By Me. And By You.
For the whole part of my life, the idea has been to think beyond means, connect the dots, and do what seemed right at that point in time. The efforts followed naturally, the aspirations followed naturally, and every year came with the belief that if one kept doing the right things, things would eventually make sense. Looking back now, I sometimes wonder whether many of those years were spent merely scratching surfaces without ever getting enough time to understand what was happening underneath. There was always another objective, another city, another expectation, another possibility waiting somewhere in the future, and in the middle of all that movement, I rarely stopped to understand the ground reality, the people involved, the stories they were living, and the stories I was constantly telling myself about my own life.
Everything just happened.
Years passed, people came and went, circumstances changed, opportunities appeared and disappeared, and somehow I reached a point where I find myself asking questions that feel strangely familiar despite all the time that has passed. The difference is that those questions now carry the weight of experience, disappointment, longing, hindsight, and a growing awareness that life is far more complicated than I once imagined.
There are days when I genuinely do not know where I belong. Hoshiarpur feels familiar but no longer entirely mine. Delhi has given me opportunities but has never fully felt like home either. The labels that once gave me certainty have started feeling incomplete. I do not know whether I am a writer, a filmmaker, a traveller, a thinker, or simply someone who once wanted to become all these things and somehow ended up standing somewhere in the middle. There are days when I open The Writers Age and cannot think of a single meaningful thing to write. There are days when I think about filmmaking and realise that years have passed without creating the kind of work I once promised myself I would create. There are days when I look at my notebooks, my unfinished ideas, my plans, and wonder how someone who once had so much urgency has become so hesitant.
The strange thing is that from the outside, there is very little I should complain about. I have a career, I earn more money than I once thought possible, I have travelled, written, created things, met interesting people, and experienced moments that a younger version of myself would have celebrated without hesitation. In many ways, I am living a life that once felt distant. Yet gratitude and dissatisfaction somehow continue to coexist, and that is perhaps the part I struggle to explain. A person can be thankful for everything he has and still wonder why certain parts of life continue to remain empty. A person can acknowledge his blessings and still feel as though something important is missing.
The older I get, the more I realise that disappointment is rarely about one event. It is usually the accumulation of many things that never happened the way we imagined they would. It is every conversation that never took place, every opportunity that arrived at the wrong time, every assumption that turned out to be wrong, every expectation that quietly remained an expectation, and every possibility that looked so certain in our minds but never became reality. None of these things is significant enough individually to define a life, yet together they leave behind questions that continue to linger for years.
What surprises me most is how often I find myself returning to the same thoughts. Why does it feel as if I am always one step away from the things I want most? Why does it feel as if certain aspects of life come naturally to others while becoming endless puzzles for me? Why do I spend so much time convincing myself that whatever was supposed to happen has already happened and that whatever did not happen probably never will?
That last question has been bothering me a lot recently because when I examine it honestly, it makes absolutely no sense.
If I am earning more money today than I thought possible five years ago, why do I struggle to believe that I can earn more? If I have built things before, why do I behave as if I cannot build bigger things? If life has surprised me before, why do I assume it has suddenly stopped doing so? Why do I negotiate against my own future before the future has even arrived? Why do I spend so much time preparing myself for disappointment when some of the best things that have happened to me arrived completely unexpectedly?
The logic simply does not add up, yet I keep returning to it. Perhaps disappointment becomes familiar after a point. Perhaps expecting less feels safer than expecting more. Perhaps after enough setbacks, a person starts convincing himself that wanting more is unreasonable. The problem is that the same person can look at his own life and find enough evidence to prove the exact opposite.
There was a time when the life I am living today seemed impossible. There was a time when earning what I earn today seemed impossible. There was a time when working where I work seemed impossible. There was a time when many things that are now completely normal felt entirely out of reach. The world did not suddenly become generous. Life did not suddenly become easier. Things happened because time passed, circumstances changed, efforts accumulated, and possibilities appeared where none seemed to exist before.
Maybe that is what I have forgotten over the last few years. Maybe I have spent too much time looking at what did not happen and not enough time looking at what still can. Maybe I have quietly started treating the present chapter as if it were the final one, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support that conclusion.
I am not writing this because I have found answers. If anything, I am writing this because I have questions, and questions at least leave room for possibility. The day a person becomes completely certain about what life can or cannot offer him is probably the day he stops paying attention to life altogether.
As I sit here in June 2026, I do not believe I have written my best work yet. I do not believe I have created my best film yet. I do not believe I have met all the people I am supposed to meet. I do not believe I have experienced everything that life has in store. Most importantly, I do not believe that the person writing these words today is the final version of himself.
Maybe the biggest mistake I have made is assuming that whatever was supposed to happen has already happened. Maybe the biggest mistake has been confusing temporary confusion with permanent reality. Maybe the biggest mistake has been talking myself out of possibilities before they even arrived.
Maybe, just maybe, there is still a lot left that I cannot see from where I am standing today.
