Desi Middle Class ✨Aesthetic✨

hating on dog parents that don’t let me meet them cuties

Should i post my forearms

desi x med school dark academia (proff exams edition)

Students

• the one always willing to answer every dumb question you come up with

• the one you call whenever you are having a breakdown and need a dose of motivation

• the one you know you can still talk about fun stuff with without being guilt tripped

• the one who seems to be handling it all the best but is actually struggling the most

• the one always coming up with weird connections and theories because they have studied everything and now their only goal in life is to confuse everyone else

• the one who starts planning the post proff party even before the exams actually start

• the one with too many connections with seniors; keeps making their own guess paper

• the one with too many connections with teachers; keeps spreading rumours

• the one who’s still looking nice for every viva

• the one who ignores their books all year long but is now the major theeta of the group

• the one who stops studying after the written exams because “vivas to ho hee jate hain”

• the one whose all practical notebooks are unfinished and unchecked and is now panicking

• the one gaining 5 pounds every proff season because they stress eat

• the one losing 5 pounds every proff season evacsue they stress starve

Teachers/Examiners

• the one who’ll keep saying “phir soch lein” to every answer you give even if it’s the correct answer

• the one who is supposedly the nicest but gives you the hardest time

• the external whose lunch break lasts an entire lifetime

• the one who turns up late but still takes the longest viva

• the one who barely asks two questions but still ends up being your worst viva experience

• the one paying way too much attention to your internal assessment

• the one who spends more time asking personal questions and never actually gets to the point

Mein to hellooo kitty bf hoon

Duniya my ass ( dono hi round hai hehe)

random desi chaotic academia things I've done:

spent the entire evening reading topics totally unrelated to my studies instead of studying and then panicking about how i hadn't learnt anything for the exam the next day.

wrapped my mother's saree haphazardly around myself and danced to my desi academia playlist at 3am and then collapsed due to the blood rush to my head.

spent an entire night reading my mother's Rabindranath-er Golpogucchho (A Collection of Stories by Rabindranath Tagore) instead of doing my homework due the very next day and ended up not submitting it.

sent random quotes of sylvia plath and f scott fitzgerald to my best friend at 2 in the morning and then talked all night about it.

danced to rabindra sangeet in my room while reciting his poetry

exhausted my 4 months worth of pocket money on books by indian authors and still not finishing even half of them.

stopped on my way back home from tuitions to buy jhumkas from a roadside stall and got yelled at for coming home late.

scattered all my books on the bed because i couldn't find the right book to feed to my emotional state.

added more and more accessories to my already unorganized jewellery box, some of them i wore once and some i have never worn till today.

had an unhealthy obsession with greek, roman and egyptian mythology for years and spent countless nights reading articles on them over a cup of masala chai.

intentionally tried to get my dupatta stuck in a guy's watch to get my very own om shanti om moment.

been overconfident in myself for an exam, spent the whole time reading articles about random topics that i will never require, thought i screwed it over and then topped the entire class.

filled up my notes app with poems at 3 am when i had an exam at 8 the following day.

fell asleep while reading a book on the floor, and woke up alarmingly early the next morning with smudged kajal, puffy eyes and a runny nose.

dried flowers from my backyard in between the pages of old books and used them as bookmarks.

had an unhealthy amount of chai to stay awake but fell asleep on my books halfway through and still passed.

2022 TBR 🧿 (continuing in 2023)

On Earth, we are briefly gorgeous - Ocean Vuong

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid (🦄)

Twisted lies - Ana Huang (🦄)

Gender Queer: a memoir - Maia Kobabe (🦄)

Lanka's princess - Kavita Kané (🫀)

Forty rules of love - Elif Shafak

All my rage - Sabaa Tahir

Redacted : poems - Trista Mateer (🦄)

She gets the girl - Rachael Lippincott, Alyson Derrick

Pride & prejudice - Jane Austen (🌷)

How much land does a man need? - Leo Tolstoy (🦄)

Terribly tiny tales, Vol. 1 (🦄)

God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

The Secret History - Donna Tartt (🫀)

The Forest of Enchantments - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (🫀)

Love story - Erich Segal (🦄)

Raavan : Enemy of Aryavarta - Amish Tripathi

The love hypothesis - Ali Hazelwood (🦄)

No Regrets - Kaveree Bamzai

Great Goddesses - Nikita Gill

Beautiful World, Where are you - Sally Rooney

Crying in H mart - Michelle Zauner

Poetry is undead - Trista Mateer

Artemis Made me do it - Trista Mateer (🫀)

Poems I sleep next to - Shelby Eileen (🦄)

Beach Read - Emily Henry

Menaka's choice - Kavita kané

Loveboat Reunion - Abigail Hing Wen

One last stop - Casey McQusiton

The Knockout - Sajni Patel

A Promised Land - Khadija Mastur

Daughter of the Moon Goddess - Sue Lynn Tan

Cheer up: Love and pompoms - Crystal Frasier ( 🦄)

Tahira in bloom - Farah Heron

A Good Girl's guide to murder - Holly Jackson (🦄)

The invisible life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab ( 🫀)

Rivals (American Royals #3) - Katherine McGee (🦄)

It ends with us - Colleen Hoover (🦄)

Persuasion - Jane Austen

Normal People - Sally Rooney (🦄)

Graceful Burdens - Roxane Gay (🦄)

I want to die but i want to eat tteokbokki - Baek Sehee (🌷)

The fault in our stars - John Green (🦄)

When the stars wrote back - Trista mateer (🦄,🫀)

Conversations with friends - Sally Rooney (🫀)

Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid (🦄)

Flower crowns & fearsome things - Amanda Lovelace (🦄)

The Bitter End - Kaliane Faye (🦄)

Rukmini - Saiswaroopa Iyer

Kate in waiting - Becky Albertralli

Simon vs the homosapiens agenda - Becky Albertralli

The Princess saves herself in this one - Amanda Lovelace (🦄)

The Song of Achilles (🫀)

It Starts with Us - Colleen Hoover (🦄)

Here's to hoping I actually read all of them :')

(I have removed books that I know for a fact I will not read, so this is an edited version of the list! Also, finished TSOA today (18/4/23) and The Invisible life of Addie LaRue on 24/4/23 and absolutely fucking bawled, so I decided to add it to this tbr list to honour it :'), not to mention that I actually had planned to read it for a long time, just didn't include it in this list 😭)

( read in 2022 - 🦄, currently reading - 🌷, read in 2023 - 🫀)

I'll be marking off the books when I finish reading them/ I'll be adding more books when I find myself wanting to read them!

Mumtaz Begum (c. 1900 - ?)

Mistress of: Maharaja Tukojirao III Holkar of Indore. Tenure: c. 1915 - 1925. Royal Bastards: Unclear. Fall From Power: She ran off.

Mumtaz Begum, later known as Kamalabai, was a ‘singing girl’ from Amritsar who as a young girl performed before Maharajah Tukojirao. The great-granddaughter of a former royal courtesan, Mumtaz captivated the Maharajah and she returned a few years later as his mistress. Tukojirao was the ruler of Indore in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh following his father’s abdication in 1903, though he reigned alongside a regency until he turned 21 in 1911. The Maharaja had two wives already – Chandravati Bai Holkar and Indira Bai Holkar - whom he married in 1895 and 1913, respectively.

After spending over a decade at court, Mumtaz grew tired of her ridged gilded cage and eventually found an opportunity to flee while on a train to meet Tukojirao in Mussoorie; she skipped town in Delhi and disappeared. Upon discovering that she was missing, Mumtaz was immediately charged with stealing state jewelry, which Tukojirao claimed was the reason she left him. Meanwhile, Mumtaz found another lover, a wealthy businessman named Abdul Kadar Bawla, and settled in Mumbai where she was able avoid to the Maharajah – at least temporarily. In January 1925, Mumtaz and Abdul were attacked in Bombay by a group of men who attempted to kidnap Mumtaz and bring her back to Tukojirao. Abdul ended up getting shot, later dying at the hospital, whereas Mumtaz was also injured but was able to escape when British military officers intervened. The murder caused a sensation and took up prime real estate in newspapers, especially when it was found that the assailants all had close ties to the Maharaja. The case ended up at court where the men were found guilty of murder, though many were convinced that Tukojirao was “the ultimate source” and the true mastermind behind the attempted abduction. Mumtaz began to speak out about the poor treatment she received while living as Tukojirao mistress and claimed that all her pregnancies ended with the mysterious death of the child.

More than a year after Abdul’s murder, the British decided to step in and told Tukojirao to either abdicate “voluntarily” or face an investigation. Tukojirao decided on the former, with the understanding that no further inquiry be made into his involvement of Abdul’s murder, and Tukojirao headed to Europe where he met and married his third wife, an American heiress. Mumtaz, meanwhile, watched her tale recreated on the silver screen as a silent film named Kulin Kanta. It is believed she then headed to Hollywood following the film’s success but I can find nothing of her career or life after this time.

Sources Photographs of ”Mumtaz Begum” (left) and ”HH Tukoji Rao Holkar, Maharaja of Indore”. Jhala, Angma Dey. Courtly Indian Women in Late Imperial India (2015). Taylor & Francis. ISBN: 9781317314448 . The Inside Story of Mumtaz Begum. https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1925/8/1/inside-story-of-mumtaz-begum

Teri deed vich billo lag gayian akkhiyan, bandh darwaje vich rehndiyan na dakkiyan

Awaiting for your glimpse i fall asleep, but my eyes are still at the shut door

random desi chaotic academia things I've done:

spent the entire evening reading topics totally unrelated to my studies instead of studying and then panicking about how i hadn't learnt anything for the exam the next day.

wrapped my mother's saree haphazardly around myself and danced to my desi academia playlist at 3am and then collapsed due to the blood rush to my head.

spent an entire night reading my mother's Rabindranath-er Golpogucchho (A Collection of Stories by Rabindranath Tagore) instead of doing my homework due the very next day and ended up not submitting it.

sent random quotes of sylvia plath and f scott fitzgerald to my best friend at 2 in the morning and then talked all night about it.

danced to rabindra sangeet in my room while reciting his poetry

exhausted my 4 months worth of pocket money on books by indian authors and still not finishing even half of them.

stopped on my way back home from tuitions to buy jhumkas from a roadside stall and got yelled at for coming home late.

scattered all my books on the bed because i couldn't find the right book to feed to my emotional state.

added more and more accessories to my already unorganized jewellery box, some of them i wore once and some i have never worn till today.

had an unhealthy obsession with greek, roman and egyptian mythology for years and spent countless nights reading articles on them over a cup of masala chai.

intentionally tried to get my dupatta stuck in a guy's watch to get my very own om shanti om moment.

been overconfident in myself for an exam, spent the whole time reading articles about random topics that i will never require, thought i screwed it over and then topped the entire class.

filled up my notes app with poems at 3 am when i had an exam at 8 the following day.

fell asleep while reading a book on the floor, and woke up alarmingly early the next morning with smudged kajal, puffy eyes and a runny nose.

dried flowers from my backyard in between the pages of old books and used them as bookmarks.

had an unhealthy amount of chai to stay awake but fell asleep on my books halfway through and still passed.