Protest

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Since around 2014, something has shifted across the world — not just in one country, but everywhere. A certain kind of thinking has grown louder, more confident, more entitled to occupy space.

And while that reality is unsettling, it has revealed two uncomfortable truths.

First — it has unmasked people.

Prejudice no longer hides behind politeness. Bigotry speaks openly. And in that exposure, there is clarity. I have learnt who I cannot stand beside, who I cannot call my own, and who does not deserve access to my life. There is a strange, painful gift in that — the ability to see people as they truly are.

Second — it has shown me my tribe.

The quiet ones. The ones who do not scream hatred. The ones who believe in dignity, in nuance, in letting others exist without needing to dominate them.

But here is where we are failing.

We are too quiet.

We tell ourselves that we are different because we do not rant, do not rage, do not reduce people. And that difference matters. But silence is not the same as dignity — and it certainly isn’t resistance.

If hate can organise, so can empathy.

If lies can spread, so can truth.

If they can be loud, we can be clear.

Not through noise, but through presence.

Through protest.

Through calling out misinformation.

Through refusing to normalise cruelty — whether towards people, animals, or the world we inhabit.

Change will not arrive because it is allowed.

It will come because it is insisted upon.

So perhaps it is time.

Time for those who believe in love, in fairness, in coexistence — to stop waiting, find one another, and speak.

Not like them.

But not in silence either.If you’d like, I can tighten this into a shorter, punchier carousel version or make it more poetic and sharp for impact.

(Thanks to Sanjevi Jayaraman, who inspired this piece.)

Minutes & Hours

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Hours and minutes, minutes and hours –
My anxiety ticks and has me game;
The controller controls my mind,
For a while, I lose your name.

It’s dangerous to run this loop,
But grief has come to stay;
I act out in ways I never liked –
But I can’t rail at the sky and pray.

So I address death on my own terms;
I know well to look him in the eye;
Not weeping, I set up a funeral;
Because a lifetime is left to cry.

A dog’s heart fails to understand
Either your death, life, pictures or flame;
Yet she reminds me of smiles ahead,
With no hint of anxiety or shame.

So the hours drag on in memory,
Marking moments I can’t forget;
It’s a different grief and anxiety –
Untouched by regret.

The pyres are burnt and done now,
Releasing the tears into moon rivers;
The fortunate have done with their crying,
While exhaustion leaves me in shivers.

Funeral tears and mourning wails,
Cascade a torrent into life’s sea;
And some tears are dammed for later,
When there will be more of death to be.

The Currency Of Being Seen

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

There is a peculiar discomfort that comes with being seen.

Not the kind of being seen that comes from love, or intimacy, or the quiet recognition of someone who knows your soul — but the kind that comes from numbers. Followers. Views. Reach. Engagement. The strange currency of relevance.

I have lived on both sides of that line.

There was a time when my posts would gather thousands of likes without effort, when visibility felt organic, almost incidental. And now, there are days when a post barely crosses a hundred. The algorithm shifts, the audience shifts, and somewhere within that, you are expected to remain unchanged — or perhaps, more accurately, endlessly adaptable.

But something happened recently that made me pause more deeply than fluctuating numbers ever could.

A friend — not a close one, but close enough — reached out. Casual conversation. He asked about my children. I told him, plainly, that I had just lost two of them. There are sentences in life that should alter the tone of everything that follows. That was one of them.

And yet, not even four hours later, the conversation pivoted.

A collaboration request.

A tag.

An opportunity.

It wasn’t even subtle.

He admitted, without quite admitting it, that he had gone to my profile, seen my following, seen my recent collaborations, and decided — as people do — that this was a moment worth leveraging. Strike while the iron is hot.

There was no malice in the traditional sense. Just… opportunism. The quiet, socially acceptable kind.

And that is what unsettled me.

Because this wasn’t an isolated moment. It echoed something another acquaintance — far more blunt, far less kind — had said to me recently. He questioned how many people in my life would remain if I were not visible, not followed, not useful to their digital presence. If I stopped making reels. If I stopped being “someone”.

At the time, I dismissed it as cynicism.

Now, I am not so sure.

Because when you occupy any form of public space — even a modest one — you become, whether you like it or not, a resource. A platform. A possibility. And people, consciously or otherwise, begin to orient themselves around that.

Some come for connection.

Some come for curiosity.

Some come for what you can offer.

And the difficult truth is — it is not always easy to tell the difference.

But here is where I stand, and perhaps where I have always stood:

I have never built my presence by attaching myself to someone else’s light. I know people who are more visible, more powerful, more widely recognised than I am — and yet, I have never felt the need to borrow their reach to validate my own. If something I create resonates, it travels. If it doesn’t, it rests. Both outcomes are equally acceptable to me.

Because for me, creation has never been about virality.

It has been about truth.

And truth, unfortunately, does not trend very well.

When I speak about grief, about injustice, about brutality, about the uncomfortable realities that sit beneath our carefully curated lives — the engagement drops. The applause quietens. The algorithm looks away.

But when I lean into easier narratives, into desire, into identity packaged for consumption — the numbers rise again.

This is not a complaint. It is an observation.

An honest one.

We are drawn to what entertains us, not necessarily to what challenges us. And yet, the things that change us are rarely the things that go viral.

So where does that leave someone like me?

Caught, perhaps, between two truths.

That visibility is part of my life now — whether I claim it or not. And that integrity must remain the centre of it — whether it is rewarded or not.

Yes, people will come into my life because of what I represent online.

Yes, some of them will leave when that representation no longer serves them.

Yes, some will stay only as long as there is something to gain.

But there will also be a few — always a few — who stay for reasons that cannot be measured in followers or framed in content.

And those are the only ones that have ever truly mattered.

The rest?

They are part of the noise that comes with being seen.

And perhaps the real work is not in silencing that noise — but in learning not to mistake it for music.