There are two kinds of comeback preparations. The normal kind is where fans clear their schedule, charge the lightsticks, rehearse lyrics and prepare their vocal chords anticipating all the screaming that’s to come.

And, then there’s the Bangtan kind:
In this case, ARMYs end up accidentally reading advanced psychology at 1:30 AM on a week day, because they managed to catch the title of a book that Yoongi was reading in ‘In the soop’; and now their brain won’t shut up till they finish reading all the reference material they can find on the topic after finishing the book itself!!!

At this point, Boraland is less about “waiting for music” and more like unwittingly getting a literature degree taught by seven asian men with colour coded microphones. If the recent hints, installations, and that suspiciously philosophical ‘What is your love song?’ prompt are anything to go by, we are probably not getting a simple romance era. Nothing is ever that simple in Boraland. We are getting a thinking about love era. Which means the only logical to prepare for the upcoming album drop is… reading.

I am comparatively new to the fandom & as such I haven’t caught up with ALL the BTS content that is out there. But, the lovely lady at Asian Entertainment & Culture has made this informative video on Youtube with the 3 books that she thinks may have their influence on ARIRANG.


1) Jung’s Map of the Soul by Murray Stein

2) Into the Magic Shop by Dr. James R. Doty

3) Demian by Hermann Hesse

4) The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

5) Pied Piper of Hamelin

6) Almond by Sohn Won-Pyung

7) The Owl Service by Alan Garner


8 & 9) Kafka on the Shore & 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

India is set to get jazzed up once again as Teamwork Arts, a leading force in India’s performing arts ecosystem, announces the 9th edition of the Jazz India Circuit, scheduled to tour Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi from 4th to 8th February 2026.

A flagship platform for contemporary and cutting-edge jazz, the Jazz India Circuit 2026 brings together world-renowned international artists and boundary-pushing collaborations, reaffirming its position as one of India’s most exciting live music properties.

A Power-Packed Line-Up for 2026

Standing in a crowd, surrounded by thousands of strangers who all seemed far more prepared for this moment than I was. Waiting for Coldplay to walk on stage and give me an evening to remember forever - either as a high point experience wise or a moment I would remember as lesson to never overestimate myself. I remember thinking, briefly, that I could still leave. That I could turn this into another almost-story.

I didn’t leave.

Mumbai, the crowd, and the part of me that wanted to flee

The truth is, I wasn’t scared of missing out on the concert. I was extremely scared of experiencing it. The crowd. The noise. The lights. The sheer scale of it all. Every possible trigger for sensory overload packed neatly into one evening. This is usually the point where I tell myself I’m “not built for these things” and retreat into safer, quieter pleasures. Headphones. Controlled volume. Familiar rooms. Predictable exits.

I had trained for this for months. Even before Coldplay ever announced their India dates, I was convinced they would come and that I needed to be prepared for it. And when I say I trained for months, I actually trained myself for the sensory overload that a concert could be in the best way I knew how. I started by taking public transport again. First during low rush periods with headphones on. First, sitting at the back of the auto where you are forced to close quarters with strangers and sit touching each other. Then to public buses and metros where it was more than two people at a time. Then slowly moving onto rush hours - still with headphones on (same song on repeat to have something to ground me). And then slowly travelling in public transportation during rush hours without headphones for short journeys, that became longer and longer.

Most of you reading this, will probably be wondering that these are all everyday common things that people do on a daily basis. Why would I consider this as ‘training for a concert’. Well, I have always been hypersensitive to stimuli. Exposure to bright lights (or the sun) for an hour or so is enough to give me a freaking headache that won’t go away for the rest of the day. Same for loud noises or crowds. Putting all 3 together is a disaster for me. And my nervous system had been at it’s worst back in 2020-21. So, it had been a uphill task.

I kept waiting for my threshold to snap. For the lights to become too sharp, the bass too heavy, the crowd too close. I kept bracing for the moment when enjoyment would tip into overwhelm and I’d have to negotiate with myself to stay. That moment didn’t arrive the way I expected it to.

When Coldplay finally came on stage, the crowd went mad, and something in me did the opposite of panic. My brain, usually so eager to narrate every experience into submission, went quiet. The noise stopped being noise. It became atmosphere. The lights stopped being intrusive. They became part of the story unfolding around me.

That surprised me more than anything else that night.

Maybe it was the music. I didn’t stop being sensitive. I stopped being afraid of my sensitivity.

And for someone who has spent years managing input like a negotiation in old Delhi bazaar, that felt like a small miracle disguised as a concert.

In the crowd, I realized I already knew these songs with my body. A song from a phase when I was hopeful. Another from a phase when I was just trying to get through the day. A chorus that once meant comfort, now sounding like reassurance. People say that is art. For me, only music has a way of doing that.

When the first familiar notes hit, it wasn’t excitement that took over. It was a quiet feeling of ‘I am okay.’ That might be what surprised me most. Not the scale. Not the spectacle. But how safe it felt to be small inside something so large. To let the music carry the weight instead of me having to hold it all together. Trust that I wouldn’t lose myself if I let go just a little.

The moment it stopped being theoretical

I had prepared for everything I could name. The crowd. The lights. The noise. The exits. I had rehearsed coping strategies like a responsible adult who knows their limits. What I hadn’t prepared for was the way the music would arrive through my body.

I had standing tickets. Which meant there was no polite distance between me and the sound. No buffer. No chair to anchor myself to. When the beat dropped, I didn’t just hear it. I felt it. Under my feet first. A steady, physical vibration traveling up through the ground, through my legs, into my chest. 

That was the moment the fear loosened its grip. I feel that one feeling is still very impossible to intellectualize or express. 

The music wasn’t something happening to me. It was something happening with me. Around me. Beneath me. I wasn’t overstimulated. I felt connected to it. The same sensitivity I had been bracing against was suddenly doing something else entirely. It was receiving.

And then they performed Viva La Vida.

I don’t know how close I was to the stage in measurable terms. Close enough that I felt I could probably reach out and touch the band members. The song stopped being a memory and became a shared pulse. The crowd surged, the lights flared, and thousands of voices rose at once, singing about fallen kings and borrowed power and the strange humility of survival.

I didn’t think about meaning. I just stood there, vibrating along with the ground, letting the song exist without interpretation. There was something so grounding about that. Feeling small without feeling erased. Feeling part of something without having to perform belonging.

And for a first concert, that felt like enough.

After the Lights, After the Noise

The concert didn’t end the way stories like to end. There was no freeze-frame moment, no neat emotional crescendo that carried me home on a high. It ended the way real things end. Slowly. With people drifting away, voices hoarse, bodies tired, adrenaline leaking out in uneven waves.

Mumbai was still Mumbai when we stepped back into it. Traffic resumed its arguments. Vendors kept shouting. Life refused to pause to acknowledge that something extraordinary had just happened to me. I liked that. There was comfort in the normalcy of it. As if the city was saying, you felt something big, good for you, now come back and live.

What surprised me was how my body remembered the night long after the sound had faded. The vibration didn’t vanish immediately. Even a year later, I can still feel it in my heart and in my feet. 

I walked away knowing this wasn’t just about a band or a song or even a first concert checked off a list. It was proof that sometimes the thing you’re most afraid of teaches your nervous system a new language.

In December, I wrote about how rest feels illegal. How the world keeps telling us that productivity is like a moral obligation and exhaustion is like a badge of honor. How doing nothing feels like disobedience. How slowing down feels like slipping off the map. That post came from a place of very tired and quiet rebellion.

But rebellion, I’m learning, has seasons.

For the first time in my life (a first in four decades) I took seven days off from work. Not because I had a trip planned or because I had work that needed handled. It wasn’t because of any other reason, but to practice what I was preaching… To rest. I have been feeling it in my body and my mind - they were starting to rebel and telling me that they needed rest. And so, I took days off with other plan than to sleep. 

The first three days I was ‘productive’ because I managed to clean and re-organise my bookshelves and make space for more. I had been putting that off for a while even though books were starting to pile up everywhere (including my closet that is meant for my clothes) because it takes a lot of time. Once that was done, I did what I promised myself… eat (I don’t have to prep or cook), sleep and stare at the ceiling - letting my mind go blank.

You can only rest for so long before something inside you begins to stir. Not with urgency. Not with hunger. More like a low hum. A reminder that you are still in motion, even when you are still. That breath doesn’t stop just because you stopped performing. That the heart doesn’t wait for permission to keep beating.

That hum is where 2026 begins for me.

My word for the year is Momentum.

Not the loud kind. Not the startup-bro, grind-culture, “rise and conquer” version of it. Not the kind that burns fast and collapses faster. I mean the quieter kind. The kind that builds without spectacle. The kind that reveals itself in tiny shifts. A sentence written. A thought held gently. A boundary kept. A song felt all the way through without rushing to the next one.

Momentum, as I want it this year, is not about how fast I move. It’s about whether I’m still moving at all.

After learning how to rest without guilt, I don’t want to swing violently into ambition again. I don’t want whiplash disguised as motivation. I don’t want another season of “I should be doing more” echoing in my head like unpaid rent. This year, I want continuity. I want the soft discipline of showing up without spectacle. I want the kind of forward motion that doesn’t require me to abandon myself at the starting line.

Momentum feels like choosing life in increments.

Some days, it might be just getting up and showing up at my work desk. Or it could be just writing a page about all my random thoughts. Other days, not quitting. Some days, it might look like finally letting a thought reach its end. Other days, simply letting a feeling pass without naming it a personal failing. Momentum, for me, only asks that I participate in my own becoming.

And maybe that’s enough for a year.

What Momentum Looks Like

Momentum, in my world, is not a dramatic reinvention montage. There is no triumphant background score swelling as I finally “get my life together,” even though I might play ‘Never Mind’ on repeat. This is is the part where I learn how to keep walking where others stop.

Some days, momentum will look boring.

It will look like opening a half-finished draft instead of abandoning it for a shinier new idea. It will look like replying to the difficult message instead of mentally rehearsing it for three days. It will look like choosing the slower road even when the faster one keeps whispering threats about being left behind.

It will look like showing up imperfectly and refusing to make a tragedy out of it.

Momentum will also look wildly inconsistent. There will be days when I move with conviction and days when I crawl with doubt. Both count. This year, I am no longer interested in only validating the versions of myself that arrive with confidence and clarity. Hesitation is also motion. Uncertainty is not stagnation. Pauses are not failure. They are part of the rhythm, whether I like it or not.

Somewhere along the way, we learned to confuse momentum with intensity. As if forward movement has to hurt to be real. As if ease is a lie we haven’t earned. I don’t believe that anymore. I think momentum can be gentle. I think it can feel like steadiness instead of struggle. Like water that doesn’t crash but still reshapes stone over time.

This is the year I stop waiting for the perfect emotional weather to begin again.

This is the year I move even when I am unsure. Especially when I am unsure.

Momentum, But Make It Mine

For me, shows up in my journal first. It always does. Journaling is where I measure aliveness most honestly. Last year taught me how to stop. This year is teaching me how to begin again without violence. Not the intoxicating kind of beginning where you promise yourself a new personality and a better schedule. The quieter kind, where you return to unfinished entries (or blogposts) and don’t treat them like evidence of failure. Where you write badly on purpose just to keep the current running. Where you trust that form will come later, but motion has to come first.

It also shows up in how I sit with symbols. As some of you know, Tarot has never been about prediction for me. It’s been a language for the things I struggle to say out loud. Last year, I pulled slower cards. Pause cards. And I admit that it made me feel bad at first, because I had bought into the world’s version of momentum. This year, I notice more movement in the spreads. Pages walking. Knights charging. Even Death, doing what it does best. Change doesn’t ask for permission, it just keeps happening. Momentum is realizing that I don’t have to chase transformation. I only have to stop resisting the current I’m already standing in.

And then there’s the emotional terrain. The part one can rarely map in clean lines.

Momentum, emotionally, means I don’t stay stuck just because I recognize the pattern. Familiar pain is still pain. Familiar fear is still fear. This year, I want to stop nesting inside what I know just because it’s predictable. I want to move even when the next feeling doesn’t come with subtitles.

I hope that it will not be like reopening old doors just to check if the hurt is still alive inside them. I hope it will look like choosing steadiness over emotional whiplash. That it will look like learning how to stay with myself when distraction is easier. I HOPE that it will mean letting music move through me without turning it into escape. Letting stories mirror me without consuming me. Letting longing exist without immediately demanding a story arc where it gets resolved.

What I Hope 2026 Will Be

What I want from 2026 is not a dramatic leap. I hope it to be a year that grows through accumulation. A year where small steps don’t feel insignificant, because they’re part of a longer arc. A year where my goals don’t sit on separate islands but feel woven into my everyday routines. A year where discipline isn’t punishment, and rest isn’t guilt.

Momentum that lets me move in that direction.

It connects my dreams to my actions.

It supports both ambition and gentleness.

It reminds me that growth often happens in the follow-through, not the beginning.

And that’s why it’s my word for the year ahead. Wish me luck!

 It always starts innocently enough. You decide to take a break, maybe a fifteen-minute scroll through nothingness, maybe a nap that dissolves time entirely. Then, right on cue, the guilt slithers in. That itchy little whisper: shouldn’t you be doing something right now? We’ve turned idleness into a moral crime. Stillness feels dangerous, indulgent like eating ice-cream for dinner or ignoring an urgent email that probably wasn’t urgent at all. We even disguise our rest as productivity to make it acceptable:
“I’m recharging”
“It’s part of my creative process”
“Self-care Sunday.”

As if simply being needs a justification.

We live in fast-paced times where an individual’s worth is measured in output. In posts published, tasks checked, and in steps counted. So when you do nothing, it feels like letting yourself and the world down. Even rest now comes with progress bars. My fitness kept prompting me to “track recovery” alongside “track fitness.” Imagine that! You must perform even in your sleep. Somewhere between capitalism and caffeine, we absorbed this belief that stillness is laziness. That if you’re not moving, you’re falling behind. But behind whom, exactly? The answer changes daily. Sometimes it is that influencer with the perfect morning routine, sometimes it is a colleague who is thriving on burnout, and sometimes you beat that imaginary version of yourself who never wastes a second.

Doing nothing has become an act of defiance because to sit quietly, without producing, improving, or proving, is to reclaim your humanity in a world that monetizes every breath. Maybe the problem isn’t that we’re tired. Maybe it’s that we’ve forgotten how to stop without feeling like we’re doing something wrong.

Somewhere along the way, someone decided that rest had to be earned. Like it’s a prize you get for surviving your own overcommitment. You work yourself raw. Then once you’ve proven that you are suffering enough, do you get to sleep, to read, to breathe. We have to wait till the inbox is empty, the dishes are done, the to-do list resembles a battlefield cleared of enemies. And when we finally sit down, it is not peace that we feel. It is relief edged with guilt. Because apparently, we can’t even stop without a reason.

We wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. We compliment people for being “so busy,” as if depletion is a virtue. “I haven’t slept properly in days” has somehow become a humblebrag and an offering to the gods of productivity. Meanwhile, our nervous systems are waving flags of complete surrender.

What’s tragic is that rest was never meant to be a trophy. In nature, it is a rhythm. The tide goes out. The moon wanes. Even seeds stay dormant before they bloom. No one scolds them for being “unproductive.” But humans? We schedule burnout like it’s a recurring meeting. The irony is painful: we chase momentum but refuse to see that even motion has pauses built in. A heartbeat, a breath, a drumbeat… they all depend on space between sounds. Take that space away, and what’s left isn’t rhythm. It’s noise.

So maybe it’s time to stop treating rest like a reward for endurance. Rest isn’t what you get after you’ve lived. It’s how you live. It’s the pause that keeps the music from collapsing into chaos.

There’s a quiet kind of rebellion in closing your laptop while the world screams “hustle.” No fireworks needed. Just a simple act: choosing to stop. We’ve been trained to believe that rest is the absence of progress, that stillness equals surrender. But what if… just what if, stopping isn’t the end of motion, what if it’s the beginning of meaning?

Rest, in its purest form, is refusal. Refusal to be consumed. Refusal to perform with burnout as proof of value. Refusal to run a race no one actually wins. To rest is to say: “I’m still human, even when I’m not producing.”

That’s not laziness. That’s resistance.

Look at any creative or revolutionary life, and you’ll see the pattern. Artists vanish between projects. Writers retreat after the noise. Rest isn’t what comes after greatness; it’s what allows greatness to exist.

Agust D goes silent before a storm of music.
SRK disappeared for years, before delivering a comeback that will go down in history.
{Ofcourse I had to tie-in my two favourite men 😀}

There’s something beautifully subversive about rest that’s unapologetic. Not “I’ve earned this,” but simply, “I exist, and that’s reason enough.”

Here’s the cruel joke: we say we want peace, but we can’t stand what peace feels like.

Stillness, true stillness, is a confrontation. When the noise stops, the mind doesn’t sigh in relief. Instead it panics. Suddenly there’s space, and in that space comes everything we’ve been running from: boredom, anxiety, unprocessed grief, the sound of our own thoughts echoing too loudly.

That’s why rest feels wrong. Stillness reveals what we are trying to avoid.

We’ve wired ourselves for constant stimulation. We can’t even stand in an elevator without reaching for our phones. Our brains, marinated in dopamine hits and notifications, have forgotten the flavor of quiet. We call it “doing nothing.” Anything but what it really is: existing without distraction. It terrifies us, because we’ve built our identities around doing. Ask someone who they are, and they’ll tell you what they do. Jobs, hobbies, achievements. Rest strips that armor off. It forces us to ask: who am I when I’m not performing usefulness? So we stay busy to avoid ourselves. We call it discipline, ambition, drive… anything that sounds better than fear.

So, how do we rebel gracefully without giving up life?

You don’t have to renounce society, move to the mountains, or delete every app to reclaim rest.

You just have to stop apologizing for being human. Rest doesn’t have to look like lying in a meadow with your phone on airplane mode (though that sounds divine). It can be quiet resistance threaded through ordinary hours… a refusal to make every second productive.

Here’s how to start rebelling without burning down your life:

1. Schedule rest first, not last.
Treat rest like a meeting with your sanity. Put it on your calendar before the work, not after. If you wait till you “deserve” it, you never will.

2. Redefine success.
Try measuring your days by energy instead of output. Did something restore you today? That counts more than the number of emails you sent.

3. Take micro-pauses.
Tiny rebellions does wonders for you. Stare out the window for five minutes. Breathe without purpose. Listen to music without multitasking. Be unproductive with intent.

4. Let boredom breathe.
You don’t have to fill every silence. Boredom is the compost heap of creativity. Leave it alone long enough and something wild might grow.

5. Rest publicly.
When someone asks how your weekend was, try saying “I did nothing,” and resist the urge to justify it. Watch their face twist in confusion. That’s their system short-circuiting.

6. Remember the body knows before the mind.
If your body is screaming for rest, believe it. You can’t think your way out of exhaustion. You can only stop.

At some point, you stop chasing and start noticing. The light on the wall. The sound of your own breath. The way time expands when you stop demanding things from it. You realize the world doesn’t fall apart when you step away. The emails keep arriving. The projects keep orbiting. The planet keeps spinning, almost insultingly fine without your supervision. And somehow, that’s not depressing. It’s relief.

Because maybe the point was never to keep up. Maybe the point was to wake up.

The real power lies in knowing when to stop, and daring to stop anyway.

So rest. Not because you’ve earned it, but because you exist.

Rest because the world has enough noise, and your silence might just be the most radical sound in it.

Rest because you can.