litreat xavier's

Backspace to 2016 Ever since we ushered in 2026, we have observed, with no small curiosity, that digital culture has transported us back to the year 2016. This return is visible across social media platforms, in popular music, in visual aesthetics, and in our online habits of self-expression. References to 2016 now appear frequently in captions, in videos, in playlists, and in visual styles, often accompanied by the gentle insistence that life, the internet, or culture felt ‘better’ or perhaps ‘simpler’ during that period. While such claims may readily be dismissed as nostalgia or generational sentimentality, the consistency and scale of this return suggest that it is rooted in deeper cultural and structural shifts rather than merely in individual longing. It coincides with significant changes in how digital platforms operate and in what they now expect of those who inhabit them. Since 2016, social media has undergone an extensive transformation, marked by intensified algorithmic contr...

  Flying into the past   As the cool raindrops mixed with warm sweat trickled down my brow, the shuttle came flying towards me and I missed it again!  The sun had set, the fluorescent bulbs lit the front of the building, and the six of us were playing a lousy yet competitive game of ‘building’ or ‘gully’ badminton. The shuttle swept more than it flew, and on the few rare occasions of a ‘good shot’, the opponent missed it due to the slippery tile floor of the building front, wet from the continuous drizzle. The miss would happen in a rather idiotically epic manner by slipping or twisting and turning themselves at weird angles, which made everybody crack up. Sometimes, one was so lost in the breeze and rain that they would not realise the shuttle was heading towards them until it was too late. The expression of confusion, followed by the urgency to hit the shot, made them look so funny that it set all the spectators into hysterics.  We played more with the roof penetra...

Alone, Together That morning started like any other, but with an extra dose of irritation. I didn't have a holiday on Anant Chaturdashi, which, to me, felt completely unfair. I left home in a bad mood, half-asleep, half-complaining in my head. I expected the streets to be quiet, the trains to be empty, and the whole city to feel paused for the festival. But when I reached the station, it was far from silent. The platform was buzzing with life; vendors calling out, trains screeching in and out, people walking fast, cups of chai being passed around. For a moment, I just stood there, confused. How could so many people be out and about on a day like this? Didn’t anyone else want to stay home? Didn’t they also wish for a break? But then I looked around properly—at students clutching their bags, office-goers with weary eyes, a man selling flowers for the day’s rituals, an old woman quietly eating breakfast on a bench; and it hit me. Everyone was living their own little version of this mo...

The Doors Of Pondicherry  In Pondicherry, the doors and streets are not merely wood and concrete, but stories and poems painted with bright colours and history. The former stand at the corner of almost every street, adorned in vibrant hues of yellow, white, and coral blue, humming their own rhythms and narrating their own stories. I walked through these French streets with my camera dangling from my neck, a map in one hand and a cup of melting gelato in the other, collecting their colours and silences like seashells. Some doors were coral blue, like the waves crashing on the rocks at the beach, while some were yellow like the petals of a sunflower. But every time I tried to click a picture, something inside me hesitated. How could I capture something that seemed to mirror me? The doors of Pondicherry do that sometimes - they stare back at you, unblinking, as if they know all the stories you’ve brought along with you; all the weight you’ve carried on your shoulders, and the amount o...

  2025 ‘Wrapped’ Put a pretty bow, a couple of party-popping animations and a glowing number on the landing page of an app, and you’ve got the recipe for quantifying and gamifying digital consumption. We, as a generation, are sticking a number on all the wrong things, just for a hit of success. Apps we use congratulate us on how much we use them, and we, faithful servants as always, fall right into the rat’s trap.  These numbers, when shared (for example, Spotify stats) then stand to pit users against each other. Some listeners even try year-round to ensure that their end-of-the-year Spotify stats reflect a niche, unique taste. The more the hours-listened, the more superior you get as a consumer. All this while, companies and creators sit back and watch, probably laughing at us. From Spotify (where it all began) to Linkedin to even Uber, almost every app we use has now begun to show its users their yearly stats, congratulating them on the amount of times they used its services...

  There are More Christmases in Bombay Besides the Bandra Christmas! I know we’re all going to throw hands if we come across one more “Hidden Gem in Bandra” reel. But all things considered, the charm of a ‘Bandra Christmas’ is undeniable. The maximalist wonderland of Candies, the cosy winding streets of Ranwar, the glistening archways of Reclamation. However, it’s all fun and games till you’re photo-bombing a stranger with every step you take, or till you’re inches away from a car running over your foot. So, even as I have enjoyed the holiday spirit in Bandra (pro tip: go before Christmas day and in the afternoon), I must talk about why it is overrated.  Everything is a spectacle today, or has to be one to garner any attention in the throes of content on social media. We rarely go to places without the Internet recommending them, and this fosters a need to beat the FOMO by getting to these ‘Instagrammable’ spots (the fact that the word is a known adjective is concerning in its...

  The Girl He Thought He Killed Every truth is tainted with a spot of lie. I told them I didn't do it. That was true—I didn't. But did I want to? Yes. I wanted to watch every ounce of life seep from his eyes. I wanted him to know, with every fibre of his being, that his time was over.  Did I want to hear his cries for mercy? Yes. Did I want to watch him turn into nothing? Yes. I wanted him to plead for his life the way I had—to feel the white-hot pain I felt when he left me broken, wounded, lying on the cold ground to die. I wanted every nerve in his body to ignite with suffering, just like mine did when his sharp knife cut through my stomach.  He thought I was dead. That I would be an incident he could tuck away. But little did he know that the shattered girl he left that day had learned how to put her pieces back together.  He didn’t know the voice he thought he’d buried would echo in his last moments. However, vengeance isn't me, I tell myself—justice is.  Ye...

  We Need to Retire the Phrase ‘The Man of the Relationship’ How the Internet is forcing heterosexual relationships into inflexible gendered binaries You’d expect, or at least hope, that love would be the last thing the Internet hijacks, but it is in fact doing so quite successfully. In its effort to produce homogenous individuals and relationships devoid of nuance, social media is not just trying to control how we (show) love, but also who we are in love, as individual men and women.  It’s an ancient habit, sorting ourselves into binaries when we speak of relationships. We have an inexplicable urge to go back to default settings to be able to effectively explain and define ourselves. And sadly, it’s not that we think a woman can’t be masculine, or a man can’t be feminine - it’s that we think they shouldn’t.  The ‘princess treatment or bare minimum’ trend, for example, encapsulates the essence of what a relationship means to social media: both grand and little gesture...

  The Queerness of Silence: What Isn’t Said in Literature Silence has always surrounded queerness. At times it has been imposed, like a silence born of punishment and fear, and at other times it has been chosen to conceal love in a language that only some will recognise. In literature, queerness often lives between the words, where desire and intimacy exist but cannot always be expressed. To understand this silence is to understand both the pain of being erased and the strength to survive. The Renaissance highlights how queer desire was written in the shadows, being rarely permitted to step into the light. Shakespeare’s sonnets to the ‘Fair Youth’ brim with passion, admiration, and longing, and their intimacy exceeds the boundaries of mere poetic flattery. Was this simply the language of friendship, or was it Shakespeare’s carefully coded declaration of love? Christopher Marlowe’s homoerotic undertones suggest a world where desire slipped into verse even when the stage demanded dis...

  On Control Do you absolutely hate it when a new season of your favorite show comes out and you see a reel with spoilers? Or when you’re reading a popular murder mystery and your friend tells you who the killer is? Yeah - well, we’re not the same. It's an unpopular and slightly controversial opinion, but I do the exact opposite. I look up spoilers. I read up on the plot of the murder mystery before putting a film on. I google who the murderer is before I finish the book, I just really prefer…knowing everything. I like being aware and informed of every single thing ahead of time. For me, everything that I watch, read, and do is a puzzle that I need to know the answers to before I even begin. For the longest time, almost everyone who saw me do this would make fun of me, saying, “Where’s the fun in getting spoilers?” and I totally understand. I never had an explanation for this except that I would really not feel okay if I didn’t know everything that’s about to happen. I brought this...

  A Poet’s Visit to the Temple of Literature and War in Hong Kong And a tourist’s inability to distinguish between the Taoist gods of literature (Man) and war (Mo) and what it means to worship both  I’m sure you can imagine a writer’s (and English literature student’s) excitement at the mere thought of a temple dedicated to the God of Literature. I knew exactly what I would pray for - literary success, a substantial following of readers, being ‘known’ for my words. I had a lot of demands from Man specifically, and was determined to get them across. I didn’t have nearly as much to ask for from the God of War (Mo), of course.  Through all the looping coils of incense set against Man Mo Temple’s red and gold interiors and the many idols nestled in its wooden walls, the place was at once familiar and unfamiliar to my foreign eyes. Everything from inscriptions to prayers written on paper by worshippers, which were hanging on softly yellow lamps, were in a language that was ina...

  Jane’s Dream or Not…?   Who is Jane, you may ask? Even I don’t have the answer. She's nobody, or maybe, she’s somebody. It doesn't really matter. She lived in a house allegedly made of concrete, but deep down she knew its walls were made of sorrow. In this claustrophobic abode lived people, but I’d rather call them monsters — monsters with a body resembling that of a dark cloud, eyes gleaming like amethyst, their presence causing unease. They held her legs and dragged her into a miserable land. But our Jane wasn’t someone who’d want to be a victim, nor did she want to be a cliché.  Thus, she traversed through the obnoxious air and the ghastly waters, and she reached the Nether. She stole a scythe glowing violet and returned to her sorrowful abode, where she slashed the limbs of those pathetic monsters. The dull gloom vanquished. The walls are now illuminated. Soon, Jane opens her eyes, feeling the quilt of her bed underneath her, beads of perspiration rolling down her n...

Generation Infinite As usual, when I looked down from above the clouds, I found two youngsters walking to a school with bright shining eyes and enthusiastic body movements. One with a few thick books and another with just a small gadget. Both looked the same, with no difference either in face or in body, but the one with the tiny gadget seems to be far superior to the latter in regard to confidence.  Both entered their class, and the one with the gadget was relating and mingling with others, whereas the latter was absorbed in his book. Whether it was a break or drills, the latter was alone with his books, whereas the other guy was moving with the crowd—pulling them at times and leading them at times. Even during exciting school events, the latter preferred to just be with his darling books, while the gadget boy found comfort in being with the moment—capturing and modifying them with his little gadget. One boy, as the time passed, became brighter than all, whereas the other started ...

Stone Garden At the age of twelve, her best friend abandoned her in the middle of a storm — not the real kind, but one that leaves you shaking, eyes burning, trust splintered. When she was sixteen, a boy with warm eyes promised her forever - then walked away without a glance back.  Two betrayals. Two clean cuts. She didn’t wait for a third. Trust wasn’t something she could afford anymore.  Her mother was the exception. The one person she could still lean on, the only one whose presence felt like sunlight in a cold world. They shared late-night talks, secret smiles across crowded rooms, and an unspoken promise that they would never leave each other. Until the night her mother did. A fight too sharp, words too loud — and suddenly her mother was gone, leaving her alone in the middle of a dark street with nothing but the sound of her own breathing. Perhaps "forever" was woven into memories, That night, the final light flickered and died. Her parents became strangers with the same...