Karina Pandya

Life can feel like it’s always rushing. Days move fast, one after another, and it’s hard to hold onto any of them. Time slips by before we even notice it. And yet, the things that matter—thoughts, feelings, conversations—move slowly. They stay with us. They echo. We start things and forget them. Tea goes cold because no one stays long enough to drink it. Feelings fade because no one sits with them. We try to keep everything together by planning more, tightening routines, and filling every hour. As if holding tighter will stop things from falling apart. People are always moving—on buses, trains, sidewalks—but their minds are somewhere else. Replaying old talks. Worrying about what they lost. Pushing feelings away for “later,” even though later may never come. Faces stare ahead, not with hope, but with habit. Being still feels wrong now. Silence feels awkward. Rest has to be planned, timed, and earned. Even slowing down feels like another task on a long list. And yet, small moments still...

Memories arrive without asking, the way grief does. Uninvited. Unscheduled. I leave his number in my phonebook because deleting it would mean accepting that it is finally over. And I’m not ready to make something final when it never felt finished. The last message still sits there like an open door—though I can’t tell if it was ever meant to be open, or if I imagined that part. Maybe it was rhetorical. Maybe it was already closing while I stood there, waiting. I keep rereading it, searching for a hidden meaning, a pause I missed, a sentence that explains itself if I look long enough. There’s no punctuation. No grammar. Not even a goodbye. Just the end of a thought. And I wonder if this is really how endings between friends are supposed to happen—so abrupt, so unfinished, so confusing. I tried for months to understand what led to this finale. I built stories in my head, stacked possibilities on top of each other until they collapsed under their own weight. None of them explained why he ...

  My thoughts always followed the same theme: attachment and longing. But were they even worth delving into so deeply—worth rethinking why they existed the way they did? Perhaps not. Still, I kept analysing and re-analysing my behaviour as if it truly meant something, as if there were a hidden agenda even my subconscious knew nothing about. Why do my thoughts always crave the same pattern, the same uncertainty?   I kept asking, again and again, as though the answer were just around the corner. But I could never logic my way out of it, never conclude this pattern of behaviour. Did I even need to understand it, or were these simply thoughts in motion—flows I was unnecessarily shaping and compartmentalising? Thoughts came and went, and I knew this movement was central to my existence. But did it always need patterns, explanations, meanings—answers my fidgety mind insisted upon? Maybe I was thinking this way because, months later, I was still grieving the end of something else. Ma...

Maya had learned that keeping the peace often required her to shrink herself. Over time, it became second nature—smiling through discomfort, laughing at jokes that weren’t funny, convincing herself that silence was a sign of maturity. People called her easygoing because she never caused a scene. What they didn’t see was how much effort it took to remain that way. She was a writer, though she rarely said it aloud. Her words lived in half-filled notebooks, unsent documents, and forgotten notes on her phone—quiet attempts at finding a voice she was still learning to trust. Like her confidence, her writing was always in progress. When feedback was kind or thoughtful, she listened easily. But when it came wrapped in cruelty, she told herself it was just honesty. She believed that—until one evening when it wasn’t. His comment was tossed casually, laced with sarcasm and a dark humour that landed harder than he seemed to notice. The room stayed light, almost indifferent, but something tigh...

She fell in love with echoes—but did they even exist anymore?  She reminisced about the way he used to lean in when he spoke to her, as if every sentence  was measured and mattered. There was a version of him who stayed up late just to talk about  nothing and everything all at once. He believed closeness was something you chose every  day. He knew how deeply his silences and unguarded moments affected her. There were other versions of him, too. The hopeful one who made promises easily. The tired one who arrived late to conversations or replied half-heartedly. The distant one who smiled without having much to say. Each version quietly replaced the last, and she hadn’t noticed the loss until it had settled in completely. The present version was polite—perhaps even kind. He remembered details as they were spoken, feelings as they unfolded. When she talked, he listened with careful posture and thoughtful attention. Loving him came naturally, but it became an act of remem...

 Every morning, Maira woke up before the city did. The kettle sang softly as she prepared her tea, its steam curling into the quiet like a secret. Outside, the windows breathed in the hush of the wind, the streets still half-asleep. Her desk waited for her patiently—or maybe it was just her laptop, already smudged with fingerprints and yesterday’s doubts, ready to be opened again. Once, she believed writers were born knowing what to say in their first drafts. She imagined words arriving fully formed, sentences obedient and confident. Time, however, taught her otherwise. Writing was not a gift handed down intact; it was learned slowly, stubbornly, through hours of uncertainty. Writers, she realised, were simply people who sat down with doubt and stayed longer than most. Some mornings, the words came too fast. Her fingers raced ahead of her thoughts, sentences spilling out messy and unkind, as if demanding to exist no matter the cost. Other days, the screen stared back at her blank a...

Adrian was like any other boy Leo had known, and yet something about him always felt just out of reach. He was charming without trying—the kind of person people gravitated toward effortlessly. With others, he laughed easily, spoke freely, and stayed present. With Leo, it was different. Sometimes Adrian sat so close their shoulders nearly touched, close enough to feel familiar, almost safe. Other times, he kept his distance—his body angled away, his attention drifting elsewhere. And then there were days when Adrian walked past Leo as though they were strangers, as if whatever existed between them could be switched off at will. Leo never understood why closeness unsettled him. What hurt most wasn’t the distance itself, but the way it changed Leo. He stopped asking Adrian how his day had been. He stopped reaching out first. Their conversations became careful and hollow, stripped of warmth, as if both of them were afraid of saying the wrong thing. Still, Leo stayed. It felt easier than nam...