reliable systems

like you all, i too speak the language of the universe.

i have been chasing fluency in it for as long as i can remember.
reading, writing, speaking, and listening to the signs of the world has made me who i am today.

from a young age, my village showed me what it means to build systems that work.
systems you can trust.

reliable systems.

although this is what i’ve spent my youth recreating, lately, i’ve found myself craving the opposite.
a self-imposed exile.
a different kind of solitude.

which feels like the biggest contradiction.
especially as i sit here writing this, not worrying about my next meal, or whether the water from my tap is safe.
writing these words is as effortless as it is precisely because my world is built on reliable systems.
systems that others — my people — have poured their lives into building.

and yet i wish to step away from all that?
why?

if i’ve learned anything, it’s that nothing is ever just because.
the world is far too intentional for that.
remember, it listens and speaks back to us.

maybe this exile i crave isn’t so different from the रामायण
the hindu legend of ram ji’s adventure

his journey into the forest wasn’t retreat; it was refinement.
a purification.
the man born to rule chose to disappear

momentarily.

and in doing so, he became eternal.

so why can’t i do the same?

he walked away from a kingdom.
i’m not walking away.
if anything, i’m walking deeper in.

into radical acceptance.
the kind that feels like surrender.
except it’s not an ending.

it’s a return.
a return to something essential.
to reliability.

and maybe that’s the truest kind of homecoming.

when ram ji returned to ayodhya,
his return marked the restoration of order,
of trust,
of light after long darkness
and that’s what we celebrate on diwali.
not the end of the exile,
but the return to what matters.

the return to a world where
where systems work as they should.

maybe my exile, too, is part of that cycle.
not abandonment, but purification.
not detachment, but alignment.

so that when i return
it's to myself
i come back more
more me.

back to reliability.