Stranger Things: A Life in the Upside Down

Stranger Things happened to us once in 2016 and then again in 2026. For many reasons, we never followed it closely over the years. But when we returned to it in 2026, the story came in waves. It soaked us in its humor, love, emotions, and messiness, and then promptly drowned us in anxiety and fear, compelling us to pray for this small family that kept growing against all odds. The writing alone deserves a long discussion on some other unhurried Sunday.

Yesterday afternoon, while driving through the corporate heart vein of Bangalore, the infamous Outer Ring Road, a strange and heavy feeling gathered in me. A devastating knot formed in my stomach, much like the chill Billy feels crawling up the back of his neck. It struck me that we have been living in the Upside Down for a long time now.

I passed the gates of one massive corporate campus after another. Each of them felt like a Mind Flayer in its own right, employing thousands of Demogorgons and an ever-growing army of the dead, us, to keep thinking minds well trained and nicely obedient. Looming above all of this was a vast cloud of capital with no face at all. That, perhaps, is the true genius of these demons. There is no single face to direct our frustration, our anger, or our despair toward. You cannot scream at a cloud, no matter how evil it feels.

There is barely a moment in our lives left to think critically about how the world works, or how it should work instead. Critical thinking is not passive. It is an active, exhausting process and certainly not a weekend hobby. But we are dulled now, softened by the carefully engineered feedback loops of the Mind Flayers. The shiny titles, the glamorous designations, the illusion of progress. Breaking free begins to feel like fighting not just your own mind, but also the army of the dead disguised as peers and supervisors, most of whom have taken up these roles without ever realizing it.

In season four, when Max returns from what is almost a certain death at the hands of Vecna, she survives through the strength of her happiest memories, her favorite song, and the love and warmth that tether her back to life. It made me cry. When El dives into her own memories, confronting her past to ask whether she herself is the monster, my heart wants to scream back, you are not, you are not.

Somewhere in all this, I realized that living is very different from surviving. We are surviving the economy, surviving responsibilities, surviving expectations, surviving the constant weight of it all. But are we living? I do not know.

I have spent years in the dim half-light of the Upside Down, mistaking it for the world. What pulls me out now is not a favorite song or a sudden flash of memory, but the steady hands of people who choose to stand beside me, even when the shadows rise. They remind me that even in a world shaped by Mind Flayers, there is a path back to the real thing.

And for the first time in a long while, I think I might take it.