Four lives in three-and-a-half cities. That’s how I measure my twenties: In departures, in half-unpacked rooms, in the smell of new beginnings that always carried a hint of loss.

Thiruvananthapuram was where I learned stillness. Not the meditative kind that poets romanticise, but the ordinary quiet of a place that moves at its own pace. The city taught me to listen to the pauses between conversations. Life there didn’t need to announce itself; it existed, unhurried and self-assured.

I grew up believing that this stillness was peace. But peace, I later learned, is not the absence of friction, but the invisibility of it.

Thiruvananthapuram raised me on inherited ideals: Literacy, social equity, and political awareness. Yet, it was also a city where politics was a cultural comfort, not a c

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