I want to write about something which has been on my mind for really long, everytime I have read about the mental health and that people should reach out or speak out, often not done due to the fear of being judged.
hi good people of BLR.
my super duper talented girlfriend made this desk organizer for me for my birthday 🎂
and she wants to make more of these for more folks! and is now open for more orders :)
dm me or retweet (to be friends with me)
The world just noticed Mumbai's garbage mountain.
A UCLA report ranks it among the world's top 25 methane hotspots. At 50 metres, twice the height of the Gateway of India, it's been poisoning the air for years.
For thousands living in its shadow, this was never news.
@_iampratip went to find the people the report didn't name.
(1/10)
I don’t think there’s a single fix for depression. Especially for software engineers. But I’ve seen what actually helps.
One of my closest friends went through a brutal breakup a couple of years ago. Proper depression. Not the Instagram kind. He stopped sleeping well, lost motivation, and every day felt heavy. He was still showing up to work, but mentally he was gone.
What changed things wasn’t a sudden realization or some motivational quote. It was structure.
He started with the gym. Nothing fancy. Just showing up. Lifting heavy things gave him one guaranteed win every day. His body changed before his mind did, but that physical progress anchored him when everything else felt unstable.
At the same time, he went deep into code. Not shallow “tutorial hopping,” but real systems work. Databases, concurrency, distributed systems. He picked hard problems because easy ones gave his mind too much space to spiral. When you’re debugging a race condition at 2am or reasoning about consistency models, your brain doesn’t have spare cycles to ruminate.
Work became therapy, but not in a burnout way. In a mastery way.
Slowly, his identity shifted. He stopped seeing himself as “someone who got left” and started seeing himself as “someone who is building something difficult.” That’s a powerful transition for engineers. Depression thrives when you feel powerless. It weakens when you’re making progress you can measure.
He cleaned up basics too. Sleep. Food. Less alcohol. More sunlight. No magic, just consistency.
Two years later, he’s in the best shape of his life. Earns more than anyone in our old friend group. Calm. Focused. Still introspective, but no longer stuck. The breakup didn’t disappear from his memory, but it lost its control over him.
For software engineers especially, this pattern shows up a lot:
Depression feeds on unstructured time.
Progress starves it.
Hard, meaningful work gives your mind something to grip.
Physical training stabilizes your nervous system when your thoughts won’t.
This doesn’t mean “just grind and ignore your feelings.” It means give your feelings a container. Build routines strong enough to carry you when motivation is gone.
And if it’s severe or clinical, professional help matters. There’s no shame in that.
But from what I’ve seen, for many engineers, the way out isn’t thinking your way out of depression.
It’s building your way out.
In December 2012, a young woman was raped for hours in a moving bus in Delhi. She later died from her injuries. That moment shook India. Streets filled. Voices rose. The nation claimed its conscience had awakened.
At that very same time, somewhere in this country, a 15-year-old girl was growing up unaware that 13 years later she would face the same horror in NCR but this time in silence.
On 28 December 2025, a 28-year-old woman was gang-raped for over two hours in a moving van and thrown onto the road, broken and bleeding.
The crime was similar.
The brutality was the same.
But the society was different.
In 2012, we were outraged.
In 2025, we are numb.
More than 100 women are raped every single day in India. Not as headlines. Not as emergencies. Just as statistics we scroll past. This is not ignorance. This is moral exhaustion. A dead conscience.
A society that can no longer be shocked by violence against women has already failed them. And make no mistake: if this doesn’t disturb you, if it doesn’t anger you, if it doesn’t move you to demand change, then the crime isn’t happening somewhere else. It is happening within us, and in your mind.
The conscience must rise again.
Because every woman deserves a safer country. And every society that looks away deserves to be called out.
“Out of ten men,
one makes a sexual joke directed at a woman,
two laugh alone,
three don’t find it funny but still chuckle to fit in,
four say nothing, they pretend they didn’t hear it at all.
Not a single one speaks up,
not a single one stops it.
Later, aside from the man who made the joke, the other nine all believe the same thing - men like that are a minority, most men aren’t like this.
They all see themselves as part of the good majority.
But from the woman’s perspective, the one being harassed, there is no big difference between them.
The laughter, the silence, the looking away - all of it creates the same environment.
So when women say most men are the same, this is what they mean. Not every man harasses women but most men participate in protecting the system that does.”
🚨 Two strong women. Helpless. LIVE on television.
Trisha 😢: A survivor who fought for years - now dragged, silenced, abandoned.
Sonal breaks down on air.
The system has failed all of us 💔
Youtube algorithm so poor, that watching just one video regarding Udaipur has filled my entire suggestion list with Udaipur, or Rajasthan related videos.
There is nothing I rate in this life more than kindness. Yes, I like intelligence, but I rate and respect kindness. Not performative or transactional kindness but people who are kind because it is in their innate character to be kind.