Yesteryear, parasocial morality, and the performance of goodness online

"Spending so much time online, I sometimes found myself actively uncomfortable, almost revolted, by the discombobulation of my offline life."

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. -George Orwell, Animal Farm

In the past few weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about something uncomfortable: Is speaking about voting and civic responsibility making some people anxious? And if it does, should I stay quiet?

These questions are not simple—especially in a time like this in Nepal, when public memory still carries the emotions, anger, and grief of recent national events. Conversations feel heavier. People feel exhausted. Many of us are already carrying emotional fatigue from social, economic, and political uncertainties. In such moments, even a reminder to “go vote” can feel like an additional weight to someone who just wants a pause from everything.

But silence also has consequences.

Democracy does not weaken because people disagree; it weakens when people slowly disengage. When participation drops, decisions are left to fewer voices, fewer perspectives, and fewer lived experiences. And often, the people who feel most disappointed with politics are also the ones who quietly step away from voting, believing their individual action will not change anything.

I understand that feeling. Many young people feel it. Many professionals, students, and working families feel it. There is a kind of quiet resignation that creeps in—the belief that systems are too large, politics is too messy, and individual participation is too small to matter. Over time, that belief becomes a habit. We stop expecting change, and eventually, we stop showing up for it.

So when someone speaks publicly about voting,whether through a reel, a caption, or a blog, the intention is not to create anxiety. The intention is to gently interrupt that habit of disengagement.

Still, it matters to acknowledge another truth: political conversations can genuinely feel overwhelming for some people. Not everyone has the emotional bandwidth to debate policies every day, read political analyses every night, or argue online. Some people protect their mental space by stepping away from political discussions, and that is valid. Mental well-being matters. Rest matters. Not everyone needs to be constantly “on” in political discourse.

But stepping away from constant discussion is different from stepping away from participation altogether.

Voting is not the same as arguing on social media. It is not the same as fighting with friends over ideologies. It is a quiet civic act that takes a few minutes but shapes outcomes for years. Encouraging people to vote is not about forcing them into conversations they do not want to have; it is about reminding them that their absence also communicates something often unintentionally.

Sometimes people say, “Politics gives me anxiety, so I avoid it.” That response is understandable. Yet if anxiety keeps large groups of thoughtful, educated, and socially aware citizens from voting, the political space does not become calmer or better. It simply becomes occupied by those who continue to participate regardless of whether their intentions are constructive or not.

This is why encouraging participation should not automatically be seen as negativity or unnecessary pressure. It is, at its core, an invitation: If you can, show up. If you care, participate. If you want change, don’t remove your voice from the process.

Lately, I keep thinking about Animal Farm when I sit with this discomfort.

In Orwell’s story, the farm animals often stay silent not because nothing is wrong, but because it feels too complex to understand—or too tiring to question. They convince themselves that someone else must know better, that someone else will handle it, that it’s safer to keep their heads down and get through the day. And that constant absence—small silence after small silence—doesn’t create peace. It creates space. And slowly, that space gets filled by the loudest, the most manipulative, the ones who benefit when others stop paying attention. The decline isn’t sudden. It’s gradual. Ordinary. Almost invisible at first. And then, one day, it’s disastrous.

That’s the part that haunts me because disengagement doesn’t always look like betrayal. Sometimes it looks like exhaustion. Sometimes it looks like “I can’t deal with this right now.” Sometimes it looks like educated people—well-read people—saying, casually, “No, I won’t vote.”

And when I hear that, I won’t lie: it fills me with sadness and a kind of despair I don’t know what to do with. Because it feels like a contradiction; educated, informed, aware… and yet choosing silence where it matters most. It makes me think of everyone who lost their lives, everyone who marched, everyone who hoped, everyone who believed that public voices and public sacrifice meant something. It makes me feel like we risk becoming “educated illiterate” knowing so much, reading so much, understanding so much, but still opting out of the one basic act that turns awareness into responsibility.

And maybe that’s why I keep bringing it up.

Not because I want to argue. Not because I want to shame. Not because I think voting magically fixes everything. But because I’m watching something happen in my own circle: whenever I try to bring up politics or even gently ask, “Will you be voting?” I can feel people getting hesitant. Changing the topic. Avoiding the conversation altogether. Almost like the question itself is impolite, too intense, too much.

But if we can’t even talk about participation, what happens next?

At the same time, I also know this: forcing is not the way.

Those of us who speak about civic responsibility must be mindful of tone. There is a difference between encouraging and shaming. Saying, “Please vote. Your voice matters,” invites reflection. Saying, “If you don’t vote, you are the problem,” creates defensiveness. Responsible advocacy is not loud anger; it is steady reminders delivered with empathy.

So for now, all I can do is ask, politely,why not? And listen. And gently encourage. Because sometimes people aren’t refusing to vote out of cruelty; they’re refusing out of burnout, mistrust, fear, disappointment, or the belief that nothing will change. And I can’t heal that by being harsh.

But I also can’t pretend disengagement is harmless.

In moments like these, balance matters. People should feel safe protecting their mental health, but they should also be reminded that democracy relies on participation, not perfection. You don’t need to be a political expert to vote. You don’t need to win every debate or understand every policy in detail. You only need to show up, make the most informed choice you can, and take part in the process that shapes the society you live in.

Encouraging others to vote is not about creating noise; it is about preventing silence from becoming permanent.

And perhaps that’s the reflection many of us are sitting with right now: speaking up may feel uncomfortable sometimes, but collective silence has always been far more powerful and far more dangerous than a few uncomfortable conversations.

If even a small reminder motivates someone to participate when they otherwise might not have, then the conversation has served its purpose.

I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.

I Who Have Never Known Men begins with a haunting premise. The narrator is one of forty women locked inside an underground cell. None of them know why they are there, who imprisoned them, or what exists beyond the walls. The only thing that sets the narrator apart is memory. The other women remember a life before captivity. She does not. This prison is the only world she has ever known.

The women spend their days talking about what came before—homes, relationships, routines, freedoms. When the narrator tries to join in, she is gently but firmly shut out. Why include someone who cannot relate? Why explain a world she has never seen? So she learns to stay quiet. To observe. To imagine. In the absence of experience, she builds an inner world of her own.

What stayed with me most is that despite having no real human life to draw from, the narrator still feels everything. Teenage angst. Curiosity. Desire. Even innocent fantasies—like imagining the guard who watches over them from outside the cell. No one ever teaches her what love or longing is supposed to look like, yet she feels them anyway.

This book is not interested in explaining where they are, how they got there, or why they are imprisoned. That absence feels intentional. Instead, it asks something quieter and far more unsettling: how do humans remain human in inhumane circumstances? How do emotions survive when connection is denied?

Then one day, a siren blares. The guards flee in panic, leaving the keys behind. After sixteen years, the door is finally open. But freedom is not taken easily. The women hesitate. They argue. They are afraid of what lies beyond the bunker, afraid of a world they no longer recognize—or one that may not exist at all. When they finally step outside, it is slowly, cautiously, carrying their fear with them.

Sometimes, I used to sit under the sky, on a clear night, and gaze at the stars, saying, in my croaky voice: “Lord, if you’re up there somewhere, and you aren’t too busy, come and say a few words to me, because I’m very lonely and it would make me so happy.” Nothing happened. So I reckon that humanity— which I wonder whether I belong to —really had a very vivid imagination.

The novel is often labeled dystopian, but that word feels insufficient. This isn’t a story about a broken world as much as it is about endurance. About how deeply human emotions run. About how longing, fear, hope, and connection exist even in silence, even in confinement.

At its core, this is a quiet and unsettling book—one that lingers. It reminded me that feeling is not something we are taught. It is something we carry.

This is not a book you read for answers. It’s one you read to remember what remains of us when everything else is taken away.

Books bring colour to my simple life and if I have a book in my hands, it feels like I'm always connected with the world. Whether I'm bored, lonely, upset, depressed, books soothe me and everything feels all right again.

One thing that has changed me deeply since becoming a bookseller is this: my appreciation for people who do this work purely out of love for books.

And along with that, how seriously I now take book recommendations.

A simple book recommendation can be a ray of hope to someone who is barely holding on. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve felt it happen. And maybe that’s why I now go out of my way to read books about books—because they often lead you to the most meaningful recommendations of all.

Recently, I read Every Day I Read by Hwang Bo-reum, the author of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop—another book very close to my heart. This book feels like a book lover’s dream. It doesn’t lecture you or overwhelm you. It feels like a gentle, unhurried conversation with someone who understands the quiet power books hold.

I found myself nodding along to almost every page, marking passages, circling titles, mentally building a reading list that kept growing with each essay. I was telling a friend how this would be such a perfect starting point for someone who wants to get into reading but doesn’t quite know why they should keep going. This book gives you those reasons—softly, patiently.

And the sad irony is that it will probably never be picked up by a non-reader, even though it’s precisely the kind of book they would enjoy.

Around the same time, I was talking to another friend— a non-reader—who told me how boring his life felt. Not dramatically sad, just quietly dull. The kind of boredom that comes from days blending into each other, from feeling like nothing new is really happening. I listened, nodded, and understood him. But as he spoke, my mind drifted to a book I had recently finished—I Who Have Never Known Men—and how it had completely altered the way I looked at freedom, suffering, and what it even means to live.

It wasn’t that my life was more exciting than his. It wasn’t that I had more things going on. But books had given me something extra—an inner expansion, a way of seeing beyond my immediate surroundings. They offer borrowed lives, unfamiliar griefs, quiet joys, and perspectives we may never encounter otherwise. And in that moment, I realized the quiet tragedy isn’t that non-readers are missing out on “better” lives—but that they may never know how much more life can be felt, held, and understood through stories.

This isn’t about thinking readers are superior. It’s not about productivity or intelligence or taste. Life is already heavy enough. Books don’t replace it—they soften it. They sit beside us and say, you’re not alone in this. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.

I could have told my friend to read a book. But I know that kind of advice rarely lands. Reading isn’t something you force—it’s something you stumble into, often when you need it most.

Every Day I Read is a collection of short essays on how to read, what to read, how to balance classics with contemporary works, how books help us, how to read more, and even how to socialize with books. It reminds you that books don’t demand perfection or discipline; they ask only for presence.

Which is why this book is exactly the kind of book a non-reader should read.

And also exactly the kind of book a non-reader will ignore.

And maybe that’s okay.

Because books have always been quiet like that—waiting patiently for the moment someone is ready to listen.

You were too sane to teach a child about craziness and cruelty. I had to learn about those from people who were crazy and cruel themselves.

Reading Poor Things felt like falling into a fever dream—where you’re half-aware, slightly dizzy, and constantly wondering if what you’re reading is real or just a distorted trick of the mind. The book is often described as a feminist twist on Frankenstein, but as I sat with it, I kept circling back to the same question: Is this actually a feminist novel, or just a man’s interpretation of what feminism should feel like? The uneasiness isn’t accidental. It’s built into its bones.

This feeling resurfaced for me recently when I watched a new Frankenstein adaptation on Netflix—one that stays true to the original book and has been receiving so much praise. It was eerie how strongly it reminded me of Poor Things. Though the two stories aren’t similar in plot, they share the same core dilemma: What does it mean to create life, and what responsibility does the creator owe the created? And more specifically, what changes when the “monster” exists in a woman’s body? Watching the movie last night almost reopened something inside me—it dragged all my thoughts about Bella Baxter back to the surface, almost too vividly.

In Gray’s story, Bella is resurrected with a child’s brain inside an adult woman’s body, making her existence inherently unsettling. Baxter, the doctor who revives her, treats her more like a curiosity—an experiment to shape, control, and observe. Because Bella’s mind hasn’t been shaped by society, she approaches the world with unfiltered boldness. She questions norms unintentionally, simply because she doesn’t know they exist. She challenges every expectation of womanhood without even trying to.

This, on the surface, looks like empowerment. But when you look a little closer, the cracks begin to show. How empowering is a woman’s independence when it exists only because the man who created her erased her original identity? How feminist is a story where the woman’s “freedom” is engineered by men and narrated almost entirely through their perspectives?

Bella’s journey becomes even more chaotic when she runs away with a lawyer—after promising marriage to McCandless the very day she meets him. This leads to one of the most interesting moments in the book: the two letters. One from the lawyer. One from Bella. Both describing the same events. Both completely different.

The lawyer rushes to blame Bella—painting himself noble and rational while turning Bella into something reckless or manipulative. Then you read Bella’s version, and suddenly the entire narrative shifts. Her letter is clumsy, curious, naïve, and painfully honest. Those conflicting letters feel like a metaphor for every time a woman’s story has been twisted to protect a man's ego.

This split narrative also echoes the questions raised in Frankenstein—who gets to tell the truth? The creator? The creation? Or the one with the loudest voice?

And then the ending comes, disrupting everything you thought you understood. The twist forces you to look back at the entire book and ask: Did Bella ever truly own her story? Or were we always reading someone else’s version of her? It’s disorienting in the best and worst ways—because once again, it highlights how fragile a woman’s narrative becomes when surrounded by men who insist on defining her.

These layers are why it’s so hard for me to call Poor Things a feminist novel without hesitation. Bella is unforgettable, but she is also shaped, controlled, interpreted, and rewritten by men—within the story and outside it. Even her rebellion exists inside a framework drawn by male imagination.

So when you ask yourself if this book empowers women… the answer doesn’t come easily. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the discomfort, the uncertainty, the shifting truths are all part of what the book wants us to feel—that unease of watching a woman fight for agency in a world where every voice around her thinks they know better.

But what I do know is this: Bella Baxter lingers. She rattles something inside you. She makes you question every narrator, every version of “truth,” and every attempt to package feminism into something neat and easily digestible. Watching Frankenstein last night only sharpened that feeling—two creations, two bodies stitched back to life, two stories about power and autonomy—and one haunting question:

Who gets to decide what a woman becomes?

How do I read about yesterday’s horrors when today’s look exactly the same?

I’ve always been someone who loved historical fiction — especially books set around World War II. Those stories shaped so much of my reading life. I used to read at least ten of them a year. There was something about understanding the past, the wars, the cruelty humans inflicted on one another, that made me feel more grounded. As if learning those stories helped me make sense of the world.

But these days… I can’t.
Not because I don’t care anymore, but because every time I try, it physically drains me.
Emotionally too.

Reading about past atrocities while watching present ones unfold on my phone screen — it’s a strange kind of heartbreak. It’s like reliving history while knowing it’s happening all over again, just with new names, new borders, new excuses.

I don’t know if others feel this, too. Maybe they do. Maybe some readers are hiding the same ache, the same exhaustion. Because for me, historical fiction used to be a way of learning empathy. Now it feels like a mirror, reflecting the same horrors I’m seeing in real time — Gaza, Ukraine, everywhere.

And I keep thinking:
How are we repeating history with so much confidence?
Did we learn nothing?

I don’t know how today’s wars will be written in tomorrow’s books. I don’t know how much will be softened, or erased, or turned into something noble or strategic or “necessary,” because that’s what history usually does. It protects the victors. It hides the uncomfortable parts. It sanitises cruelty.

But right now, in this moment, I don’t see victors anywhere.
There are no heroes in modern war.
Only people losing their homes, their families, their humanity.
Only us — losing pieces of ourselves every time we scroll through another headline.

So am I becoming pessimistic?
Maybe.
Maybe not.

I’m pessimistic because governments — all governments — seem to chase power more than peace. Because leaders speak of morality while doing the opposite. Because even in tragedies, someone somewhere is calculating gain.

But I’m also strangely optimistic.
Optimistic because people still care.
Because they still protest.
Because they still hope.
Because each new generation believes that maybe, this time, something will finally change.

Look at Nepal’s Gen Z movement. I don’t know what its long-term effects will be. Maybe it’s too early to judge. Maybe the very people who stood together will clash later — that’s how movements go. But still, that moment mattered. It meant something. And I pray, honestly, that the ones who lost their lives, their soul, their fire… that it wasn’t all for nothing.

Maybe that’s what keeps me going.
Not history.
Not politics.
Not leaders.

But people.
Just ordinary people trying their best not to repeat the same mistakes.

Maybe one day I’ll return to historical fiction.
Maybe when the world feels a little less heavy.
Maybe when my heart can hold both past and present without breaking.

Until then, I’ll just sit with this feeling — that strange mix of sadness, anger, exhaustion, and hope.
Hope that we don’t have to keep repeating history.
Hope that we can, somehow, survive it.

Some books shake you to your core—not because they’re shocking, but because they’re true. “Mad Woman” is one of those books. It’s unsettling, emotional, and impossible to forget. It’s packaged as a murder mystery, but let me tell you now: this is not a whodunit. This is a raw, unflinching look at trauma, motherhood, and the weight of a past you can never quite outrun.  

The story follows Clove, a woman juggling the exhausting demands of motherhood while carrying the invisible scars of her childhood. She has spent years burying her past, refusing to speak of it—even to her loving husband. But then a letter arrives from prison. Her estranged mother, who killed Clove’s abusive father, is asking for forgiveness. She wants Clove to bear witness, to help prove that what she did was self-defense.  

This one letter cracks open everything Clove has tried to keep locked away. Memories of her father’s violence, the helplessness of her childhood, and the deep, nagging fear that she might become like him. The way she talks to herself, the way she second-guesses her every move as a mother, hit me hard. Because isn’t that what so many of us do? Wonder if we’re doing enough, if we’re breaking cycles or unknowingly continuing them?  

What I love about this book is that it doesn’t shy away from the ugly parts of survival. It doesn’t try to package abuse into something digestible or turn it into a love story like “It Ends With Us” did. And look, I liked “It Ends With Us” when I first read it too. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized how dangerous it is to frame stories of domestic violence in a way that makes them feel romantic. “Mad Woman” doesn’t do that. It makes you sit with the discomfort, with the reality of what it means to survive and still carry the ghosts of your past.  

Another thing that stood out to me was how the book explores the way women are forced to shape their own stories to be believed. Clove’s mother spent years hiding the truth of her abuse, and when she finally fought back, she became the villain. And isn’t that the way the world often works? Women are expected to endure, to stay silent, to survive quietly. But the moment they fight back, their stories are questioned.  

There’s also a quiet but sharp commentary on social media—how we curate our lives, filter our pain, and present only the best, most polished versions of ourselves. Even when our lives feel like they’re crumbling, we still find ways to make them look beautiful on the outside. It’s something I think about a lot.  

I don’t know if I can say I “enjoyed” this book, because it’s not the kind of story you enjoy. But I felt it. Deeply. And I know I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.  

So if you’re looking for something raw, something that doesn’t sugarcoat trauma but instead forces you to sit with it, read this book. Read it for the women who’ve had to fight to be heard. Read it for the conversations we “should” be having about domestic abuse, generational trauma, and the impossible weight of being a mother in a world that never makes space for them.  

And when you’re done, let’s talk about it. Because stories like this deserve to be heard.