An annual reset button for every relationship you have

Paryushan is the most important Jain festival: eight or ten days of fasting, scripture and self-reflection, usually in late summer. It ends with a day of forgiveness, and a phrase in Prakrit: 'Micchami Dukkadam'. Roughly: may my wrongdoings be fruitless. Forgive me.

Jains say it to everyone: family, friends, colleagues, the neighbour they've been cold to, and people they've fallen out with. These days it floods WhatsApp groups and Instagram stories. The traditional verse behind it goes: 'I forgive all living beings; may all living beings forgive me. I have friendship with all, enmity with none.'

It's universal. You don't wait to be sure you were wrong. You ask forgiveness for harm you caused knowingly or unknowingly, in action, speech or thought.

It's mutual. You're also expected to release your grudges. The Jain view is that anger you carry is karma binding to you, so forgiving someone is partly an act of self-liberation.

It's scheduled. Once a year, the whole community does it together. That removes the awkwardness of going first. Everyone's going first.

Online culture has sophisticated tools for calling people out, and almost none for letting people back in. Apologies get picked apart. Old posts resurface forever. There's rarely a defined moment when anyone agrees to put something down.

Micchami Dukkadam doesn't mean pretending serious harm didn't happen, and it doesn't replace accountability. But it offers something online culture lacks: a shared ritual that assumes everyone has caused harm, everyone can ask for forgiveness, and everyone is capable of letting go.