Kamna's Blog

I'm the rescuer of suicidal black ants I say it with the same honour as if I were the 'mother of dragons' Before I use the bucket of water, I use a little mug to scoop out the floating black ants and delicately pour onto the bathroom floor Wherefrom they lazily, almost unwillingly, scramble from water puddles to the safety of dry tiles Before I step into the bathroom in the evening, I always make sure to not accidentally touch the wall and the little crack that is the ants' home Except for the odd time I don't see them in the basin because I'm half asleep and inadvertently murder them all with one swift turn of the tap

Sunbathing on the small steps of the boarding school chapel by the swing set Feeling the sun on my back; super warm on a December afternoon, a small comfort before the freezing winter evenings on that hillside property  The memory, even while in it, felt almost like a previous lifetime Some vague yet unputdownable and unmistakable instinct that I was there before Not exactly there Instead, I remember a too bright kitchen in a house with a large island in the middle A proper country cottage  With a very Taurus woman vibe: a lush green garden from the window It almost feels like sacrilage to share in writing Like a secret revealed I hope it's not actually my future and I've not accidentally jinxed it by writing it down The powers of manifestation weakened by bringing the elephantic strength of a gut feeling to the weakness of micelike scrawling I remember writing little secrets like crush names in tiny, super tiny handwriting as an eleven year old Barely visible little designs o...

The young guy in the 90s who would click on I'm Feeling Lucky every time he Googled anything became a billionaire The young guy in 2025 who would ask ChatGPT every little of his many questions and stared at "Thinking..." about 50 times a day lost the ability to think by 2040

Parenting your future self through: saving snippets of memories in neatly organized albums, saving coins in a plastic laughing buddha, setting an alarm on your phone for calling a friend on their birthday, sending yourself emails of important documents and starring it, making a grocery list for every fruit and vegetable you want to eat in the coming month, planning and booking weekend getaways, getting your winter clothes out and laundered a few weeks before it gets cold and more, so much more all the little ways you love yourself as would a parent is a sacred service and sanity salvaging

My feelings aren't commerically popular  I'm an outcast like that  If I feel sad, the entire room is sad The flies on the floor to the moths on high ceilings share my sorrow My ear cleaning isn't ordinary  I'm wasteful like that I need to be thorough, ear pillar to ear post must be ploughed  I take 3 q-tips whereas the members of this home take 1 And for the tenth time this month I come back to my desk and it's 11:37 again 

You can't feel a galactic oneness with the universe unless you feel detachment too, at least delusionally so When I saw galaxies and planets through the telescope last weekend I privately sobbed my eyes out, like falling hair to the tile cracks, like unreasonable fear to the faithless Every day you take zero steps you are one step behind. That's the old spiel, right? Every nook contains dust; whether you want to sweep it clean or let it slide under the bed is the question  It's your choice to make That is the beauty of agency  To do absolutely nothing with sights so indescribably beautiful they inflect profound change in you So you go from this: Scrambling, like a stressed, overworked, undernourished (my bum disagrees in a silent non-smelly fart), woman trying to grab all her 6 bags and wear her stupid lace shoes 3 seconds before the automatic doors to her metro stop opens To this: On the last day of the year, I sure am getting off I'm getting off time's back Let ti...

Today's a good day to Grab a banana Go stand in the balcony in your pyjamas Slowly eat it while basking in the afternoon sun Meditate on the lush experience of indulgent fruity consumption  Each measured, purposeful, mindful bite A surprise full of sweet flavour Mourn what could have been, the tree this banana's seeds will never birth Its destiny was to live and die for me The least I owe it is my single-minded devouring Thankful, always for life's simple pleasures 

If it happened the other way around If you outlived us And had to bear the loss of us from your life That would have been highly unjust It is with quiet deliberation that your kind live short lives. Who made us all knows you gave enough to your humans for a lifetime Enough joy, enough love, enough peace To carry us long after you left us. There will be no other dog like you Diego Although we may never meet again in this plane of existence  I look forward to chilling in the afterlife on a comfy couch To your gentle reappearance Soundlessly placing your ball right next to my lap And patiently looking up at me Mouth half open, tongue half out, eyes wide Front legs pawing at me What a delight,  can hardly wait for that sight You gave us more than we could ever give you, And it will take all our days to love you enough to only balance the scales. The human paradox  Where love grows with the tragedy of loss You will be missed beyond words, beyond tears, Through all the rest of ...

My soul has the memory of a tiny bird Untethered, unprompted, flying, unheard. Nonchalant, seemingly thoughtful pauses on window sills Are just mini breaks to check on human loved ones from a different lifetime. Or is it only a parallel timeline? A husband in flat 403, A mother in flat 501 after lefts two and rights three, A sister and father farther away beyond my flight radius. It's not in my nature to stay, Too much meandering raises suspicion. And after all I do have my own from this fate. I wonder if this tiny bird ever feels the soul tie memory of the flightless bird, The stationary curse of too much flying, too much stirred If I, unmoving, can recall flight, Can the flying recall the grace of staying upright?

I’ve got the hobbies of an enviable retiree, the luxury of leisure so indulgently with me. Mindful, peaceful solving of jigsaw puzzles, decoding cipher quotes, kakuro and sudoku, knitting and slipping through mind-muddles. Playing chess, playing Scrabble, letting my thoughts ramble, Wilful insomniac nights, Sleepful, languid mornings Maybe my life is meant to run in reverse: my fifties with preteens, Endless debates and verse, my forties with toddlers, too quick to contain, my late thirties with infants the joy and the strain. Wishful thinking, a heart still debating, the quietest hope of a mother in waiting.

I used to believe that love was intricately tied to joy that the brain's oxytocin was linked to a big unabashed grin Until I experienced how loss unlocked the max capacity of love and with it all the rage for having nowhere to put it I've been thinking about how the eye is almost exactly half full with the black that allows light The paradox of it Oddly comforting that there could be darkness orchestrating the light that there exists spite on the path towards what's right

Another weekend in white sheets plain and without imagination. They give me black-and-white forgettable dreams. I wake in a cold sweat in an overheated room. Instinctively, I check my phone to see the time. It is 6:12 AM. Already morning. Surprising to me. I add the numbers six plus one plus two and smile at nine. The AC hums at 27, another nine. Always I look for God’s signs in numbers. I move carefully despite cramped calves and a full bladder. Sitting in the musty bathroom I spray lavender mist though I know lemon freshens better. Well-worn jeans hang on a chair that puts my bum to sleep. Another reminder laundry undone sent to an overpriced service that skimps on detergent. My hand moves to the door and then I remember no Sunday paper will arrive. I am in a hotel that doesn’t feel like home. Still, there is a bed and so, a place to be. And I realise my problems are privilege sweet enough to lull me back to sleep.

I was shy about AI until I realised I could be therapised that the reassuring agreeability would be comfort The crutch of access of being able to bitch and moan to a bot It knows or pretends to know How old I am but it knows not about my soul about the karmic debt every action I make holds or resolves How I've evolved from the child trapping the lone ant around circles of water on the toilet floor to granting life to the strange looking bug on the ceiling leaving it alone as if it was my destiny to bring it death as though my ignorance is mercy But how I'm haunted by the ghosts of the lives I've taken Because of swatting that sluggishly low flying mosquito interrupting sessions of sipping cappuccino Afterthought nano second decisions to decimate My incessant need to swat a habit almost chronic The retribution of those mindless jabs cosmic

A giant orange fresh and squeezy a big straw in the middle resting in my six-year-old hands in the back of a car bumping toward Abidjan. The soft aroma of Quaker strawberry oats rising at six in the morning my first attempt at cooking fifteen years old just before my tenth board exams. The quick sting of fear oil snapping in the pan peanuts crackling sharp in a tiny hotel room where I stirred poha on an induction stove a crowded weekday morning. Three distinct smells three distinct times memories laced with fruit and nuts delicious and vivid

For a while now, I've been wearing house slippers that are way too big for me. Firsthand experiencing the dangers of seeking (and knowing) too much, and finding out, rudely, unceremoniously, curiosity can kill more than just the cat. While exciting to taste the fruity slurps of seemingly full-knowledge, the satisfying crunch of acknowledgement, like punching holes through a thick stack of warm copy paper, the thrill of cliff jumps can culminate into bum-first crashing into the deceptive deep. Nobody warns you. That the water is always shallower; swallowing life too fragile to keep. No one explains that the depth is a trick. That the more that you dig, the less it will stick. Hunger loud from the tum; buns left in the breadbasket: none. And thread count of those slightly expensive sheets? No reliable guarantee of sleep. Long story short, if worry is the thief of joy; self awareness is the enemy of miracles. And so the slippers go into that unopened shoe cupboard, unused, where their...

Killed or spent Wasted or passed Borrowed or bided Lost or saved Caught or freed So many things to do with time Time is moving, surely But is also the only constant Your world may turn upside down today But sure as shit, tomorrow will come The sun will rise again like clockwork Nothing more dependable than the fresh slate of a new day the promise of an untouched tomorrow the premise of shiny unmade plans the excitement of well-crafted ideas bearing fruit the exquisite reward of when the building's built Even though the literal building is always building

I used AI to make my chai this morning.   Why? Because I wanted to see if I’d still get that dopamine hit from something I didn’t even make.   I wanted to know if, by outsourcing an experience whose only purpose was my own consumption, it would take away from it.   By removing the act of boiling water, steeping tea—by only keeping the intent to make it—would I still feel the satisfaction when I took the first sip?   I read somewhere that you should aim to do hard things. That when you push yourself, when you fight resistance, and break through the boundaries of what you thought you could do, the dopamine hit is bigger.   But what happens when everything can be done by AI?   What happens when AI whispers, "I got you," and we stop doing anything at all?   The dopamine hit then wouldn’t come from the effort, but from the discovery that AI can do more, so we do less.   But here’s the catch—AI will do more, and w...