From isolation to belonging: The psychology of real connection
By Avnee Taneja There are moments when you are sitting across from someone, laughter curling at the edges of the table, and yet a thin, invisible distance rises between you like mist on glass. Their words reach your ears but not your heart. You nod, you know your lines, you keep pace with the conversation […]
Loneliness in a hyperconnected world
By Aditya Pundir It feels strange to write about loneliness in an age when we have over eight billion people on the planet, and India alone is home to more than 1.4 billion. We live in a hyperconnected world powered by digital technologies – yet, paradoxically, people feel more isolated than ever before. This raises […]
Five ways to help you socialise
Snehanky Chattopadhyay “I swear it feels like I am trapped”; “I don’t know what else to do”; “I feel very happy” – these were the sentiments echoed throughout the period of plague of the 21st century aka Covid. I remember during that time having to counsel people who were alarmingly frustrated with the social restrictions […]
Men’s mental health: The crushing weight of provider pressure
Syed Hammad Ali For generations, the Indian family household has been governed by strict gender roles, where the men bear the responsibility of being the financial providers and protectors, while the women manage the household realms of child-rearing, cooking, and household maintenance. This division became so ingrained in our cultural identity that male self-worth […]
The invisible wound
by Neha Duseja Did anyone notice the bruise on my face? No, right? Because there wasn’t any. And that’s the thing about some wounds – they don’t show up on the skin, they sit inside you, quietly, and rot everything you once loved. I was 22 when I first heard the term panic disorder. I […]
When the wild speaks
This year’s monsoon brought devastation to Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, with cloudbursts, landslides, and floods leaving no doubt that climate change is intensifying. It is making life dangerous for mountain communities and risky for tourists, while turning weather patterns increasingly unpredictable. We may soon need to redraw our weather charts and learn entirely new ways […]
The places we never go
by Sukriti Taneja There’s a folder on my laptop called ‘Someday’. Inside it, you’ll find half-baked itineraries to faraway cities, screenshots of Airbnb’s I’ll probably never book, bookmarked travel blogs, and a map dotted with pins that feel more like diary entries than destinations. It’s a strange kind of travel, this wishful wandering. You […]
The rise of ‘situationships’ and what they’re doing to our mental health
Bhavya Jain “So what are we?” Honey, they don’t know that and neither do you. That is why your relationship would be classified as, what we call nowadays, a situationship. There’s a connection, certainly, but there is no commitment. One day you’re just friends and the next night maybe something more. Therefore, we define situationships […]
The metamorphosis
Sucheta Das Mohapatra The quality of Neelanjana’s (name changed) work kept deteriorating. She wasn’t performing as per her manager’s expectation. The Human Resource (HR) Department of the company she served placed her in three Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) in six months. There was no change. No one could make out what was happening. She was […]
Breaking up with perfection
A love letter to my flawed, real self. Because flawless is exhausting, and freedom looks better on me by Anandmai Kumar A long-overdue breakup Perfection and I go way back. She was the invisible roommate, the unrelenting voice in my head, the imaginary gold star I kept chasing. She arrived quietly – through school […]