I finished Tumhari Aarshi late in the evening, phone face down on the bed, the room lit by a single tube light that had begun to hum faintly. I remember my shoulders were slightly raised, as if I had been bracing myself without knowing why. When I closed the book, I didn’t move at once. Not because something had struck me dramatically—but because something had quietly refused to leave.   There was a pause. The kind that doesn’t ask for attention.   This book did not arrive lo

There are some characters we inherit, not choose.   Their meanings are handed to us early, wrapped in certainty, repeated until curiosity feels unnecessary. Ravan arrived in my life that way — already concluded, already named, already sealed. Evil was not something to be examined; it was something to be defeated. The story had taught me where to stand long before I knew how to ask why.   So when I picked up this book, I didn’t do so with reverence or rebellion. I came carryin

I was lying on my side when I finished it.   Not the dignified, upright posture of a “serious reader.” Just me, the phone slipping slightly in my hand, one knee drawn up, the fan making that familiar uneven sound it makes when it’s been on too long. Evening had already crossed into night. My first thought wasn’t insight. It was quieter.   So this is why my days feel unfinished.   I didn’t think of time. I thought of energy. Specifically, where mine had been leaking without my