts using it, it's not even second-hand. It's many-hands. And while "many-hands" might enter the Oxford dictionary if it's many-handed, but will never make it to a writer's dictionary. — % &-
Whenever I'm in a job, I end up taking up a weekend project. And put my heart and soul into it.— % &Cubbon Reads started when I was at Sharechat, and had weekends off. My partner and I wanted to go to Cubbon on Saturdays, so we could cook, chill and do laundry at home on Sundays. We started doing that, so many others joined in.— % &Pint of View started now when I'm at an AI SAAS company, and only have Sundays off. All our lectures are on Sunday for a reason!
P. S. I haven't attended Cubbon Reads in three months! — % &Last twelve months, when I was either in the hills or at home, I built nothing new. No product, no community. Bookmark and YQ were on but on autopilot. In those months, I turned into a student of music, read a bit and started writing short stories. All three are way more personal to me. — % &I was thinking why this happens and I figured a reason. Having been a founder for nine years, I undergo an identity crisis the moment I get into a job. I just don't relate to not being a founder anymore, and I subconsciously start wanting to build something ground up in my own way.— % &When I'm running startups, I never have that identity crisis, and there, I rather pursue my personal interests privately instead of starting something else. I pursue things that I not-so-urgently yet wishfully want to pursue. Say reading, writing, music, running, cycling, hiking, gypsying, cooking. It's almost as if I'm better for myself when I'm self-employed. But hey, am I better for the world when I'm employed?— % &My weekend project is kind of a soft rebellion to this whole capitalistic edifice that is a job. It's my protest song! — % &It's important to register that it's not my protest song against the company or the employer. But quite simply, it's against the job. Having been an employee, and also an employer (continued) for nine long years, it's the concept of employment that I detest. The inherent power hierarchy a job comes embedded with (even though I understand its need—without it, the capitalistic edifice will collapse) is something that seems to strip everyone of their innate free will. A job is a slow drugging of the dreamer in you. Soft rebellions like a weekend community become a mandate to preserve your self. It sort of slips into your job as well, as you're happier with yourself, and less frustrated with job on bad days.— % &Fortunately, all my employers have been generous and kind, at least to me, and I have been somewhat helpful too, but there's something about a job that existentially just doesn't feel right. It feels as if I'm not being true to myself. Because to a person who knows how to dream, it always haunts at the back of your mind that it's not your dream that you're pursuing. It feels like carrying the burden of a lie all the time. — % &No, don't get me wrong! I like my job for all its people, its learnings and even perks, but I also detest it for its very nature—that it's a job. No matter how good the work is, how high the pay is, how much freedom it provides, a job will never make you feel rich if you have dreams of your own. It's called occupation for a reason. A job occupies your self. You always feel poor, in one way or the other. When does one feel rich then?
The comedian Jimmy Carr put it rather succinctly: "If having more money wouldn't change what you do, then you're rich."— % &-
Being in a job you don't love is akin to being with someone you don't love. It fulfills your needs, but not your heart. Your heart misses that adventure, that longing which makes you feel alive. You live a cushier life, armed with a bank balance that will take years to run out, but miss the freedom and hope that only comes with having nothing. I miss those days of carefree abandon when I was broke but fearless, when I had nothing but walked like I owned the world, when after a tireless day consumed by rejections, I had the heart to gift myself a poem.
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In the long run, employment isn't about hiring someone for their talent but for their consistency. One hires you for your consistent efforts.
If you have someone even moderately talented keep at something everyday for a long time, no matter how much they procrastinate, they will take the thing forward. Talent determines the speed of growth, but it's actually consistency that fuels growth. This is why job works and self-discipline doesn't quite. If I get money enough to sustain myself to do something consistently, say practice sitar, I will also move the needle and become a virtuoso in it in a few years. But the motivation to sit and slog and do the daily riyaz wanes with time. It's only a job that pays you to be an amateur and learn on the go. Nothing else in this world does that.
Perhaps that's why most great artists start young before they're corrupted by this drug called salary, before money becomes the sole motivation to do something consistently. At that stage, joy is the most valuable commodity. As an adult, if you see yourself being consistent without pay, that's the thing that you're meant to do, that's the person you're destined to become.-
How to preserve your language if you're in a tech bro workspace? Read good books. Preferably fiction.
How to save your soul in a big city?
Escape it every now and then.
How to cure boredom?
Meet new people. Regularly. Until it tires you.
How to make peace with traffic?
Listen to upbeat music.
How to fulfill a dream after becoming tired of chasing it? Postpone it until you feel like doing it once again.
How to truly love someone? Give space to them,
in shared spaces and in conversations.-
I don't like bookstores where books are not scattered haphazardly. There's something about organisation which makes one not feel free enough to take out a book to browse. The pressure to keep it back where it was is too deterring and too inorganic to browse.
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It's been exactly a month since I started working full-time at a friend's startup—in a marketing role, a job that fundamentally involves writing.
It's been exactly a month since I started using AI for writing.
It's also been exactly a month since I wrote something from scratch, something on YQ, something for myself.— % &To tell the truth, I have just one dream. That of writing a novel.
Just one novel. About growing up around my father. This is the only thing on my bucket list. This is the story behind my three word insta bio: "Will write someday." This is the place I wish to arrive at, the reason I want to live for.
And there's absolutely no hurry to write it. I rather wish to write it with older eyes.— % &So to this person, who's saving himself for a novel someday, it feels as if I'm knowingly eating away at my writer self—the conscientious self that pulls me towards the writer I aspire to be.
And no, it didn't start now with AI becoming my everyday crutch for subjects as frightening as finance. It started years go.— % &In fact, it started with YQ itself, as I betrayed the long form for the short & traded off the endurance I'd built to survive the arid & arduous journey of a novel for quick gratification on a "post", or worse, "quote".— % &I never attempted a novel since YQ. I first lost the muscle, then the ideas stopped knocking too.
Every long-form idea would be filtered for tiny insight, then turned into a little something. A musing a day. A one-liner a day. A microtale a day. A poem a day. All clubbed, the self-congratulatory, a "quote" a day.
With time, I clearly knew how to go from point A to point B in my narrative but I forgot how to get lost that only the scope of a novel offers. And I lost that scope in me too.— % &But somehow, writing everyday kept the fire burning. It allowed my dream to rest, to stay, to linger, to grow deeper, all the while, waiting (without looking) for a start to the novel that could make me jumpstart.
Short-form, or the so-called "quote", helped me too. It allowed me to call myself a writer. To the world, and more importantly, to myself. And it helped me continue writing.
One becomes a writer by calling oneself a writer, they say. A real quote, at last!— % &So to this person, who has time and again felt incapable of fulfilling the one cherished dream, and who's writing something (from scratch, mind it!) after spending the past one month hopping ships named ChatGPT, Gemini to finally settle on Claude, I say this with a rare relief:
This musing is fresh from the pen, typed with hand, no footprints of GPTs whatsoever, unfiltered, unedited, unadulterated, like always. I can still write.— % &Earlier, writing was a way for me to make sense of the world. Now writing is a way for me to figure whether I'm still making sense or not. Or have I lost the muscle? I continue to dream of writing my novel someday. I don't know if I will have the talent left or will AI murder the writer in me, or will my novel be written by an AI when I'm 50.
I can just hope it will be me who writes.
Will write someday. Amen.— % &-
For the entire time I was away from Bengaluru, my Instagram feed was filled with all these videos where there were locals fighting over language, where goons bumped into cars and chased them late nights. I came back scared, a dashcam in place, a Learn-Kannada-in-30-Days book handy with me and "Swalpa Kannada Gotu" on the tip of my tongue.
When the first delivery boy I ordered groceries from called me, I cautiously switched to English, not Hindi like before. But to my surprise, he switched to Hindi upon realising I didn't speak Kannada. He kindly climbed up three floors and handed over the groceries. I offered him water but he politely declined. "Naai saar". I thought of the simplest way to convey my gratitude & I could just come up with one word: Dhanyavadagalu, which I probably mispronounced because he smiled. His smile reassured me. I was needlessly wary of this sweet city from faraway.
Bengaluru is home to so many migrants because locals are tolerant & accepting. All Bengaluru desires of us is to become cognizant to its culture beyond just the CTR ka dosa and MTR ki rava idly. There's no bigger door to the culture of a place than its language. It's on us to learn the language.-
When you meet a guy for dating or marriage, ask them what they like about their mother.
If their answer only contains either of these: her sacrifice, her cooking or how well she takes care of dad and the house and the family, avoid these guys at all costs. What a guy likes in their mother is what they desire of their partner. They haven't grown beyond looking at their mother from the patriarchal lens and would expect the same from their partners in one way or the other. Instead, look for guys who talk about their mother's dreams, if and how she rebelled against the society for being the most authetic version of themselves, how she's found (and often fought for) her independence within and outside her household, how her kindness isn't limited to the husband and kids but to the overall world. Find a guy who loves his mother for being herself, not how father or children or the world expects her to be.-
The vacant space in our hearts
that someone's presence
can only fill.-