Prashant Verma

My fellow men, we need to talk about postpartum care. Before Rumi was born, I read up on postpartum. Hormonal changes, baby blues, sleep deprivation, mood swings (I am thorough, bro). I thought I was reasonably prepared. Yeah, so that was a big misjudgment. I was absolutely NOT prepared. Turns out reading about this phase and actually living it are not the same thing at all. So I'm not going to pretend I have a solution. Think of this as a note you can come back to when you're in the middle of it and have no idea what you're supposed to do. 1. Put your ego somewhere very, very far away. A friend told me this before Rumi was born: "For the next few months, destroy your ego. Take everything on the chin." I nodded as I got it. Oh boy, I did not get it. Your wife has just gone through pregnancy, delivery, physical recovery, a hormonal crash, no sleep and being responsible for another human 24/7. This is not the time to win arguments. There were plenty of moments where I wanted to defend myself or explain what I actually meant. Honestly, most of those moments did not need a defence lawyer. 2. You are the translator between her and the rest of the world. Biggest learning for me. Parents, in-laws (this needs its own thread), relatives, friends, visitors, phone calls, everyone's opinion on feeding and sleeping and how to hold the baby. All of it should come to you first. You take the hit, you filter it, and only the useful and kind stuff gets to her. Someone wants to visit at the wrong time? You handle it. A dozen people want updates? You handle it. She is recovering. Don't make her manage everybody else's feelings on top of that. 3. Stop trying to solve everything. I am always in problem-solving mode, and I have learnt that females hate it. There were days my wife would cry and neither of us could say why. My default with any problem is "okay, what's wrong, how do we fix it." Terrible strategy here. Sometimes there's nothing to fix. She just needs to get everything out of her head while someone listens without turning it into an action plan. So sit with her. Listen. Hug her. Ask what she needs, and then actually do that thing. And if the crying doesn't ease off after a couple of weeks, or something just feels off, that's a doctor's job, not yours. Get help. 4. Don't wait to be asked. This one is straight from my wife. The baby is your job anyway, that doesn't count. Notice her. Get her food. Fill her water bottle. Offer a massage. Take stuff off her plate before she has to assign it to you. And every so often, give her the one thing that basically disappears once there's a newborn in the house: your full attention. Phone away, no baby logistics, just her (I was playing IPL fantasy during this phase and it was a bad decision). 5. Rehearse, if you can. If you're anything like me, you forget things. Especially at 3am. Nothing on this list works if you only read it once, so go over it now and again before the baby arrives. Be a bit deliberate about it. Looking back, I think I got "being prepared" wrong. I thought it meant knowing what could happen. What it actually means is remembering all of this at 3am, half asleep, holding a crying baby, while your wife is having one of the worst days of her life. Trust me, you're going to need it.

I'm an engineer. I'm the guy at the dinner table who ruins everyone's superstitions with a five minute explanation. Vastu, rahu kaal, the lemon hanging off the car, I've got a take on all of it. Nazar is the one I've never been able to explain, and after Rumi was born I just stopped trying. A couple of months back Rumi lost it completely. She was 7 months old and it was past 6 PM. We fed her, changed her, rocked her, called the doctor on call. Nothing was wrong on paper, she just kept going. Then my mom said, very casually, that Piyusha had posted a picture of her after a long time, and maybe someone's nazar had got her. We laughed it off. Thirty minutes later we were still standing there with a screaming baby and said fine, do it. The nanny warmed some spices on a tawa, carried them across the room over Rumi a couple of times and dropped them into a pot. Ten minutes later Rumi was fussy instead of furious, and 30 mins later she was asleep. I don't want to believe it. I was there. Weirdly, its hit rate is 100%. The part that bugs me is I've seen it before. When my brother was about 4 he was out all day with some relatives and came home berserk. No fever, no fall, nothing anyone could find. My grandmom said the same word. My mom lit a diya in the kitchen, dripped oil over the flame with that fire thing, and he settled. I was a kid and I remember thinking, okay, so that's how it works. Here's what I tell myself. You only do nazar at peak crying, so it can only get better after. 30 mins of arguing plus 10 mins of ritual is 40 mins of a baby wearing herself out. A baby held by calmer adults calms down. And I remember the night it worked, not the nights it didn't. All true. We still do it. And it isn't an Indian thing. Greece has mati, Turkey hangs that blue glass eye in every shop and car, Italy has malocchio, and in Mexico a grandmother will pass a raw egg over a crying baby for mal de ojo. The Americans don't have a word for it, so they call the same baby "overstimulated" after a day of being passed around and admired. Same diagnosis, different pot. Friends of ours with kids, people who write software for a living, quietly admitted they do it too. The nanny does it when she's around. Our moms do it when they visit. Piyusha has sort of trained herself now. I just hold Rumi and keep my mouth shut, which, for me, is the real miracle.

This is a summary of my recent chat with Claude. Me: Claude, let's talk about my Twitter account. I want to increase engagement. Claude: Great, lots to work with here. Don't post more than once a day, X buries the second post. If you must, make it one you can afford to lose. Stick to one lane. Your parenting posts work, nobody who followed you for dad content wants your take on AI labs. The first two lines decide everything, the rest hides behind "Show more". Judge a post at 48 hours, not 12. Only quote a post that's still live. Etc. etc. Me: Cool, cool. Let's make a plan. Claude: Yes. One quick question first, so I can calibrate the plan. How many followers do you have right now? Me: 340. Claude: Bsdk, kuch bhi post karle kabhi bhi kaun hi padh raha hai, lol

Hemal, congrats man. Since you asked, I’m about 9 months ahead of you and there’s one thing I’d put at the top of the list that nobody really told me about: postpartum. Not the baby’s, your wife’s. I actually read up on it before Rumi came. Hormonal changes, baby blues, sleep deprivation, mood swings, all of it. Thought I was reasonably prepared. Yeah, no. Reading about this phase and living it are two different things. So I’m not going to pretend I have a solution, think of this more as a note you come back to at 3 am when you have no idea what you’re supposed to do. 1. Put your ego somewhere very, very far away. A friend told me this before Rumi was born, “for the next few months, destroy your ego, take everything on the chin.” I nodded like I got it. Oh boy, I did not get it. In the first few weeks my wife would snap at people, me included, over stuff that looked completely random. My instinct every single time was to explain myself. What she actually needed was for someone to hear her out. Your wife has just gone through pregnancy, delivery, a hormonal crash, zero sleep and is now responsible for another human 24/7. This is not the time to win arguments. There were so many moments where I wanted to explain what I actually meant. Honestly, none of them needed a defence lawyer. 2. You’re the translator between her and the rest of the world. Biggest learning for me. Parents, in-laws (this needs its own post, trust me), relatives, friends, phone calls, everyone’s opinion on feeding and sleeping and how to hold the baby. All of it comes to you first. You take the hit, you filter it, only the useful and kind stuff gets to her. Someone wants to visit at the wrong time? You handle it. A dozen people want updates? You handle it. She’s recovering, don’t make her manage everyone’s feelings on top of that. 3. Stop trying to solve everything. I’m permanently in problem-solving mode and I’ve learnt that my wife hates it. There were days she’d cry and neither of us could say why. My default is “okay what’s wrong, how do we fix it.” Terrible strategy here. Sometimes there’s nothing to fix, she just needs to get everything out of her head while someone listens without turning it into an action plan. So sit with her. Listen. Hug her. Ask what she needs and then actually do that thing. And if the crying doesn’t ease off after a couple of weeks, or something just feels off, that’s a doctor’s job, not yours. Get help. 4. Don’t wait to be asked. This one is straight from my wife. The baby is your job anyway, that doesn’t count. Notice her. Get her food, fill her water bottle, offer a massage, take stuff off her plate before she has to assign it to you. And every so often give her the one thing that basically disappears once there’s a newborn in the house, your full attention. Phone away, no baby logistics, just her. (I was playing IPL fantasy during this phase. Bad decision.) 5. Line up a lactation consultant before the delivery. We assumed feeding was the easy part. Then we got home on night one and it all fell apart, the baby wouldn’t latch, she kept crying, and you lose your head completely when that happens at 2 am with nobody to call. Ask your hospital now if they have one on the floor, and get a number for after you’re home. Trust me, you’re going to need it. (I’ve written a bunch of these on parenting, they’re all on my profile if you want more.)

In Gurgaon for a few days and the thing that gets me every time is the wine shops. Every few hundred metres there’s one, and it’s not a shop, it’s a mini mall. They have heavy chandeliers, marble floors, a whole wall just for Laphroaig, and a guy at the door who greets you like it’s a hotel lobby. Then you step out onto the road, which is a different story, and the drain next to it is a whole other story. People here have their priorities straight lol. Just Gurgaon things.

A friend of mine has been in Europe for 6 months doing his Masters, 6 more to go. We were on a call some time back, he was cooking his own dinner and I asked him what he misses most about India. I was expecting food, or his parents, or friends He said “being privileged.” I didn’t know what to say for a second lol. But he was dead serious. His point was that if you have even a decent amount of money in India, your whole life runs on cheap labour and labour laws that nobody really enforces, and you get so used to it that it stops looking like privilege and starts looking like normal. Food at your door in 10 minutes. A plumber who shows up tonight, no appointment. Someone cooks, someone cleans, someone stands in the queue for you. The whole Blinkit and Zepto thing only exists because of this. And honestly, he’s right, I’ve felt it on every trip and just never said it that bluntly. I was in the US for 3 weeks in September and by day 4 the thing I missed most was Swiggy. Not even a specific dish, just the fact that food shows up. Back home a delivery costs roughly what the plate costs at the restaurant. There, getting food delivered is a luxury and it’s priced that way, so you cook, or you walk. Anyway he went back to his cooking. 6 more months of that for him.

There’s a small temple in the lobby at Manipal Domlur, right before the surgery wing. I noticed it a month back when I took my mother-in-law to the ER (high fever, swine flu) and went down to the pharmacy. ER visits are stressful AF, and I ended up standing there for a bit. While I was standing there, four men stopped at it. Somewhere between 35 and 60 yrs old, and clearly from very different worlds: a couple in branded clothes, a couple in simple traditional attire. All four did the exact same thing. Slippers off, eyes closed, and they stayed. These weren’t quick fold-your-hands prayers. They were long and deep and you could sense the anxiety and the desperation from across the lobby. You don’t have to ask what anyone is praying for there. Twenty feet from the surgery wing, every prayer is the same one. It was quite moving and humbling to watch. I could feel their pain, their anxiety, and some part of what they were wishing for. The whole building is scans and specialists and the best medicine money can buy, and the temple inside it probably gets the purest, most powerful prayers in the city, because everyone there has come for one reason and they’re at their most vulnerable. It made me realise how having your health, and the health of the people you love, sorted is one of the biggest luxuries there is, and we take it for granted every single second. I stood there and thought about Rumi, about Piyusha, about my parents. If it were one of them behind those doors, I know exactly how I’d be standing. Same as those four men. Slippers off, eyes closed, praying honestly. MIL is fine now, by the way.

You know that baby wailing on a flight while the two parents just sit there looking helpless? Yeah, today that's me. Rumi's second flight, she's 8.5 months old and hasn't sat still for five minutes in her life. If you're on the 4 PM Indigo flight to Delhi, sorry in advance. Wish me luck, please.

At this point I’m more scared of my Claude chats leaking than my browsing history. I literally ask it the dumbest questions. Some of them twice.

I thought reading about postpartum made me ready. Rumi arrived and proved me wrong in about a week. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about what this phase taught me as a husband. It travelled much further than I expected, and a lot of soon-to-be dads wrote in. But a post can only hold so much, and there was more I wanted to say. So here's the longer version. The one I wish someone had handed me before Rumi came. None of this is expert advice. It's one tired dad's notes from the middle of it, written for the men who are about to be where I was. Rumi is fine, by the way. Rumi was always fine. It's the parents who need the manual. If you're in the thick of it right now, I hope this makes the hard days a little lighter. And if you know someone who's about to become a dad, send it to them. They'll need it at 3am. Save this one.

Last night’s multi level marketing pitch at Starbucks had me 90% sure of what I was watching. Then a fourth guy walked in whose only job was to explain it’s not an MLM, lol. It went to 100%. Full story below. It started with two guys and a girl. Both guys very polished, she looked barely out of college. From what I could gather they had common friends and had worked together at some point, so a friend brought a friend. The first half hour was both of them glorifying their lives. Conference in Malaysia, another one coming up in Dubai. They’re free, they decide their own day, 3 or 4 hours of work and a lot of money. At no point did they name the company. She asked, very politely, what the company does and what the products are. Both times the answer was “someone else will explain, you’ll get to know eventually.” Then guy #2 stepped out and I could see him on a call, clearly coordinating with someone. I knew what was coming. Bang on, 20 mins later a guy walks in wearing a full suit, tie, Rolex. The boss. And he went straight at her. “If you’re so entrepreneurial why haven’t you started a business? Why did you have to wait for this? Why have you never worked at a startup? I don’t think you have it in you.” I felt bad for her because the questions were genuinely stupid, and guy #1 and #2 were batting for her the whole time. Massive respect to her, she fielded all of it without flinching. I tried to take a photo and couldn’t without being obvious, and I didn’t want to kill the show. At one point all three of them stepped out and I thought this is my chance to tell her it’s a standard MLM pitch. I couldn’t. They were watching her from the outside. They came back and the script had flipped. Now the boss is ordering coffee for everyone, mellow, almost warm. He boasted that he takes Three 3 vacations a year, has every luxury, 500 people reporting to him, and the company takes care of him. He was exactly like her 15 years ago, before guy #1 and #2 found him. She has rough edges but he’ll coach her personally. “Are you good with people?” She said yes, she’d done a lot of people management in her last job. He walked out leaving her with the feeling that she’d probably make the cut. Then the part I did not expect. Guy #4 walks in. Normal clothes, no costume, spoke really well. His whole job was damage control. The company has been misrepresented in the past, people think it’s an MLM, it isn’t structured that way at all, they don’t even sell products to their own people (Amway). It’s about building a chain of like-minded people who come up with business ideas together. Bro. One person brings two, two bring four. I just kept listening. It's a pyramid scheme. Somewhere in the middle I ordered a second latte and my sleep got fucked, but it was worth it. When she finally got up to leave I was going to catch her at the door and tell her not to stress about any of it. Guy #1 was already waiting there for her. From her face I don’t think she was sold, she had the apprehensions any normal person would. But guy #4 is what stays with me. They know people have caught on, so they’ve got a man whose job is to fix the story.

Okay guys so I am having coffee at Starbucks near my house and some people are pitching their multi level marketing scheme to a girl right now (seems like an onboarding). I have removed my headphones. I’ll share what I learn.

Sorry, it had to be done. Took AI one evening to do what Gurgaon wedding planners will take one season to charge for.

Wedding planners in South Delhi and Gurgaon will be losing their minds with this launch. This car screams ‘North Indian shaadi entry car’. It even comes with the cold pyro built in. This shaadi season will be insane. Only thing that could top it is a Fortuner doing this.

If you're due soon, send this to your husband. The day our daughter was born, from my side of the room. We stayed home for early labour on purpose. Then Bangalore traffic turned 35 minutes into an hour, and when we reached, Piyusha was too far along for an epidural. What the birth plan saved us from, and what nobody warned me about.

90s kids of India, I don’t think we romanticise our childhood enough. Honestly, I think we got the luckiest window this country ever handed out and it was pure luck, nobody planned it. The kids before us had a street full of other kids and no screen. The kids after us got the screen and lost the street. We’re the only batch that had both. I was born in Gurgaon in 1991, same year the economy opened up, so I sorta got the whole show from the front row. The street first. Any evening, fifty kids on our road, easy. A hundred plus in the empty maidan on a good day. One TV in the house and you couldn’t skip an ad, so I still know every jingle from 1998 (yeh dil maange more, Sachin was in it, you bought the Pepsi because of him, that’s just how it worked). No phone in the house till 2003, I was twelve. I still remember like a dozen landline numbers from back then, because that’s how you reached a friend: you dialled his house, his dad picked up, you did the whole namaste uncle routine and waited. And nobody could call you home from the maidan because, well, what would they call? And every year, give or take, the whole extended family went somewhere together. That’s one of those trips in the photo. Find me. I can’t tell you the last time all of us were in one frame like that. Nobody decided to stop, it somehow just doesn’t happen anymore. Then the screen, and this is the part the 80s kids didn’t get. The new stuff came one thing at a time, and each thing got a whole year of your life. Shaktimaan on Doordarshan, half the school ran home for it. Cable came to our house in 1997, Swat Kats at 6 PM, non-negotiable. Cable got cut in '99 because my marks were bad (fair, honestly). Andaz Apna Apna flopped in 94 and by 99 every kid I knew could do the whole Crime Master Gogo bit, because cable just kept running it, every month, for years. Nothing new was pushing it off the screen, so a flop got five years to become a classic. Road Rash at my cousin’s place in '01. Street Fighter at the video game shop, ten bucks for thirty minutes. And then 2003, which was a crazy year in our house: computer, landline and a Hyundai Santro, all in one go. Felt like the house had jumped a decade. My sisters are 8 yrs older than me. Somehow this was a big differnece. They had no video games, no Cartoon Network, no Fun Flips or Uncle Chipps, they got Doordarshan and the one TV and that was it. The Santro came when I was twelve, which means I grew up with a car and they got one at twenty. I asked them about it recently and they said my childhood just had more in it, more stuff, more choices. They’re not wrong. Money came in the same window, and not a lot of it. Dad was private sector, Mom ran the house. The first big thing they bought was a second-hand Bajaj Chetak. Nirula’s in Sector 14 was where kids got taken when they scored well. I never scored well, so I went and paid for it myself lol. First cassette I bought with my own money was Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I was seven. Shah Rukh was my guy and Baadshah was the movie, and no, I won’t be taking questions on that. WWF was religion. Trump cards were the currency of the maidan, WWF, cars, cricket. Before a surgery I was scared of as a kid, Dad handed me a pack of cricket cards at the hospital. Don’t know if he planned it, but it worked. And since every house had one TV and there was one match a day, the whole country watched the same thing at the same time. March 1, 2003, Centurion, Sachin’s six off Shoaib, whole house crammed in front of the one TV. 24 September 2007, Misbah scoops it to Sreesanth and the entire street came out. The entire street, man. That was the last time I remember everyone I knew watching one thing together. 2008, IPL, cricket became a schedule. 2009, I got my first phone, in college, at eighteen, and honestly I’m glad it was that late. I know every generation says their childhood was special. Fine. Show me another batch that had a maidan with a hundred kids AND Cartoon Network, at the same time. 80s kids had the maidan. 2010s kids have the screen. There’s exactly one batch that had both and it’s us. And let’s be honest, this was a few crore of us, private sector dad, one TV, a colony with a ground, nowhere near the whole country. Still. I consider myself very, very lucky, and I don’t think enough of us recognise it.

Patch notes, version 42.0.1: fixed a bug where the unit makes this face when handed a human beverage. Rollout delayed.

A friend who’s known me for 3 yrs met my parents for the third time last week. On the way back he said “I finally get why you are the way you are.” I knew exactly what he meant. He’s seen me anxious way too many times. Like on that trip itself, I kept rushing him the whole way to the airport. And then he saw where it comes from. My mom gets anxious every time I take a flight or have an important meeting. Made me think. You can work on yourself your whole life, change how you behave, upskill, whatever, and you still end up mostly being a copy of how your parents lived. You can't control it. Now I think about this with Rumi. She’s 8 months old and I can already see me in her. If she wants something, she will do anything to get it. Like last week she crawled across the whole bed, over two pillows and her mother, to get to the AC remote. Very strong preferences. That’s me, no doubt. She also sleeps on her tummy exactly like I do. We put her down on her back and she just flips over, face to the left, one arm tucked under, bum up. Nobody taught her that lol. The part I really hope she doesn’t get is my anxiety. I don’t know how much of it is already in her and how much she’ll pick up from watching me. Still figuring out what I can do about it. Hoping she gets Piyusha’s calm for that one. Left is me, right is Rumi. Similar age, similar yellow dress, same serious face.