Author: Navneet Shukla
They Were Always Going to Leave. That Was the Point.
Letting go of your children is not a single moment. It is a thousand quiet losses that begin long before they leave, and long before you are ready. There is a specific kind of grief that has no funeral. No date to mark. No ritual to contain it. Nobody brings you flowers. Nobody asks how…
What Kama Actually Means: The Ancient Secret Nobody Told You About Pleasure
There is a word you already know. You know it the way most people know it. As something charged. Something that requires a lowered voice or a knowing look. Something that sits in the imagination alongside incense and candlelight and the particular silence of a room where two people have decided to stop talking. The…
An Astrologers Day by Rk Narayan: The Con Man Who Told the Truth
An Astrologer’s Day by RK Narayan is a story about a fraud. A man who knows nothing about the stars. Who cannot read the future. Who sits under a tamarind tree every day in a busy market and tells people what they need to hear so they will pay him and go home. He is…
Do People Think AI Is Conscious? A Study Published Today Says It Takes Minutes
Do people think AI is conscious? Most people, if asked directly, would say no. They know they are talking to software. They understand, at least intellectually, that there is no one home behind the text on the screen. Then they have a conversation with a chatbot for a few minutes. And something shifts. A study…
Why Do We Rehearse Arguments That Never Happen?
Why do we rehearse arguments that never happen? Because the brain cannot tell the difference between a problem that has been resolved and a problem that has been rehearsed to death. You have done it today, probably. A conversation in your head with someone who was not there. You said exactly the right thing. They…
Why Nothing Feels Real Anymore: The Strange Experience Nobody Talks About
Why nothing feels real anymore is not a question most people ask out loud. They sit with it. They notice it at odd moments. On a Tuesday evening doing something ordinary. In a conversation that sounds like a conversation they are having but does not quite feel like one. Looking at their own hands and…
Deep Questions to Ask Someone to Know Them Better (That Actually Work)
Deep questions to ask someone to know them better are rarer than they should be. Most conversations stay on the surface because both people let them. You talk about work. About plans. About what you watched recently. You leave knowing roughly the same amount about the other person as you did before you sat down.…
The Sniper by Liam O’flaherty: The Last Line That Changes Everything
The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty is not a long story. You can read it in eight minutes. Maybe ten if you pause at the ending, which you will. Most people do. You were probably fourteen or fifteen when you first met it. A classroom. A textbook. A teacher asking about themes and literary devices. You…
Tagore’s the Postmaster: A Story About Being Left Behind
The Postmaster by Rabindranath Tagore is twelve pages long. Twelve pages. Written in 1891. And yet here you are, years after Class 9, still thinking about Ratan standing in a doorway. Still thinking about a lamp being lit in the dark. Still thinking about a girl who refused the money. That is not an accident.…
Why the 90s Feel More Real Than Yesterday
What were you like in the 90s? The question is everywhere right now. On social media. In comment sections. In the particular glow that comes over someone’s face when a certain song starts playing. But here is what nobody asking the question has told you. The reason the 90s feel the way they feel has…
