Teaching my dad to tie his shoes

I taught him to criss-cross the lace,

pull the right end from

beneath, and tighten until the shoe fits his feet.
     	   To
      make an
  oval with the
       left end
   	  and
loop the right around it.
Finally, to pull from both ends
                    and
          make a bow knot.
Now, when he walks into
a room of C-suite “upper” castes, he’ll pass.

Cling

Rain drops hit orange cement; some ricochet and
some trickle down onto grey asphalt, into
pious puddles craving rapture from a callous sun.

Rain drops cling to brown hair; brown hair clings to brown hair;
brown hair clings to tank-top; tank-top clings to skin in shadow;
shadow of a uterus clings to ovarian silhouette.
A shadow louder than a sheer Givenchy dress
at some Gala bereft
of vintage Casios and metal bracelets and creased socks in heels
and Gaspar Noe nightmares and Lars von Trier daydreams.

Piglet

I don’t always know
which of us is
soothing the other,

but as of yet
we’re still connected:
a hell-bound essence
preceding
heavenly existence.

Milford Sound

I have found Milford Sound to be Anti-
Babel: intellect was not used to pry
open the gates of heaven—so heavy—
but to let a bevy of lovelies
waltz on marsh.
                             Now it seems that you have found what
the philosopher and physicist sought:
a century of inquiry doesn’t
compare to life in a state so present.

Two Haikus involving Cats

I.

Cat is a contained
math equation; a stable
atom. Unlike us.

II.

Scratches, sunken eyes,
and sweaty skin: fair prices
for the joys cats bring.

Thanks for reading! Three of these were my submissions for Tadpole Press, this writing competition that asks for poems capped at 100 words. Go check them out if keen.

I read its story as microcosmic for the history of ethnic groups born, or altered, from multi-generational bastardy. People (particularly from historically oppressed groups who are doing okay right now) forget that so many aspects of their identity—skin tone, religion, language—come from top-down inter- class, caste, race (etc. etc.) sexual violence, so I found it a relevant read and a good reminder.

The book has also made me curious about Leninism. It has made me understand why a post-revolution proletariat dictatorship might be necessary to keep a bourgeois tyranny in check and ensure that socialist reforms—like uniform land ownership—are made permanent before transitioning to a Marxist democracy. Have already added Comrade Lenin’s works to my book list.

The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories (1983) by Charles Bukowski

I was skeptical if Bukowski could pull off sci-fi and fantasy stories, but within his crude form and gritty, grounded settings, they worked surprisingly well. Witches, sex robots, and brain re-programming machines existing alongside unemployment cheques, enlarged prostates, and bland turkey made these stories effortlessly absurd.

I also liked how the stories place you in the shoes of incredibly reprehensible characters. Bukowski forces you to see yourself in them, making their flaws, insecurities, and contradictions uncomfortably relatable. I can see how such stories can be disconcerting to some, but their point is delivered well: how unchecked fear, loneliness, resentment, and desperation can twist even the best of us.

There is one short story (”Copulating Mermaids of Venice”) where he takes the body defilement a bit too far, however.

The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (1876)

I know someone whose favorite poet was Ovid until they discovered Poe, which is understandable if you solely consider his long-form poems: “The Raven”, “Tamerlane”, and “Al Aaraaf”. With their wordplay, internal and external rhymes, and assonances, their verses yearn to be recited—even sung.

That said, the aforementioned poetic devices combined with his use of archaic language make his shorter, one-page poems feel annoyingly anachronistic and contrived. Most of the poems in this compilation are of this sort, so overall, I’m not too impressed with this book.

Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency (2021) by Sarah Ichioka & Michael Pawlyn

This functions more like a manifesto and call to action than a guide or toolkit on how engineers, architects, and other professionals can work sustainably in the built environment industry.

I appreciated the environmental research findings that articulate the disastrous effects of climate change and how most frameworks that we use, like LEED, do not accurately capture the total carbon emissions associated with a project. I also loved learning about the social findings, such as how only 3-4% of a population is required for massive paradigm shifts to happen. However, the book seemed like it would be more technical; it was not, so that disappointed me quite a bit.

The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) by Sigmund Freud

It’s like reading The Rig Veda to learn cosmology. Total quackery now that we have scientific methods to look into the brain and mind.

I normally don’t bother with product-of-their-time books, but someone gave this to me with great enthusiasm and I wanted to be fair to them, so here we are.

The Idiot (1869) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Notes from Underground (1864) seemed like a hyper-conscious descent into madness initially, but it just turned out to be incoherent incel rambling.

Had a similar experience with this one: seemed like a falling upwards by playing an idiot story, similar to Greg and Tom's from Succession (2018 - 2023), but Myshkin really is just a pity-party self-insert idiot.

The form is also annoying: too much exposition.

Hope: The Autobiography (2025) by Pope Francis

The autobiography, as a form, is and always has been safe and sterile. This one is no different.

The Rig Veda (1200 BCE)

A good set of paganistic poems; i.e, poems about nature and other tangible/palpable entities.

It makes occasional calls for pre-Reformation Protestantism-esque indulgences towards priests, so I knocked a few points off for that in my mental scorecard.

Suit (2022) by Samarth

Samarth’s art is so expressive, visceral, and dynamic.

The story asks some very pertinent questions. Do all forms of labor actually have inherent dignity? Why is cleaning up in India still labour of the lower castes? Why don’t upper castes clean the toilets they shit in? Does financial mobility necessarily come with social mobility?

The cycle of casteism is continued as the story ends. I wish it had done something else with it—though I am unsure what.

Bird Business: Illustrated Peeks into the Daily Lives of Indian Birds (2021) by Rohan Chakravarthy

The illustrations are so good that I always ended up animating them in my head—as I used to do when I was a child.

It is also a fun piece of bestiary to carry around when you want to know the most fascinating trait of a particular species—if the topic of birds ever comes up.

This is not to say that there are no good songs. There are six incredible songs that I am quite fond of—but we are talking six out of thirty-one here.

I will spend the rest of this review getting specific about some songs, both good and bad. I would like to start with the good ones.

***

I loved "loml". I visualise a non-malevolent, but hurt, ghost haunting a foggy cemetery and humming the song's melody in melancholy when I listen to it. The deep piano leads Taylor's sombre lyrics, from a gentle slow-dance to a fiery swirl, as a rumbling violin accentuates the final lines of the song: "Our field of dreams, engulfed in fire/ Your arson's match, your somber eyes/ And I'll still see it until I die/ You're the loss of my life". I can already see myself healing a heavy heart to it over a morning coffee.

"Chloe or Sam or Sofia or Marcus" has a beautiful piano melody that rises and falls rapidly, mirroring the eternally recurrent act of a lover melting the persona's heart, only to stab it with an icy knife, thereby rendering it frozen once again. The ending of the song is most curious: the high-pitched piano seems to tease the subject to come towards the persona; the tune then deepens, as upon his leaning in, she leans away.

"Cassandra" has incredible lyricism: "I was in my tower weaving nightmares/ Twisting all my smiles into snarls/ They say what doesn't kill you makes you aware/ What happens if it becomes who you are?" This track would accompany a phoenix rising from its ashes— with red-hot embers on burning wood and hazy vision from the heat.

I love how her enunciations match every piano key on "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived"; it also has this escalating synth that feels like a machine gun firing at the song's subject. I adore the rippling, wave-like production on "imgonnagetyouback"; it is something that I would definitely put on my driving playlists. "The Albatross" is reminiscent of the woodsy-poet, strum your guitar by the fire energy that evermore had; I just wish it had more nuance to it: it begins very well but it does not have conflict, nor a climax.

Similar, but slightly diminished, sentiments apply to "How Did it End" and "Peter" —they are good but nothing too special.

As much as I like these tracks, I cannot help but think of how inferior they are compared to Michelle Zauner's songs on Jubilee, a record with more poetry in lyricism than TTPD. Look at the opening lyrics to the intro track, "Paprika": "Lucidity came slowly/ I awoke from dreams of untying a great knot/ It unraveled like a braid into what seemed were thousands/ Of separate strands of fishing line/ Attached to coarse behavior, it flowed/ A calm it urged, what else is here?" Nothing from Taylor's new record can top this.

Let us now move on to the bad tracks.

***

All the songs that I am about to mention have production and vocal delivery that are symptomatic of Top 100 pop-trash—so not good.

"Fortnight" sets the tone for most of the songs on this album: a Lana del Ray aesthetic; soapy lyrics; and an anachronistic emo-energy. I suppose this is the "Karma" and "Anti-Hero" equivalent on this record: a straight to radio single. I understand the need for such songs, of course, but I never have been too fond of them —they stimulate me neither intellectually nor emotionally.

The title track has painfully annoying lyrics: "You smoked and ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist." They probably work as insights into her and the subject's relationship but Charlie Puth is not that good of an artist—as fond as I am of "We Don't Talk Anymore".

"Down Bad"'s hook has Taylor's voice synthesized to sound like an off-tune string. I think it is meant to emulate drunkenness but if so, Taylor and her team might never have actually gotten drunk—because nobody inebriated has ever sounded like that.

Then there is the infamous "Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto" on "So High School". Taylor has expressed her sensuality more subtly and cleverly on several songs in the past—"You got that long hair, slicked back, white t-shirt/ And I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt", to give an example— so lyrics like these just gave me aneurysms.

By the time "Robin" came around, I was already well past my wit's end with this record and desperately wanted it to be over. Then came "Manuscript" with its lo-fi, sounds-to-study-to production and lyrics such as "if the sex is half as good, they'd be pushing strollers"; I closed the tab and stopped the listening session right then and there.

***

Over the last few days, I have become quite fond of "Chloe or Sam or Sofia or Marcus", "loml", "The Albatross", and "imgonnagetyouback"; I have added them to multiple playlists of mine and they are likely to stay there forever. It is most unfortunate that they belong on the latter segment of the album—I would imagine that most listeners might not even get to them unless Taylor has them out as official singles.

It is also unfortunate that the rest of the tracks are total duds. Bloating an album with unpolished and imprecise songs is, surprisingly, reminiscent of what Kanye—her foil, so to speak—has done with some of his records, such as Donda and Vultures. Bloat is unacceptable: why does your record have thirty-one songs when almost twenty-five are a definite skip on a second listen? "Fresh out the Slammer", "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me", "The Alchemy", "Clara Bow", and many others just do not make me feel anything. They should have been released later on a deluxe version of the record.

The songs that I did enjoy hint at so much potential that The Tortured Poets Department could have had if Taylor was more consistent with its overall tone; it could have been a sequel to folklore and evermore even. I mourn the thought of this hypothetical variant.

I too have dabbled in sampling while writing poetry, and of all the poems that I had written over the years, the ones that I still like are those that took heavy inspiration from great poems written by great poets.

I wanted to use this space to share these poems of mine. I will refrain from mentioning the works and writers that inspired my pieces—that is for you to figure out, if you like to.

Without further ado, here they are. To experience the intended formatting of the poems, please read on landscape if on phone or on a desktop :

1. Declension of Faith

I am. I am not. I am. I am not.
In my head. In your head. In my head. In your head.

You are not.

Old man with three grainy slashes between his eyes.
Your faith. I am Not in yours.
If not in yours. Where Am I?
I am. In mine. My—non—faith.
If I am you, I am not.

Old man with three grainy slashes between his eyes.
You are not.
I am. Not you.
Caste mark
that cracks the skin around the begging woman’s eyes.
I am not in your head.
If not in your head
In whose head am I?
Mine.

If not in yours
In whose
In whose faith

Am I?
I am. I am not yours.
I am not. I am yours.
I am. I am. I am.
I am mine.

2. Rot

I saw a body burst into blood-stained butterflies;
they fluttered onto her daughter’s shoulder,
and covered her with a blood-black blanket.
Claw as she might, she could not unweave
the fabric of wings bound to antennae,
bound to legs, bound to her very tissue.
A moth, trapped in a red-hue, pulsating room,
has flashing lights pulling at him from everywhere;
his skeleton cracked as his body split into two
and painted the pounding walls red.
He looked so pale that night.
Now I know why.

Such things have made me wonder
if beauty could ever blossom from rot.

I saw a broken man morph inside a cocoon once:
his head shrunk; his eyes blackened; his nose fell off.
His long fingers, so accustomed to a typewriter,
attached themselves to his sides
—makeshift legs that he crept around with.
These legs also wove stories, however,
of cold rain dousing out a flaming car,
of Death gently guiding a fallen couple
across the River Styx and onto Elysium,
and of daffodils and snowdrops blooming on graves
—of the new and beautiful coming out of the old.
And many people paid in gold to come admire them.

When rot comes for me,
I want a million butterflies to drill into my spine
and give me saffron-red wings. As the evening comes,
and before the starlit sky circles into sight,
I shall fly into the sun
and become a bleeding crater on its surface:
a watchful eye that sees civilisations fall
with a phantom smile.

3. I Fit into You

I fit into you
like an arrow through an eye:

a peacock-feather fletched arrow;
a pale-blue eye.

4. Server

We are dependent
on

a data server
with

the monolithic
presence

beside the brown
technician.

5. Forest for the Trees

I heard whimpering of a broken string,
saw broken straws of a battered broom stick,
and bangs, like a scalp massage, seemed to bring
a smile—or was that my mind playing tricks?

Solved myself by drowning in deep waters,
drove a buggy up two dunes and then down,
rolled ‘round the pink rink like a pro-skater,
and took rest in the shadow of a mound.

The trees make sense, but the forest does not:
the sky looked clear and the lake, still as ice,
so how am I doused in rain, acid hot?

I stare at a clockwork toy, worth the price.

***

Helen Hindpere, the writer of Disco Elysium, once said, "no one wants to hear your dreams and no one wants to read your poems." If you took the time to read all five of mine, you have my thanks. If you found the poems good, know that they owe their quality to literary giants—all long dead but still listening to the pitter-patter of their cultural great-grandchildren from beyond the grave.

I have now listened to the whole thing and I have some strong thoughts. Let's get into them!

Songs from The Vault

I will start with the ones from The Vault because "Slut!" happens to be my favorite track on the whole album.

"Slut!"'s melancholic pre-chorus with its "Got love-struck, went straight to my head / Got lovesick all over my bed" pierced my heart — the "love-struck / lovesick" assonance helps with that, for sure! There is also a high-pitch synth melody that one, sent me to heaven, and two, really complements the bitter-sweet lyrics of the song. "SLUT!" not only acknowledges the hurt that comes with a relationship, but also fondly caresses and cherishes the pain. It is a beautiful song and a genuine highlight of the album.

I also enjoyed "Say Don't Go". This was mostly because it felt like an organic extension to "All You Had to Do Was Stay" in lyricism, vocal delivery, melody, and production: a shift from aching but playful indifference to regretful reminiscing over a lover. I consider the two songs to be sisters and it is a shame that the album was not structured to have "Say Don't Go" come after the other — it would have been sonically very aesthetic.

"Now That We Don't Talk", "Suburban Legends", and "Is It Over Now?" are alright. They showcase Taylor's storytelling chops but the production — while in flow with the rest of the album — is very generic. I don't think I will be giving these three another listen.

Re-Recordings

"I Know Places" is my favorite re-recording on this album! The "Ah-ah-ah-I" echo has been synthesised a little more and now packs a stronger punch — not sure how others might find it but I loved the effect. Taylor's older, deeper voice fits incredibly well with the cautious and ominous tone of the first three-quarters of the song. I was also a little worried that she would not be able to hit the energetic outro of the original song with her new voice but she did and I am very happy for it!

I have also noticed that the beats in this album have a lot more weight to them than in the original recording. And it is very apparent in the re-recorded "Welcome to New York", "New Romantics", and "Out of the Woods". "Welcome to New York"'s chorus now has a newfound thump and I can see myself bopping to it on a casual evening drive; "New Romantics" sounds very euphoric with the new production and I am totally putting it on my shower playlists; and "Out of the Woods" — which I had dismissed as a dud in 2014 — now sounds transcendentally atmospheric with the powerful beats and Taylor's mature voice.

I absolutely hate the new "Style" though. The old version had these powerful bass waves that I felt paralleled the song's main theme: Taylor's pervasive and disruptive presence that never goes out of style. The re-record, on the other hand, pulls back these bass waves in favor of high-pitched screeches reminiscent of the sound broken cassette-tapes make. What the hell were they thinking?

"Blank Space" is dull this time around, most unfortunately. The old version's highlight was Taylor's coy and playful vocal delivery, and she is unable to match that in this one. Go back to the 2014 version and wait for her insanely charming "I can make the bad guys good for a weekend!" — you will see what I mean.

"Bad Blood" is good, for the most part, but Taylor sounds manic in the "You and I" segment of the pre-chorus — appropriate for the theme, I suppose, but I did not enjoy it.

I had found "Shake It Off" very cringe worthy way back in 2014, so I have not bothered to check it out this time. Let me know if I should. All the other songs that I have not mentioned by name were good then, they are good now; I have nothing much to say about them.

Concluding Thoughts

Red (Taylor's Version) is my favorite of Taylor's re-recorded albums. It was like a love letter to her past self and she sounded like she genuinely wanted to be behind the mic while recording the songs. It also has this very rustic production that gives it a timeless quality. Finally, its songs from The Vault — mainly "All Too Well (10 mins)", "Babe", and "Nothing New" — are, hands down, the best songs in Taylor's repertoire.

1989 (Taylor's Version)'s existence, on the other hand, feels like a business decision. And most of its songs are a definite skip on a second or third listen for me.

But that is okay. There are four songs here that I know I will come back to time and time again: "SLUT!"; "Say Don't Go"; "Welcome to New York"; and "New Romantics".

That is good enough.

Back in 430 BC, the historian's word was truth: there was no proof reading, no fact checking, and no bias handling. This book has dog-headed soldiers at war with "civilised" Greeks, caricatured portrayals of individuals that Herodotus had an axe to grind with, and some bizarre accounts of the East. You can read The Histories as a deep dive into the collective psyche of a people yet to be disillusioned by science or as a work of magical realism—it is a titillating experience either way.

9. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) by Milan Kundera

This text is a delicate tango between post-modern literature and existential philosophy. Kundera zooms in on micro concepts such as the beauty of the human body and the streets of Prague, and ties them to macro concepts like political idealism and the gravity of choices in an eternally recurrent universe. It is a difficult thing to pull off without sounding pretentious or shallow but within his delicious prose and the context of several beautiful, multi-faceted characters, the book does not sound so.

8. Second Person Singular (2011) by Sayed Kashua

This novel was my first foray into Israel, Palestine, and the various identity- and geo-politics of the region—and it left me with more questions than answers regarding both. Kashua slowly unfolds a story that explores infidelity, inter-race jealousy, and masculinity through narrative shifts between two protagonists: with a first-person perspective for one and in the third-person for the other.

If you have ever lived as an ethnic minority, you will relate a lot to the two protagonists. Hopefully, you find some soothing humour and catharsis while reading through their struggles.

This text is also a spiritual successor to The Kreutzer Sonata — the next book on this list!

7. The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) by Leo Tolstoy

Read this and Vladmir Nabokov will forever seem like an amateur to you. Tolstoy portrays the mind of an intellectual and charming psychopath so well that you actually end up rooting for them—until a certain twist happens in the novel that I would not dare spoil.

The writing is often witty, sometimes melancholic, and at special moments, immensely manic—exploring a psyche teetering on the edge of madness.

6. The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka

To think that an unfinished book left such a lasting impression on me—yes, Kafka passed away before he could complete the novella.

The Trial is a psychoactive text: there are maze-like, circular descriptions of bureaucratic infrastructures that mirror the protagonist, K's own labyrinthian experience with the law; eccentric characters seated in Eldritch-filthy rooms with baroque paintings hanging on the walls; and legal advice equivalent to a snake eating its own tail.

This would have been a very depressing book if it was not for K's witty and almost deadpan way of observing the convoluted and antagonistic world around him, giving the text an absurdist quality that made me chuckle then and there.

5. Free Will (2012) by Sam Harris

The central thesis of this book is that decisions, choices, and actions are results of multiple data-processing that happen within the subconscious parts of your brain, essentially suggesting that you have no free will—and it provides both neuroscience case studies and philosophy of mind thought experiments to prove this point.

This book made me a more sympathetic person, in general. I now think of the circumstances that surround a person's actions—their childhood, past traumas, mental illnesses, etc etc—and I am not as quick to value judge them. And for that, I am eternally thankful to Sam Harris.

4. The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins

The Selfish Gene fundamentally changed the way I perceive life-forms: from autonomous creatures that use genes as a mechanism to create progeny, to automatons created, programmed and used by genes for their own survival through time.

Dawkins provides case study after case study to prove this point, from detailing how replicators—RNA—are the origin of all life, to proving how a bee hive is equivalent to one single life form, and using game theory to suggest how reciprocative aggression is a successful evolutionary strategy.

This is the most groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting text I have had the pleasure to read and I encourage everyone to check it out!

3. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys

Fun fact: this is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre from the perspective of Rochester's locked-up Creole wife, Bertha. Rhys does so to shed light on the sexist aspects of colonialism and its remnants in the post-colonial world. Bertha—or if we go by her birth name, Antoinette—has her land, people, and name stolen by the white Rochester, thereby turning Brontë's idea of a victimised white-man forcibly married to a mad native-woman on its head.

If you have read Jane Eyre, you would know that things don't end well for Bertha but Rhys' story stresses the importance of struggling against odds to take ownership of our own narrative in the face of all-consuming forces like colonialism and capitalism.

2. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf

This novella taught me that plot is not necessary for a good story; you just need good prose, particularity of details, and deep characters.

Unstructured thoughts, mistakes in memory when it comes to details of people and setting, and multiple self-contradictions make this text a post-modernist masterpiece: while you read The Odyssey, you observe Odysseus inside a world, while in Mrs. Dalloway, the character of Mrs. Dalloway is the world.

Mrs. Dalloway is a flawed and beautiful character, and it is an absolute joy to sink deep into her psyche through the course of this text.

1. The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka

Reading this book made me fear capitalism; a crippling fear that I have yet to recover from.

This absurdist novella about a man turning into a beetle is a sad metaphor for the mentally and physically challenged living in a society where their self-worth is measured by their economic output. The protagonist, however, is a funny man—very witty and observant. The way he responds to his tragedy is charming and it is very hard to not root for him.

All in all, an expertly written text that feels almost prescient in today's context.