I still remember being on vacation and all hyped to post a few cool pictures I had taken in Himachal on my Instagram. My mother, sitting next to me, quickly slapped my wrist loosely and said:
âGhar jaa ke daalna ye sab, nazar lag jaayegi nahi toh!â
[Transl.: Wait to upload these until we get home, or else evil eye will soil the whole vacation!]
It was one of the most bizarre encounters I had ever had. I didnât really buy the whole âbeing hush-hush-about-everythingâ act. I mean, if there was something worthwhile happening, why wouldnât you talk about it in real-time? However, I have been raised by parents just as stubborn as me. Hiding useless details about furniture and refurbishing plans every other Diwali from neighbors that visit, youâd understand exactly where I get the crazy in my genes from.
All of this better-than-thou, anchored in logic approach worked until one horrible spell in eighth grade humbled me hard. To give you some context, I had a handful of insane extracurricular opportunities lined up. Being the yapper that I am, I blurted every micro-detail about each of them to all of my friends. Soon enough, by some odd voodoo of fate, the silliest of roadblocks started popping up for each of them. Some got rescheduled or scaled down, some got cancelled altogether. I was just taken aback by the sudden, inexplicable nature of all these events clustered together. I distinctly remember my motherâs mention of nazar ringing loud and clear in my ears at the time.
Could this have been true after all!? I thought to myself.
Ninth grade rolls around, and I am suddenly a pathological liar. Constantly downplaying achievements, lying about doing poorly on tests, withholding every bit of exciting news until the very last minute. Trust and believe, I was a menace to my high school pals. The funniest thing is, that was, I think, the most successful high school year I had ever encountered. The whole theory of nazar or jinxing events at the back of my mind was corroborated by all these successes, some of which were frankly not even deserved (talk about still suffering from imposter syndrome, yikes).
Carrying this demeanor forward into uni, I realized soon enough that this had greatly backfired on me. Every initiative of mine looked sudden, ill-fleshed out, and lacking any depth. Naturally enough, I missed out on quite a few initial breakthroughs. That is when I realized this superstition needs to be let go of. Closed mouths donât get fed was the new mantra, I guess. I made sure to publicize every bit of work I was doing, every opportunity that had come my way. Suddenly, this whole dark, misty cloud of jinxing things seemed to have blown over. But it wasnât for long. I seemed to have hit a wall again.
The same experiences from eighth grade seemed to have resurged. So many things were starting to not work out again. What did my genius self do, again!? Hoard all evil eye jewelry I could possibly find, haphazardly hang up themed dreamcatchers and posters all over my room. I just didnât know how to proceed on a campus where communication about plans is almost a prerequisite to gain access to resources and march forward while also being lowkey. I realized soon enough, that clearly wasnât my forte.
Multiple sleepless nights later, I felt like I had cracked the code one random day while scrolling through Instagram reels of all places (insane full circle). I had stumbled upon one that talked about the popular fallacy of feeling like you have achieved a task just by talking about it, riding the optical high of completion. Suddenly, everything made sense. Yapping about exciting ventures and simultaneous jinxing perhaps was never the problem. The false sense of achievement definitely was, though. I did some more digging and found that this illusion was actually legit. It is so easy to be cast away in a fantasy land of believing youâve already done enough just at the ideation stage and publicizing your ideas, rather than doing the grunt work for them.
So, I think where I am at right now is that I still do chatter a mile about the happenings in my life, but I have just started bullshitting way less about plans I havenât quite brought to fruition yet. Perhaps this is what has been rebranded as talking less, locking-in more in pop terminology. Definitely a big one on the mood board for 2026!Â