Okay, time for some real talk.
Last week, I was at a dinner party, and someone said something that I thought was incredibly profound. I nodded along very seriously, very intellectually. I even repeated it to someone else the next day as if it were my own idea.
And then… I saw the exact same line on Instagram. With 47,000 likes.
And it got me thinking:
So, do we have original thoughts anymore? Or are we all just… reposting each other’s brains?
Here’s the thing: this question is not new. And that itself is kind of the point.
There’s this brilliant old story—you’ve probably heard it—about Adi Shankaracharya, the 8th-century philosopher from Kerala. The man walked across the entire Indian subcontinent on foot, debating scholars everywhere he went. No Google. No podcasts. No “as per my last email.”
And what was he doing? He was synthesizing. Taking Vedic ideas, Buddhist thought, and local traditions—and weaving something new out of them.
But here’s what I love: his critics said, “You’re not being original. You’re just remixing old texts.”
And Shankara basically said, “Yes. And?”
It reminds me of something my grandmother used to do—and I think a lot of desi grandmothers did this. She had this one saree. One iconic saree. Kanjeevaram silk. Orange and gold.
Every few years, when the border frayed or the fabric wore thin, she didn’t throw it away. She’d take it to the local darzi—the tailor—and have it cut, turned, and re-bordered. Sometimes it became a blouse. Once, it became cushion covers. I think at some point it was even a wall hanging.
Same threads. New form. New life.
She never called it upcycling. She never posted about it. She just… understood that things transform. That’s not a lack of originality. That’s craft.
Now, neuroscientists will tell you—and I love when science backs up grandmother wisdom—that the human brain doesn’t actually generate thoughts from nothing. It combines. Every “original” idea is a mashup of things you’ve read, felt, seen, or overheard on the Mumbai local at 8 a.m.
Austin Kleon wrote a whole book called Steal Like an Artist—which is itself a very stolen idea, by the way—going back to Picasso, going back to T.S. Eliot, going back to… well, probably Shankara.
The point is: originality was never about conjuring something from thin air. It was always about what you do with the remix.
And I think this hits especially close to home if you grew up Indian—or if you’re living outside India, carrying this beautiful, complicated, dual-SIM life.
Because NRIs know this better than anyone. You’re constantly translating. You’re taking the values your parents packed into your suitcase—the aachar, the advice, the slightly aggressive love—and making them work in a new city, a new culture, and a new context.
That’s not losing your identity. That’s extending it. That’s originality.
Every desi kid who has explained Diwali to a confused coworker, or made their mom’s dal recipe work with American lentils, is doing something creative. You’re a remix artist, and you don’t even know it.
So here’s my answer:
Yes. We absolutely have original thoughts.
They just don’t arrive like lightning bolts from the sky. They arrive like a good cup of chai—built from things that came before, steeped in your particular history, and poured out in your particular way.
Nobody else’s chai tastes like yours. Even if you used the same leaves.
So, the next time you think, “Oh, someone’s already said this,” say it anyway. In your voice. With your stories. With your grandmother’s saree energy.
That’s the original thought.
That’s the whole thing.
