As a kid, I remember driving back from the Moscow airport with my family, preparing for another summer in Russia, and refamiliarizing myself with the city after being away for a year. Looking out the window, my childish, curious gaze was often confused by the differences between architectural styles across[Read More…]
Off the Board
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math
In middle school, I spent objectively too much time reading dystopian Young Adult fiction novels and watching rom-coms from the 1990s and 2000s, which have now left me with a questionable repertoire of references and an insatiable taste for casual insurgency. I’ve never considered my attempts at nonconformity as dangerous[Read More…]
No, you’re not OCD for liking things organized
Content warning: Mentions of mental illness and descriptions of intrusive thoughts and compulsions I was 17 when I finally started to seek help for my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The signs had been there for a long time, but it took me receiving a proper diagnosis to realize the scale at[Read More…]
I’m so tired of being a person of colour
It’s a thought that fills me with unparalleled shame. As soon as it forms, I want to bury it. But as I sit with my friends, at home, at work, I feel the burden of existing as a radical act, as political praxis: The thought creeps back in. How do[Read More…]
My body is not the enemy
Content Warning: Mentions of disordered eating I started running competitively when I was eight years old. My earliest memory from that year is a race with my dad where I was kicking toward the finish, shouting, “I can’t feel my legs!” Let me tell you, as a runner who too[Read More…]
Remembering Ammi’s Saree
Content Warning: Mention of death and loss of a family member July 21, 2021, was the only day I ever wore my Nani’s (maternal grandmother’s) saree. After years of putting off the theme, my family finally committed to wearing sarees on Eid Al-Fitr. While one of my cousins bought hers[Read More…]
Reclaiming the value in being “undecided”
If you ask any of my friends at McGill, they would tell you that I have switched around my majors and minors eight times since the beginning of my degree. I started as an Environment & Development and International Development Studies (IDS) double major with a History minor. Throughout my[Read More…]
Loving my Black hair back
Last April, I attended a birthday party for a friend. Rather than looking back at the shared laughter and happiness of this gathering, I remember this night for a white person who, after complaining at length about their “difficult” straight hair, gestured toward me and my “easy” curls. Without my[Read More…]
Sarah Koenig is not perfect and neither is ‘Serial’
On Jan. 13, 1999, Hae Min Lee, a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, disappeared. On Feb. 9, 1999, her body was discovered in Baltimore’s Leakin Park, and on Feb. 25, 2000, her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was found guilty on charges of first-degree murder. Fifteen years later, Rabia Chaudry—an[Read More…]
Greek life, behind closed doors
“Welcome to the club. You’re, like, one of the few pretty girls at McGill. Use it wisely.” No, that’s not a quote from a Mean Girls production at McGill. That’s a genuine thought expressed to me by a sorority girl at my first—and only—frat party. Following that linguistic beauty and[Read More…]
