#desiblr
niche things I love about Indian culture
(Besides the awesome fashion, food, mythology, architecture, music, and philosophies)
-in Hindi, “ladies and gentlemen” is “goddesses and gentlemen” (देवियों और सज्जनो)
-how you measure age by how many monsoons you’ve seen (“he is of 10 monsoons”)
-good morning WhatsApp forwards. Yes, this is a controversial one. I just think it’s cute as hell
-how 2 Indians can each know like 4 languages but still not be able to communicate with each other because they don’t share a single common one
-men wearing lots of jewellery especially gold hoop earrings
-nose rings (I got mine when I was a kid WITH my parents’ approval)
-the fact that Indian English uses so many archaic words and terms. And also so many terms that sound like they’re from the year 2050 (like “biodata” for resume)
-“where should I put this?” “On my head.”
-the expression “sucking my blood” in Punjabi when someone is annoying you. “Stop sucking my blood,” “He’s really sucking my blood.” Also “He’s eating my brain” in Hindi is a good one too
-how shop owners serve you food and chai and how the men drape saris over themselves to model them for you
-impromptu poetry sessions (“वह क्या बात है!”)
-there’s a reason so many animes are inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism. The original spirit bombs and other magical energy weapons were in the mahabharat lol
-really off the wall units of measurement. Lakh makes perfect sense. Crore makes a bit of sense. But why is a mahakalpa 311,040,000,000,000 years. Why does an akshauhini consist of 21,870 chariots; 21,870 elephants; 65,610 horses and 109,350 infantry. That is so specific
-the fact that no one’s gonna top the party we’re gonna throw when the queen dies
Why do hoodies always have names like ‘STANFORD’ or ‘CHICAGO’ on them? Why not something like ‘MUMBAI’?
BOMBAE
read an essay on the orientalising and colonising of the gita, gonna go lie down for several days
it’s called ‘Translating Gita 2.47 or Inventing the National Motto’ by Sibaji Bandyopadhyay (pages 31-95)
read an essay on the orientalising and colonising of the gita, gonna go lie down for several days
really wish i had this confidence in life (“james mill’s ‘the history of british india’ and utilitarianism as a rhetoric of reform,” j. majeed)
realizing you’re bisexual while watching keira knightley and orlando bloom in pirates of the caribbean except i’m desi so replace that with realizing i’m bisexual by watching shah rukh khan in his black and red kurta and preity zinta in her blue and silver lehenga dancing to ‘maahi ve’ in 'kal ho na ho’
The bollywood urge to call your lover your god and your religion
“इश्क़ की चिंगारियों को फिर हवा देने लगे; गुम हुए, गुम हुए जो रास्ते मेरा पता देने लगे”
“عشق کی، چنگاریوں کو پھر ہوا دینے لگے; گم ہوئے،گم ہوئے، جو راستے میرا پتا دینے لگے”
Ishq, Ali Sethi
Sometimes I forget that Doraemon is not actually a desi cartoon.
Clearing a common misconception
cuz I have had enough
So the Ramayan brothers -
Ram, Laxman, Bharat and Shatrughan; are called in this order cuz of their importance in the story. Ram, the hero, Laxman, his companion, Bharat, who chased his brothers and begged them to return and Shatrughan who literally had 0.0001 seconds in the whole story.
But most people think this is also the order of their ages. Eldest Ram, then Laxman, then Bharat and the youngest Shatrughan. BUT THAT IS SO NOT TRUE!
Their order:
First queen, Kaushalyagave birth to eldest Ram.
Second queen, Kaikeyigave birth to second Bharat.
Third queen, Sumitra gave birth to the twins Laxman and Shatrughan, the youngest brothers.
But Laxman was closer to Ram while Shatrughan was closer to Bharat.
In scriptures it’s said, the twins were actually “devotees” of their favorite elder brother. They worshipped them.
So for that reason, the order goes like
Ram, Laxman, Bharat, Shatrughan.
But the real order is
Ram, Bharat, Laxman, Shatrughan.
Hope it helps <3
There’s a sort of goodbye that comes with 17.
All questions of ‘who do you want to be when you grow up’ turn to 'who are you becoming now?’ 17 is young, 17 is old. It’s everything you wanted. It’s everything you despised. It’s messy and ruthless and full of grief at times. And 17 is scary as hell because now you know that you finally have to say goodbye to childhood.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned (source)
Mother, tell me what to do. How do I breathe without also choking on the air? How do I grow up without also losing my innocence?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
Juliet’s prom by Ritika Jyala
The first boy who liked me told me how he thought I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and how much he’d love to be with me. And I know that he was just a kid and didn’t mean any harm but it instilled this thought in me that being pretty was the only way I could attract people, that I had to give parts of myself to others in order to feel validated; it was almost like seeing myself as a token or prize whose worth is decided by the man who holds it. I began focusing on how much people would love to be with me rather than how much I enjoyed their company and that’s a big burden to carry at 11.
And after years of feeling trapped, I decided it was enough and tried to hate pink and makeup and skirts and everything I had loved as a child because I associated those things with the idea of performance. Again, I lost sight of what I liked and enjoyed, so I spent my 20s reclaiming barbie dolls and lip gloss, pink and skirts and everything I had once denounced for the fear of being ‘cringe’.
-Ritika Jyala, I love Pink, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
It’s just how different suffering can look and feel. You see movies and shows where you see a character in pain but the lens makes it pretty, the suffering is beautiful and then you look at yourself and nothing about your pain is pretty, nothing is worth looking at. So you tell yourself this is not real- that your pain and your agony don’t really exist and you’re just being dramatic but if you could see what you feel, would you still be so harsh on yourself?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
Sometimes I think this world is a bad place, but then I look around me and in all its chaos and mosaic of bodies and souls and dreams, I see beauty and goodness hidden behind kind eyes and rough hands.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
(read the whole thing here)
As a child, I had been obsessed with black holes. I wanted to know what it meant when people said they felt nothing, how everything- all of the universe and all of their life could fit inside nothing.
When you’re a child, you cannot fathom seeing nothing when there’s the sun, plants and broken parts of machines to look at, it feels impossible to be empty. I asked my grandpa if it hurt when he lost his left ear in the war. He tells me his brother lost his life. But did it hurt?, I ask again. Grandpa says it still hurts. I don’t know if he’s talking about his ear. Sometimes I see him drinking alone at night, tears rolling silently on either cheek and I understand how sometimes nothing can feel safer, how black holes devour the universe- and are still empty.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.
I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.
One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn’t ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn’t know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn’t look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.
The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
Edit: I added a visualizer for this on my YouTube channel. Check it out here
i just moved to bangalore, anyone here?
I don’t know since when the sadness is living
In the lonely house of my heart
مرے دل کے اکیلے گھر میں راحتؔ
اداسی جانے کب سے رہ رہی ہے
ISTG all the countries of the Indian subcontinent would be besties if they were headed by Desi Tumblrinas
Oh to be the only daughter of the rich scholarly couple from 50’s India, driving a Morris Oxford to University, speaking fluent Hindi, Urdu, Bangla, English and French, lounging in my summer cottage in Shimla, going shopping with Anglo-Indian friends in the local market, either being the subject of envy or disdain of other women, smoking a cigg from my pearl studded gold case that was a gift to daddy from some royalty with one of my many flings, flying off to Paris for vacations, attending meetings with the top leaders and not giving a fuck about getting married because daddy’s rich enough to buy me a trophy husband. All this while clad in elegant yet sexy chiffon saree.
and bangalis as well
based on true story
Cooping up with the demise of the two legends
That awkward moment when you realize you’ve already seen Anya years ago
Hunter X Hunter Fans:
Realme Introduced GT Neo 3 NarutoEdition
Le Weeabs:
Crush : Do you like Anime ?
Me: Yes
Crush: I’m into Anime as well
*Inner Me:
Dante meri jaan tumhe kuch na ho yahi meri dua hai
*Every Big brother after reading this:
Sanji with the Ladies VS
Sanji with Rest of the Strawhats
itni milti hai miri ghazlon se surat teri
log tujh ko mira mehbub samajhte honge
اتنی ملتی ہے مری غزلوں سے صورت تیری
لوگ تجھ کو مرا محبوب سمجھتے ہوں گے
― Bashir Badar
When Saqi Faruqi wrote, “mujhe khabar thi mira intizaar ghar me raha , ye hadsa tha ki main umr bhar safar me raha” but he also wrote “ab ghar bhi nahin ghar ki tamanna bhi nahin hai, muddat hui socha tha ki ghar jaenge ik din.”
desi chaotic academia moodboard
angry sapphic scholarship student who will do everything to outrank her male classmates
I’m going through my Hindi songs playlist and I just remembered a parody of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai that my friend told me way back in sixth grade that her older sister had made
Test paas aaye
Dil ghabraye
Teacher ne na jaane kya paper sajaaye
Ab toh mera pen ruk ruk ke chalta hai
Kya karoon haye kuch kuch hota hai
I don’t know if her sister had actually made this or if she had found this somewhere else but this made me so nostalgic. Just leaving this here for the desi peeps
The truth behind Indian extremists’ anti-Muslim ‘great replacement theory’ | Global development | The Guardian
Now, as the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, sparks fresh scrutiny of the American far-right’s ‘great replacement theory,’ new data has punctured India’s own version – where Hindus are allegedly victims of a dramatic Muslim demographic rise.
