Zach’s Galaxy

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We all knew Zachary had mast cell tumours on his back. I know the signs — the tiny swellings, the quiet signs that the body gives when it’s fighting something deeper. I also knew I didn’t want to put him through invasive surgeries or chemotherapy. He’s twelve now — he crossed that milestone on the 21st of September — and at this age, peace matters more than intervention.

Recently, we found two new lumps on his throat and another big one on his shoulder. The biopsy was done — it could be a goitre from the thyroid gland, or it could be metastasis. We don’t know yet. I’ve taken it in my stride, because Zach has already defied time. He’s the first boxer who’s lived this long with me.

I lost Rolfe at six. Diana at ten. Zoe at eleven. But Zachary — my Zacho Whacko — has crossed twelve. He still eats well, plays with his ball, and his eyes still light up when we go down together.

This morning felt ordinary. I went hunting for tiles and granite for the new home — the kind of simple domestic errands that keep life moving. When I returned, Anand casually mentioned he’d cancelled his trip to Delhi. A small thing, really — but it hit me with unexpected force. Because somehow, it made everything suddenly real.

I went to take a bath and ended up crying — the kind of quiet, unstoppable crying that comes from a place deeper than thought. Because loss is loss. It doesn’t matter how many times you experience it; it never gets easier.

I don’t even have the biopsy results yet, but I know. He’s old. And I’ve always prepared myself for the worst — I’ve always been that kind of person. Still, it hurts. Zach and Xena are the last of my dogs who ever met my aunts — Munni pua, Goodie pua, Cecilia. They’re the only ones who’ve seen that part of my life, that chapter when everything was still whole.

Zoe belonged to the Amruttara years.

Zach and Xena belong to Raj Mahal — the home where I was truly happy.

And now, as time shifts again, I feel that ache of knowing that endings are near, even when love continues.

I’m fifty now. My body reminds me of it — the aches, the stiffness, the quiet hum of age that settles into the bones. And yet, I carry all of it with me — not just the years, but the memories.

Most of those I’ve loved have gone — except for my mother, my sister, Anand, and Atif. But I’ve lost so many others — people and dogs alike. Now I have Zuri, the youngest in our home, but she’s never known my aunts. And it reminds me that everything comes with a time limit — even memory.

Because memory lives only as long as those who share it do. And when they’re gone, even the memory begins to fade. I like to think it doesn’t die, though. Maybe it goes somewhere — into a kind of galaxy of memories, where all our shared moments turn into light. Coiling and floating together — brilliant stars in a quiet Milky Way of remembrance.

When I look at Zachary now — slower, softer, but still full of heart — I realise that grief is just love with nowhere to go. Every wag of his tail, every breath he takes, feels like a reminder that life isn’t measured in years but in moments of trust and togetherness. One day, when he’s no longer beside me, I’ll still feel him — in the walk in the evening, in the sound of glomping that he brought in quiet places, in the stains of his saliva that dab all our walls and all of the memory that becomes love. And maybe that’s what love really is — the part of us that refuses to die, even when everything else must.

October

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October has never been kind to me.

My father was born in this month, and from my very first bond with a Libran, I learnt what cruelty and rejection felt like within the walls of my own home. My teenage years — already fragile — were turned into a living hell under his shadow. That wound still bleeds into the way I view this month.

October also carries news that cuts too deep. It was in October that I first heard the words my mother has cancer. It was in October that I watched the fur child I loved most slip away, after weeks of suffering from degenerative myelopathy. She left me on 28 October, and the grief still claws at me.

Even Diwali, a festival I love so much, often lands in October. Its lights and laughter bring me comfort — but they also stand as bittersweet reminders, because while the lunar cycle moves, the weight of this month never does.

It isn’t just one or two bad memories that colour this month for me. It’s a series of them. A pattern. A cycle of loss, fights, pain, and news that bruises. Only yesterday, I had a big fight with my partner, and today I realised the date — the second of October. This month has barely begun, and already it has reminded me of its shadow. Even my body joined in, with a sharp catch in my neck that makes every movement hurt.

October always feels heavy, dark, restless. It begins with promise — a dinner with a friend, a small spark of joy — but it almost always slips into something else. Something harder to hold. Something that leaves me waiting, tense, counting down until the calendar finally turns.

These are the images I’m putting out — fragments of how this month feels inside me. A collage of memory, pain, and resistance.

Sabar Bonde

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I watched Sabar Bonda at its 4:20 show at PVR Andheri — an experience that turned out to be more than just cinema, but a mirror. What most gay men go through, irrespective of class. A simple thing like a parent being worried about the future of his gay son. 

It began with death. A father passes away, and rituals immediately take over: what to wear, what to eat, how to mourn, what to suppress. That opening sequence pierced me deeply because my bua — whose birthday coincidentally fell on the day of my viewing — was like a father to me. The grief, the weight of conduct, and the demands of tradition all struck a profoundly personal chord.

What makes Sabar Bonda so powerful is that the protest it mounts is whisper-quiet. It doesn’t erupt in melodrama; it lingers in what society insists upon — in colour, rules, and ritual. A grey shirt Anand is told to change. Much like how people ask us to change, to convert. The slippers he wears – bringing comfort to his feet – but only in the company of his lover, because ritual forbids it. The shadows of who he is, pressed against the mould of what he’s “supposed” to be. The film reveals itself in the texture of small moments: Balya’s gift of cactus pears, the shared silences, the tension between city and village, heartbreak and love, grief and continuity.

Anand’s mother is the film’s moral and emotional backbone. She loves, supports, and resists in her own way. His father’s eventual acceptance, Balya’s steady care, and the hesitancy threaded through each character are rendered human. There is no villain here — only systems and traditions, and people trying to navigate them quietly.

Critics have largely echoed these impressions. Moneycontrol calls it “a gentle story of grief, memory, and love told with quiet honesty. It lingers in the silences and small moments …” Times of India writes: “to enjoy the sweet taste of cactus pears, you must first carefully remove the sharp spines from the skin of the fruit … meant to be savoured exactly like that.” That metaphor mirrors the story’s truth — love, identity, and acceptance are like a fruit you crave, but you must first tend to the pain. Indian Express highlights the film’s visual poetics: the still camera, wide frames, and static gaze that holds ritual, grief, and distance until intimacy seeps in. Hindustan Times calls it “a tender, deeply moving study of queer love in one of the year’s best films,” noting how customs, everyday pressures, and quiet longing are handled with exquisite precision.

Where my own experience diverges is in how deeply the symbols resonated. The cactus pear, unlike the peach in Call Me By Your Name, isn’t about erotic awareness, but about care, concern, and tenderness — love that is rare, difficult to find, but sustaining. The rituals aren’t simply a backdrop; they are choreography, dictating what must and must not be done. Anand’s protest is not loud — it is embodied in small refusals, in gifts, in a silent embrace.

Long after leaving the theatre, certain truths lingered. Rituals and rules aren’t just external constraints; they are the inner architecture Anand must resist and reshape. The sensory texture — touch, clothing, light, the sound of goats, footsteps, and fields — builds an emotional world as vivid as any dialogue. There is the courage of saying no to what one is “meant” to be, and yes to a hidden version of self. And there is the way family, particularly the mother, becomes both an anchor of tradition and a wellspring of possibility.

Some critics have noted the film’s pace is slow. I felt that too — but its slowness isn’t a flaw. It forces us to sit with grief, longing, and ritual as the characters themselves must. It may not satisfy those expecting dramatic peaks, but its reward is in its lingering — in the way it teaches us to notice what we otherwise overlook.

The caresses are felt through the screen. The running of hands in the hair. The embrace to ward off the cold. The closeness found at last in the privacy of the city. They permeate through the screen and fall into your hands and heart. The emotion there becomes visceral and that’s what makes the movie brilliant – it’s like reading a book, you are pulled into deeper nuance and feeling.

Sabar Bonda doesn’t shout its declarations. It doesn’t need to. Instead, it builds a space where grief, yearning, and identity coexist in fragile balance, where society’s insistence collides with the quiet affirmations of love and humanity. It reminds us that love can be radical, even when soft. That rituals can suffocate as much as they anchor. That resistance doesn’t always roar — sometimes it whispers, gently, persistently, and all the more powerfully.

If I were to give it a frame, I’d say: Sabar Bonda is a film of small revolutions. It doesn’t overthrow. It loosens. And in that loosening lies its beauty — because it allows tenderness the room to breathe.