For the last few days, I have been asking the tarot about a little brindle Boxer puppy named Malaika. Not because I believe cards can predict life with scientific certainty, but because sometimes symbolism becomes… More
When understanding scares me
I watched a disturbing video yesterday involving an animal activist who had allegedly just learned that a rescued dog she cared about had died after being brutally assaulted. The injuries described were horrific — a broken spine, shattered legs, a helpless animal beaten so severely that it did not survive. Standing near what appeared to be a police station, she confronted the man accused of the act and physically lashed out.
And what frightened me was not the activist’s anger.
What frightened me was understanding it.
Because there was a time when people believed institutions would intervene before human beings reached emotional breaking points. There was a time when the law felt like an authority citizens could turn towards rather than a maze they had to emotionally and socially exhaust themselves navigating.
But what happens when people lose faith in that protection?
What happens when acts of cruelty towards animals are repeatedly trivialised? When FIRs become uphill battles? When enforcement feels inconsistent, delayed, indifferent, or absent altogether? When ordinary citizens begin to feel that vulnerable beings have no meaningful protection unless someone physically stands between them and violence?
That is the point at which societies become dangerous.
Not because activists are angry, but because institutional trust has eroded so deeply that anger begins replacing faith in due process.
And perhaps the most demoralising part is this: I already know what will happen next.
The activist will be dissected more thoroughly than the cruelty itself.
People will analyse her rage frame by frame. They will call her unstable, hysterical, uncivilised, aggressive, emotional. Endless debates will emerge about whether she “went too far,” while far less energy will be spent confronting the suffering that triggered the reaction in the first place.
That is the pattern now.
The person who breaks emotionally under the weight of repeated brutality becomes easier to scrutinise than the brutality itself.
Because outrage against cruelty demands moral participation. Outrage against the activist is safer. Cleaner. More socially comfortable.
Anyone involved in rescue work in India already knows this emotional fatigue intimately. Feeders and rescuers are constantly told to “follow the law,” yet often find themselves struggling simply to have cruelty acknowledged with seriousness. Meanwhile, street animals continue suffering through beatings, illegal relocation, starvation, dehydration, and neglect while much of society either looks away or actively resents the people trying to help them.
And perhaps that resentment reveals something deeply broken in us.
Because no one carrying food and water through burning summer nights for thirsty animals is doing it for power or profit. They are responding to visible suffering. They are filling a moral vacuum left behind by public apathy and institutional weakness.
Yet increasingly, compassion itself is treated as provocation.
People complain about feeders while ignoring the conditions that create suffering in the first place. Cities expand without ecological thought. Heat intensifies. Concrete replaces shade. Human beings create brutal urban environments and then grow irritated at the sight of animals trying to survive within them.
What disturbs me most is not isolated cruelty, but the emotional climate surrounding it. The normalisation. The numbness. The speed with which empathy is dismissed as impractical sentimentality.
I used to believe very deeply in patience, dialogue, and peaceful civic engagement. And I still believe societies cannot survive if citizens abandon law altogether. But I now understand how dangerous it becomes when people feel the law has already abandoned the vulnerable.
Because once citizens stop believing institutions care, they stop emotionally investing in institutions at all.
That is the real warning sign.
Not one activist losing control in grief and rage, but an entire culture steadily losing confidence that justice, compassion, and accountability still function in any meaningful way.
And if that trust collapses completely, we will not merely have failed animals.
We will have failed the very idea of civilisation itself.
Falling Apart
There is a peculiar pattern I have begun to notice in my life. It doesn’t arrive loudly or announce itself, but it repeats—quietly, predictably, almost ritualistically. Two people meet through me, they like each other, and they begin to spend time together—often without telling me, which, to be fair, is completely fine. Then something else happens. They get close, sometimes too quickly. They collapse the distance that usually takes time to build. They borrow familiarity—from me, from my space, from the comfort I have created—and convert it into intimacy. For a while, it feels effortless. Until it doesn’t. Because just as quickly as they come together, they begin to fall apart. And that is when I re-enter the story, not as a friend, not as someone they care about in that moment, but as a witness, a sounding board, a recipient of screenshots, accusations, name-calling, emotional debris. It is almost fascinating. When they were meeting, laughing, sharing time together, I was not required. But the moment things fracture, I become necessary. There is something deeply inconsistent about this behaviour. Joy is private, conflict is public. Connection is theirs, but consequence becomes mine. And I find myself wondering, quietly and without drama, what exactly my role is meant to be. If I am not needed in the making of the bond, why am I expected to hold its breaking? This is not about exclusion—I do not need to be invited into every interaction my friends have with each other, that would be absurd. But inclusion only in conflict is not friendship, it is convenience.
When people meet through a common friend, something subtle happens. They trust faster than they should, open up quicker than they normally would, feel safe not because of what they have built together but because of the environment they have stepped into. The intimacy is not entirely theirs, it is borrowed, and borrowed things often come with fragile foundations. So when disagreements arise—and they always do—there isn’t enough structure to hold them. The fall becomes inevitable. But instead of recognising the fragility of what they built, they reach for the one constant that existed before them, the person who introduced them, the person who in their minds must now mediate, interpret, absorb. What I am being asked to do, without ever being asked, is simple and impossible at the same time: take sides without appearing to, listen without reacting, validate without encouraging, care without becoming involved. Neutrality, in such situations, is rarely perceived as neutrality; it is often mistaken for betrayal. And so, slowly, something shifts. The space I created for connection begins to feel like a space of tension. My friendships begin to feel conditional, dependent on who is currently getting along with whom, and I, quite unintentionally, become collateral damage in relationships that were never mine to begin with.
There was a time I believed I could prevent this. I even had a rule—don’t hook up with people you meet in my space—because more often than not, it is that added layer, sexual or romantic, that accelerates everything: the bonding, the intensity, the eventual rupture. It seemed logical, almost protective. But rules like these do not hold. People will do what they want, connections will form where they are not meant to, and boundaries, unless they are internal, are rarely respected. So I let that rule go, not out of resignation but out of clarity. What I cannot control is who meets whom, and what I cannot prevent is what they choose to do with that meeting. But what I can decide, very clearly, is this: I will not be part of the aftermath. Not the screenshots, not the commentary, not the subtle attempts to recruit me into a narrative. If a relationship is built independently of me, then its conflicts must also be resolved independently of me. This is not indifference, it is discipline.
There is a certain kind of person who brings people together, who creates warmth, who allows others to feel comfortable enough to connect. It is a beautiful quality, but it comes with an unspoken cost. People begin to see you not just as a friend, but as a space, and spaces, unlike people, are expected to hold everything—joy, conflict, mess, resolution—without fatigue, without resistance. Perhaps the shift I need to make is not dramatic or loud, but precise. To move quietly from being the centre of these interactions to being simply a part of them. To remind people, without hostility, that I am not a mediator, not a judge, not a repository for unresolved emotions, just a friend. And like all friendships, this too must have boundaries. Because connection, when it is real, does not require a third person to sustain it, and conflict, when it is honest, does not need an audience to validate it. Everything else is noise.
Karan Johar’s Women
There is a peculiar tendency—especially among more “Westernised” critics—to flatten Indian mainstream cinema into a moral checklist. If a film doesn’t align perfectly with contemporary ideological expectations, it is dismissed, and in that dismissal, nuance is often the first casualty. My recent conversation with a dear friend made this painfully clear. The subject: Karan Johar. Now, let me begin with honesty. I do not place Johar on a pedestal. In fact, I have my own reservations—particularly about his relative silence on queer issues despite his immense influence. But to reduce his work to “toxic portrayals of women” is not just reductive—it is intellectually lazy.
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
Yes, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is problematic. Johar himself has admitted this over the years—that the film’s transformation of Anjali from tomboy to “desirable woman” reflects the conditioning of that time. He has openly spoken about how his understanding of gender and femininity has evolved since. But here’s the problem: critics stop here. They freeze him in 1998, as though growth, reflection, and evolution are not part of an artist’s journey.
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
In Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Kajol’s Anjali is often dismissed as loud, caricatured, “too much”. But look closer. She is unapologetically rooted in her identity, emotionally intelligent, and unafraid to challenge patriarchal authority. She enters a hyper-elite household and refuses to shrink. That is not weakness—it is resistance, expressed within the grammar of mainstream Indian cinema. Johar understands something many critics ignore: in Indian storytelling, strength is not always quiet. Sometimes, it is exuberant, messy, and deeply emotional.
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil is often criticised for its “immature male protagonist”, and rightly so. But what is consistently missed is that the women are not written to accommodate him. Alizeh refuses romantic pressure and defines the relationship on her own terms, while Saba walks away from a younger man who cannot meet her emotionally. Johar does not reward the male gaze here—he exposes it. The film is not endorsing obsession; it is showing its futility. If anything, it offers one of the clearer portrayals in mainstream Hindi cinema of a woman saying, “I choose myself.”
Yet perhaps what unsettled audiences was not just the woman, but the man. Ranbir Kapoor’s Ayan is not written as the traditional Hindi film hero. He is emotionally excessive, vulnerable to the point of discomfort, and unable to accept rejection with dignity. In many ways, he occupies a space that mainstream cinema has historically reserved for women—the one who longs, who waits, who cannot let go. And Alizeh does something far more radical—she remains clear, self-contained, and unmoved by his persistence.
This inversion—of who desires and who decides—disturbs more than we admit. For decades, Indian audiences have been conditioned to believe that if a man loves deeply enough, he will eventually be rewarded. Here, he is not. He is simply left to live with rejection. And that discomfort is rarely interrogated honestly. Instead, it is redirected. The woman becomes “cold”. The film becomes “frustrating”. Because a man behaving with emotional vulnerability is often seen not as layered, but as weak—almost, as many would quietly put it, “like a woman”.
It is also telling how conversations around Ranbir Kapoor evolved after this phase, with a visible audience comfort towards more dominant, aggressive expressions of masculinity in films like Animal. To draw a direct line would be simplistic, but the contrast reveals something undeniable—what we reject in vulnerability, we often overcorrect in dominance.
Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani
In Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, Rani is perhaps Johar’s most evolved female character. She is sexually autonomous, intellectually assertive, emotionally aware, and unapologetically modern. And yet, she exists within an Indian familial structure. This is where Western critique often fails. It looks for rebellion through rejection, while Indian narratives often explore rebellion through negotiation and transformation. Rani does not abandon tradition; she challenges it, bends it, and redefines her place within it. That is far more complex than simple defiance.
Across Johar’s filmography, a pattern emerges. His women choose, even when it hurts. They leave, even when they love. They define relationships rather than being defined by them. From unrequited love to extramarital dynamics, from age-gap relationships to emotional boundaries, his stories consistently centre female agency within commercial frameworks. And that last part matters, because Johar is not an indie filmmaker. He operates within a system where cinema must succeed financially to exist at all.
The word “toxic” has become dangerously overused. Everyone, to someone, is flawed—that is the nature of human storytelling. To call a character toxic because they are emotional, conflicted, or imperfect is to strip storytelling of its very essence. Johar’s women are not perfect. They are human. And in a landscape where women were historically ornamental, being human is revolutionary enough.
So why does this reading persist? Because for a long time, Indian audiences—men and women alike—have been conditioned to see women as emotional supporters, not emotional authorities. When a woman refuses, defines boundaries, or chooses herself, she disrupts expectation. And disruption is often misread as arrogance. A woman who does not accommodate is seen as difficult. A woman who does not reciprocate is seen as cold. And a woman who does not reward male persistence is seen as the problem. This is not just a failure of criticism; it is a reflection of conditioning.
Perhaps the issue isn’t that Johar writes weak women. Perhaps the discomfort lies in something deeper. His women do not always behave the way we want “ideal” women to behave. They love unwisely. They stay when they should leave. They leave when others expect them to stay. They are contradictory. They are real.
You don’t have to love Karan Johar. You don’t have to agree with his choices. But to dismiss his female characters as “toxic” is to overlook the quiet, consistent agency he has woven into mainstream Indian cinema—often in ways subtle enough to be missed, but strong enough to endure. And perhaps that says more about how we watch films than how he makes them.
Hearts Still Care 
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