A garage. A loft. A cupboard. A suitcase under the bed. A plastic bag inside another plastic bag because, obviously, that also has potential.

In my house, it’s the garage. In yours, it might be the kitchen drawer, the guest room, or that one shelf nobody opens unless there’s a family emergency.

This is not a story about clutter. Not really.

It’s about the strange, funny, very emotional way we keep saving things for a version of life called “later.”

It is also a little bit about the hoarders of our families.

In my case, it’s my mum. She has always had this very specific relationship with things. She doesn’t just see an old bedsheet. She sees backup. She doesn’t just see a box. She sees future use. She doesn’t just see a pile. She sees effort, money, memory, and the possibility that one day, somehow, this exact thing may save the day.

And honestly, that is the part I understand.

What I don’t understand is when “saving” becomes “forgetting,” and the thing kept for later quietly becomes the thing nobody can find, use, donate, repair, or even emotionally defend anymore.

The Garage Has Receipts

My mother is usually very happy not taking my help with household cleaning and organising.

Which is fair. Because the second I enter the scene, peace leaves the group chat.

She is the kind of person who will run an entire house, remember where the turmeric is, know which neighbour borrowed which bowl in 2017, and still insist that the one faded dupatta in the back of the cupboard has “some use.” Her brain is basically a household archive with emotional subtitles.

So when I question the archive, naturally, the archive questions my audacity.

As long as I mind my own business, live out of the suitcases I’ve brought home, and don’t look too closely at anything, all is well.

Then one of two things happens.

Either she asks me to “go keep this there,” or I notice something I was never meant to notice.

Like clothes from when she was my age.

Or old bags.

Or random fabric.

Or something that has been “kept safely” for so long that even the thing itself has forgotten its purpose.

And that’s when the fight begins.

Everything Is Useful If You Believe Hard Enough

To be fair, she’s not entirely wrong.

During my fashion design days, I did use old clothes and fabrics to repurpose them into new designs. Very sustainable. Very creative. Very “look at me saving the planet with one old kurta.” But here’s the problem with saving things for later.

Sometimes, by the time later arrives, the fabric has gone bad. The stitches don’t hold. The quality has died. Or worse, you forget you saved it in the first place and end up buying the same thing again. So now you have the old thing, the new thing, and the emotional burden of both.

Cute.

The Indian Home Runs on ‘Kaam Aa Jayega’

If you grew up in an Indian home, you know the sentence.

“Rakh do, kaam aa jayega.” Keep it. It’ll be useful.

This sentence has saved many things from death. Old containers. Bedsheets. Dupattas. Wires. Notebooks. Gift boxes. Broken bags. Clothes that no longer fit anyone but are somehow still “good material.”

And listen, there is history there.

For a lot of our parents, saving things wasn’t a quirky habit. It came from scarcity. From not having enough. From knowing the value of money. Growing up in homes where you didn’t throw something away just because you were bored with it.

So no, this is not me saying our mothers are wrong.

It’s me saying maybe the “later” they’re preparing for has quietly taken over the house. And with my mother, “later” is not laziness alone. It is a habit. It is an attachment. It is also the mental load of running a home where every object has to be accounted for, every expense has to be justified, and every perfectly usable thing feels rude to discard.

The Problem With Later Is That It Has No Calendar Invite

My mother’s usual defence is simple.

She has to do everything in the house. Nobody helps. Everything is on her. Organising is also another task added to the pile of tasks already waiting for her.

And honestly? Fair.

Decluttering sounds cute on the internet. In real life, it means bending, sorting, dusting, arguing, deciding, donating, carrying, and then listening to someone say, “But why did you give that away?”

No wonder the pile becomes a “later” pile. The donation bag sits in one corner. Then moves to another corner and somehow migrates to the garage and becomes part of the architecture.

Not a Mom Thing, a Letting-Go Thing

The funny part is, this is not just my mother.

My brother has been holding on to notebooks from standard 11.

Standard 11th. He doesn’t use them. He doesn’t need them. He probably doesn’t even remember what’s inside them.

But touch the drawer, and suddenly it’s a heritage site. For him, it’s not about scarcity. It’s about comfort. He arranges his things a certain way. His space feels familiar. Even if he’s not using half of it, knowing it’s there makes him feel settled.

And that’s the thing.

Some people hold on because they grew up with less. Some people hold on because change feels annoying. Some people hold on because deciding is exhausting.

Some people hold on because their mess has become their comfort zone.

So no, it’s not a mother thing. It’s not even a money thing. It’s a letting-go thing.

Minimalism Meets the Middle-Class Cupboard

Watching The Minimalists: Less Is Now makes living with less look almost too simple.

The documentary follows Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, better known as The Minimalists, as they talk about how owning less can make space for more actual life.

Lovely thought. But Indian homes complicate minimalism. Because here, an extra bedsheet is not just an extra bedsheet. It is guest culture, emergency planning, middle-class memory, and “what if someone needs it?” folded into one.

Minimalism says: keep what adds value. Indian homes say: but what if this random cable adds value in 2031? And that’s where the real work begins. Not in throwing everything away.

In asking: Is this still serving me, or am I just scared to let it go?

My Personal Rule: Keep the Story, Not the Storage Problem

I’m not someone who believes everything old must go. I keep things too. I keep letters, clothes that still feel like a version of me, small objects that carry a person, a place, or a time I don’t want to lose. I understand the drama of a thing becoming more than a thing. Sometimes a random top is not a random top. Sometimes it is a whole era with sleeves.

But I do have one rule. If I can tell you why I’m keeping it, it can stay.

If the only reason is “maybe later,” “just in case,” or “I forgot this existed but now that you’ve shown it to me, I feel emotionally attacked,” then we need to have a conversation. For me, the difference is simple. Keeping something should feel like care. Hoarding it should not feel like avoidance.

Some Things Are Memories, Some Are Just Dust With Confidence

There are things worth keeping. A sari that belonged to your grandmother. A letter. A childhood toy. A piece of clothing that carries a whole person inside it. Something that still makes your heart do a small, dramatic thing.

Keep them properly. Store them with care. Give them space and respect.

But the broken wooden chair that someday a carpenter will come and fix? The top you haven’t worn in six years?

The notebook from a tuition class you emotionally left behind in 2018? Maybe not. Not everything is memory.

Some things are just objects with excellent PR. Memory deserves preservation. Clutter just demands accommodation. Know the difference. 

The Marie Kondo Method, but Make It Family Drama

With my brother, the calmer route works. You can’t just storm in and say, “Move your things, I need this space.”

That will activate the defence system. You have to tell him, gently, that you know this is difficult. That you’re not here to destroy his entire emotional ecosystem. That you just need him to look at the things and decide what still matters.

Once he gets there, he usually realises he doesn’t need 100 things. Maybe he needs 10.

Fine. Keep the 10. But let the 90 go.

That’s the most practical version of the Marie Kondo idea. Not everything has to “spark joy” in a poetic, Netflix-approved way. Some things can simply be useful. Some can be meaningful. The rest can leave.

With Mothers, You Need a Strategy and Snacks

With mothers, it’s harder.

You cannot simply tell them what to do. That is not how Indian households work. That is how you get a 45-minute speech on everything they have done for you since birth.

You have to help. You have to sort with them. You have to show them what has gone bad, what hasn’t been used, what someone else could actually use, and what is only taking up space.

And most importantly, you have to move fast. Because if you leave the donation pile unattended for too long, it will be reviewed, reconsidered, rescued, and returned to the garage.

The trick is not to fight every time. It is to explain why something can go.

Why it won’t be used. Why someone else may need it more. Why keeping everything is not the same as valuing everything.

Don’t Wait for the Big Clean

The easiest clutter to deal with is the clutter you never create. When you’re about to keep something, pause for five seconds and ask yourself if it has an actual place in your life or just a possible one.

Because if everything gets promoted to “later,” later eventually needs an entire garage.

And if you already have a later pile? Give it a date. Not someday. A Sunday. Take an hour. Put on music. Make coffee. Get everyone involved. Homes don’t belong to one person, and neither does the responsibility of looking after them.

You don’t have to become a minimalist overnight. You just have to stop making “later” do all the heavy lifting.

Before You Ask, What’s Wrong With Hoarding?

Technically, nothing.

Keep what you want. It’s your house. Your cupboard. Your emotional support carton.

But also, let’s be honest.

If you keep things you never use, you make less space for things you actually need.

If you store things “for later” and never find them later, you buy more.

If something could help someone else but is sitting in your garage collecting dust, its usefulness is basically being held hostage.

And if your home starts feeling heavy, crowded, and chaotic, maybe the things are not just taking up space.

Maybe they’re taking up energy.

The Real Test Is Honesty

Maybe the real test is not whether something sparks joy.

Maybe the real test is whether we are being honest about it.

Will I use this? Do I know where it is?

Is it still in good condition? Does it mean something to me? Would someone else use it better?

Am I keeping it because I love it, or because deciding what to do with it feels like work? That last one is usually the problem. A lot of clutter is not attachment. It is postponed decision-making wearing sentimental perfume.

Keep the Meaning, Lose the Dust

The point is not to become a minimalist monk with one chair, two plates, and a beige linen wardrobe.

The point is also not to shame our parents for saving things.

Maybe they saved because they had to. Maybe they kept because life taught them not to waste. Maybe “later” was once a very real survival strategy.

But maybe now, we can update the system. Keep the things that hold meaning. Keep the things that still serve a purpose. Keep the things that make you feel rooted, loved, or quietly happy.

Let go of the things that are only sitting there because no one had the energy to decide. And the garage, finally, gets to stop being a museum of postponed decisions.  Because somewhere in the garage, my mother is probably still saving something for later. And if I come back years from now, I have a feeling it’ll still be there.

Waiting.
Dusty.
Confident.

Fully convinced its moment is coming.

The post Somewhere In The Garage, My Mother Is Still Saving Things For ‘Later’ appeared first on Voicey World.

But over time, things changed. Managers encouraged teams to communicate in languages everyone could understand. People adjusted. Nobody made me feel like my right to exist in the city depended on linguistic performance.

And because dignity existed alongside expectation, something interesting happened.

People learnt Marathi anyway. Friends around me picked it up naturally. Not because somebody screamed at them. Not because they were threatened. Not because politicians convinced them language was a border wall. Because they wanted to connect better and respected the culture around them.

Every Indian child has stood in a school assembly and repeated the pledge.

All Indians are my brothers and sisters.

A sentence we memorised before we were old enough to question it. Right next to unity in diversity, national integration, and maps in textbooks coloured to look beautifully seamless.

Then we grew up.

And suddenly, being Indian didn’t seem to be enough anymore.

Now you also need to sound correct.

Speak the right language. Use the right accent.

Because apparently, all Indians are my brothers and sisters with regional terms and conditions.

The Cost of Sounding Like an Outsider

In May 2026, Newslaundry reported the story of 21-year-old Pandav Kumar, a Zomato delivery worker from Bihar’s Khagaria district, who was allegedly shot dead on April 26 by a Delhi Police constable after being called a ‘Bihari’. According to the report, Pandav was his family’s sole breadwinner. His younger brother had dropped out of school due to tuberculosis. Pandav had moved to Delhi years ago to support everyone back home. That night, he had simply stepped out after attending a child’s birthday celebration with friends from his village.

Then, allegedly, came the question so many migrants in India know too well: ‘What are you Biharis doing here?’

Moments later, a bullet was fired. Pandav died. His friend survived with injuries.

And honestly, if that sentence doesn’t disturb you enough already, nothing in this article will.

Because this story is no longer about language alone! It’s about what happens when regional superiority, insecurity, politics, and everyday prejudice start wearing the mask of ‘cultural pride’.

And Pandav Kumar’s case is not an isolated incident. People can comfortably file it away under ‘tragic but rare’.

Pandav Kumar, the family’s sole breadwinner, was killed in a shooting involving a Delhi Police constable.

It is part of a pattern.

A very ugly one. Every few months, India rediscovers its multilingualism by threatening someone over it.

In November 2025, a college student in Maharashtra reportedly died by suicide after being assaulted following a language-related altercation on a local train.

In Dombivli, two women were reportedly assaulted after one of them used the word ‘excuse me’ in English.

Videos have surfaced of political workers allegedly humiliating workers, shopkeepers, and public staff for not speaking Marathi fluently enough. Bengaluru has repeatedly witnessed incidents involving people allegedly targeted for not speaking Kannada. Students from the Northeast have spoken for years about racial and linguistic hostility in metropolitan cities that proudly market themselves as ‘cosmopolitan’.

And these are only the stories that became loud enough to trend. For every viral video, there are probably hundreds of quieter humiliations that never become headlines.

The migrant worker laughed at for mispronouncing a word. The cab driver mocked for his accent.

The office employee silently excluded from conversations. The delivery executive treated like an outsider despite spending more time in the city than the people insulting him. Humiliation rarely trends unless somebody dies, gets beaten up, or the internet gets content out of it.

Everything else becomes background noise. And maybe that’s the most disturbing part. How normal this has started to feel.

India Runs on Migration, We Just Don’t Like Admitting It

Here’s the thing nobody wants to say loudly enough.

India survives because people migrate. Workers leave villages.

Students leave hometowns. Families relocate because survival demands it. Entire cities function because somebody, somewhere, left their home behind. Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Delhi — these cities are built every single day by migrants.

The person delivering your food, driving your cab, building your apartment, cleaning your office, serving your coffee, teaching your children — there’s a good chance they came from somewhere else.

Migration isn’t an exception in India; it’s the engine. Which is why the hypocrisy around language becomes impossible to ignore.

We want migrant labour; we just don’t want migrant presence. We want people to contribute economically. But socially, emotionally, and culturally? We keep reminding them they are temporary guests.

Paying taxes, working brutal hours, and helping cities function still isn’t enough. Now you also need to clear a spoken language entrance exam for basic respect.

Nothing says national unity quite like threatening someone’s livelihood over pronunciation.

The Language Question Nobody Wants to Fully Answer

The recent Marathi language debate in Maharashtra exposed this contradiction in full public view. The Maharashtra government’s push requiring taxi and autorickshaw drivers to demonstrate working knowledge of Marathi triggered political debate, legal questions, and anxiety among migrant drivers. But before we turn this into a Maharashtra-only story, let’s be honest: every region in India seems convinced it has a monopoly on language insecurity.

Maharashtra has seen repeated controversies around Marathi. Bengaluru periodically finds itself at the centre of Kannada-related language rows. Over the years, reports have surfaced of people being harassed, threatened, or even assaulted for not speaking Kannada. In one widely reported case in 2014, a student from Manipur was allegedly attacked after locals demanded he speak Kannada because he was living in Karnataka.

The language changes.

The script changes.

The political slogans change.

The behaviour often doesn’t.

Find someone who sounds different.

Question whether they belong.

Call it cultural protection.

And this is where the conversation becomes more complicated than internet shouting matches.

Because yes, Marathi deserves respect in Maharashtra.

Kannada deserves respect in Karnataka.

Tamil deserves respect in Tamil Nadu.

Every language deserves preservation.

Are We Protecting the Language or Simply Performing Power?

If drivers must prove Marathi proficiency, what comes next?

Doctors?

Nurses?

Teachers?

Private employees?

Students?

Will every Indian eventually require linguistic clearance certificates before crossing state borders? Because that sounds less like unity and more like internal immigration control.

And yet, while these debates explode politically, ordinary people remain trapped in the middle. Regional communities fear cultural erasure. Migrants fear humiliation and exclusion. Politicians harvest both anxieties like electoral crops. Meanwhile, the average person is just trying to survive rent prices and traffic. The irony becomes even more absurd when you look at the larger national picture. The same political ecosystem that promotes Hindi aggressively at the national level often simultaneously defends regional language pride locally.

In Maharashtra, backlash erupted against policies seen as ‘Hindi imposition’ in schools. Opposition leaders described it as a threat to Marathi identity. In Tamil Nadu, resistance to Hindi imposition has existed for decades. Karnataka has seen campaigns demanding stronger visibility for Kannada.

And honestly?

Some of those concerns are valid.

India cannot flatten itself into one language. But there’s a difference between resisting linguistic domination and punishing ordinary people for sounding different. Those are not the same thing. And somewhere in India’s language wars, that distinction keeps collapsing.

The Foreigner Exception

Now let’s talk about one of the funniest and most embarrassing contradictions in this country. Watch a white tourist struggle through one sentence in Hindi.

Instant national celebration.

Somebody starts recording. Instagram captions appear.

‘OMG, he respects our culture.’

‘Protect him at all costs.’

‘He speaks better Hindi than me.’

Now watch an Indian migrant struggle with a regional language in another Indian state. Suddenly everybody becomes a border security officer.

‘You’ve lived here three years and still don’t know the language?’

‘Why are you here then?’

‘Go back.’

The white tourist gets encouragement. The migrant worker gets suspicion. The exchange student gets applause. The delivery driver gets mocked. And let’s be brutally honest here: the standard isn’t always effort.

It’s familiarity. It’s perceived belonging. People often decide whether your language mistakes are charming or irritating based on who they think you are before you’ve even finished speaking.

A foreign tourist struggling through a sentence is often seen as someone embracing the culture. An Indian from another state making the same effort can be asked why they haven’t learnt the language already. That is not language pride. That is gatekeeping disguised as cultural protection.

Because if communication were genuinely the goal, effort would matter more than perfection. Broken Marathi would still be welcomed. Broken Kannada would still count. Broken Hindi would still deserve patience. Instead, fluency becomes a measure of belonging. And the people perceived as outsiders are often expected to prove themselves the fastest.

The Language of Exclusion 

I moved to Pune from Madhya Pradesh seven years ago. In the beginning, there were moments that stayed with me. Rickshaw drivers occasionally treat me differently. Office conversations suddenly switched into Marathi while I sat there wondering whether people forgot I couldn’t understand or whether they wanted me to feel that way. But over time, things changed. Managers encouraged teams to communicate in languages everyone could understand. People adjusted. Nobody made me feel like my right to exist in the city depended on linguistic performance. And because dignity existed alongside expectation, something interesting happened.

People learnt Marathi anyway. Friends around me picked it up naturally. Not because somebody screamed at them. Not because they were threatened. Not because politicians convinced them language was a border wall. Because they wanted to connect better and respected the culture around them. Because curiosity works much better than hostility ever will.

They learnt it like a skill. Not an obligation. Like respect. Not fear. And maybe that’s the part India keeps getting embarrassingly wrong. People don’t resist languages. People resist humiliation. The problem was never Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, or Tamil.

The problem begins when language stops being an invitation and starts becoming a moral superiority contest. Because somewhere along the way, some people became convinced that another language entering their state is enough to destroy their culture, identity, heritage, civilisation, and the entire emotional stability of society. Which is fascinating considering India has survived invasions, colonisation, partition, corruption, inflation, pollution, potholes, and Mumbai traffic, but apparently hearing the ‘wrong’ language at a tea stall is where we finally collapse as a civilisation.

And the saddest part? Most migrants are already trying. Trying to fit in. Trying to survive. Trying to learn. Trying to belong.

But belonging in India increasingly feels conditional. You can work here. Build here. Pay rent here. Drive our cabs. Deliver our food. Help run entire cities.

Just don’t sound too different while doing it. Because the moment somebody’s dignity becomes dependent on how they sound, we have already failed the idea of India we keep performing in school assemblies. So maybe the next time we proudly say ‘All Indians are my brothers and sisters’, we should finally say the quiet part out loud too. Unless they speak the ‘wrong’ language.

The post All Indians Are My Brothers and Sisters. Until Someone Speaks the Wrong Language appeared first on Voicey World.

There’s a version of life you don’t recognise when you first step into it. It doesn’t announce itself. It just quietly becomes your normal. Learning which grocery store is closest. Finding the sunny corner of the room. Buying another plant even though you promised yourself you wouldn’t. Then, just when it starts feeling like home, you’re packing boxes again. And only while leaving do you realise you’ve been living a life built on temporary addresses all along. 

The kind where home is never one place. Just a series of rooms that held you for a while.

I moved to Pune with five suitcases in June 2018 for my undergrad. That was my entire life.

No “I’ll take this later.”
No cupboards left behind at home. Just everything I thought I needed, zipped up and carried with me.

I lived in a PG first for seven months. Three girls, one room, cupboards that filled up too quickly.
Somewhere between fashion college and growing up, my things started multiplying. More clothes than the cupboard could hold. Fashion magazines I kept “for inspiration.” My favourite coffee mug. A corkboard with polaroids and receipts from random café visits. Plants that somehow survived hostel life. None of it was expensive. But together, they stopped the room from feeling rented. 

The room didn’t grow, but my life did. So it started feeling smaller.

Then came the one BHK in Feb 2019 for the next three years. A friend, a slightly bigger kitchen, a little more breathing room. We bought stuff, a lot of stuff

Then we started playing house!

Added plants, photographs, and hung fairy lights. For the first time, it felt like we weren’t just living; we were staying.

Until we weren’t.

She left. I stayed back in that same house, surrounded by things that once felt shared. I didn’t decorate much after that.
Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know if I was staying long enough to put that effort in. 

Then came another move. A job in a different part of the city. Long commutes. Expensive rent. And a version of me that was starting to get scared of comfort. So I left again in March 2022. This time, into a home I built with someone.

And this one, I gave my whole heart to it. New curtains and fresh plants.
Cushions, bedsheets, things for the kitchen, we didn’t really need but wanted anyway. A refrigerator that made it feel like permanence had finally arrived.

I didn’t hold back in this house. I let it become ours. And maybe that’s why leaving it hurt the most.
The relationship didn’t last. The job changed. And suddenly, everything I had carefully built became something I had to pack away.

Again.

By then, I had more than I started with. A lot more. 

So I packed it all up, once again, and moved into another house. It was April 2023, and this time, it was just me. 

Lamps, overnight bags, little souvenirs I’d picked up along the way, because I always thought, I’ll still be here. Somewhere.

But somewhere keeps shifting. And slowly, you realise, you can’t carry everything with you.

Another move, Jan 2026, this time I didn’t even try. I gave things away. Left things behind. Packed only what felt necessary.

Came back to my hometown with less than I had built, but more than I had started with. And even now, I know,  if I leave again, I’ll leave things here too.

The stuffed toys on my bed. The things that don’t fit into suitcases anymore. The things that quietly became part of my life.

Because that’s the truth no one tells you about moving, you don’t just change homes.

You shed them.

Over and over again.

So how do you live in a place you know you might leave? Do you hold back, keep it minimal, live like it’s temporary?

Or do you give in, decorate every corner, let it hold pieces of you, even if you know you won’t take them back?

I’ve done both.

I’ve lived in rooms that never knew me. And in homes that held too much of me. And I still don’t have an answer.

Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe the point isn’t to choose between staying and leaving. Maybe it’s this…

To keep building a home anyway.
Even if it’s temporary.
Even if it breaks a little every time.

Because somewhere between the packing and the leaving,
You realise it was never just about the house.

It was about who you became in it.

The post I’m Not a Minimalist. I Just Move Too Much to Get Attached appeared first on Voicey World.

This act of being in the zone with point-blank focus is a tried and tested experiment by me as well. When I was preparing for defence exams, and I wanted to become an officer so badly that I would do anything for it, I used to give my phone to my mother as a sacrifice. She was given clear instructions: do not give me my phone until I have finished my to-do list for the day.

But Why Locking in Requires ‘Sacrifice’?

I had a vision in my mind that I had to accomplish, and that required my undivided attention. Becoming an officer is not an easy thing, but my willpower in front of Reels is quite weak. I am prone to watching videos, believing I have all the sweet time in the world.

I would pick up my phone to search for a topic, but I don’t know how my finger would click on Instagram and one hour would go by just like that. Then, I would remember- oh shoot, I was studying. I even deleted the app from my phone, believing that I would not get distracted anymore. But the constant notifications from the ‘study groups’ I had joined, Zomato’s flirty notifications, and shopping apps’ messages would irritate me. One ‘ting’ voice and my head would turn towards the phone. 

While I tried to stop myself from reaching for my phone, the process of reading, making notes, memorising everything, taking regular tests, and maintaining consistency would sometimes make me lose confidence too.

I remember reading the chapter on Parliament in Indian Polity one morning. The chapter covered everything from the structure and functioning of Parliament to the roles of the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and the Speaker, along with different parliamentary procedures. After reading all of this, I took a test that night and scored 3/10. The questions were statement-based, and every option seemed correct to me.

When I opened Telegram, I saw other aspirants calling Parliament the easiest chapter, saying the type of questions and answers were fixed. I thought, Am I that dumb? I’m scoring 3/10, and people are calling this chapter easy? This all led me to question myself and my decision to prepare for the exam.

And I thought it was all because of this phone. 

Due to all of this, I made the sacrifice and gave my phone to my mother. 

Lock-In Sacrifice That Would Irritate Me

But I will be honest with you. On the first day I gave my phone to my mother, I sat down with the attitude that today, my path to becoming an officer had officially started. That enthusiasm lasted for exactly 45 minutes. And then I slept for two hours.

By the time I woke up, my willpower hit its lowest record. I would even skip my syllabus, thinking I could catch up on it the following day.

But that wasn’t easy at all. I still feel ashamed of all the times I used to say, ‘Just give me my phone for 15 minutes, and I will give it back.’

Was my motivation to clear those exams lacking? Absolutely not. 

But I still wanted my phone. And sometimes, I used to regret choosing my mother as the custodian of my phone because that lady is a disciplinarian. She would literally do anything but give me my phone.

I felt this whole process was a punishment because I took away my own choice. I did it to be away from my distractions, and getting the phone back was becoming my distraction. 

That’s when I realised that keeping my phone away was one thing, but actually sitting down and studying was another. Removing the distraction didn’t automatically make the work interesting, and it certainly didn’t mean I could concentrate for hours just because I had decided to. 

This is the time when one feels most alone and searches for comfort, and I found it online (I got it after I told my mom that I needed it for studying).

Internet Has Been Doing This Too

I thought I was the only one who needed to go to such extremes to get things done. But then people on the internet were doing the same thing, just in different ways. There was this whole fad around the 75 Hard challenge, dopamine detox, Monk Mode, and all those other challenges. All having the same winning arc: that you have got to become indispensable and take charge of the chariot of your life.

In fact, in most of the motivational speeches I’ve heard, I’ve seen people pitching the same idea: ‘Disappear for six months, and be ahead of everyone.’

And this is the mindset we perhaps need more than ever. See, earlier people didn’t have this kind of technology; millennials grew up with technology but with more restricted usage, and we are practically children of the Internet. 

The sheer number of videos telling us how to fix our lives, build discipline, wake up at 5 am or become a completely different person in six months is insane. 

And when those very videos become a distraction too, the idea of shutting everything out sounds like the best possible decision one could take. This is why locking in feels like a necessity now.

Boring, Frustrating, but Did It Work?

And if you ask me for my unsolicited opinion, I would say locking in is one of the most boring things you have to do. There were days when I wouldn’t study at all; I wasn’t a perfectly disciplined person at all, just because my phone was with my mother.

But once I started breaking down my obstacles and setting achievable goals, I found it a little easier. The feeling of ticking things off my to-do list gave me a hell lot of satisfaction. Gradually, I could see that I was getting things done.

And yes, I cleared my written exams multiple times because of it. So, yeah, locking in might actually be helpful.

The post Why Does Locking In Feel Like a Punishment? appeared first on Voicey World.

The dark brown leather couch was lovingly passed down to me from my parents when I decided to move out. This couch was special to me because some of my best childhood memories were made when we simply perched on it.

Back in the day, my parents’ home was lively, with people flocking in… My uncle and aunt would spend Sunday afternoons playing UNO, with my brother coaxing us to play by house rules, or my mother putting a +4 card on the same one, and we would cry in unison. My family and I often made major decisions, like whether to get a new chandelier or invest in a Dyson vacuum cleaner, or simply talked about life on a Sunday evening.

But as I got a new job and my brother left for a different city to pursue his graduation… the couch lost its semblance.

It gathered dust because our conversations ended on our family group chat, and mainly because we had different routines. My parents would sleep by 9:30 p.m., and I would come back after working longer hours.

The days no longer ended with us spending quality time on the couch; one of us would just sit there, catching up with the others over FaceTime and memes. But I still wanted the sofa to have a place in our lives. And subconsciously, it did. I’d find myself drying towels on it every time the weather turned.

Slowly, the luxury of spending hours together on that couch disappeared.

But now I see the resurgence of that same couch, not just in my life but in the world of furniture too.

The brown couch is now where my friends and I come together more than anywhere else. We binge-watch, unwind, and spend hours doing very little, but with intention.

The depth feels just right because we end up reclining and staying longer than we planned. It just feels easy on us, like good posture you don’t have to think about. And I think that is why I am emotionally attached to it. Not only does it remind me of my fond memories with my parents, but I also get to spend time similarly with my friends.

Every Saturday is movie trivia night. We come to the couch, packed with snacks and our water bottles, and decide not to move for the next three hours.

Literally and figuratively.

The couch has these wooden grooves, which make it equal parts chic and comfortable, and every time I sink into it, it feels like I am getting a bear hug, which, I believe, is the perfect medicine after a long, tiring day.

It Didn’t Just Come Back for the Aesthetic

The giant conversation pit in the film The Fantastic Four: First Steps [2025] [Photograph: Marvel]

But when I look back at what brought our society to this boring-a** sofa, I am taken back to when we had something known as the conversation pit—a seating area literally built into the floor, lined with low, continuous sofas—for everyone to gather and chit-chat. It peaked in the 1970s, and then disappeared.

But now, as we try to build a space in our tiny, rented apartments, the sunken sofa has entered the chat. Thankfully, it is no longer found only in architecture journals but also on our Instagram feeds, Pinterest saves, and the group chat where someone drops a reference image and everyone responds with a single word: want.

There’s No Need to Optimise Our Living Room

A view of the living area from the terrace of the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, built between 1953 and 1957 [Photograph: Wikimedia Commons]

The sunken sofa arrives in the middle of a larger shift away from the kind of home that was simply optimised for flexibility. The move now is towards pieces that resonate with us on a soul level and spaces that are our own.

The conversation pit fits because, above everything else, it’s a commitment. You cannot rearrange it on a Sunday afternoon because you’re bored. That’s not a flaw. That’s exactly the point we are looking for.

For us, building a home was never about making sure everything fits. It was about having a space that holds us and defines who we are as individuals.

… And also, to just enjoy our rent a bit more.

Pin It Anyway

But we get it: to build a conversation pit, we’d have to call a contractor and break down a wall. And, boy, doing that in a rented apartment in today’s economy is a far-fetched dream, let alone a realistic possibility.

But you know what? We can still have our own chit-chat corner with a sunken couch arranged inward, a deep rug or a throw, and floor cushions to hold our moods just fine.

As I write this, I realise I’d love to make my space richer with a buttercup-yellow sofa bean bag from Couchette. I think it would go so well with my existing brown baby. I’d want to, of course, add a bunch of colours. For instance, these reversible cushions in purple and green from The Purple Pony would add to the vibe of the place.

Buttercup yellow sofa bean bag, Couchette

Think Artment’s Corduroy Cloud Sofa Seat paired with IKEA’s bright blue cushion with tigers on it. You could also add Vaaree’s Fluffscape Cotton Floor Cushions to make a sweet corner. They come in a host of colours, and I think they would look so amazing with a pair of striped cushions from H&M Home.

Corduroy Cloud Sofa Seat, Artment

Natthäger Cushion, IKEA

Fluffscape Solid Cotton Floor Cushion, Vaaree

OH.MY.GOD, but I think my heart is set on Uber Decor’s Helsinki 2-Seater Striped Sofa. Every cell in my body resonates with this one.

Helsinki 2-Seater Striped Sofa, Uber Decor

Add colours or, perhaps, eye-catching vases like Claymen’s Blob set in Lemon Yellow with fresh flowers on the side for a cosy vibe. The sunken sofa, in its 2026 form, is as much a configuration as a construction of the erstwhile conversation pit. Furniture ultimately isn’t just logs of wood put together to cater to our basic needs; it is feelings today.

The original conversation pit was a mid-century design feature — a sunken section of the living room, built to gather people and keep them there. You stepped down into it, which meant you had to actively choose to leave. The architecture was meant to make you socialise whether you liked it or not.

The sunken sofa is the conversation pit’s grandchild. It comes with the same logic but less drama. There’s no stepping down, no room within a room. It’s just a sofa that sits lower, wraps around you more, and makes getting up feel like more effort than it’s worth.

It has the same intention but is just quieter about it.

The post The Sunken Sofa Is Everywhere Now, Mine Never Left appeared first on Voicey World.

I watched the film adaptation when I was 11, and that logic felt almost like a spiritual download. You see, I have always been the kind of girl who wants everything she sets her eyes on.

I used to think exactly like this.

For years, while I was in Delhi, I operated under the same logic. It made perfect sense to me because every month I’d buy a minimum of two pairs of shoes, lipsticks in the same family of browns, a blingy bag [I swing between a mini bag and a handbag, because you never know when the occasion to pull it out will arrive], and a cute top for special coffee runs.

To me, it wasn’t excessive spending; it was just variety. Each purchase was justified by the last, and each cycle was validated by the monthly ritual of it all.

I never budgeted in seven years of working. I was living the Carrie Bradshaw life from Sex and the City, under the delusion that the more I spent, the more I would earn. And I got away with it. Money was never an issue.

But then I moved to Mumbai.

Packing up, I had to look, for the first time, at everything I had accumulated, and it did not feel good. I felt like a pig gorging on food when I wasn’t even that hungry, stuffing things into my mouth and getting bigger with every bite. It reminded me of the scene in Spirited Away… [2001] where Chihiro finds her parents in an abandoned restaurant, eating mechanically and senselessly until they literally turn into pigs.

I was filled with stuff I didn’t particularly love: shoes I thought I would wear someday, clothes I thought I’d fit into when I got fitter, and, of course, the bags I could pair with all my ‘fits. TBH, if you had lowkey tossed it all away, I wouldn’t even have noticed. And the common factor was that I bought because it was trendy, or because an influencer I subconsciously wanted to be had bragged about it.

This was never a money problem. I never shopped to the point of thinking twice before buying a packet of milk by the fag end of the month. I certainly could have budgeted better, and I certainly did not need two of every piece “just in case”. But the feeling of achievement I chased with every purchase was clearly helplessness. I tried to fill a void every time I swiped my card or entered an OTP, all while eagerly tracking the last parcel’s delivery.

So I did what my dad had been telling me to do for seven odd years: I decided to finally budget. A new city requires new discipline, I thought. Maybe the problem was my location and not my soul.

One month after moving into my new place, I spent a small fortune on home decor, which I could easily have spread over the following months. I bought a floor lamp, a chandelier, a bookshelf, and a floor-length mirror, none of them necessities. I would find myself clicking Buy Now at 2 AM, and then it would arrive: what I call post-purchase clarity, which hits like cold water. Once the order was placed, the desire for the piece would vanish, replaced by a crushing wave of guilt.

That was when I realised I wasn’t spending carelessly. I was spending in a pattern that couldn’t work for me.

Desire Is Never About the Object

This is what took me years to understand.

When I buy a pair of earrings, the same pair I already own, I’m not really expanding my jewellery collection. I’m buying an image, a promise that this object will make me more myself and make me feel more seen, when TBH nobody gives a f*ck whether I wear those earrings again. I’m buying the illusion that owning it will turn me into the person I want to be. What I’m chasing is a voyage, not a destination. At the click of ” Add to Cart”, the voyage feels intoxicating, but once I unpack the order, the destination always feels empty.

This is why post-purchase clarity slaps so hard. It’s as if someone woke me with a kiss to break a spell, and suddenly I see what I bought: no dopamine hit, no gateway to a better self, just the knowledge that I had believed a lie that lasted exactly seven minutes. If desire were an object, it would vanish the moment you got your hands on it.

People treat money as just currency; I really think it is not. It is alignment. It is the pull of the eyes when you see someone stepping out of a Porsche, or walking down the street to a Boojee Café carrying a vintage Dior bag.

I explain this in a materialistic way because when we feel the weight of our being, the fact that we will leave this planet, that we are specks of dust in the universe with only finite time in hand, we start chasing goals and levels that will outlast us. What we’re really chasing is a sense of immortality, something that lives longer than we ever will. We want to be remembered, and maybe the things we buy help us give that feeling a tangible form.

That’s why values, posed as questions, actually work. Before I buy something now, I ask myself three of them.

Will this serve me in the next two years, and help me become who I want to be? Not “do I want it today,” but will it still be part of my life when the excitement of newness wears off, or will it become clutter that weighs down my freedom?

Where will it go, and what will it cost the planet? Every purchase is a vote for the kind of world I want to live in. If I can’t bear the answer, I shouldn’t buy it.

Am I buying because I need it, or because I’m bored, envious, or influenced? This is the hardest to answer because it requires me to be vulnerable with myself. Am I buying because someone I want to be like has it? Because this algorithm knows my weakness?

When you filter your desires through real values, a lot of sense comes knocking. You stop seeing budgeting as deprivation and start seeing it as a doorway to less clutter, less anxiety, and more freedom.

Because here’s the truth: I don’t actually need anything materially. I have everything [in pairs] and more. I have a lovely set of family and friends, a job I love, a healthy body, and a place I like to call home in the city I have always wanted to be in. Everything beyond that is a choice, and that choice deserves only one test: does this serve who I want to become, or does it pull me away from myself? As Chuck Palahniuk wrote in Fight Club, “The things you own end up owning you.”

The crop-rotation logic made sense to me for years because variety is sweet and rotation sounds sustainable. But it’s just another way of saying, I don’t know who I am, so I’m trying on different identities through purchases. The real problem was never discipline or spreadsheets. I had never decided what I valued.

I think of those boxes in my new living room now. Each one held something I had once wanted badly, and none held the life I thought I was buying. I never wanted shoes, bags, or lamps. I wanted the person who would own them, the woman who is seen, settled, and sure of herself. An object can only ever be an object. The life it seems to promise has to be built through choices that matter, and that is the only thing worth unpacking.

The post I am the Pig from Spirited Away… appeared first on Voicey World.

I just covered my head when told, sat through the prayers, waited for langar, and accepted that adults had their own mysterious spiritual logistics. But somewhere between hearing verses from the Guru Granth Sahib, watching my nani pray to Guru Nanak Ji with complete familiarity, and eating the best kada prasad known to humanity, one thing quietly stayed with me.

Langar wali thali

Gurudwaras are so commonly associated with Sikhs, Sardars and Punjabis that I didn’t realise, for years, that our Sindhi comfort there had a whole history of its own.

Mostly because nobody sat me down with a whiteboard and said, “Beta, today we will discuss the historical relationship between Sindhis, Sikhism, Nanakpanthi traditions, Partition, and inherited spirituality.”

Rude, honestly.

Instead, like most things in South Asian families, the answer came through habit first. Through summer vacations and my nani’s routine. Through old photographs of Guru Nanak Sahib on the wall and prayers I heard before I understood them. 

Through spaces that felt like home long before I knew their history.

Well, this one is not your same old ‘suddenly discovering a new faith’ story.

It is about realising that something I thought belonged to someone else had been part of my own inheritance all along.

Before History, There Was Nani

The writer’s nani

My nani was the kind of woman who dedicated her life to her guru, her children, and then her grandkids, which is basically the holy trinity of nanihood. 

My nanu called her Kiki. She was loving, warm, deeply devoted, and had that specific Sindhi-Punjabi-Sikhni aunty energy that cannot be manufactured. You either have it, or you don’t.

The writer’s nani at the Gurudwara

She gave me my love for parandas and patiala saawars. She dressed me in clothes she made herself. Nani fed me, played with me, spoiled me in the legally approved nani way, and somehow made faith feel less like a rulebook and more like a rhythm of the house.

During summer vacations, all the cousins would gather at her home. Mornings had their own chaos. Everyone had to brush. Everyone had to bathe. Everyone had to stand in line like we were auditioning for a family version of military school. Then we’d open our suitcases, pick our favourite clothes, and get ready like our lives depended on it.

Because in a way, they did.

If we were late, nani would leave without us. Or worse, she would take only the cousins who were ready.

At Nani’s house, spirituality came with its own consequences. 

The Gurudwara Felt Like Nani’s World 

The Gurudwara she took us to was old-fashioned.  It was quiet in that way; some places are silent even when people are moving around. An elderly Sardar uncle would read from the Guru Granth Sahib. We would cover our heads, take a rumala sahib from the pile outside, enter, sit down, and watch.

The idea is simple: you enter with respect.

As a child, I didn’t know all this language. I just knew the steps.

Cover your head. Sit quietly. Don’t fidget too much. Try not to fall asleep.

My nani would read Japji Sahib, the morning prayer composed by Guru Nanak Ji. The prayers would end with ardas, the collective prayer of supplication and gratitude. And somewhere in the middle of all this, I would become completely hypnotised by the chaur sahib, the ceremonial whisk waved over the Guru Granth Sahib as a sign of reverence.

The slow movement of it was so calming that it almost put me to sleep.

Honestly, if meditation apps had chaur sahib visuals, half of us would be healed.

Then came the part every child understood without needing theology: kada prasad.

Warm. Ghee-loaded. Soft. Sweet. Absolutely undefeated.

The old sardar uncle, whom we called Babaji, would give it to us while chanting, “Waheguru, Waheguru.” I didn’t know the full history of what I was part of. But I knew that prasad felt like love being placed into my hands.

We’d come home, eat breakfast, and continue with our day. That was the routine. That was nani’s world.

And because it was nani’s world, I accepted it.

Here’s Where the Confusion Entered

Back at my paternal home, the spiritual setup looked different. There was not the same everyday Gurudwara rhythm. We did have a Sindhi Tikana, a devotional space where we prayed to a different guru, and only much later did I realise that in one section, the Guru Granth Sahib was kept there too.

As a child, I didn’t know this.

So in my head, nani’s Gurudwara world felt separate. Almost like something from her side of the family, her city and her rhythm. My paternal side felt more like a Sindhi Tikana setup, a mixed devotional space with Sindhi, Hindu, and Sikh influences sitting together in a way nobody seemed to find confusing except, eventually, me.

Because outside the home, the categories felt clearer.

Sindhi. Sikh. Punjabi. Hindu. Gurudwara. Mandir.

Clean labels. Separate folders.

But inside our families, faith did not behave like a school notebook. It moved through rooms, rituals, photos, prayers, idols, scriptures, food, songs, and grandmothers who did not pause to explain the academic framework before taking you along.

And honestly, maybe that is why it took me so long to understand it.

I Was Trying To Put Nani’s Faith Into Boxes She Had Never Used

The facade of the Gurudwara

The more I read, the more my childhood memories rearranged themselves.

In many Sindhi devotional spaces, especially tikanas, the Guru Granth Sahib has historically been kept with deep reverence, sometimes alongside Hindu deities and other devotional symbols. That may sound confusing if you are used to clean set of religious boundaries, but Sindhi spirituality has often been more layered than what most people perceive. It has carried influences of Hinduism, Sikh teachings, Sufi traditions, local saints, Jhulelal devotion, family gurus, and community practices, sometimes all in the same emotional room.

This does not mean Sindhis and Sikhs are the same community.

It does not mean every Sindhi family follows the same practices.

It definitely does not mean we can flatten everyone’s faith into one cute ‘unity in diversity’ poster and call it a day.

It means the lived history is more complicated, and honestly, more interesting.

For many Sindhi families, Guru Nanak Ji was not someone else’s Guru. He was part of the spiritual vocabulary of the home. Present in prayers and photographs. Present at Gurpurab celebrations. Present in the Guru Granth Sahib kept in tikanas. Present in the way elders spoke of faith, even when they did not explain it like a podcast episode.

Which, frankly, would have helped.

But no. We got mystery, prasad and vibes.

And Then There Is Partition

Because no story about Sindhi identity can really avoid it. Partition did not just move people from one side of a border to another.

 It moved languages, recipes, gods, prayers, scriptures, grief, habits, and the tiny rituals families kept repeating because stopping would feel like losing one more thing.

After Partition, many displaced Sindhi families rebuilt their lives across India, in places like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, and beyond. KBS Sidhu’s essay notes that Sindhi Hindus carried saroops of the Guru Granth Sahib with them and rebuilt tikanas where Gurbani remained central to community gatherings.

That detail stayed with me.

It’s one thing to say a community values a tradition. It’s another to carry it with you when everything else around you changes.

Sindhi families rebuilt their lives from scratch after Partition. New cities. New homes. New beginnings. But many of them still made space for Gurbani, paath, Gurudwaras, and the practices they had grown up with.

There is something quietly moving about that.

At Some Point In School, This World Appeared Again

I did a project on the ten Sikh Gurus, from Guru Nanak Sahib to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, who declared the Guru Granth Sahib as the eternal living Guru of the Sikhs. I remember writing it down, learning the order, understanding the broad story, and feeling like I had touched a part of history that was both familiar and not fully mine yet.

Then life did what life does.

Boards happened. Exams happened. We grew older. Nani shifted homes. Summer vacations became shorter. We stopped going to her house for long stretches. The Gurudwara visits slowly faded into memory.

Not dramatically.

Just quietly.

But they didn’t fade from hers.

When she celebrated big wins like moving homes, she kept Paath Sahib at home, bringing the sound of Gurbani into her own space, almost as if the Gurudwara had travelled with her. For my nani, it is a love language. She didn’t just visit Waheguru Ji. She made room for that presence wherever she lived.

My childhood rituals, though, disappeared. One year, you are doing them. Then one year you are not. And nobody announced the last time.

Pune Brought It Back

A Gurudwara in Pune

Years later, in Pune, the thread found me again.

In my first year, on Guru Nanak Jayanti, my Punjabi roommate and I decided to visit a Gurudwara. I didn’t know then that this would become one of my most peaceful places in the city.

But it did.

I started going often. On Guru Nanak Jayanti. On New Year’s. At the beginning of something. At the end of something. When I wanted to say thank you. When I wanted to pray. 

When my mind needed a place to sit down and stop behaving like a browser with 47 tabs open.

And slowly, I began taking people with me.

Punjabi friends. Muslim friends. Spanish friends. Marathi friends. My Marwari best friend. Office friends. People I loved. People I wanted to know better.

Yes, even dates.

Listen. Some people do coffee. Some people do cocktails. Apparently, I do spiritual soft launches.

But it made sense to me. A Gurudwara is one of the few places where I have always felt that nobody is asking you to perform belonging. You cover your head, sit down, listen, eat prasad, maybe help, or just be. It is calm without being cold. Open without being loud. Sacred without making you feel like you need a membership card.

For me, taking someone there became a way of saying, “This is where I come from.” This is what calms me. This is a part of me I want you to see.

The Place Was Never Just a Place

The more I returned to Gurudwaras as an adult, the more I understood what nani had given me.

She had not given me a lecture. She had not explained history, syncretic Sindhi spirituality, the role of Guru Granth Sahib in tikanas, or the spiritual overlap between Sindhi and Sikh communities.

She had simply taken me with her.

And maybe that is how grandparents pass things down. Not always through explanation. Sometimes through repetition. Through where they take you. Through what they bow before. Through what they make feel normal.

As children, we think we are just being dragged along.

As adults, we realise we were being introduced.

The Part That Still Hurts a Little

Kada prasad

I had always wanted to take nani to the Gurudwara I loved in Pune.

I had told her about it so many times. I imagined sitting there with her, showing her the space that had become mine in a city far away from home. I imagined her looking around, approving it in her quiet nani way, maybe telling me something I would pretend to understand fully and then decode five years later.

But before I could take her, she passed away.

So now, whenever I go, I carry her with me.

Every beginning. Every thank you. Every quiet prayer. Every Guru Nanak Jayanti. Every time I sit there, and the world finally lowers its volume, I think of those summer mornings. The cousins rushing to get ready. The old Gurudwara. Babaji saying “Waheguru.” The kada prasad in my hands. 

My nani sitting there with a faith that did not need to justify itself to anyone.

Maybe This Was Always Mine

For a long time, I thought my confusion came from not knowing enough.

Now I think it came from being taught to see faith as something with hard borders.

But my nani’s faith did not move like that. Sindhi history often did not move like that either. It moved through migration, memory, devotion, adaptation, loss, rebuilding, and the stubborn tenderness of families who carried what mattered even when they had to leave almost everything else behind.

So when people ask why Sindhis go to Gurudwaras, why many revere Guru Nanak Ji, why the Guru Granth Sahib appears in some Sindhi spaces and why this connection exists at all, the answer is not a simple, one line.

It is history.

It is Nanakpanthi tradition. It is Sindh’s layered spiritual landscape.

It is Partition. It is my grandparents. It is the way faith sometimes arrives before language. It is the way a child can sit in a Gurudwara, not fully understanding anything and still feel held.

Maybe my nani did not introduce me to a new faith. Maybe she helped me recognise one that had been waiting inside my own history.

And maybe that is why, even now, years later, whenever I enter a Gurudwara, I don’t feel like I am stepping into someone else’s space. I feel like I am returning to something she knew before I did.

To the sound of “Waheguru” under someone’s breath. To kada prasad warm in my hands. To a faith that arrived first as routine, then as memory, and finally as belonging.

Jo Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal

The post My Nani Introduced Me to a Faith I Didn’t Realise Belonged to Me Already appeared first on Voicey World.

TBH, while I have managed to upgrade myself from amateur to intermediate and pro in most aspects of running a household, there’s one that’s been quietly stealing my time and energy every single day.

 What should I eat for breakfast?

For the longest time, I was convinced that variety for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was non-negotiable. I mean, the conventional household wisdom always said change it up and keep things interesting. So I’d rotate between cereals, avocado toast, eggs, smoothie bowls, and poha.

Sounds ideal, right? Except it wasn’t. Every morning, I’d stand in front of my kitchen while my cook would look at me with a death stare as I mentally cycled through options and lost a solid 10-15 minutes to what should have been a simple decision.

Then came the day I discovered the viral tiramisu oats recipe. I made it on a whim; it looked beautiful for starters. I was so excited that I woke up in the middle of my sleep to go up to my fridge and see if it was done just yet.  

The morning I had it, I had an almost god-sent revelation.

I felt like a kid in Candyland, okay? I could eat dessert for BREAKFAST!!!

I ate it again the next day. And the next. By day seven, I realized something peculiar.

I could have this…every day…and I know I still won’t get bored of it. 

By day 30, I was certain. And may I tell you, this is the first time in my entire life when I hadn’t experienced a hint of boredom. It’s like Tiramisu Oats were made for my nervous system. 

It was delicious, nutritious, and I wouldn’t have to hide it from my gym trainer. It was liberating because none of my brain cells were fighting; it just felt consistent and reliable, leaving me feeling satiated. And everybody deserves to feel like that.

Allow me to share my recipe with you.

The Elite Breakfast Recipe

It is so ridiculously simple, and just like me, you’ll look forward to it any time of the day.  It takes me five minutes. And with protein intake being the most pertinent goal of my life, this meal keeps me satiated for a good 2-3 hours. 

Here’s how I made it:

1. The base: Mix 3 tablespoons of rolled oats with your choice of chocolate-flavored or coffee-flavored protein powder. You could honestly mix coffee with milk and pour it too
2. I prefer low-fat milk and stir it until it is combined
3. Pour into a container and refrigerate overnight
4. Finishing touches: Top with a generous layer of plain yogurt
5. Dust generously with cocoa powder to give it that authentic tiramisu vibe. [I kid you not, it looks like it was parcelled all the way from Italy, lol]
6. The ritual: Serve in a pretty bowl. Trust me when I say this: the vessel matters

Do Overnight Oats Taste Like Chewing Wet Cardboard?

Okay, so when you keep it stored in the fridge for a minimum of 14 hours, it transforms into this creamy, indulgent paste. Like, it doesn’t feel like oatmeal anymore. And when you add the cocoa powder on top, that hint of sweetness hits differently. 

The coffee flavor from the protein powder and the slight sweetness of that cocoa powder just make it feel like you’re eating a yummy homemade Tiramisu. Now, I used the term ‘homemade’, so clearly it won’t taste like an exact Tiramisu because a real one has Mascarpone cheese. 

But here’s where it gets interesting. When I added the yogurt layer, it didn’t taste sour at all. You know we have this preconceived notion that yogurt will add sourness, but it doesn’t. And honestly, it’s such a good replacement for mascarpone cheese. The texture alone does half the job and wins half the game right there.

If I had to rate it, I’d give it a solid 6 out of 10 compared to an actual tiramisu. And let me tell you why. The yogurt mimics the creaminess of Mascarpone so perfectly that the texture in itself carries the experience. The thing is, it will never taste exactly like a tiramisu, but I would say it comes pretty close. I’d say it’s about 70% there, which honestly is wild for something that costs a fraction of the price and takes five minutes to make.

Tiramisu’s Fit AF Cousin

I love Tiramisu with the bottom of my heart, and I really wish God gave me the kind of body where I could eat it for all three meals, but alas, the reality of this world is different. 

Living alone taught me that aesthetics aren’t frivolous. It adds the rizz, the vibes, and they’re basically how we experience our meals. And speaking from my own experience, every morning when I’d take out my favorite ceramic bowl or a pretty glass container, something would shift.

The breakfast became an event, not just a task. I’d take a moment to appreciate the gradient of brown from the cocoa powder, the creamy texture visible through the glass, the way the spoon would cut through it.

It sounds small; it honestly is. But these small rituals accumulate. 

They’re the difference between eating mechanically and eating mindfully. I guess this is why I didn’t get bored.

30 Days Later

After a month of eating the same breakfast, I realised that the real insight is: limitations can be liberating. 

When you remove the decision, you gain clarity. 

When you embrace repetition, you free up mental space for things that actually matter.

The tiramisu oats didn’t just satisfy my hunger or my macro goals (though they did both excellently). They taught me that often simplicity and monotony in something as simple as breakfast don’t have to be boring. It can be your own sweet ritual, a comfort, and a daily moment of intentional eating.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. 

Will I eat this every day? Probably not. 

But I’ve learned that I don’t need variety to avoid boredom. I need consistency, and honestly, a pretty bowl. My macros eventually just fall into place.

The post This Is the Most Banging Breakfast I Had Every Day This Past Month appeared first on Voicey World.

I couldn’t get enough, because these characters were doing something to my mind that was unimaginable, even to me. I was so deep into it; the stories were full of complex human emotions and were presented in a very magnificent way.

I got into reading more and more about Gods, their strategies, and how they moved through the world. The more I read, the more I realised that the stories I thought I understood had so many facets. Mythology had so much more to offer because even the Gods I had grown up praying to could make me question their actions.

A character I admired in one book could frustrate me in another. Someone I had first understood through her suffering could turn out to be a warrior in a different retelling.

The Narrator Changed Whose Side I Took

What surprised me most was how quickly my loyalties changed depending on who was telling the story. These were different writers’ interpretations, not interchangeable accounts of one definitive version. But while reading, it was easy to forget that distinction.

Take Draupadi, for instance.

Water-colour painting showing Draupadi tying her hair after the defeat of Duhshasana, surrounded by the Pandavas [Photograph: Wikimedia Commons]

In Mahabharat, Draupadi is shown as a woman wronged by a society that failed her, and even by her own husbands. She got far less screen time and fewer dialogues than the male characters in the television adaptation, yet her rage and her vow of vengeance changed the course of history.

She seemed divine to me because of how much she endured and how the series chose to show it. She was born from fire and had to accept a life with five husbands. And when she was dragged into the royal court and disrobed, she didn’t break. She held on to her dignity and demanded justice. She faced humiliation without letting go of her anger, and that made her feel larger than life, like someone who could bear far more than an ordinary woman could.

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni shows Draupadi in a different light, as the epic’s protagonist. Her emotions take centre stage, and her anger, jealousy, pain, and pride are explored in far greater detail, along with her fight against patriarchy and society.

I was impressed by the voice Draupadi is given in this book because she is no longer a character to be looked at. I was looking at the Mahabharata through her eyes. I could read her thoughts, see her rivalry with her mother-in-law, and root for her. I understood Draupadi, and I accepted her faults and her unfulfilled desires. I grew alongside her and almost became a fan.

Karna offering his Kavach and Kundal to Indra, who approaches him disguised as a Brahmin. [Photograph: Wikimedia Commons]

And then came Kavita Kane’s The Wife of Karna.

This book challenged the very version of Draupadi I had built in my head.

Through Uruvi, Karna’s wife, I saw a different side of her. At Yudhishthira’s Rajasuya Yagna, the Vedic royal consecration ritual associated with establishing imperial sovereignty, Uruvi noticed Draupadi gazing at Karna again and again. It made her question her bond with him and whether any feelings still existed between them.

And suddenly, Draupadi was no longer the heroic woman I had admired in the previous book. She was someone my protagonist felt jealous of.

You know how we connect with the protagonist while reading? Imagine finding out that your partner shares a history of admiration, rejection, and humiliation with another woman, and that she still seems to hold a place in his life.

It was a strange experience. Draupadi hadn’t become a different person in my head for no reason. I was seeing her through someone else’s eyes, and that changed how I felt about her.

And this happened with Sita, too.

Sita Bhumipravesh (Sita Returning to Mother Earth), oil on canvas by Raja Ravi Varma. [Photograph: Wikimedia Commons]

In Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan, I watched Sita go through her hardships with very little space to express the range of emotions she might have felt. She is portrayed as an ideal wife who stood by her husband through the worst phase of his life and remained ‘pure’ even after being held captive by Ravana.

Her portrayal felt celestial to me; I admired her, but I couldn’t feel or see what those hardships meant to her as a woman.

Then I read The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Written from Sita’s perspective, it took me through her emotions, her journey, and her resolve. She was still in love with Rama, but I could see the hurt and disappointment that came with that love. Even after walking through fire to prove her purity, she forgave him. And when Rama eventually abandoned her, she wasn’t entirely surprised, because his doubt about her faithfulness during her captivity had already broken the trust between them. Reading this made me realise that Sita could love her husband deeply and still be hurt by him.

I built a soft corner for her in my heart, so much so that the book turned me into a sobbing mess at 4 am.

I thought I had finally found a version of Sita I could connect with, but then I picked up Amish Tripathi’s Sita: Warrior of Mithila.

.

Book cover for Sita: Warrior of Mithila

In this book, Sita is a warrior. She fights Ravana’s army with weapons in her hands when they come to abduct her, and she is trained in combat, strategy, and planning. The idea of her being chosen to become Vishnu was also very different from the Sita I had read about and imagined.

This version really puzzled me. The Sita I knew was now someone who could fight, strategise, and lead. I had gone from feeling sorry for her to admiring her resolve, and now I was reading a version that challenged my understanding of her role altogether.

Phew! That’s how my mind went through all this.

And this is one of the things I love about falling into the mythology rabbit hole. You don’t have to settle for the character you first encountered on television.

You can meet them again through another writer, another perspective, and another interpretation. Sometimes you agree with that version, sometimes you don’t.

And sometimes you end up questioning why you felt so strongly about the character in the first place.

An Emotion Often Assumed Is Only Felt by Humans

The Sacrificial Horse (Ashvamedha), Paithan-style painting (Chitrapathi), Maharashtra, 19th century. [Photograph: Wikimedia Commons]

There was something else I began noticing as I read these books. For most people, deities are flawless. They might do things that we wouldn’t normally approve of, but we believe they did them for a larger good. We see them sacrificing, protecting, and guiding us. I used to think that way, too.

But when I read about Krishna in the Mahabharata, I observed another side of his character.

Take the episode involving Jarasandha. Krishna had to relocate his people from Mathura to Dwarka to protect them from Jarasandha’s repeated attacks. But he didn’t stop there. He later devised a plan in which Bhima would challenge and kill Jarasandha. I was fascinated by how cunningly he handled the situation, using his intelligence to help the Pandavas succeed.

Isn’t this similar to how we ask our friends to deal with people who are annoying us? Once, my friend hadn’t finished her work, so I had to convince her professor by telling him she was unwell and in the hospital. I know the stakes were completely different, but Krishna used his friend to get the job done, and in many ways, I did the same.

Then there was the episode involving Jayadratha, when Krishna used his Sudarshana Chakra to cover the sun, making the Kauravas believe that the day had ended. Arjuna had vowed to kill Jayadratha before sunset, or else take his own life. Krishna’s strategy gave Arjuna the opportunity he needed.

I found myself appreciating how Krishna could use deception and strategy to get things done. These weren’t necessarily the qualities I associated with a God growing up. And yet, here they were, part of the stories I was reading.

I absolutely loved how Krishna, since his childhood, was lovingly called chhaliya [trickster] because of his playful and cunning nature, from stealing butter to helping the Pandavas win the war.

I wasn’t looking at him only as a divine figure who knew and could do everything. I was looking at his decisions, intelligence, and the lengths he would go to achieve what he believed was necessary.

For the first time, I was comfortable looking at a God through the same lens I used for other characters.

Examining their actions, questioning their choices, and trying to understand their reasoning. I didn’t have to stop thinking critically just because the person in the story was godlike.

I realised I didn’t have to arrive at one final answer every time I read something. I could look at different explanations, explore different theories, and form my own understanding.

That was a big shift for me. Earlier, I would watch a mythological story and accept what I was shown. Now, I want to know why a character acted a certain way, what another version might say about the same event, and whether I agree with the interpretation in front of me.

Mythology has made me comfortable with not having one fixed answer, and eager to find more.

Where Should You Start

A 12th-century painted wooden manuscript cover from Nepal depicting narrative scenes from Kalidasa’s play Abhijnanashakuntalam. [Photograph: Wikimedia Commons]

You don’t need to watch a television series before picking up a book. Start with the question or character that interests you, and keep track of what kind of book you are reading.

Rajagopalachari’s Mahabharata offers an abridged retelling if you want to follow the wider story. Devdutt Pattanaik’s Myth = Mithya explores ideas and symbols through his interpretations and illustrations. For novels centered on women’s perspectives, try The Palace of Illusions, The Forest of Enchantments, or Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen. If you want a more freely reimagined adventure, there is Sita: Warrior of Mithila. They offer different ways into the stories, not a single reading order or a substitute for one another.

You may not agree with every interpretation. I certainly haven’t. But now, when I find myself taking a character’s side, I also want to know who told me their story.

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Then the scene cuts.

Now she’s in the kitchen wearing an oversized T-shirt, tiny shorts, specs slipping down her nose, hair tied into a chaotic bun that hasn’t known peace since 8 a.m. Suddenly, this man is obsessed. He’s grabbing her waist. Picking her up. Acting like he discovered love itself next to the fridge.

The caption usually says something like, ‘Men are simple.’

What exactly is going on here? How are these creatures simple?

And every single time I come across these reels, I have the same reaction I had when it was happening to me.

Because, objectively speaking, she looked incredible in both scenes. In fact, in the first one, she looked like she could ruin someone’s life and get away with it legally.

So why does the second version suddenly feel more intimate?

The Off-Guard Theory

There’s this scene in Peaky Blinders [2013] where Tommy Shelby visits Grace at home and tells her people look different at home, off guard.

That line has stayed with me for years because it’s true. People do look different when they’re off guard.

Not uglier.

Not less attractive.

Just… softer somehow.

Less aware of themselves.

There’s a version of people that exists when they stop preparing to be perceived. When they’re sleepy. Distracted. Existing instead of presenting. And maybe that version feels closer because it isn’t performing for the world.

That’s the feeling those reels are trying to capture.

Not necessarily: men prefer messy girls.

But there’s something intimate about being allowed access to someone unmasked.

The oversized T-shirt isn’t really the point. It’s what the T-shirt represents.

Comfort.

Domesticity.

Access.

The feeling of being let into somebody’s real life instead of just witnessing their public self. And honestly? That’s kind of beautiful.

Maybe this is where the idea of exclusivity sneaks in. A woman walking out the door in a tiny dress probably knows she looks incredible. She knows she’ll be seen. She knows people will notice. Not because she’s arrogant, but because she’s human.

But the version of her standing in the kitchen at home, hair a mess, glasses on, completely off-duty? That version isn’t performing for the room. She’s not trying to impress anybody. That version feels private.

Maybe that’s what some men are reacting to. Not the clothes. The feeling that this person has lowered her guard around them in a way she wouldn’t around everybody else.

The feeling that this version exists only between the two of them.

Also, Let’s Be Honest, Women Do This Too

I don’t think this is some uniquely male psychological phenomenon. Women have versions of men they irrationally adore more too.

Post-gym boyfriend.

Sleepy boyfriend.

Boyfriend before a haircut.

Boyfriend driving with one hand.

Boyfriend making Maggi at 2 a.m. like he’s competing on MasterChef.

Humans attach emotions to tiny versions of each other all the time. Love is weirdly specific like that.

So, part of me understands the appeal of someone being ‘off-duty’ around you. Especially in relationships. Especially after the world has exhausted both of you all day. There’s something deeply romantic about the ordinary. About kitchens, slow mornings, and someone stealing fries off your plate while looking clinically underdressed.

Internet culture has shifted towards this kind of intimacy a lot. The whole soft domestic romance aesthetic. Girl dinner. Shared hoodies. Couples grocery shopping like it’s a personality trait. Everybody wants love that feels like a Sunday afternoon instead of a music video. I get it.

People Have Wildly Different Reasons for Feeling This Way

Some love the off-guard version of their partner. Some are attracted to confidence and effort and want their partner dressed up every chance they get. Some don’t seem to choose at all.

I’ve even had someone tell me that when I was dressed up, I looked so beautiful that they wanted to look at me more than touch me. The point is that attraction is personal. Two people can have the same behaviour and arrive there for completely different reasons.

Which is why conversations matter so much more than assumptions.

Quietly Carried Pressure

These reels become popular because, for a lot of women, they feel relieving. Being a woman can feel like a part-time administrative job.

There is always maintenance involved somewhere.

Hair.

Skin.

Outfits.

Weight.

Makeup.

Shaving.

Looking effortless while secretly operating like a production team.

So the idea that someone could still find you desirable when you look deeply unserious is comforting. Maybe even healing a little.

Like, okay, cool, I can look like a sleep-deprived potato around you, and you’ll still kiss my forehead. Great. Love wins. And that softness matters.

And to be fair, this isn’t something women do alone. People rise to the standards of the people they love. Men do it too.

They start dressing better. Grooming better. Caring about things they previously considered unnecessary. Entire skincare routines have probably been born because somebody developed a crush. Relationships have a funny way of making all of us want to show up as the best versions of ourselves.

Which is why being loved when you’re not trying feels so reassuring.

Because effort is beautiful. But knowing you don’t have to earn affection every second of the day is beautiful too. We should absolutely feel desired in the versions of ourselves that are casual, tired, emotional, sleepy, uncurated, and fully human.

But my confusion with these reels started when I realised how close intimacy and control can sometimes sit next to each other.

Because the question stopped being ‘Is this cute?’ and became ‘Wait… is this always cute?’

Because I’ve Also Seen the Other Version

I’ve been in a relationship where the ‘off-guard version’ of me was appreciated.

But the confident version of me was resisted. And those are two different things. At first, it’s subtle enough that you don’t immediately clock it. You think maybe he just likes simpler things. Maybe he’s protective, uncomfortable, or overthinking. But over time, the pattern becomes harder to ignore. I’d dress up to go out with him, and instead of excitement, there would be comments.

‘Isn’t that too much?’

‘Why are you wearing that?’

‘Why do you need to dress like this?’

And it wasn’t even only about clothes eventually.

It became the dancing.

The confidence. The loudness. The social version of me. The visible version of me.

The parts of me that naturally took up space. Even writing about that dynamic now makes something tighten in my chest. Not because of the clothes. The clothes were never the real issue.

What felt suffocating was the feeling that I was constantly being edited. That somebody could love me enough to stay, but not enough to let me remain exactly who I was.

And that’s a very different conversation.

That’s no longer about attraction. That’s no longer about oversized T-shirts, tiny dresses, or Internet Reels.

That’s two people repeatedly running into each other’s core nature and wishing it were different.

One person wanting to be fully accepted. The other person wanting a slightly modified version. And eventually you stop arguing about the outfit and start arguing about existence itself.

That’s a much deeper problem than the one this article is trying to understand. But it’s also why I can’t think about this topic without remembering how quickly one can start looking like the other. And I realised something terrifying: There’s a difference between someone loving your softness and someone only liking you when you become smaller.

That difference changes everything.

You Have a Responsibility Here, Too

Sometimes we spend so much energy trying to become the version of ourselves that gets the best reaction that we stop asking a much simpler question:

What if I just stayed exactly as I am? Because if a woman starts wearing baggy clothes only because she’s noticed her boyfriend prefers them, something has already shifted.

Not dramatically. Not maliciously.

Just quietly.

The same way some people become less loud around certain partners. Less ambitious. Less expressive. Less themselves.

And I don’t think that’s what love is supposed to ask of us. Let people accept you fully.

The dressed-up version. The messy version. All of it. Because the goal isn’t finding someone who loves one version of you.

It’s finding someone who doesn’t need you to edit yourself to be lovable.

Intimacy Should Not Require Shrinking

That’s the actual conflict sitting underneath these reels.

Because healthy intimacy exists.

Private versions of each other exist.

Domestic attraction exists. People become more magnetic when they’re relaxed and safe.

But there’s a line where preference becomes restriction. Where ‘I love this side of you’ slowly turns into ‘I prefer you this way.’

And then ‘I prefer you this way’ becomes ‘Why can’t you always be like this?’ That’s where things start choking. Because a woman should never start feeling easier to love when she becomes less herself.

Less expressive. Less free. I don’t even think most people do this consciously. That’s what makes it complicated.

I don’t think every guy who loves seeing his girlfriend in an oversized T-shirt secretly wants to suppress female expression. Please. Some men are literally just obsessed with messy buns and emotional support hoodies. But I do think relationships sometimes reward softness while unintentionally punishing visibility. And that deserves examination, too.

Maybe the Real Answer Is Balance

Maybe the healthiest version of love is when both versions get adored equally. The girl in the tiny black dress. And the girl eating chips in oversized clothes at midnight.

The woman who commands attention in a room. And the woman who falls asleep halfway through a movie. Because I don’t think intimacy should compete with confidence. A man should be able to adore the version of his girlfriend that feels private to him while still hyping up the version of her that exists confidently in the world.

Because clothes don’t switch intimacy on and off. A tiny dress doesn’t suddenly make someone less loving. Less safe. Less emotionally available. The version of her heading out the door looking incredible can still be the same person who’ll call you on the way home, steal your fries later, and fall asleep on your shoulder during a movie.

Which is why women deserve appreciation in both versions. Not just when they’re curled up next to you in an oversized T-shirt. But also when they’re excited about an outfit, feeling confident, and about to leave the house. Whether they’re going out with you or without you. In fact, especially then. Because if somebody loves you, shouldn’t secure love be able to handle both?

Shouldn’t it be able to say, ‘You look amazing. Have fun’ and trust that the intimacy you share doesn’t disappear the second somebody gets dressed up?

Those moments matter more than people realise. A woman who leaves feeling celebrated carries that feeling with her. A woman who leaves feeling judged, scrutinised, or quietly punished for looking good often carries that too. And eventually, it becomes difficult to understand why the people outside seem more excited for your confidence than the person who’s supposed to know you best.

We all deserve relationships where we can feel soft without feeling reduced.

Desired without being controlled. Comfortable without subconsciously shrinking.

Maybe that’s why this topic feels so messy. There’s a tenderness behind it, and how easily tenderness can become possession if nobody’s paying attention. And maybe that’s the difference I keep coming back to. Does your partner love the version of you that’s off guard? Or do they only feel comfortable when you take up less space? Those are not the same thing at all.

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