The Lazy Desi’s 25-year archive of chaos, dreams, kids, ADHD, gaming, and everything life swallowed too early.
Look — NYC is a masterpiece… for other people.
For me, it was an overcaffeinated mausoleum pretending to be a city.
I could never shake the sense that everyone was sprinting nowhere in particular.
Every time I returned from my hometown with the baby, the city felt even more sterile, more hollow, more like a diorama of ambition with no soul.
It was not going to raise my child.
Not if I wanted him alive, sane, or familiar with sunlight.
The brain has an elite, almost militaristic capacity to continue functioning when the body waves its white flag.
I currently rely on that ruthlessly.
While my physical form languishes in hormonal chaos, my mind pirouettes through complex thought with the same velocity it always has — analyzing, calculating, interpreting like a research algorithm.
It’s such a bizarre sensation:
my body belongs to this pregnancy,
but my mind still belongs to mathematics, anatomy, sociolinguistics, cosmology —
anything that could anchor me to myself.
I am two entities at once:
biological and intellectual,
deteriorating and ascending.
Landing in New York felt less like travel and more like a dimensional shift.
I stepped off the plane carrying a private secret — a very new, very fragile pregnancy — and an overwhelming sense that I had been dissolved and reconstituted somewhere between continents.
The sensory cleanliness of JFK stunned me.
The geometric order of lines.
The sterile fluorescent lighting.
The absence of unsolicited commentary.
My brain, permanently rewired by South Asia’s emotional immediacy, kept waiting for someone to interrogate my life choices.
No one did.
No one even looked twice.
It was both liberating and disorienting — like being handed a new identity before I remembered the shape of the old one.
This one was… eye-opening.
Traveling alone as a teen, I masked effortlessly:
Quick reflexes in crowds Hypervigilance Silent efficiency No emotional leakage Zero sensory complaints
Traveling as an adult with someone else?
My mask cracked.
Hard.
Suddenly the noise was too loud, the people were too close, the expectations were too heavy.
I realized how much I’d intellectualized my way through fear and discomfort back then.
How much adrenaline compensated for the ADHD exhaustion.
How much of my “independence” was actually survival-mode brilliance.
Being with someone didn’t make me weaker —
it simply revealed how much stronger I’d forced myself to be when I was alone.
But hey! It’s New York City Baby!!!
How come:
other girls know routines
other girls know more than just random useless stuff like Photoshop, HTML, MySQL, Makeup, Gaming and how to administer an IV or properly (and hygienically) use a epipen in case of anaphylactic shock. (Spoiler: I have zero allergies)
other girls know how to plan. PERIOD.
other girls finish homework well before its due (not the whole weeks worth in a hyperfocus induced all-nighter last minute style which, in-turn the teach concludes are each either an absolute work of college level art, or straight ILLEGAL having no clue how little personal effort it took on my part and how much heavy duty procrastination went into it lady!
other girls remember deadlines
other girls don’t crash and burn (sleep non-stop for three whole nights) after finishing all of last months assignments last minute for Monday after having asked for (and been approved for) extra time just the day before.
other girls don’t feel like aliens in their own bodies
other girls don’t have to change personalities like outfits just to make it through the day
other girls don’t have to bury the best parts of them just to make it make sense
Why does everything feel natural for them…
and like trial-and-error survival for me?
Why am I always so tired?
Am I broken?
Or just… different?
UnderTheRock Diaries 