"Your life's ambition achieved," ElectricPotatohead says when I tell him I now live in London. Incisive and reductive, just how I like my old friends. I follow that thought down a shallow ditch and come upon the distressingly unoriginal realization that begins and ends with the phrase "Now what?"

I walk from my mews house to work on late November mornings amid Christmas lights and autumn leaves. I walk back home past the overspill from pubs filled with people laughing and drinking and smoking. I walk my dog in centuries old parks and talk about breed and age with people in waxed coats with corduroy collars. I see friends on weekends, dressed in Max Mara versions of the Zara clothes I used to buy. I buy groceries at M&S and make jacket potatoes for dinner. This is everything I ever wanted and nothing is the way I thought it would be, just how I like life to go.

The little interlude of two years that was Paris, the decade in New York that preceded that, the near-decade spent in the Far East and the sixteen years spent at home. These are my markers - vivid and alive in my imagination, dead and buried for all intents and purposes. A dichotomy I seem to have been conditioned my entire life to meet. All lessons variations on how best to contain one's overreactions. Gratifying then, that I meet every change these days with a trained equanimity - acknowledged and managed in terms of expectations. Pleased when required, prepared for disappointment anyway.  

And yet, every morning I pinch myself as I walk past streets and people I used to long for. The only constant thought in my mind these days is the young girl who dreamt of what I have now. The only standard I aspire to meet is the one she painstakingly, carefully, quietly set all those years ago. She would be proud of me. 

My sister tells me to send love back to my past selves. She says I can't really heal, I can't really be ready to meet the future if I am still lacking somewhere in my past. She shouldn't worry, after all. The old me, and the other one, and the one before that - they are all here, bedazzled and bemused. 

A short month of historical revisionism

Every second day brings a reverberation of something that had already occurred. Something that had already been resolved or, at the very least, unanimously buried. The impact is sharp and immediate like feet meeting rocks underwater. Back and forth in time, back and forth in places, back and forth in words like a fucking cosmic joke.

Everyone seems to respond with a resentful look in their eyes which doesn't entirely mask the fear they feel at the thought of coming full circle. Nobody has time for this, not in this economy. We've got to push on, push on to Moscow, per Mark.

I was in on this a while ago though. I have been on this ride, I have seen where it stops, I have done my part, I have crawled back and swiped at the weeds. This is just how it goes. It would be nice if there was a little takeaway at the end each time though, would be lovely to have something to hang on my wall. But I know by now, jesus, obviously by now, that I will always end up clean as a whistle, empty as a drum, an echo of an echo.

And yet, always the first back on, someone give this girl a job.

I will not be seduced this time though. I have a plan. I have been studying the others. I am mirroring their habits. Well, the easy ones anyway. I am taking stock of the part I play in being consistently naive to extremely predictable outcomes. I am also finding that I have a decided talent for finagling myself into situations that are, for the most part, to my benefit. The trick is to seem like you landed somewhere out of largesse, feet first in a new tax bracket.

I moved to Paris on a hot July afternoon in the throes of crises - global and personal. Man (same) and dog (hypoallergenic/beautiful/mental) in tow on a crowded, jubilant Air France flight promising hordes of American tourists the excesses they had so missed in the last year. 

Once again, I am making myself at home in hostile territory. Once again, I am tottering on cobblestone streets on Tuesday nights. Once again, I am finding myself in situations where nobody understands who I am and what my genuinely chequered past connotates.

The difference this time is that I am absolutely unapologetic about the space I occupy. If I am to be at home in foreign land, I will be at home in the nicest arrondissement with the freshest Hungarian point hardwood flooring I can find. If I am to stumble across streets, I shall do so after imbibing the finest bourgogne available, in my best shoes and my fanciest coats. If I am to be misunderstood, I shall refrain from correction. If I can't get a display trophy, then I will find an artist on instagram who takes commissions via gmail.

This is the thing about getting sick and getting better. Second lease on life sounds dramatic because landing squarely in that narrow margin of serious but not immediately terminal should signify immense gratitude. And there is, my god there is, so much that I fucking moved to Europe just because I could. 

However, the manual for recovery is very much your own to write and the whole thing becomes especially tedious when you realize that recovery is just one of the lanes you have now added to your clusterfuck existence. Like including ecommerce on top of your brick and mortar distribution. Like adding lamb chops to your standing grocery order. Like being both origin story and evolution theory. Like booking an MRI in the same month as your annual eye exam. 

 

You can't ride every single horse that comes your way, sure, but really, should you? 

So while coming to appreciate that life will evolve and devolve the way it always has, I find myself at an age and a point in time where I have very little fucks to give, as the kids on tiktok say. I care supremely for myself and mine. Not all the time but enough to reign it back in or push the boat out, swaad anusaar. I speak more freely and with less fear of retribution. I take more chances on myself. I spend €5 more on a bottle of wine because who knows when you've had your last one. 

Ultimately, that's the entire point of this exercise - it all comes back around until it doesn't. I'd still rather be surprised than not. 

A guide to your 20s

Watching England play football is an act of sado-masochism. I now have a genuine reason to support them, even if Steven Gerrard is no longer on the pitch looking gorgeous as he fucks up penalties. You know, angrez se shaadi karo, unki sub-par teams ko support karo. Obviously, I draw the line at rooting for that most gloriously mediocre football club, Tottenham Hotspurs. I have enough North London to deal with anyway, I am happy to continue investing my emotions in the perpetually underwhelming Liverpool. And of course, the Indian cricket team. My wedding started with the India-Pakistan world cup fixture and I could not think of a more shubh-muhurat. Even more than the open bar at the sangeet which our 100-strong contingent of friends destroyed while my relatives and uncle-aunties looked on in horror.

So really everything is the same. Slight cosmetic changes, better apartments, new jobs in new high-rises, new countries with their new work visa stamps in battered passports, diamonds and earnest promises (as if the two are meant to have any correlation, (my love for you is as solid as this diamond? My love for your has turned from black to glittery over time like this diamond?)). Because as much as I'd like to say otherwise, I am really just the same fucking person. Nahi hota mujhse change. Not to say there haven't been lessons learned or thoughts thought.

A certain amount of vodka sodas, and a certain amount of certainty that you're turning 30 in less than six months is all it takes to turn after-work happy hour into a post-mortem of your spectacularly well-lived 20s.

I spoke well of my past. I treated it like you would an ex-boss who you may run into again because man, fashion is a small industry and you really respected him. Learned so much! Good times! But really, really happy that that's over.

And so I share with you what I shared with the mid-20s girls last week. They were so fresh-faced despite their Thursday nights out and they were so earnest, it broke my heart a little.

• Live a little, flirt a little, play with hearts a little - you never know when you've just had your last fling. Who would have thought I'd end up marrying the jewtiya? 
• Start saving money. Not a lot, because everybody needs to buy leather leggings and everybody needs a pissed-up weekend in New Orleans but put aside something every month at the same time as you pay rent.
• No Class A drugs. The occasional pill - sure! You'll feel like shit for a week afterwards anyway. No chance you're doing that again for a long while. Weed is semi-legal so pass.
• Have one, and this is important, only one female friend who isn't in your immediate circle who you can call at any given time on any given day and confess to your darkest fears and secrets. Be that friend to her. She will last you a lifetime. Mine is BM/OTP, and I am hers and that's all I've needed for 10 years.
• Allow yourself to dwell on miserable moments. But only with a time-limit. 
• Know your worth. Always ask for more because they're definitely low-balling you. 
• Know your worth. Always let a boy know exactly what you expect and if he still falls short, run and don't look back. 
• Figure out what works best for your personality, but find a way to accept praise well. 
• Also, learn how to accept criticism and bounce back. Bouncing back is often more important than not making mistakes.
• Call your parents. Even if you don't want to. Don't text, don't email, call. Once a week - that's all they want. 
• Learn how to cook one thing well and take it to every pot-luck. Make good friends with people who can cook and go to all their dinner parties. Always with a bottle of wine that cost at least $20 because your friend just spent her Saturday making a roast chicken while you lay on the couch, scratching at your dry skin distractedly while watching Sherlock again.
• Never cancel on people last minute unless there's an emergency. You're an adult, show up when you said you would show up. 
• Don't trust everyone. If your gut says no, follow that feeling to the end of the rainbow. Not everyone is inherently nice. 
• And finally, eat carbs. Eat lots of carbs. Savour every bite. Marvel at how they seem to do nothing to you. Everything ends at 28. 

Outside There's a Boxcar Waiting

I fell in love twice the summer I turned 13. With two teenage brothers whose names rhymed. I fell in love simultaneously with their identical eyes and their matching boy-band haircuts. We were visiting our fathers who were posted in the Kashmir valley and we shared a tin-roofed barrack divided by a wafer-thin wall. I could hear them laughing at night after we returned from the mess dinners and they would wait outside my door every morning so that we could walk down for breakfast together.

It felt like we were the only three carefree teenagers in the whole valley that summer. We took day trips in olive-green jeeps with armed escorts just to visit some village with the best palangtod milk cakes. It was a surreal time - machine guns, land-mine detectors and ID checkpoints and three denim-clad kids from Delhi being ushered in and out of militarised zones. We would play antakshari with the soldiers in our car. Someone would end up having to sing a song beginning with 'ha' and they would invariably start with, 'ho gaya hai tujhko toh pyaar sajna...' before someone (me) would cut it short and say, 'no, no, no, no, it starts with 'na jaane mere dil ko kya ho gaya.'' We would end up fighting, calling names, threatening to throw each other out to the 'militants' and that would be the end of the game for the rest of the journey.

They were not much older than I was - one was 14, the other 15 - but they were more foreign to me than anybody I'd ever met. While I read Agatha Christie novels checked out from the library under my father's name, they would buy pirated discs of English movies I'd heard about but never been allowed to watch. They listened to music I had no context for and they wore 'imported' sweatshirts with hoods drawn over their heads as they skulked about the lawns, discussing NBA scores.

I was fascinated by them, observing their mannerisms closely as we played two versus one badminton, staring out of a gap in my curtains at them as they gave painstaking instructions to the barber who would come over to the barracks' verandah to give them their fortnightly haircuts.

My mother forced me to get a haircut from that same fauji barber one afternoon despite my protests. The barber gave me a 'mushroom' cut, which would have been bad enough, but he used a razor to trim all the hair from the bottom of my 'mushroom' to my neck. Like Skrillex, almost, but that wasn't a thing in 1998. By the end of that awful ordeal, I was in tears. I ran away from the verandah and sulked for a minute in the drawing room in the mess before the brothers tumbled in, helplessly holding on to each other as they laughed at me. The 15-year-old spent the rest of the day running his fingers across the back of my head, giggling at the prickly hairs that remained. Every time his hand touched my neck, I got goosebumps down my arms. I was painfully aware of him touching me, so careless and so deliberate - no boy had ever been that bold. It wasn't a comfortable feeling, but it wasn't bad either.

The next day, while the older one watched The Lost World in the mess, the younger one took me to his room to show me a collection of stamps he apparently traveled with. As I flipped through the cardboard pages of the stamp book, he reached for my hand and held it as he talked about the Queen's head on a purple British stamp. I blushed furiously, my hand suddenly clammy and I made an awkward exit from his room. From that day on, he became quiet. He wouldn't joke around with me like his brother would. Instead, he would stare at me across the dining table while we ate stale toast and fried eggs. I would try and engage him in conversation and he would give cryptic answers, look me in the eyes for an uncomfortably long period of time before yanking his hood up and walking off.

A few days after the stamps incident, I found myself in the boys' room again, alone with the older brother this time. He had asked me to come in with him to fetch his basketball. Once there, he talked about how he planned to make the school basketball team and how he has been training for it for a year. He showed me some muscles going down the side of his leg, near his knee and proudly detailed how he had developed them. He asked me to see for myself and again, I was amazed at his confidence, at his casual request. I remember feeling shocked when I tentatively put two fingers on his knee and traced them down his leg. This wasn't casual for me. I felt faint, and he kept asking, "Hai na? I told you!" He jogged out dribbling his stupid basketball and I stayed back just to catch my breath.

After that, I was terrified of being left alone with either of them because I had no idea what they might say or do and what I might say or do. I still spent all my time with them, watching TV or playing in the lawns or going out to other battalions for parties but I avoided being anywhere with just one of them.

Meanwhile, one afternoon, after a particularly loud game of tag in the lawns, I returned to the verandah to my mother as she sat having her tea. She had been watching us play and as I flopped into the chair next to hers, she quietly observed into her teacup, "Yeh ladke bade hero nikle, yaar."

One evening the three of us were in the TV room fighting about what to watch as usual. The younger one left the room briefly to find some snacks and Pepsi. The energy in the room suddenly shifted and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the older one flip channels mindlessly as he turned to look directly at me. "Scout, I have a question for you." I looked at him enquiringly. He carefully returned his gaze to the TV and asked ever so slowly, "Do you like me or my brother? I don't understand. And I don't want to... you know?"

My heartbeat slowed down and then quickened, my pulse throbbed in my ears and the room zoomed in and out of my vision as I tried to respond coherently. "Haha, what do you mean! Haha. I mean, haha..."

He kept staring at the TV as I stumbled through the fog until finally he relaxed into the couch and said, "Doesn't matter. Do you want to watch Zee Horror Show?"

That night, I heard them singing Dire Straits songs through the wall that separated our rooms. I lay in bed, excited and nauseous and horrified. I couldn't wait to see them the next morning and I couldn't wait to never see them again after the summer ended.

And it did end a few weeks later. Uneventfully, obviously. We all parted as friends and we made vague promises to stay in touch. Maybe our mothers might meet up in Delhi, bringing us together again. Maybe not. Maybe they might transfer to my school. Maybe not. It didn't matter. Summer was over.

A few months after we returned to Delhi, they called on the landline. Over the phone, they sounded exactly like each other and I couldn't tell which one I was speaking to as they took turns to talk. My mother watched me keenly from the kitchen while I giggled into the phone in the dining room. We spoke for a few minutes and then we said goodbye. I sat down for lunch, pink in the face. My mother placed a steaming chapatti on my plate and asked, "Kaise hain dono sher?"

Ab batayein bhi to kya batayein, Mom.

Don't Please, Don't Change A Thing

New York, sometimes you feel so close to me that I could almost reach out and touch you. And sometimes, you feel like a mirage, a hallucination that comes to me so often that I've lost all faith in it.

New York, I love you, but you're bringing me down.

A Number One

I suppose it was inevitable that I would one day find myself living in New York City. I seem to meet all important landmarks in my life with some degree of bemusement. Things happen mainly because I never really believed they would happen. And so I am unemployed, engaged and disoriented in New York.

I don't love this city. It is grim like nothing else I know, its joy is brittle, its promise disingenuous. It is a city for ruthlessness, broken hearts and pragmatism. I don't hate it either. The collective dreams of millions of people make the air thick with anticipation, heart beats are faster, love is rare but fierce when it sticks.

There is dark magic in the streets, an unsettling bite to the wind, a disturbing paranoia that there are many things unfolding all at once.

Down the street, the sun shines on pristine snow-covered sidewalks full of people carrying grocery bags bursting with produce and baguettes. A few steps away, you find yourself chasing dark shadows down an alley where men move swiftly, hands tucked in oilskin jackets, murmuring phrases you don't hear to people you don't trust. They shake hands surreptitiously, partaking in what you are convinced are street drug deals. A strange whistle emerges from a second-floor window and a man taps a car window, as if in acknowledgement. Not wanting attention, you shuffle quietly, quickly until once again, the sun breaks out on a playground next to your Lower East Side co-op where dogs and children run in circles and a fireman sings a spanish song. And you remember to breathe again.

I don't love it here, but I don't not.

BAPE

My bathtub is clogged. Sometimes, it takes over thirty minutes to drain completely, leaving shower gel residue around the rim of the drain. It bothers me no end, it makes me upset and worried. I have poured more Draino down the, well, draino than is good for the environment. I have prayed. I have google searched. I have done everything short of calling a plumber. The damn bathtub remains firmly clogged up, as if holding on determinedly to all the Queen and Journey songs that I have sent its way over the last two years. What? What else are you supposed to sing in the shower? Katy blooming Perry? Not on my turf, you don't.

This should not bother me as much as it does. I consider this a personal failing, concealing it from visitors, forbidding house guests from enjoying the excellent water pressure, sending them to the other bathroom instead. Sometimes, after a shower, I stand in the pool that is ankle-deep these days, and sigh dramatically. It does nothing, but at least I feel like I'm trying. At least I'm not giving up and conceding my place as the master and purveyor of my own fucking bathroom.

The rest of the house, it functions. Well, there is that issue with the kitchen light, but I have worked around it and it is no longer a hassle as long as I flick the switch super-fast-like a few times. I am also not a massive fan of the mouldy storage cupboard in the hall leading to the bedrooms but if I keep it shut and keep my belongings away from it, I can pretend it doesn't exist. But the bathtub! I can't ignore it, I can't pretend I don't need it, I can't just let it go the way I let go of my resentment of the dim 'chandelier' in my bedroom. The bathtub is a necessity and I suspect it knows that. No other reason for being so obstinately uncooperative.

And then I hear the news that they are tearing down my building. It is, after all, over 30 years old. It is too big, too old, too grand to remain next to the shiny new neighbours with their boxy gleaming rooms, stainless steel kitchens and unclogged bathtubs. I must move out by the end of the month and so the search starts for a new house. On my list of requirements? Gas hobs (none of that electric plate nonsense), balcony or a rooftop, built-in closets and a bathtub with industrial-strength plumbing and drainage.

It has been a week now. A week of stumbling around the city, viewing flats smaller than my useless storage cupboard, balconies with just enough room for two potted plants and a pair of legs, abysmally tiny kitchens which couldn't possibly handle me and my food at the same time. I have viewed flats where stretching a leg would be enough to transport you from the living room to the bed should you wish to take a nap. It has all been quite disheartening and vaguely disturbing.

And so, last night, when I came back to my own luxurious, 1500 square foot mansion, I sighed in relief at the thought of having to walk more than two steps to enter my bedroom. A few more weeks, that is all I have. A few more weeks to operate out of the storage closet so I can get used to a smaller house. A few more weeks to cook up feasts to last the entire length of my next lease. And most importantly, a few more weeks to wade through my own personal swimming pool. Life has a funny way of putting problems into perspective. Until next time, my friends.

For the desired effect, could you come back August or June.

One of my many bad habits (including but not limited to cuticle-harassment, chain smoking, regularly contributing to the Alexander Wang cause, eating potatoes for meals and blaming alcohol for bad judgment calls) is the constant search for validation of my feelings by watching CW shows (see: Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries). If a particular plot line on one of these shows even remotely resembles a plot line in my own reality TV series, I pounce on it with all the passion of a 16 year old watching Love, Actually. I can often be found sitting in my room, yelling at the TV, willing Damon to kiss Elena and just god for fuck's sake get it over with. Obviously, wine is involved.

In one of the recent episodes of Gossip Girl, which by the way is nowhere near the stellar standards it set in its first two seasons of cattiness and guilty pleasures, Chuck Bass (formerly light of my days, love of my life) decided that he can no longer feel anything, including physical pain or hangovers, because things are definitely. over. between him and Blair Waldorf (whose wardrobe I emulated for about four seasons). I sighed and sympathized with Chuck, now determined that that had what had happened to me. I had finally become what I always wanted to be, cold and unfeeling. Numb to any external stimulus. Just going about my life, buying more clothes, drinking more vodka and deriving pleasure from fiction. Chuck and I were in this together, and we would live happily ever after. Or until they cancelled the show, realizing that all the characters had slept with each other and there was nothing else to do.

Imagine my delirious pleasure when, in the latest episode of Vampire Diaries, Stefan and Elena - the most insipid of couples, boring in their devotion to each other no-matter-what, were finally falling apart because Elena saw Stefan for what he really was - a really ugly dude. Just kidding. She actually saw that his true nature was that of someone who wanted to prey on her and kill her. She quickly found solace in bad-boy-gone-good, Stefan's brother Damon who I've been rooting for since his days as a Dolce and Gabbanna model. But not before she watched Stefan 'turn-off' the human side of him. The side of him that actually loved her, cared for her and wanted to protect her. She watched his face as he jerkily switched his brain off to affection and was horrified (belated response) when he strolled casually towards her before attacking her. I mean, how fucking convenient. If only humans were capable of turning off that switch and protecting themselves from ever getting hurt. Poor Chuck had to drink himself into oblivion before emerging numb and all Stefan had to do was turn this stupid switch off. I was extremely excited for what lay ahead, I really really wanted Stefan to finally be happy with himself and do whatever the fuck he pleased while Elena found someone else to protect her and take care of her. That's true love.

So where does that leave me? Do I think I'm the bad boy? Do I think I deserve what I got and that now that I am somewhat impervious to emotions and guilt, I should go about my life just making myself happy, screwing over anyone who didn't accept me for who I truly was? I don't know, ya'll. I'm quite pleased with my ability to shut out pain and rejection and feelings of low self-esteem but is it healthy? Will it all come crashing down in the next episode, as is likely seeing that these shows I take emotional guidance from are just one bitch-slap away from being soap operas? Will there be a voice-over at the end of the season, talking about doing the right thing no matter what it costs you? Who knows. Until next week. xoxo.

'Head Clutch' is the desi version of 'Face Palm'

You took the weather with you. In what was clearly an attempt to draw a bit of romance (the bad type) and pain (the good type) from the already desperate situation, the world decided to greet my loneliness with gray skies and pointless rain. Every morning is colder than the one before, every evening, the walk home is longer. How then, am I supposed to stay calm, drive carefully? How then, am I not supposed to dwell on all things miserable while smoking incessantly when I know, I know it makes my sadness so much more than just a state of mine - it gives me personality. At least I can hide behind that familiar wall, go back to the person I was long before we met, the little girl with her big words and increasingly self-destructive spirals. ("I will drink the hell out of this vodka-tonic!")

I sometimes wonder if I fooled myself into stability. How did I manage to make sense of all those things, put them in little IKEA organizers and pile 'em high (watch 'em fly). I also wonder how much of my current mess, a return to old-familiar-form, is of my making. Did I just miss the tension, and this is a test run to see if I'm any better at handling it? Or maybe this is life - cyclical in it's spreading of bullshit and hopelessness comma helplessness. If so, then hello! It's been a while. Help yourself to the Medoc. I'll be outside, being all dramatic and shit. I'm sure you're used to that.

But you, I forgot this was meant to be about you. Wait, let's leave that to another time. Can we, for one minute, just focus on me? Sorry, does that sound too shrill? I'm kidding. You are the reason, or maybe not the main reason, but the catalyst that has led to this faithless departure from normalcy (where is a synonym when you need one?). But I don't think that could have led to this, to be honest. Maybe it wasn't a departure from contentment but actually a panicked run-for-your-life move towards self-preservation. And why should anyone apologize anymore for being shamelessly self-indulgent. Pragmatic is for day jobs and therapists' offices. As for me, I'm just happy (Gosh yaa, I just want to be happy) to smoke furtively and watch gray disappear into gray.

Suck It And See

It isn't cold anymore. I wear sandals on weekends. But tonight, there was a chill in the air as I walked the never-ending walk to my train station. I walked past a local woman burning paper and wood in a metal container, as is the perplexing custom here. She stoked the fire with a long iron rod and there it was - Delhi.

The smell of burning wood, its warmth against my bare leg and the cool wind in my face. That is all it took for me to be 15 again, for me to be standing outside my block, next to the tired security guards and their dying fire, for me to be waiting for the 7.15 bus to take me to school. And I longed for that time, some more of that time, so much that I almost choked on my duty-free cigarette.

I am so removed, so distant from those days but I still can't help going back. But you can't go back. Even when you do. It is never the same again. Sometimes, when I visit Delhi and drive around in a car, I get glimpses of the place that used to be, the place that still lives in my heart. A wide road lined with trees, a man with a cart selling peanuts and yellow popcorn. The bright orange of the setting sun, bringing alive the film of sand hovering over the city. The gurbani heard from a rooftop, the smell of aloo-tikkis. But it is never complete. I can't replicate something that existed ten years ago. Something that existed only for me. I still seek out the omelet-sandwich man when I go back and the damn omelet never tastes the same.

And so I am stuck in-between. Forever longing for the place that doesn't exist anymore, never satisfied with where I am now. I treat these new streets so carelessly, tottering around on Tuesday nights, and yet I worry that when I leave them, they will bring me more despair. I know myself, I will sit in another new city and look back on tonight and wonder if it's possible to do it again. As if everything in life is open to negotiation. As if there's a from-the-top option.

Maybe I'm rambling, maybe I shouldn't listen to The Cure so much, maybe I just prefer living in my head. It makes me sad but it also makes reality more bearable, in a twisted way. I have always been an advocate of escapism, of wanting something you know you can't have just so that what you have doesn't hurt you as much. Or maybe I enjoy pain, just as long as it's of my own choosing.

We can't stand being told what to feel.