A BEAUTIFUL MESS

 

A Beautiful Mess........

Advait felt like a puzzle with no solution, and he was sick and tired of people trying to solve him. Every time he spoke about his struggles, he could see the machines whirring in people's heads, ready to dish out the right advice, the perfect answer that would make everything neat and tidy again. But life wasn't a five-star hotel, where everything would be neat and organized. He was like any other normal human being, a bit different. He had his mood swings, his sadness one day was not the same as his sadness the next. His anger was a fleeting storm, and his joy a bird that would perch for a moment and then fly away. He was a creature of constant change, and longed for someone to see him not as a problem to be fixed, but to be able to appreciate his chaos.

He remembered a past relationship where every conversation felt like a diagnostic session. His ex would say, "I know what you need," or "You just do this, and it will be sorted." He felt a tightening in his chest every time, a suffocating feeling of being seen through a lens of judgment and expectation. She was looking for the finished painting, not the crooked lines and the messy canvas. She wanted him to be a still photograph, not a moving film. He knew her intentions were good, but it made him feel more and more like a failure. He was always disappointing her by not staying in one emotional phase long enough for her to "solve" him.

Then came Aditi. She was different from the very beginning. One evening, Advait was sitting on his couch, a bunch of thoughts tangled in his brain. He didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to hear any advices. As Aditi entered the room, she saw Advait sitting and immediately sensed his feelings. She simply sat down beside him, not saying a word, put her hand over his shoulder. She didn't ask "What's wrong?" or try to cheer him up with a silly joke. She just existed in the silence with him, her presence a soft blanket of acceptance. It was the first time in a long time he didn't feel the pressure to explain himself or to be okay.

After a few minutes, the dam broke, and he began to pour, his voice soft and raw. "It's not one thing," he said, looking at the floor. "I feel like I'm a different person every hour. My problems are like clouds, they evaporate and reform and change shape. And every time I try to talk about them, people are looking for the permanent sun. I'm not the same person I was an hour ago, or a minute ago. Are we not two shape-shifters looking at each other." Advait was probably looking for a validation. Aditi listened without interruption, her gaze gentle. When he finished, she didn't offer a solution. She just put her hand on his, her touch a grounding warmth. "I know," she said quietly. "I feel it too. My anxiety today is a sharp, jagged stone, but tomorrow it might just be blunt. It's a mess, isn't it? But a beautiful mess. I don't want to solve you, Advait. I don't want to fix your clouds. I just want to watch them with you."

Her words were soothing, like a balm on a painful head. He realized that all this time, he had been fighting himself, trying to become the person others wanted him to be, stable, predictable, and fixed. But here was Aditi, telling him that his constant evolution was not a flaw, but a part of him to be cherished. He looked at her, truly seeing her for the first time, not as a mirror but as a connected soul. 

She was not trying to describe him; she simply accepted him. That night, for the first time ever, Advait felt truly seen. He was not judged, nor advised. The heavy knot in his brain hadn't completely disappeared, but it felt lighter, less suffocating. He understood now that he didn't need to be solved.

He just needed to be accepted and appreciated for the mess that he would always be. And in Aditi, he had found someone who could do just that, with a quiet strength that was more powerful than any answer.

THE ILLUSION INDUSTRY

 

The Illusion Industry.....

Social media today is not just a platform, it is a battlefield of narratives, a marketplace of illusions, a theatre where truth is optional and performance is everything. It doesn’t just reflect society; it distorts it, stretches it, and sometimes breaks it. In this world, a ring light becomes a halo, a microphone becomes a magic wand, and a curated backdrop becomes a throne. Authority is no longer earned, it is staged.

Influencers have become the new high priests of this digital temple. They speak with the confidence of scholars and the certainty of prophets, even when their knowledge is stitched together from half‑read articles, AI‑generated summaries, and trending hashtags. Their charisma becomes their qualification. Their tone becomes their evidence. Their confidence becomes their credential.

And the audience is hungry, restless, overwhelmed and believes them, believes them blindly. Not because the information is true, but because it is delivered beautifully. Because it is packaged like wisdom. Because it feels easier to trust a familiar face on a screen than to dig for facts in a world drowning in noise. This is how misinformation wins. Not through malice, but through convenience. Not through conspiracy, but through carelessness. A single unverified claim, spoken with conviction, can travel farther than a well‑researched truth. Lies sprint. Facts crawl.

We experience see this almost every day and across every topic. Be it politics, motivation, relationships, vaastu, feng shui, health, finance and what not. The more dramatic the claim, the faster it spreads. The more emotional the message, the deeper it sinks. People don’t share what is accurate; they share what is exciting. And excitement is the currency of the algorithm.

Take any incident which happens. How quickly the digital mob forms, FIR is filed, and within minutes, influencers begin dissecting the story, assigning motives, creating narratives, and passing judgments. No investigation, no clarity, just instant outrage, instant theories, instant verdicts. The incident becomes content. The man becomes a headline. The truth becomes irrelevant. This is the brutality of social media: it does not wait for facts. It does not care for context. It does not pause for fairness. It rewards the loudest voice, not the most informed one. And once a narrative takes hold, it becomes almost impossible to reverse. A rumor repeated enough times becomes a belief. A belief repeated enough times becomes a truth. A truth repeated enough times becomes a weapon.

Motivational influencers oversimplify life into slogans. Relationship gurus reduce human complexity into clichés. Vaastu and feng shui “experts” turn ancient traditions into viral superstition. Everyone is selling certainty in a world built on uncertainty. Everyone is performing wisdom instead of practicing it.

The real tragedy is not that influencers mislead, but that audiences surrender their judgment so easily. We mistake confidence for competence. We confuse aesthetics with authenticity. We let algorithms decide what we should think, feel, fear, and believe. In this economy of attention, misinformation is not an accident, but a business model.

To survive this digital chaos, we need more than digital literacy and digital courage. The courage to question what feels convenient. The courage to pause before reacting. The courage to verify before believing. The courage to accept that truth is often slow, quiet, and uncomfortable. Influencers too must recognize the weight of their words. Audiences must recognize the limits of their screens. 

And all of us must remember that truth does not shout, it whispers. The truth does not trend, it endures. It does not go viral, it survives the noise. Just as a slow‑cooked meal takes time, patience, and real ingredients not like an instant packet meal which is quick, flashy, and convenient, but rarely nourishing.