Trolling

Ashwin Goyal

Dec 9, 2023 — 1 min read

He is the picture of average. His face, his walk, his entire being is so ordinary that you'd walk past him without a second glance.

However, the average man has a secret. Whenever he touches his phone, he feels a surge of power, a rush that he never experiences in day-to-day life. His eyes gleam with malicious delight as he goes from man to troll, from decently kind to hatefully cruel.

“This is where I truly matter,” he thinks, as he types out comments that belittle achievements and amplify sorrows. If someone expresses joy, he jumps in to say it doesn't matter. If someone is proud, he tells them they aren’t good enough. And if someone is having a hard time, he urges them to consider giving up entirely.

“They can’t ignore me here,” he’s sure, a twisted satisfaction filling him as his offline mediocrity hides behind his online omnipotence.

Then he puts his phone down and the illusion shatters. The troll vanishes, and there stands the average man once again, back to being a nobody.

Being honorable

He was molded by his mother's teachings to be an upstanding, honorable man. “Be the change,” she would whisper, her eyes holding a thousand untold stories of suffering. Then, the honorable man met his wife’s father, who, adhering to tradition, offered a dowry far beyond his middling

Marrying a man

In the quiet hours of the night, she often lies awake, her mind a sea of contradictions about the man sleeping beside her. "Why does it irk me so?" she wonders, staring at the ceiling. He is a good father, attentive and caring. But his part in creating