The Comedy of Being
A Series of Emotional Sermons for the Spiritually Overstimulated
By saqlain taswar
Contents
1 The Comedy of Knowing Nothing
2 The Comedy of Grief
3 The Comedy of Disconnection
4 The Comedy of Identity
5 The Comedy of Healing
6 The Comedy of Belief
7 The Comedy of Hope
8 The Comedy of Survival
Chapter 1
The Comedy of Knowing Nothing
I know nothing.
No, wait—maybe I know that I know nothing.
But how do I know that?
And if I don’t know that, then I don’t know nothing,
which means I might know something.
Which would mean I’m lying.
To myself.
About not knowing.
Which means I do know something:
That I’m a fraud.
…But what if the fraud is the one telling me I’m a fraud?
What if even that’s a lie?
What if all of this is just the universe trying to cough up a joke,
and I’m the phlegm?
People chase truth like it’s a missing sock.
They look under the bed of science,
in the laundry of religion,
in the junk drawer of therapy.
But maybe truth got bored.
Maybe it left the party a long time ago.
And we’re all standing around
arguing about who brought the chips.
I don’t know anything.
I don’t even know if I’m real.
I might be a thought someone forgot to finish.
A sentence that never got a period.
Just a dangling clause of consciousness
hanging from the ledge of meaning.
And while I dangle, the world burn nos.
Somewhere a child scrolls through war on TikTok
like it’s another trend to survive.
Somewhere a woman bleeds, and the law says
she deserved it—because her body speaks too loudly.
Somewhere a man mistakes a gun for manhood,
and someone else doesn’t get to go home.
And the algorithms hum like gods in the background,
feeding us curated panic
and dopamine crumbs.
We scream for justice
but can’t even agree on the definition.
We build identities like IKEA furniture—
cheap, wobbly, missing screws—
then get surprised when they fall apart mid-conversation.
We say “self-care”
while our souls rot from overexposure to unreality.
I don’t know anything.
But I feel everything.
And it hurts in places I can’t name
because the language is broken
and the grammar is grief.
And yet…
If this is what not-knowing feels like,
maybe ignorance isn’t empty—
maybe it’s the fullest thing of all.
So full, it spills over into laughter.
The kind that comes after a breakdown,
when your face is still wet with tears
and you laugh anyway—
because everything’s absurd,
and you’re still here,
and that alone
is a punchline.
I don’t know anything.
But I know this:
Whatever this comedy is—
I’m in it.
And maybe that’s enough
for tonight.
Chapter 2
The Comedy of Grief
Grief moved in without asking.
It’s the roommate who never pays rent,
leaves dishes in the sink,
and plays the same three voicemails at 3am on a loop—
my mother’s voice cracking on “I love you, beta”
the night before the aneurysm took her.
I keep her last dupatta in a plastic bag
so the smell doesn’t escape.
I open it once a year
and inhale like a junkie
until the fabric forgets her
and remembers only my desperation.
The world doesn’t stop for grief.
It wants me to smile at the grocery store
while I’m calculating how many sleeping pills
would make the cashier’s small talk disappear.
Instagram serves me ads for sympathy bouquets
between thirst traps.
The algorithm thinks I’m in the market for both.
I tried to mourn properly once—
wore black for forty days,
lit a diya every evening,
posted a tasteful black square.
Got 842 likes.
Nobody asked if I was eating.
Guilt is grief’s shadow.
It whispers: You should’ve answered that last call.
You were busy doom-scrolling.
You could’ve flown home.
You were broke and proud.
And yet, grief is a teacher.
It taught me to laugh at funerals
when the maulvi mispronounced her name
and the hearse got stuck behind a wedding baraat
blasting “Baby Doll Main Sone Di.”
I don’t know how to grieve right.
Is it letting go or holding on?
Is it deleting her number
or keeping it as my emergency contact in heaven?
Maybe grief is just living with a hole
and learning to wear it like couture.
I laugh through the tears,
because what else is there?
Grief is the punchline no one asked for,
but it’s mine.
And I’m still here,
carrying it like a roommate I’ve learned to love—
ugly, loud, and impossible to evict.
Chapter 3
The Comedy of Disconnection
I have 4,892 followers
and zero people who know
I cried in the office toilet today
because the AI therapist chatbot
called me “user”
and asked if I wanted to upgrade to premium empathy.
I tried to tell my best friend I was drowning.
He replied with a GIF of a drowning SpongeBob.
We both laughed.
Neither of us followed up.
My phone is full of group chats
where nobody speaks unless it’s a birthday.
We drop cake emojis like grenades
and call it love.
I once spent three hours crafting a text
explaining why I disappeared for a week.
Autocorrect changed “I wanted to die”
to “I wanted to diet.”
She replied “same bestie 😂💪”
and I never corrected her.
Real connection is dangerous.
It requires eye contact,
unfiltered voice cracks,
the risk of being seen without a filter.
So we hide behind read receipts
and “haha” reactions
The
and pretend the blue ticks don’t feel like knives.
I paid $9.99 for an app
that sends me daily affirmations
in the voice of my dead grandmother
generated from three WhatsApp voice notes.
It tells me I’m enough.
I cry every time.
Five stars.
And yet, there’s beauty in the glitch.
Sometimes a stranger on the internet
quotes my suicide note back to me
as a caption under a sunset
and suddenly I’m less alone.
I laugh at the absurdity of it—
swiping for souls,
refreshing for rescue,
praying to push notifications.
Maybe connection isn’t the point.
Maybe it’s just surviving the static
long enough to hear one voice,
just one,
that says “I see you”
without asking for my Venmo.
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
The Comedy of Healing
Healing sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Like oat-milk lattes and sound baths.
But it’s more like performing open-heart surgery on yourself
with a spoon and a TikTok tutorial.
My therapist’s office has a ring light
and a sponsored candle that smells like “inner peace”
but is actually just capitalism with lavender.
She tells me to “sit with the discomfort.”
I sit.
The discomfort orders Uber Eats.
I tried every modality—
EMDR, ayahuasca, breathwork, ketamine, Reiki, CBT, DBT, EFT, NFT.
Still woke up wanting to die.
Turns out the void doesn’t accept vouchers.
The internet sells healing like crypto—
“10x your vibration in 30 days or your money back.”
I bought the course.
Still waiting for the refund and the vibration.
Trauma is glitter.
You can vacuum for years
and still find it in your soul at 3am.
Healing is absurd.
You pay $180 an hour
to cry about your childhood
while a white woman with a podcast
nods and says “that makes sense.”
And yet, there’s something holy in the mess.
Every scar is a story you survived.
Every breakdown is proof you showed up.
Healing isn’t about becoming whole—
it’s about learning to walk
with the holes still bleeding
and calling it fashion.
I laugh because healing’s a scam,
but I’m still buying it.
Not because I believe in “fixed,”
but because quitting feels too much like letting them win.
Chapter 6
The Comedy of Belief
Belief is a tightrope over a void.
One misstep and you’re falling
into the same darkness you started with.
I was raised on five prayers a day
and one God who sees everything.
Now I’m 33
and the only thing I pray to
is the Wi-Fi signal.
I envy the certain ones—
the uncle who quotes Quran like it’s Twitter,
the atheist who quotes Dawkins like it’s Quran,
the influencer who quotes both
and sells manifestation candles for $89.
Doubt is my only honest prayer.
It sounds like:
If You’re real, why did You let her die choking on her own blood?
If You’re not, then what the fuck is all this for?
Religion became content.
Science became content.
Even atheism became content.
Everything is a reel now.
I tried manifesting once.
Visualized a parking spot.
Got a ticket instead.
The universe has jokes.
And yet, I keep searching.
Not for answers,
but for a question that doesn’t make me want to scream.
Maybe faith isn’t certainty—
it’s showing up to the void anyway
and flipping it off
one shaky step at a time.
I laugh because belief is a cosmic prank,
but I’m still telling it.
Not because I’m pious,
but because I’m terrified of the silence
if I stop.
Chapter 7
The Comedy of Hope
Hope is a weed growing through concrete.
Ugly, stubborn, unkillable.
It blooms in my chest
every time the news says we’re all going to die
and I still set an alarm for tomorrow.
They say hope is a light at the end of the tunnel.
My tunnel collapsed in 2020
and they just kept selling tickets.
Hope feels more like a dare:
Bet on tomorrow
when today is on fire.
I still water plants
I fully expect climate change to murder.
I still text “are you okay?”
to people who ghosted me in 2018.
I still believe a stranger on the train
might smile back.
Hope is absurd.
It’s doom-scrolling genocide
then crying at a video of a baby goat
jumping on its mother’s back.
It’s knowing the house is burning
and still doing the dishes.
Hope hurts.
Every time you believe,
something breaks your heart again.
But numbness hurts worse.
I laugh because hope is a terrible gambler
with the worst odds in the universe,
but it’s the only one
still betting on me.
Chapter 8
The Comedy of Survival
Survival is making chai at 4am
because sleep is a luxury
and the gas bill is due.
It’s smiling at the colleague
who doesn’t know
you spent last night
googling “painless ways to go.”
It’s paying rent
with the credit card
that pays for therapy
that keeps you alive
to pay rent.
Capitalism wants me productive.
Depression wants me in bed.
I compromise:
I attend the meeting on mute
with the camera off
and call it balance.
Survival isn’t pretty.
It’s eating cold biryani straight from the pot
because washing dishes feels like Everest.
It’s answering “I’m good”
when you mean “I’m a haunted house
with the lights still on.”
Every day is a gauntlet
of notifications, deadlines, and news alerts
telling m
The Comedy of Being
A Series of Emotional Sermons for the Spiritually Overstimulated
By
saqlain taswar
Compiled on November 18, 2025
Contents
1 The Comedy of Knowing Nothing
2 The Comedy of Grief
3 The Comedy of Disconnection
4 The Comedy of Identity
5 The Comedy of Healing
6 The Comedy of Belief
7 The Comedy of Hope
8 The Comedy of Survival
Chapter 1
The Comedy of Knowing Nothing
I know nothing.
No, wait—maybe I know that I know nothing.
But how do I know that?
And if I don’t know that, then I don’t know nothing,
which means I might know something.
Which would mean I’m lying.
To myself.
About not knowing.
Which means I do know something:
That I’m a fraud.
…But what if the fraud is the one telling me I’m a fraud?
What if even that’s a lie?
What if all of this is just the universe trying to cough up a joke,
and I’m the phlegm?
People chase truth like it’s a missing sock.
They look under the bed of science,
in the laundry of religion,
in the junk drawer of therapy.
But maybe truth got bored.
Maybe it left the party a long time ago.
And we’re all standing around
arguing about who brought the chips.
I don’t know anything.
I don’t even know if I’m real.
I might be a thought someone forgot to finish.
A sentence that never got a period.
Just a dangling clause of consciousness
hanging from the ledge of meaning.
And while I dangle, the world burns.
Somewhere a child scrolls through war on TikTok
like it’s another trend to survive.
Somewhere a woman bleeds, and the law says
she deserved it—because her body speaks too loudly.
Somewhere a man mistakes a gun for manhood,
and someone else doesn’t get to go home.
And the algorithms hum like gods in the background,
feeding us curated panic
and dopamine crumbs.
We scream for justice
but can’t even agree on the definition.
We build identities like IKEA furniture—
cheap, wobbly, missing screws—
then get surprised when they fall apart mid-conversation.
We say “self-care”
while our souls rot from overexposure to unreality.
I don’t know anything.
But I feel everything.
And it hurts in places I can’t name
because the language is broken
and the grammar is grief.
And yet…
If this is what not-knowing feels like,
maybe ignorance isn’t empty—
maybe it’s the fullest thing of all.
So full, it spills over into laughter.
The kind that comes after a breakdown,
when your face is still wet with tears
and you laugh anyway—
because everything’s absurd,
and you’re still here,
and that alone
is a punchline.
I don’t know anything.
But I know this:
Whatever this comedy is—
I’m in it.
And maybe that’s enough
for tonight.
Chapter 2
The Comedy of Grief
Grief moved in without asking.
It’s the roommate who never pays rent,
leaves dishes in the sink,
and plays the same three voicemails at 3am on a loop—
my mother’s voice cracking on “I love you, beta”
the night before the aneurysm took her.
I keep her last dupatta in a plastic bag
so the smell doesn’t escape.
I open it once a year
and inhale like a junkie
until the fabric forgets her
and remembers only my desperation.
The world doesn’t stop for grief.
It wants me to smile at the grocery store
while I’m calculating how many sleeping pills
would make the cashier’s small talk disappear.
Instagram serves me ads for sympathy bouquets
between thirst traps.
The algorithm thinks I’m in the market for both.
I tried to mourn properly once—
wore black for forty days,
lit a diya every evening,
posted a tasteful black square.
Got 842 likes.
Nobody asked if I was eating.
Guilt is grief’s shadow.
It whispers: You should’ve answered that last call.
You were busy doom-scrolling.
You could’ve flown home.
You were broke and proud.
And yet, grief is a teacher.
It taught me to laugh at funerals
when the maulvi mispronounced her name
and the hearse got stuck behind a wedding baraat
blasting “Baby Doll Main Sone Di.”
I don’t know how to grieve right.
Is it letting go or holding on?
Is it deleting her number
or keeping it as my emergency contact in heaven?
Maybe grief is just living with a hole
and learning to wear it like couture.
I laugh through the tears,
because what else is there?
Grief is the punchline no one asked for,
but it’s mine.
And I’m still here,
carrying it like a roommate I’ve learned to love—
ugly, loud, and impossible to evict.
Chapter 3
The Comedy of Disconnection
I have 4,892 followers
and zero people who know
I cried in the office toilet today
because the AI therapist chatbot
called me “user”
and asked if I wanted to upgrade to premium empathy.
I tried to tell my best friend I was drowning.
He replied with a GIF of a drowning SpongeBob.
We both laughed.
Neither of us followed up.
My phone is full of group chats
where nobody speaks unless it’s a birthday.
We drop cake emojis like grenades
and call it love.
I once spent three hours crafting a text
explaining why I disappeared for a week.
Autocorrect changed “I wanted to die”
to “I wanted to diet.”
She replied “same bestie 😂💪”
and I never corrected her.
Real connection is dangerous.
It requires eye contact,
unfiltered voice cracks,
the risk of being seen without a filter.
So we hide behind read receipts
and “haha” reactions
and pretend the blue ticks don’t feel like knives.
I paid $9.99 for an app
that sends me daily affirmations
in the voice of my dead grandmother
generated from three WhatsApp voice notes.
It tells me I’m enough.
I cry every time.
Five stars.
And yet, there’s beauty in the glitch.
Sometimes a stranger on the internet
quotes my suicide note back to me
as a caption under a sunset
and suddenly I’m less alone.
I laugh at the absurdity of it—
swiping for souls,
refreshing for rescue,
praying to push notifications.
Maybe connection isn’t the point.
Maybe it’s just surviving the static
long enough to hear one voice,
just one,
that says “I see you”
without asking for my Venmo.
Chapter 4
The Comedy of Identity
Who the hell am I today?
The app says I’m a “chaotic desi academic.”
The mirror says I’m a 30-year-old man
who still flinches when his father’s name appears on the phone.
LinkedIn says I’m a thought leader.
My therapist says I’m a walking attachment wound with Wi-Fi.
Identity is IKEA furniture—
cheap, particle-board, made in a sweatshop,
assembled with Allen keys and rage,
collapses the second you put real weight on it.
I’m brown enough to be exotic at conferences,
not brown enough for the aunty WhatsApp groups.
Muslim enough to be suspected at airports,
not Muslim enough for Jumu’ah.
I’m the diversity hire
who still codeswitches so hard
my tongue gets whiplash.
I tried to “be myself” once.
Posted a picture without a filter.
Got called brave.
Lost three brand deals.
Our identities are crowdsourced now.
One viral thread and you’re canceled.
One viral poem and you’re a brand.
Both feel like death.
I’m a kaleidoscope of contradictions—
namazi and nihilist,
trauma survivor and meme lord,
son of immigrants who still can’t spell “embarrassed.”
Maybe that’s the point—
identity isn’t a destination,
it’s a fistfight with every version of you
that ever got left behind.
And yet, I laugh.
Because trying to be “someone”
in a world that wants you
performative, palatable, and profitable
is the funniest tragedy of all.
I’m a glitch in the matrix,
and I’m owning it,
one shaky selfie at a time.
Chapter 5
The Comedy of Healing
Healing sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Like oat-milk lattes and sound baths.
But it’s more like performing open-heart surgery on yourself
with a spoon and a TikTok tutorial.
My therapist’s office has a ring light
and a sponsored candle that smells like “inner peace”
but is actually just capitalism with lavender.
She tells me to “sit with the discomfort.”
I sit.
The discomfort orders Uber Eats.
I tried every modality—
EMDR, ayahuasca, breathwork, ketamine, Reiki, CBT, DBT, EFT, NFT.
Still woke up wanting to die.
Turns out the void doesn’t accept vouchers.
The internet sells healing like crypto—
“10x your vibration in 30 days or your money back.”
I bought the course.
Still waiting for the refund and the vibration.
Trauma is glitter.
You can vacuum for years
and still find it in your soul at 3am.
Healing is absurd.
You pay $180 an hour
to cry about your childhood
while a white woman with a podcast
nods and says “that makes sense.”
And yet, there’s something holy in the mess.
Every scar is a story you survived.
Every breakdown is proof you showed up.
Healing isn’t about becoming whole—
it’s about learning to walk
with the holes still bleeding
and calling it fashion.
I laugh because healing’s a scam,
but I’m still buying it.
Not because I believe in “fixed,”
but because quitting feels too much like letting them win.
Chapter 6
The Comedy of Belief
Belief is a tightrope over a void.
One misstep and you’re falling
into the same darkness you started with.
I was raised on five prayers a day
and one God who sees everything.
Now I’m 33
and the only thing I pray to
is the Wi-Fi signal.
I envy the certain ones—
the uncle who quotes Quran like it’s Twitter,
the atheist who quotes Dawkins like it’s Quran,
the influencer who quotes both
and sells manifestation candles for $89.
Doubt is my only honest prayer.
It sounds like:
If You’re real, why did You let her die choking on her own blood?
If You’re not, then what the fuck is all this for?
Religion became content.
Science became content.
Even atheism became content.
Everything is a reel now.
I tried manifesting once.
Visualized a parking spot.
Got a ticket instead.
The universe has jokes.
And yet, I keep searching.
Not for answers,
but for a question that doesn’t make me want to scream.
Maybe faith isn’t certainty—
it’s showing up to the void anyway
and flipping it off
one shaky step at a time.
I laugh because belief is a cosmic prank,
but I’m still telling it.
Not because I’m pious,
but because I’m terrified of the silence
if I stop.
Chapter 7
The Comedy of Hope
Hope is a weed growing through concrete.
Ugly, stubborn, unkillable.
It blooms in my chest
every time the news says we’re all going to die
and I still set an alarm for tomorrow.
They say hope is a light at the end of the tunnel.
My tunnel collapsed in 2020
and they just kept selling tickets.
Hope feels more like a dare:
Bet on tomorrow
when today is on fire.
I still water plants
I fully expect climate change to murder.
I still text “are you okay?”
to people who ghosted me in 2018.
I still believe a stranger on the train
might smile back.
Hope is absurd.
It’s doom-scrolling genocide
then crying at a video of a baby goat
jumping on its mother’s back.
It’s knowing the house is burning
and still doing the dishes.
Hope hurts.
Every time you believe,
something breaks your heart again.
But numbness hurts worse.
I laugh because hope is a terrible gambler
with the worst odds in the universe,
but it’s the only one
still betting on me.
Chapter 8
The Comedy of Survival
Survival is making chai at 4am
because sleep is a luxury
and the gas bill is due.
It’s smiling at the colleague
who doesn’t know
you spent last night
googling “painless ways to go.”
It’s paying rent
with the credit card
that pays for therapy
that keeps you alive
to pay rent.
Capitalism wants me productive.
Depression wants me in bed.
I compromise:
I attend the meeting on mute
with the camera off
and call it balance.
Survival isn’t pretty.
It’s eating cold biryani straight from the pot
because washing dishes feels like Everest.
It’s answering “I’m good”
when you mean “I’m a haunted house
with the lights still on.”
Every day is a gauntlet
of notifications, deadlines, and news alerts
telling m
The Comedy of Being
A Series of Emotional Sermons for the Spiritually Overstimulated
By
saqlain taswar
Compiled on November 18, 2025
Contents
1 The Comedy of Knowing Nothing
2 The Comedy of Grief
3 The Comedy of Disconnection
4 The Comedy of Identity
5 The Comedy of Healing
6 The Comedy of Belief
7 The Comedy of Hope
8 The Comedy of Survival
Chapter 1
The Comedy of Knowing Nothing
I know nothing.
No, wait—maybe I know that I know nothing.
But how do I know that?
And if I don’t know that, then I don’t know nothing,
which means I might know something.
Which would mean I’m lying.
To myself.
About not knowing.
Which means I do know something:
That I’m a fraud.
…But what if the fraud is the one telling me I’m a fraud?
What if even that’s a lie?
What if all of this is just the universe trying to cough up a joke,
and I’m the phlegm?
People chase truth like it’s a missing sock.
They look under the bed of science,
in the laundry of religion,
in the junk drawer of therapy.
But maybe truth got bored.
Maybe it left the party a long time ago.
And we’re all standing around
arguing about who brought the chips.
I don’t know anything.
I don’t even know if I’m real.
I might be a thought someone forgot to finish.
A sentence that never got a period.
Just a dangling clause of consciousness
hanging from the ledge of meaning.
And while I dangle, the world burns.
Somewhere a child scrolls through war on TikTok
like it’s another trend to survive.
Somewhere a woman bleeds, and the law says
she deserved it—because her body speaks too loudly.
Somewhere a man mistakes a gun for manhood,
and someone else doesn’t get to go home.
And the algorithms hum like gods in the background,
feeding us curated panic
and dopamine crumbs.
We scream for justice
but can’t even agree on the definition.
We build identities like IKEA furniture—
cheap, wobbly, missing screws—
then get surprised when they fall apart mid-conversation.
We say “self-care”
while our souls rot from overexposure to unreality.
I don’t know anything.
But I feel everything.
And it hurts in places I can’t name
because the language is broken
and the grammar is grief.
And yet…
If this is what not-knowing feels like,
maybe ignorance isn’t empty—
maybe it’s the fullest thing of all.
So full, it spills over into laughter.
The kind that comes after a breakdown,
when your face is still wet with tears
and you laugh anyway—
because everything’s absurd,
and you’re still here,
and that alone
is a punchline.
I don’t know anything.
But I know this:
Whatever this comedy is—
I’m in it.
And maybe that’s enough
for tonight.
Chapter 2
The Comedy of Grief
Grief moved in without asking.
It’s the roommate who never pays rent,
leaves dishes in the sink,
and plays the same three voicemails at 3am on a loop—
my mother’s voice cracking on “I love you, beta”
the night before the aneurysm took her.
I keep her last dupatta in a plastic bag
so the smell doesn’t escape.
I open it once a year
and inhale like a junkie
until the fabric forgets her
and remembers only my desperation.
The world doesn’t stop for grief.
It wants me to smile at the grocery store
while I’m calculating how many sleeping pills
would make the cashier’s small talk disappear.
Instagram serves me ads for sympathy bouquets
between thirst traps.
The algorithm thinks I’m in the market for both.
I tried to mourn properly once—
wore black for forty days,
lit a diya every evening,
posted a tasteful black square.
Got 842 likes.
Nobody asked if I was eating.
Guilt is grief’s shadow.
It whispers: You should’ve answered that last call.
You were busy doom-scrolling.
You could’ve flown home.
You were broke and proud.
And yet, grief is a teacher.
It taught me to laugh at funerals
when the maulvi mispronounced her name
and the hearse got stuck behind a wedding baraat
blasting “Baby Doll Main Sone Di.”
I don’t know how to grieve right.
Is it letting go or holding on?
Is it deleting her number
or keeping it as my emergency contact in heaven?
Maybe grief is just living with a hole
and learning to wear it like couture.
I laugh through the tears,
because what else is there?
Grief is the punchline no one asked for,
but it’s mine.
And I’m still here,
carrying it like a roommate I’ve learned to love—
ugly, loud, and impossible to evict.
Chapter 3
The Comedy of Disconnection
I have 4,892 followers
and zero people who know
I cried in the office toilet today
because the AI therapist chatbot
called me “user”
and asked if I wanted to upgrade to premium empathy.
I tried to tell my best friend I was drowning.
He replied with a GIF of a drowning SpongeBob.
We both laughed.
Neither of us followed up.
My phone is full of group chats
where nobody speaks unless it’s a birthday.
We drop cake emojis like grenades
and call it love.
I once spent three hours crafting a text
explaining why I disappeared for a week.
Autocorrect changed “I wanted to die”
to “I wanted to diet.”
She replied “same bestie 😂💪”
and I never corrected her.
Real connection is dangerous.
It requires eye contact,
unfiltered voice cracks,
the risk of being seen without a filter.
So we hide behind read receipts
and “haha” reactions
and pretend the blue ticks don’t feel like knives.
I paid $9.99 for an app
that sends me daily affirmations
in the voice of my dead grandmother
generated from three WhatsApp voice notes.
It tells me I’m enough.
I cry every time.
Five stars.
And yet, there’s beauty in the glitch.
Sometimes a stranger on the internet
quotes my suicide note back to me
as a caption under a sunset
and suddenly I’m less alone.
I laugh at the absurdity of it—
swiping for souls,
refreshing for rescue,
praying to push notifications.
Maybe connection isn’t the point.
Maybe it’s just surviving the static
long enough to hear one voice,
just one,
that says “I see you”
without asking for my Venmo.
Chapter 4
The Comedy of Identity
Who the hell am I today?
The app says I’m a “chaotic desi academic.”
The mirror says I’m a 30-year-old man
who still flinches when his father’s name appears on the phone.
LinkedIn says I’m a thought leader.
My therapist says I’m a walking attachment wound with Wi-Fi.
Identity is IKEA furniture—
cheap, particle-board, made in a sweatshop,
assembled with Allen keys and rage,
collapses the second you put real weight on it.
I’m brown enough to be exotic at conferences,
not brown enough for the aunty WhatsApp groups.
Muslim enough to be suspected at airports,
not Muslim enough for Jumu’ah.
I’m the diversity hire
who still codeswitches so hard
my tongue gets whiplash.
I tried to “be myself” once.
Posted a picture without a filter.
Got called brave.
Lost three brand deals.
Our identities are crowdsourced now.
One viral thread and you’re canceled.
One viral poem and you’re a brand.
Both feel like death.
I’m a kaleidoscope of contradictions—
namazi and nihilist,
trauma survivor and meme lord,
son of immigrants who still can’t spell “embarrassed.”
Maybe that’s the point—
identity isn’t a destination,
it’s a fistfight with every version of you
that ever got left behind.
And yet, I laugh.
Because trying to be “someone”
in a world that wants you
performative, palatable, and profitable
is the funniest tragedy of all.
I’m a glitch in the matrix,
and I’m owning it,
one shaky selfie at a time.
Chapter 5
The Comedy of Healing
Healing sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Like oat-milk lattes and sound baths.
But it’s more like performing open-heart surgery on yourself
with a spoon and a TikTok tutorial.
My therapist’s office has a ring light
and a sponsored candle that smells like “inner peace”
but is actually just capitalism with lavender.
She tells me to “sit with the discomfort.”
I sit.
The discomfort orders Uber Eats.
I tried every modality—
EMDR, ayahuasca, breathwork, ketamine, Reiki, CBT, DBT, EFT, NFT.
Still woke up wanting to die.
Turns out the void doesn’t accept vouchers.
The internet sells healing like crypto—
“10x your vibration in 30 days or your money back.”
I bought the course.
Still waiting for the refund and the vibration.
Trauma is glitter.
You can vacuum for years
and still find it in your soul at 3am.
Healing is absurd.
You pay $180 an hour
to cry about your childhood
while a white woman with a podcast
nods and says “that makes sense.”
And yet, there’s something holy in the mess.
Every scar is a story you survived.
Every breakdown is proof you showed up.
Healing isn’t about becoming whole—
it’s about learning to walk
with the holes still bleeding
and calling it fashion.
I laugh because healing’s a scam,
but I’m still buying it.
Not because I believe in “fixed,”
but because quitting feels too much like letting them win.
Chapter 6
The Comedy of Belief
Belief is a tightrope over a void.
One misstep and you’re falling
into the same darkness you started with.
I was raised on five prayers a day
and one God who sees everything.
Now I’m 33
and the only thing I pray to
is the Wi-Fi signal.
I envy the certain ones—
the uncle who quotes Quran like it’s Twitter,
the atheist who quotes Dawkins like it’s Quran,
the influencer who quotes both
and sells manifestation candles for $89.
Doubt is my only honest prayer.
It sounds like:
If You’re real, why did You let her die choking on her own blood?
If You’re not, then what the fuck is all this for?
Religion became content.
Science became content.
Even atheism became content.
Everything is a reel now.
I tried manifesting once.
Visualized a parking spot.
Got a ticket instead.
The universe has jokes.
And yet, I keep searching.
Not for answers,
but for a question that doesn’t make me want to scream.
Maybe faith isn’t certainty—
it’s showing up to the void anyway
and flipping it off
one shaky step at a time.
I laugh because belief is a cosmic prank,
but I’m still telling it.
Not because I’m pious,
but because I’m terrified of the silence
if I stop.
Chapter 7
The Comedy of Hope
Hope is a weed growing through concrete.
Ugly, stubborn, unkillable.
It blooms in my chest
every time the news says we’re all going to die
and I still set an alarm for tomorrow.
They say hope is a light at the end of the tunnel.
My tunnel collapsed in 2020
and they just kept selling tickets.
Hope feels more like a dare:
Bet on tomorrow
when today is on fire.
I still water plants
I fully expect climate change to murder.
I still text “are you okay?”
to people who ghosted me in 2018.
I still believe a stranger on the train
might smile back.
Hope is absurd.
It’s doom-scrolling genocide
then crying at a video of a baby goat
jumping on its mother’s back.
It’s knowing the house is burning
and still doing the dishes.
Hope hurts.
Every time you believe,
something breaks your heart again.
But numbness hurts worse.
I laugh because hope is a terrible gambler
with the worst odds in the universe,
but it’s the only one
still betting on me.
Chapter 8
The Comedy of Survival
Survival is making chai at 4am
because sleep is a luxury
and the gas bill is due.
It’s smiling at the colleague
who doesn’t know
you spent last night
googling “painless ways to go.”
It’s paying rent
with the credit card
that pays for therapy
that keeps you alive
to pay rent.
Capitalism wants me productive.
Depression wants me in bed.
I compromise:
I attend the meeting on mute
with the camera off
and call it balance.
Survival isn’t pretty.
It’s eating cold biryani straight from the pot
because washing dishes f
eels like Everest.
It’s answering “I’m good”
when you mean “I’m a haunted house
with the lights still on.”
Every day is a gauntlet
of notifications, deadlines, and news alerts
telling m
e someone else didn’t make it.
And yet,
I still laugh at memes
about wanting to die.
I still forward them
to the group chat
that never replies.
Survival is the quietest revolution—
waking up when everything says stay down,
brushing your teeth like an act of war,
whispering “fuck you”
to the void
and meaning it.
I laugh because surviving is ridiculous,
but I’m still here,
sipping chai,
writing my own damn ending
one stubborn breath at a time.e someone else didn’t make it.
And yet,
I still laugh at memes
about wanting to die.
I still forward them
to the group chat
that never replies.
Survival is the quietest revolution—
waking up when everything says stay down,
brushing your teeth like an act of war,
whispering “fuck you”
to the void
and meaning it.
I laugh because surviving is ridiculous,
but I’m still here,
sipping chai,
writing my own damn ending
one stubborn breath at a time