Strawberry Monds & the Death of Prophecy Inc.

When you put yourself in a new place or rather, a new situation, you tend to plant expectations. On who you’ll become, how you’ll want to be seen, the kind of girl people will whisper about in class or quote on their Notes app. But what happens when all that comes crashing down? What happens when you quietly morph into everything you once promised yourself you’d never be?

It sounds scary to imagine. But what’s scarier is when you live it through. When it doesn’t come in one loud crash, but slow, crumbling moments.

9th grade was when it first began. My introduction to the "wife material" side of Twitter still creeps into my life in the form of moral dilemmas. Not between right and wrong, but between free will and “what will my non-existent future husband think?” The first time I felt truly unlike myself and still went ahead anyway was when I had my first cigarette. All by myself.

Strawberry Monds. Bought from the shady little shop across the road from college. I lit it, it didn’t feel freeing or cinematic. It felt... barf blurh. Like I oh so definitely lost my old self. I can't say if it's the company, or the place, or all the consequences of one terrible decision.Either ways, it changed something. Not necessarily for the better, but for something.

There’s a Pinterest quote I once read (obviously couldn’t find it again) but it said something about how there's beauty in destruction, and theres peace in everything falling apart. There it was.When things happened that I still don’t have the courage to write about. Things I know I never will. Because what if someone reads it? What if someone screenshots it and shows it to people who’ll laugh?

In the middle of all that shitfest, the only thing that felt “beautiful” was that strawberry-flavoured cigarette. It was something I did alone. Something that stood for myself that no one recognised, not even the people on my close friends.

I still remember how I used to judge the oldies during my first week of college - the ones standing outside hostels and puffing smoke.
“Imagine if your child saw you smoking,” I’d think.
Two trimesters down? I knew exactly why they smoked. A year in? I was the one smoking.

It’s not just about the 10rs cigarette. It’s about letting go of the things I used to know. And instead, becoming someone new, NOT necessarily someone better. Just. someone that stands out , although in all the wrong ways.

Once upon a time, I could quote exact polling data from six (okay two) Indian states without looking at a single source. Prophecy Inc., my beloved psephology project, was the only thing I truly believed I’d build a career from. I was obsessed. Back then, I would’ve done my political science project on fascism with manifestos and a lot of certainty.

Now? I did it on fashion and fascism. I look up courses on fashion law.I scroll past public policy fellowships and bookmark styling and FLJ gigs instead.

And it makes me wonder:
Do we only love things until we’re good at them? Until we stop being the best in the room?
And if someone else can love it harder, than you ever did, do you quietly walk away?

or maybe.. its not that deep.

YEEHAW BYE PEASANTS.