Just then, a stray dog, drenched and shivering, limped under his plastic chair. It had a nasty cut on its paw. It looked up at Aarav with eyes that held no filter, no pretense—just raw, tired existence.
Something shifted. For the first time in months, Aarav wasn’t performing. He wasn’t trying to look okay. He was just… being.
He captioned it: “Life jothe ondu selfie. No filter. No pose. Just real.” life jothe ondu selfie
When he walked into his parents’ house, his mother gasped. “Aarav! You look terrible!”
The rain was hammering down on the tin roof of the Chai Tapri, drowning out the usual evening chaos of Bengaluru’s IT corridor. Aarav stared at his phone. The screen was cracked—a casualty of last week’s panic attack when he’d thrown it against the wall. Just then, a stray dog, drenched and shivering,
“One more filter, saar?” the chai wala asked, sliding a cutting chai across the wooden counter.
Aarav didn’t answer. He was scrolling. His feed was a masterpiece of other people’s lives. A friend trekking in Himachal. A colleague’s wedding. A junior from college holding a trophy. Everyone had a perfect, glossy, filtered life. Everyone except him. Something shifted
He was 28, a software developer, and utterly exhausted. His life had become a series of sprints: Jira tickets, sprints, burndown charts, and the endless, soul-crushing traffic of the Outer Ring Road. He hadn’t seen his parents in Mysore in eight months. He hadn’t held a paintbrush—his childhood passion—in three years. His “gallery” was now a neglected Instagram page full of stock photos of coffee cups.
He laughed. A real laugh. “I know, Amma. But for the first time, I’m not trying to look good.”