A summary of 2025's reading

 2025 was a long year. Very eventful, and socially fulfilling,  but that is a conversation for another day. Today, I wish to share the literary journey I unintentionally embarked upon - of discovering new books and authors, the one I intentionally embarked upon, of trying to read just a little every day - albeit that was not a very successful one, I feel satisfied regardless, as 2025 was more enriching than 2024 in this context.

    First and foremost, I will admit that I went overboard while buying books for 2025. I bought a total of 16 books, only one of which I finished reading completely. But that does not mean that I did not read at all apart from that book. Below I will list the books that I partly read and hope to finish reading soon, however this list includes not just some of the books that I bought this year, but also those that I already own, or have an e-copy of. 

1. Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
    After being introduced to Atwood by The Handmaid's Tale, I decided that I want to read more of her works. And my second target was Alias Grace. However, the book has been a read-in-progress for the last 3 years, and I have read around 2/3 of it. I cannot write a complete review yet, but I love the detailed and colourful description of things, and the way Atwood has painted pictures for us, the reader to view in our mind's eye.

2. At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie
    A book picked up for casual reading, I did not make it past the first chapter before I was swamped with so much work, it just lay in my travel bag for months before I put it back on the shelf

3. An Interview with a Vampire - Ann Rice
    Another book that was picked up for casual reading when the curse of coursework hit me, before I could completely read it.

4. Why I am an Atheist - Bhagat Singh
    This book had been on my TBR (To Be Read) for a long time. Why I am an Atheist is the title of an essay written by Bhagat Singh - an Indian Revolutionary, a response to the people who believed him to be an atheist because of vanity, but it is also the title of the book that is a collection of essays and letters written by him. I read two of his works from that book - the essay in question, along with a letter he had written to his father from jail. Although I am not an avid reader of essays, Why I am an Atheist was one of the most well-structured pieces of writing I have read in my life. I will be writing a proper review for this book later.

5.  The Day I Became a Runner - Sohini Chattopadhay
    This book describes itself as 'A women's history of India through the lens of sport'. It is an anthology of stories of sportswomen of India, specifically in the sport of Running. It starts off with Sohini telling her own story of how running became an integral part of her life. This book too is partly read, and I will share more when I have read more.

6. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Sushana Zuboff
    This is a non-fiction that examines the challenges from the form of power that is "Surveillance Capitalism" and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behaviour [Annotation from the book]. This is, I think, one of the most relevant books to read in today's age, when we all experience the phenomenon of surveillance firsthand. This book is also, unfortunately, incomplete as of now, but you will find it in my TBR list for 2026.

    Now I shall talk a little about the books that I did complete reading, although there are only three of them. The first is called "Azadi, Freedom. Fascism, Fiction" by Arundhati Roy. Roy captured my attention when I read her work, "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness." The book Azadi is a collection of essays and speeches made by Arundhati Roy, spanning the years 2018 to 2020. This book opened my eyes to histories I had not heard of before, and while I itched to write a review, I couldn't let myself write one until I had learnt the history of the conflict in Kashmir in depth, as I did not want to treat this book as my sole source of knowledge of the matter.

    The second is "Gently Falls The Bakula" by Sudha Murthy. This was Sudha Murthy's first novel in Kannada, written 3 decades before its English publication in 2008. The novel is set in the 1980's and explores the theme of commitment towards the professional and personal aspects of our life. This concept can be applicable even in today's decade as the line between work and personal life grows thinner, and boundaries are difficult to maintain. I also realised that, having read some of Murthy's later works, they show the way in which her writing style improved from when she wrote her first novel, in which I personally found the narrative repetitive, especially towards the end.

    Lastly, I read 'Lessons in Chemistry' by Bonnie Garmus. It follows the life of a young chemist, who happens to be a woman, and lives in an age where 'tis very hard for women to be believed qualified in their education, and who becomes a mother of a bright child. She raises that child alone, for her partner passes away in an accident before she is found to be pregnant. It shows how, when given a platform to speak - a TV cooking show, she takes the opportunity to share her knowledge about chemistry and life, and inspires women to be more than what they were stereotyped as.  The book is a recent publication, having come out in 2022, and has been adapted into a TV show of the same name, starring Brie Larson - we most popularly know her for the character 'Captain Marvel'.

    This year had many firsts for me. I bought my first textbook, a reference that has the basic concepts of my course in a concise manner. I listened and completed my first Audiobook ever - Shadow's for Silence in the Forests of Hell, a thrilling and captivating story and my first Brandon Sanderson Book. The story is set in the Cosmere - a fictional universe in which many of Sanderson's books are set, a universe I have yet to explore but am very much excited for. I attended a Literary Festival for the first time in my life this year, and got introduced to not just amazing people but beautiful art, new artists, new art forms, and new discourses.

    2025 was very busy and very intense, emotionally, intellectually and professionally. With all that was read and done, I do not think I would have it any other way. 

Thinking about what I see - a mini rant.

The prescribed working hours for construction workers are 8 hours per day and 48 hours per week. This is according to the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996. This information is so readily available on the internet that one doesn’t even have to dig through the constitution for it. Then why is it that when buildings and homes are being constructed in residential areas, the work starts at 6:00 am, when the sun’s barely out, and continues throughout the day, hours after the sun has set? Anyone should be able to see that 6:00 am to 8:00 pm is 14 hours. 6 hours more work than the prescribed 8 hours. If this information is so readily available on the internet, is it not the responsibility of a person who is getting a home built to know that them making construction workers do their job for more than 8 hours is not just highly unethical but also against the law? This means that the employers, whom I doubt are unaware of this rule of the Department of Labour, are brutally exploiting these workers.

It is not just about everyone in the area having to listen to the sound of drilling and granite being cut long after it is supposed to stop, and on a Sunday. It is about the living and working conditions of the people who, day and night, spend their time in an environment so harsh that their bodies may be harmed permanently. I do not think I have to spell out the adverse effects of the pollution a construction job generates. And all of this, because someone wants a house to be built as fast as possible with no regard to the well-being of the persons employed under them or the people living in the area where that home is being built. The people who work for such projects are contract workers, often migrants, and people who travel from rural lands to urban forests for money, and so for the period they are doing the work, they have a roof over their head, food in their bellies and money to send back home. It makes me incredibly sad to know that they have to put up with such inhumane working conditions to earn meagre wages, which, in today’s economy, don’t get you all that much.

And I think to myself, what can I do in this situation, when I have to hear drilling at 10:30 pm, when I am on the verge of going to bed, and in the early hours of the day, which is usually the quietest time of the day, but be upset with the employers, because telling the workers to not do work after a point is useless, as they will do so anyways, because it is the wish of the person paying them. What does it matter that then, it disturbs all the people living in that area, what does it matter, that working at night in low light isn’t safe, what does anything matter, in the face of money?

Consumerism

When I was 18 years old, I was forced into an intervention. The reason? Well, there were many but one of the main being that I was spending too much time on the phone. Now, I can understand that many, especially younger people may be outraged and deny the fact that the time they spend on the phone is not, in fact too much. But no amount of defending will change statistics, no amount of self-delusion changes facts. And the fact was, that I was indeed spending a lot of time on my phone.

The argument raised against me, was that I was not being productive. I was spending all my time, consuming things around me and not creating anything. This is not just in context to writing, or making art. It meant, that instead of trying to contribute to something, I was content with letting things happen around me and accepting them as they were. It meant that instead of spending my time doing something that would benefit me constructively, I was wiling it away by doing things that were not allowing me to learn anything new. And, it turned out to be true. The intervention had, to an extent, worked. It had forced me to introspect, to think about what I had been doing, and how I had been spending my time. It also made me think about consumerism and overconsumption as a whole.

It has been more than two years since that incident. To say the least, the last two years have been eye-opening. In this short essay, I will touch upon consumerism in the context of digital media and internet content. I will also talk about how the platform "Instagram" influenced me, the good, the bad, and the ugly. In addition to this, I will share my thoughts about overconsumption and the effect it has on one's body, mind, and life.

According to the Oxford Learner's Dictionary, consumerism is defined as the buying and using of goods and services; the belief that it is good for a society or a person to buy and use a large quantity of goods and services. According to Merriam-Webster, it is the theory that increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable or the promotion of the consumer's interests. Both definitions show that the essence of consumerism is that buying things is good, for you and the economy. Now while this may be good for the economy, it certainly isn't always good for the human buying the thing, especially when the idea of it is being shoved down your throat through constant advertisements.

Instagram's Ad Revenue saw a 16% rise in 2024 compared to 2023, reaching $62.1 billion. [https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/instagram-ad-revenue] The platform sees the highest usage among people aged 18 to 34. It is the ideal platform if your targets are young adults and millennials. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/325587/instagram-global-age-group/][https://datareportal.com/essential-instagram-stats] So why do people buy things more off of social media ads as compared to conventional advertising on billboards, flyers, the newspaper, and tv? The answer comes in two words - algorithm, and influencers. Sites such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc use advanced algorithms to analyze user data and preferences. Hence, each ad that shows up on your feed is highly personalized. Advertisements on social media use the users' search history, demographic information, and past purchases, making sure to almost always get what someone wants to buy right.

An influencer is defined as a person or thing that influences another. In the context of social media, it means two things, one social media itself, and a person/organization who uses the platform to influence other users of the same platform. Being an influencer on Instagram has two sides. One, the monetary benefits, or the lack thereof, and two, the emotional and mental side. Influencers who post things very often, and become popular, get sponsors and inadvertently become brand ambassadors. They are paid by that brand to talk about it and post about it. Then, it doesn't matter if the person posting about something uses it or not; it's just that they are selling it. On the flip side, even popular Instagram influencers don't always get brand offers, so earning money through posting is difficult. And how does one become popular? By the number of views, the number of likes, the number of times the share button is clicked, and the number of comments under it. More is good, right? Well, as it turns out, there is a dark side to this. People who post, many times start having only one thing on their mind. And you guessed it right, it is "How many people have seen what I posted?" This leads them to overthink about each and everything that they do. On top of that, reading comments under their post leads to both positivity and negativity. But let's face it, in today's world, hate spreads faster than love. So it is not far-fetched to say that the negative comments' influence affects the mental and emotional state of the person posting.

All of this is how Instagram affects the people who used it to influence. Now, let's talk about what we originally started off with. Instagram influences our thought processes and tastes a lot more than we think it does. Everyone runs about like sheep, following and trying what the newest trend is. Someone who has never liked a band before would start listening to their songs because they became popular on Instagram. Someone starts reading a whole new genre of books only because someone else has said that it is very good. Everyone suddenly starts hating a book series or criticizing it, and oh one shouldn't dare to contradict the opinion of the larger public. What to eat, what to watch, what to play, what to do, what to read, how to sleep, how to study, how to eat, whom to talk to, whom not to talk to, who is what kind of person, what music to listen to, what news to know, what news to ignore, everything of a users life is moderated by the platform. And in the end, Instagram runs on advertisements. So what you are spending your time watching, is only a form of advertising and  what you are doing in your life, is only the result of trying to attain a mirage. And people end up buying things from what is shown on the platform. Beyond material consumerism, Instagram also enforces ideological consumerism. It reinforces our beliefs about something and makes us think that we are right in thinking what we think. That there is someone out there who is exactly like us, when in reality that is not the case. It makes us believe that the thoughts we have, and the things we do, are our own, we do them because we want to, while in truth, they have been forced upon us in such a way that we believe that it is we who feel these things.

The worst thing about this whole scenario is, that we lose. We lose energy and we lose time. Time that can be spent doing something productive, time that can be spent learning something new, time that can be spent expanding our horizons, time that can be spent maintaining an interpersonal relationship, time that can be spent thinking and doing something for the society, time that can be spent in being kind, to others, to ourselves. We lose time, and we lose our life. I personally have lost months to it. Months of my precious time, and mental space, thinking about things that needn't be thought about. Feeling like if I only had that one thing, I would be happy. Feeling like something in my life was wrong just because I didn't possess that one particular object or didn't feel this particular way about something. This is what overconsumption of social media content does to you. It takes over your life. It gets you hooked to cheap dope shots with every scroll, that leave you drained and wanting when you aren't looking at a screen.

The saddest part is that almost nothing that people post about on Instagram is real. It is very rare to come across something truly original and not just over-processed reproduced junk. So why must we let something that is not real, and only interested in our money and time, affect us so much? Why must we let it question our way of living? Why must we let it define what happiness is? Ask yourself these questions. Reflecting on my journey, I now understand the impact of excessive social media use. I no longer allow Instagram to shape my self-worth or dictate how I spend my time. My advice to others is simple: Question what you see. Learn to form your own opinions. And for Earth's sake go touch some grass.

A Review of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

A little over a year ago, I fell in love with The Handmaid's Tale. It was hauntingly well written. It resonated within me like a scream waiting to be let out. A part of this piece is a review of the book that was originally written as an assignment.

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, was published in 1985. It is one of her best works to date. The book was adapted into an award-winning TV series in 2017 of the same name. It explores themes such as that of women subjugated in a patriarchal society, the loss of individuality for females, the stripping of women’s rights, and the various means by which women try to regain independence stolen from them by a theonomy. I personally would call it A Feminist Must Read.

The novel is set in a futuristic dystopian world, where the environment has been harmed by various nuclear plant catastrophes which led to stillbirths, miscarriages and genetic deformities. In the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian theonomic state, formerly known as The United States of America, women are not allowed to read. The only materials permitted to be read are from the Holy Word, and those which promote the ideologies of Gilead. Women are not allowed to speak. A new way of speaking is forced upon them, in a culture that makes them subservient to men. They are separated into classes based on their role in the Gilead society. Their attire is color coded, stripping them of their personal identity, and the freedom to choose how to dress. 

The Wives, wear light blue dresses. These are the spouses of the Commanders, the governors of the Republic of Gilead. The Marthas, wear green dresses. These are the ‘house help’ so to say. The Econowives are the wives of poorer men. They wear dresses of red and blue and green, striped, cheap and skimpy. Last but not the least, The Handmaids, who wear red dresses with white wings around the face, hiding most of their faces except for the chin and part of the mouth. These are the women who are vessels for a Commander and his Wife to have a baby, which would then be raised by them while the handmaid, having given birth and done her job is sent to the next household, the next posting, another Commander. And lastly, are the Aunts. They wear army brown dresses with big pockets. These women are the ones who train the handmaids to behave according to the requirements set by the state. The handmaids undergo physical and mental torture, and grooming so that they may completely accept and be subservient to their circumstances, without fight.

As said by an Aunt in the book, “Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary” (Page 39). The Aunts' role was to beat and brainwash the fertile women in the region into submission. The regime used these women to control other women because they knew that “the best and most cost-effective way to control women for their reproductive, and other purposes was through women themselves; after all no empire imposed by force has ever been without this feature: control of the Indigenous by members of their own group” (Page 316)

The story is seen through the eyes of one such Handmaid, Offred. Offred is a patronymic name, composed of the possessive preposition, and the first name of the Commander. Of Fred.

It follows her journey as a working woman and mother, having a family of her own, to being forced to become a Handmaid. Being raped in order to give birth for other people. The tale is about her mental fight to retain the free-thought she was used to. This ultimately leads her to escape her situation.

‘The Handmaid’s Tale can be regarded as an example of l’écriture feminine for it echoes this feminine style of writing in terms of not only content, which centres on the discussion of autonomy of female bodies, but also narrative style. Female writing is indirect and diverse, as in narration of Offred is often fragmented, teetering between the present and the past.’

There are a number of complex characters in the story, each given their own unique positions: the mother of the handmaid, who was a devout feminist and fought for change; Offred’s best friend, a spunky and brave girl who fought her way out of the Red Centre (The institution of the handmaids), The Sons of Jacob (the people who brought about the destruction of the congress and the formation of the Republic of Gilead), and many more. A stroke of thoughtful writing by the author, I think, is her way of describing a single item or situation in many different ways, which changes the meaning of the thing or event according to context and timeline. The book uses symbolism to show the importance of objects, which are commonplace, but in Gilead prove to be meaningful. The smallest things such as a pillow, or a chair trigger a stream of thoughts that become the handmaid’s tale.  

Atwood wrote this book in the 1900s as speculative fiction. The Handmaid’s Tale, I believe, is not just a futuristic novel but one that could easily fit in the horror genre. This is because the events happening in the book, as Margaret Atwood’s self-imposed rule for this book was not to use any event or practice that hadn’t already happened in human history, shows that the conditioning of society based on mass hysteria and religion is not very hard to achieve. Adding to the fact that currently in the USA, women are losing their right to abortion, no matter their age and medical complications, proves that we are in great threat of the book becoming a reality.

Roe v. Wade was a legal case in which the US Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled that the unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion was unconstitutional. On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. This had dire implications for female healthcare. Several states adopted laws that drastically limited the availability of abortion. In the aftermath of this decision, a series of protests took place, both for and against abortion. By just broadly following all the debate, discussion and action that took place afterwards, one can see patterns of events comparable to what Atwood wrote, when she described how the Sons of Jacob overthrew the democratic government of the United States and established a theocratic government. This, was extremely frightening to me, as it is not just a specific demographic but all societies in this world, that need to educate themselves and pay attention to what is happening around us, or we might find ourselves becoming another Offred, another Wife, or worse, another Aunt.

Here goes nothing.

When I first thought of starting a blog, I did not mean for it to be a page where I shared my poetry, for at that time I seldom wrote it. But I think as time went on, I started writing verses more than prose. It was hard to write stories here, or even express my thoughts for several reasons, one of them being that although the thought of posting on a blog was amazing, I was extremely wary of the internet and what my online presence would mean for me. In addition to the fear of oversharing, I had the fear of being judged by people online. Somewhere in my heart I also felt that not everyone had the right to know what business I've got going on. 

As I have grown older, I have been exposed to various environments which have made me re-think my earlier doubts. It is too soon to have reached a final conclusion, but for now, I am unafraid to share what I feel. Because I know for a fact that, keeping myself safe on the internet will not always be possible. It is not just online that you are exposed to demotivating ideas and negative thinking. I do not overestimate the kind of reach my words have in the world out there. What matters is that I can articulate what I am thinking and feeling and be brave enough to put it out there. 

That is why I am going to start sharing titbits of my thoughts when I think they need to be shared here. I hope that other than you taking a glimpse of what kind of a person I am, they also make you introspect. If I am really lucky, one might be inspired and start writing for themselves, and there will be one more person in this world who writes.