Summer Books round up 1

The last couple of weeks, which ideally I should have spent working on academic writing, I have instead been reading books that have nothing to do with anything. I read Eula Biss’ Having and Being Had (sorry to my friend whose book I stole) and then Rachel Cusk’s Outline and Annie Ernaux’ s Exteriors, and oh! Famesick by Lena Dunham and Strangers by Belle Burden. All books written memoir essay style, by rich white women I presumably have nothing in common with. Yet I read these books, honest tirades of their lives, a retelling of their narratives, a deep dive into the female psyche with rapt attention.

A Summer of Watching Police Procedurals

The summer of 2025 was my last free summer before I was thrown into the abyss that is grad school. I left my job in May, and thought to myself– ah, yes! The summer I get to my TBR, a summer to truly read. But instead, I found myself learning how to swim and then spending the rest of the day watching Police Procedurals. From the depths of Amazon Prime and Netflix, I unearthed shows titled Rizzoli and Isles, Castle, Bones, and Cold Cases. All were set in the US, in different parts of the country– in Boston, New York City, DC, and Philadelphia. Police procedurals often begin with a rather predictable set of events. Rich civilian consultants who just love solving puzzles; a detective with a dead parent/sibling/partner; a vast conspiracy to shut down honest investigation, and of course, a sometimes lazy love story to give the female detective an opportunity to retain her appeal to the male viewers by appearing desirable and hot.

Should it be democratic even if it is crap?

I often think about art, and people who make art. And about democracy. But never have these two interacted more than when we talk about OpenAI. AI has slowly become an undeniable part of life; even Google searches are not searches anymore– they are AI-generated, guided responses that make your life easier, and set fire to a few trees. But that is not the ‘harmful’ AI, the one that simply answers your questions, the one that has truly captivated people, is generative AI, the one that ‘creates’. It is creative, and dynamic– writing personalized papers, literature reviews, articles, headlines, and copyediting ads. Now, it can even create artwork. All at one command. One sentence, one input picture, and voila you’re a creator.

Book Review- Rahul Bhatia's The Identity Project

I came of age in an India that was already traipsing through rapid social and institutional transformation. I was 19 when the Bharatiya Janata Party came into power for the second time with a sweeping majority in 2019. Shielded by my privilege, life continued albeit not without hiccups. I was 20, when the anti CAA protests gripped the country and I learnt to recognize Hum Dekhenge as a rallying cry. I was 21, when North East Delhi was gripped with a communal riot; students at my alma mater gathered in droves to organize and send relief materials to ease out the pain of those injured. My political consciousness moved and shifted as I studied and witnessed the politics of my country. Friends, family, family friends were suddenly awakened from a political stupor(or so I had thought for a long time). Drawing room discussions quickly devolved into shouting matches and accusatory fingers pointed towards complacent people for their inability to witness the current regime as anything but revolutionary. I was 22, when I first tweeted something about the regime and instead of measured consideration received a barrage of hate in my dms and replies. I was 23 when my well meaning Professor indicated that my application for a scholarship to study the current regime might not receive due consideration because of its political nature.

Prerna Vij

On Writing

When I was in 5th grade, my school had three different exams for the languages we were taught. We had the grammar exam, a literature exam and a creative writing exam. You would get prompts or pictures in the creative writing exam and you could write whatever in the two hours we were given. I remember chewing on my pen, trying to write up stories that mirrored my favorite authors. Which was basically Enid Blyton. I was in awe. How could someone write characters I could read again and again. Children who went swimming in creeks and ate pot pie for breakfast. And so I would sit in these exams, and try to write to life those same characters that I was moved by. If someone had been able to run my stories through turnitin then, I would definitely have failed for plagiarism. But I did not know that at that point, there was such a thing as a logical flow, or a workable plot. I mean one of the stories I wrote for my Hindi creative writing exam was about a friendship between a horse and girl.

Prerna Vij

Studying Vigilantes, Indian politics and political violence. Sometimes, I watch romantic comedies.

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Summer Books round up 1

Prerna Vij

A Summer of Watching Police Procedurals

Prerna Vij

Should it be democratic even if it is crap?

Prerna Vij

It is the end of summer

Prerna Vij

Book Review- Rahul Bhatia's The Identity Project

Prerna Vij

I give it a solid 5/10. Gold is SO out of style

Prerna Vij

On Writing

Prerna Vij

On Grandparents

Prerna Vij