— Fuck Soulmates, Be My Academic Rival

“whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government”

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-Extract from the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776: in reference to the ‘certain unalienable Rights… Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’

Okay so I'm angry now and just have to say this.

PERIODS ARE NOT SEXUAL. TELLING YOUR KIDS ABOUT PERIODS ISNT GROOMING WTF. TELLING YOUR KIDS ABOUT WOMENS HEALTH ISNT SEXUALISING THEM

Indian Dark Academia - Delhi (mystery academia)

You spend most of your summer afternoons roaming around the monuments, marveling over the minds of people long gone. you find an old vendor outside Qutub Minar, seated with large stacks of books in front of her. Secrets Of Delhi, the cover of the one hidden beneath the rest says. The vendor mumbles its price and you ignore the chill you feel crawling down your spine when you catch her smiling at you.

The dim light of your candle flickers as you flip through the pages of the book the vendor sold to you. The moon hangs low in the sky, as if intent to see what mysteries you'll unveil. What the Sultans tried to hide, stories buried by time, dangerous lores that might be true; you feel the words sear into your eyes. You brush them off as fictional gibberish as you get ready for bed but you couldn't shake off the feeling that you're being watched. The shadows in the corner of your room shift as if in confirmation.

You vaguely remember your history professor mentioning a mad astrologer who claimed there was a "disastrous" planetary alignment during 1757. Exactly a century before the First War of Independence. You cannot help but think of him now as you run your hand over the walls of Jantar Mantar.

You're strolling through the Red Fort and you find undecipherable inscriptions on a pillar of the Diwan-i-khas. You let your fingers trace the letters as you realize that something strange happened here.

The voices of a hundred sufi saints ring in your ears and your dreams are haunted with memories that aren't yours. You catch glimpses of harems and princesses dancing. A sword dripping with blood and a body buried in the hush of the night. Ruins of deserted mughal palaces where you could still hear the voice of a wailing woman. Delhi's beautiful but she's got her secrets.

college students. this site is so sexy for notes btw

i am somehow clair de lune, gymnopédie no.1, lacrimosa and danse macabre all at once.

you’re in his dms, the thought of me haunts him to death

He asked me when I fell in love with him and I knew it sounded dramatic to say the moment I saw him, so I told him this story of my grandma who had Alzheimer's- she forgot her name and the words for fruit and food, she forgot her address and how to use the washroom, all her life lost to the disease. The only thing she remembered was her son's name and when that began to fade, the one thing she always remembered was that she loved him, even in illness, even in insanity. She saw this 6 foot 2 man with a scrubby beard and she didn't know him but she said she trusted him, she asked him to hold her hand when she died. When does memory end and love begin? All I know is- she loved him before she remembered him.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

“Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together? Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.”

— Emery Allen

Eldest daughter

“Your double chin is showing”

That has reached my ears while I was dealing with my clothes in a bathroom. It’s not that I am easily triggered, I am truly not though each word coming out of my mom’s mouth is like a bullet.

“I don’t mean it as a compliment, nor as an insult. It’s just what it is”

I only have one thought in my mind - backhanded. My mom is just like any other ethnic mom says what she wants because for the first time in her life she has an authority over someone. She finally gets to be the boss and find a scapegoat. Motherhood is the only space for women from traditionals and ethnic households to seek control and people who would finally listen to each of their bitchy words. Even if it means that your children, particularly your daughters, would be those people.

And such phrases come out so randomly, I frequently try to get inside her mind and comprehend what drives her sudden urges to put some salt onto my wounds.

And I truly am trying to become the mom from 11th episode of “How to get away with murder” and gravitate towards forgiveness. I truly do.

But this same womb that carried me will eventually become the cell.

Oh to be able to heal your ethnic mom, to become her, to sink into her and be one big piece like we once were. Yet I am aware of the fact that the more I sympathize the more I idealize her, and her “double chin” comments.  

But perhaps this is faith. The faith of an eldest daughter in an ethnic family. The faith that is full of generational curses and traumas that I will cut off.

I love my mom and this is why I will never be like her.