Blog
Series
- Part 1 we keep solving the wrong problem on indian roads
- Part 2 in india, the biker is treated like the problem
- Part 3 we built a tax system that only catches the honest
- Part 4 we keep telling women to be careful
- Part 5 we let people buy their own clean air and water
- Part 6 we never learned to think, or to be seen
- Part 7 in india, care depends on who you know
- Part 8 you can't get justice, and you can't take it yourself
- Part 9 the hard conversation we keep avoiding
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19 posts RSS
The Ultimate Guide to Building a Production-Grade Node.js Backend in 2025
A modular backend with clear layers (types, repository, service, controller, routes), Vitest for fast tests, and modern choices like Drizzle or Hono. Updated for how we build backends in 2025.
What Mentoring College Students Taught Me About Myself
Two years after college I didn't write a single line of code professionally. I said yes to everything, hoping something would feel right. Now I mentor students, not because I have all the answers, but because I remember what it felt like to drown in options.
The Dialect of Depth
i used to test people. see how deep they could go on a first meeting, and if they hit a wall, they weren't my people. the wall turned out to be mine.
The Door Left Ajar
people tell you what matters to them. rarely in the words. usually in the weight. improv actors have a name for it, and indian dramaturgy named it fifteen centuries earlier.
You Can't Interrogate Someone Into Vulnerability
i learned the ladder and used it like a drill. a friend called it. "this feels like an interview i didn't sign up for." carl rogers explains what i got wrong.
Intimacy Isn't Built From Time
in 1997 a lab made strangers feel closer in forty five minutes than most friendships get in years. the mechanism has four words, and everyone forgets the same one.
Small Talk Is the Runway
most conversations move sideways forever. what do you do, where did you study, oh nice. the skill isn't better questions. it's remembering there's a down.
the hard conversation we keep avoiding
every fix starts with someone willing to say the hard thing. but in most teams, friendships, and families, we choose the comfortable silence over the awkward truth, and the problem everyone can see just quietly grows.
you can't get justice, and you can't take it yourself
report a theft and the system often won't move. find the thief yourself and the law treats you as the problem. the citizen ends up squeezed between an institution that won't act and a rule that won't let them act either.
in india, care depends on who you know
we built insurance and private hospitals, ways to pay for care and ways to escape the public system, instead of public care that simply works. so getting treated well comes down to what you can afford and who you can call. i learned that the hard way.
we never learned to think, or to be seen
school graded our attendance and our assignments. it never taught the two things that actually decide where we end up: how to think, and how to be seen. so the diligent get stuck and the visible get ahead, and both were failed by the same system.
we let people buy their own clean air and water
the air is a winter emergency and the water is a tap count. meanwhile we quietly sell people purifiers and bottled water so they can escape a shared system we never fixed. the escape is the wrong problem.