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The Long View Letters

Are you tired of the 'everything-everywhere-all-at-once' world we live in? The Long View Letters is a quiet corner for the overwhelmed. Think of these as notes from a fellow traveler who has been marking inches of the same gravelly way we call the creative life. Come and linger.

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Featured Post

Mind the Gap (On the Illusion of Catching Up)

The Long View Letters Issue 05 (June 14, 2026) Mind the Gap: (Notes on Presence) In November 2012, the staff at London’s Embankment Station were approached by a woman who identified herself as Dr. Margaret McCollum. She wanted to know why the iconic voice advising commuters to ‘Mind the Gap’ had been changed. It had belonged to her late husband - the actor Oswald Laurence. Even as London Transport digitized and updated the announcements they played across stops – Embankment had still hosted...

An illustration of Pluto against a pale pink background

The Long View Letters Issue 07 ( July 12, 2026) Field Notes: (Pluto, Odyssey, and Pining for Daddy) After a hectic June, I rather hoped July would be quiet. My plan was to nest and rest, at least for the first fortnight. Honour Cancer season. Instead, the month has kept me on my feet – literal and metaphorical. So, this edition of The Long View Letters is more field note than essay. The internet likes to joke about Mercury Retrograde. But if the messages which suddenly popped up in my phone,...

A mixed media collage with a bird and the text 'My Open Heart'

The Long View Letters Issue 06 (June 28, 2026) The Long View Letters essays ~ miscellanies ~ invitations Hello! It feels like a year since the last Miscellany. How are you doing? I have been practicing crosswords and making collage fodder again. Collaging is such a therapeutic process for me - it deserves a whole letter. There is also a book I recently finished reading that felt like one of the best books I’ve read in a long time — but we'll keep that for later. For now, I’ll be honest and...

The Long View Letters Issue 04 (May 31, 2026) The Long View Letters essays ~ miscellanies ~ invitations Hello & welcome to the second ever edition of Miscellanies from The Long View Letters! Corralled indoors by the threat of a forbiddingly high UV Index in these dog days, I have found myself brooding on life and times. To help me on, Spotify has curated my Top Songs of All Time. Mom has asked me to box notebooks from the last four years which have been gathering dust in the next room. In...

A bowl of khichdi with pickle and papad

The Long View Letters Issue 03 (May 17, 2026) On Making a Khichdi: (And the Absence of Certainties) The truth is I love straight lines. I admire mathematical precision. If life were Euclidean geometry, I'd think it a delight (even though I hated the subject in school). For all these reasons, I admire bakers and baking. It is a science. Numbers of eggs, ounces of flour, degrees of heat, allowances for fan-assisted ovens. On the other end, a fork that comes out clean. And, as often as you like,...

The Long View Letters Issue 02 (May 3, 2026) The Long View Letters essays ~ miscellanies ~ invitations Hello & welcome to the very first edition of Miscellanies from The Long View Letters!On 26 April 2026, the internet would have you know that Uranus entered Gemini after spending eight years in Taurus, having, what I would like to call, a titanic tantrum. Imagine hiring an inventor to lay bricks as per a bureaucratic blueprint. Understandably, the wiry genius had many deep and lasting...

The Long View Letters Issue 01 (April 19, 2026) On Rereading: (And Why I'm Still on Volume IV of IX) Here is the truth: I am a writer who has often struggled with a reading habit. Picking a new book, keeping up with bestseller lists (let alone book clubs), and setting reading challenges has felt incredibly hard. Perhaps part of it is down to how I feel about reading itself. I grew up in India, where the education system emphasized learning by rote. We had to memorize quadratic equations,...