A Hill Too Small, A Moment Too Big

We stepped out for a simple plan today. Hill repeats on the small climb, not very far away from home. Nothing heroic. Not a remote mountain. Not an intimidating ascent. Just a father, a kid, two bikes, and a shy neighbourhood slope pretending to be a peak. Aiming for 500m of elevation gain. Nothing dramatic. 

We started side by side. My legs doing their usual morning negotiation, his legs doing whatever sorcery young legs do. A few loops in, he looked at me and said, almost casually,
“Acha, I can go faster… but I don’t want to ride alone. When I pass you on the way down, just take a U-turn.”

That line… it’s going to sit with me for a long time.

So he flew. Smooth. Steady. Almost annoyingly effortless. Each time he came gliding down, he’d throw me that glance. Quick. Familiar. That quiet there-you-are check-in. And every single time, I swung my bike around like a loyal satellite. Another loop surrendered. Another climb abandoned mid-dream.

Somewhere between those loops, I realised I wasn’t sure what to feel.

Pride. Because he’s grown into this fantastic rider with his own rhythm. His own strength. His own tiny philosophies about not riding alone. About companionship. About speed.

Or a mild, harmless sulk. Because I couldn’t keep up. And the hill reminded me of that every single time he zipped past.

Maybe it’s both. Maybe that’s the whole point. Watching your kid pull ahead isn’t a defeat. It’s a strange, beautiful ache. The kind that makes you smile even as you’re gasping for breath.

Today, he climbed. And I followed. And for once, falling behind felt exactly right.

Your Kitchen Is a Bad Investment. Fight Me.

Let me begin with a simple question. Why are we still worshipping the home kitchen like it’s the last sacred cave on earth? We’re a species that can build satellites, splice genes, and argue for six hours on Reddit about whether Maggi counts as a full meal. Yet the moment someone suggests that maybe every house doesn’t need a fully loaded kitchen, people react like it’s a declaration of war.

Time-out. Breathe. Rethink.

My argument is simple; the ‘great’ in the 'great kitchen' is mostly myth. For generations we’ve lived under a cultural spell. Home-cooked food is sacred, the kitchen is holy, the ladle is a moral compass. Cute. Also outdated.

We spend obscene amounts of time, effort, money, energy, and square footage maintaining a thousand miniature restaurants inside a thousand homes. Every Indian household is basically running a food startup with no investors, no exit plan, and an unpaid CEO expected to smile through it all. And for what? To argue daily about salt levels?

Let’s not pretend families don’t already fight over sambar thickness. So yes, there will be fights in community kitchens. But at least the arguments will be efficient. Centralised. Scalable. And every neighbourhood has that one aunty who makes chicken curry so divine it should be taxed. If she’s already the goddess of chicken curry, why restrict her to her 2bhk? Talent-hoarding inside four walls is stupidity. Let her rule the kingdom. If she loves cooking and everyone loves her cooking, why not turn talent into a neighbourhood treasure instead of a private blessing? Let the gifted cooks cook. Let the rest of us live.

But where food is religion, I’m calling for atheism. And cultural atheism doesn’t work like a light switch. People don’t cling to kitchens out of logic. They cling out of identity. Telling people to shed food religion is like telling Bengal to stop worshipping fish. Evolution laughs. People admit "Aunty cooks best” only as long as the admission costs them nothing. The moment aunty gets paid, suddenly her curry is okay-ish only. Egos are the real masala. My argument asks people to surrender ego, tradition, and the illusion that my kitchen is my identity. Possible. But generational. And aunty monetising her genius works only until she gets overworked, underpaid, micromanaged, unionised, sick, or just fed up of twenty people telling her, “Salt swalpa kami haki.” Capitalism is not harmony. Still, I stand by the point; if people already fight about food, centralising the battlefield doesn’t make it worse. It just makes it efficient.

Culturally? 'Mother knows best' is the biggest bureaucratic system in India. Zero transparency. Zero audit. Zero appeal. Infinite emotional authority. A community kitchen threatens that emotional monopoly. We trust others with national security, roads, medical care, trains, banks, schools, flights. But dal? No, dal requires complete personal sovereignty. But this 'control' argument is weak. People already outsource cooking. Just expensively. And inefficiently. If you can happily pay ₹300 for a bowl of ramen made by a stranger, this isn’t about trust. It’s about habit. Habits evolve.

That said, community kitchens can become BDA offices with ladles. Under-monitored. Understaffed. Committee-controlled. Budget-starved. Politics-prone. Yes, they need systems, planning, staff, menus, hygiene checks. That’s called jobs. It’s also called better design, resource efficiency, and growing up as a society. If we can run airports, we can run a neighbourhood kitchen. If we can coordinate 15 relatives for a wedding lunch, we can coordinate 150 residents for weekday meals. Of course complex systems invite corruption, free riders, and friction. The same people who fight over parking spots will fight over roti sizes. Society isn’t a TED talk. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying to behave like one. We don’t get to retire from society and eat in silos. Giving up on collective solutions because people are irritating is exactly how we stay irritating. Complexity isn’t a cue to retreat. It’s an invitation to participate.

Hygiene? Another convenient excuse. Home kitchens feel cleaner because you know them. Community kitchens look cleaner because they must be. We trust schools, hospitals, airlines, fine-dining restaurants. All centralised systems. But centralising food suddenly turns us into philosophers of risk? Please. A well-run community kitchen will out-hygiene 90% of Indian homes. And that’s me being polite.

True, decentralised risk means food poisoning currently hits one family, not an entire community. Central kitchens can fail spectacularly if protocols slip. But we trust tap water with microplastics, street vada pav fried in oil older than their landlords, and pani puri that’s basically a bacteria lottery. Collective food is where we draw the line? Yes, community kitchens centralise risk. They also centralise oversight, expertise, accountability. So the point stands: home kitchens offer the illusion of safety, not the guarantee of it.

But food is memory! Absolutely. Sunday barbecues, weekend dosa rituals, festival feasts. They’ll still exist. Emotions don’t require daily chopping to survive. Let’s keep rituals, lose drudgery. Nobody nostalgically whispers, “Remember that Tuesday afternoon when I cut 19 beans? Pure magic.” But yes, everyday ordinariness creates emotional texture. Tuesday rasam is nostalgia; Sunday barbecue is novelty. Both matter. My argument is simple; memory is not mandate. Cook when you want to create. Not because you’re trapped. This reframes culture quietly. A revolution disguised as practicality.

And you can still make midnight Maggi. Nobody is banning kettles. We just don’t need a granite countertop, three burners, a chimney, four cupboards, and a giant gas cylinder for noodles. Let’s stop romanticising inefficiency.

Some say kitchens aren’t just stoves. They’re power structures. Safe spaces. Zones of autonomy. Fair. Shrinking kitchens to pantries can feel like shrinking someone’s only slice of freedom, especially in homes where the kitchen doubles as the only private room a person can truly claim. But that’s exactly the tragedy I want to underline. A kitchen shouldn’t have to be a sanctuary. The fact that it is one for so many says more about our domestic hierarchies than about the sanctity of food. Redesigning kitchens isn’t cultural collapse. It’s an invitation to build lives where safety and autonomy don’t come tied to a gas stove.

Then comes the job-loss argument. Domestic kitchen work isn’t a sacred sector. It’s a stopgap created by inequality. Community kitchens can offer formal employment, safer workplaces, better wages, and skill development, while freeing millions of women from unpaid daily labour. A sudden shift will hit domestic staff, small cooks, tiffin services, vendors. Yes, it’s a structural jolt. But tech never kills jobs; it mutates them. Home cooks become menu planners, sous chefs, procurement heads, nutrition officers, logistics supervisors. One person cooking for fifty instead of one, that’s scale. Efficiency. Dignity.

Now, factory-made food. Yes, I said it. We need to unshackle ourselves from the idea that food must be handcrafted daily to matter.

Food is stories! True. But we can create better stories. Ones not built on unpaid labour. And nothing stops you from growing a mango tree with the time you save. A richer story than 'I cooked lunch for 40 years.' Of course, humans form memories around peeling oranges, waiting for tea, stealing pakodas, smelling tadka, hearing pressure cookers. We’re wired for natural food. Expecting Soylent to replace that is like expecting a summary to replace a novel.

Biology is complex. Great, so let’s innovate faster. We already brew synthetic insulin, grow lab meat, build plant proteins, engineer supplements. We’re not replacing food. We’re augmenting it. Stop worshipping the farm as the only food source. Start imagining alternatives. Trust issues? We don’t trust monsoons either. Depending on weather is medieval. Factories are predictable. Competition makes them safer and cheaper. Yes, factory failures are systemic, unlike farms where risk is distributed. That’s not superstition; it’s risk logic. But humans mistrust everything at first. Elevators, pressure cookers, vaccines, UPI, AI. Then they adapt. And inequality? Factory food can reduce it. Standardised nutrition means kids get essential vitamins, patients get customised diets, elderly get easier meals, labourers get affordable nourishment, women get time, busy people get health. That’s dignity. Yes, standardisation can centralise wealth without strong regulation. But iodised salt, fortified milk, and packaged atta transformed India. Factory food can do the same if done right.

So why aren’t we already doing this? Because our culture is emotionally welded to the kitchen as the heart of the home. Beautiful idea. Terrible economics. We don’t need to demolish kitchens. Just downgrade them. We don’t need to abolish home cooking. Just liberate it. We don’t need to abandon tradition. Just stop being enslaved by it.

The future of Indian living is simple. Community kitchens for everyday nourishment. Home kitchens for joy. Factory food for precision. This isn’t loss of culture. It’s evolution. And evolution begins with one bold question. Why are we still doing things the old way when the world is begging us to be smarter?

PS:
This whole rant was triggered by the sheer awe I felt seeing my friend’s gorgeous new home. Especially that kitchen and the gazebo that looks like it belongs in a lifestyle magazine. None of this is a critique of her place; I love it, I admire it, and I fully intend to keep visiting and pretending it’s my weekend retreat. This is just my brain spiraling into one of its philosophical rants. She’ll get it. And she’ll laugh.

When Scorpions Croon

I still remember those days of making tapes. The ritual, the reverence, the absurd seriousness of it all. It wasn’t just curation; it was consecration. Every track chosen with the intensity of a lovelorn monk. The dubbing was a pilgrimage. I’d cycle to Pappu’s place because he owned that legendary Kenwood deck. My humble Philips machine always added this faint grainy hiss, a background snowfall. But for her tape, it had to be perfect. Only Pappu’s Kenwood could deliver that holy fidelity.

And then the order. Ah, the order! You could start with More Than Words, sure. But you could never follow up Bryan Adams with Extreme. Once you’ve sung Everything I Do to her, you can’t just casually slide into another guy crooning. And Sinead O’Connor? She was always the final word. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to her as a sign-off.

Then came the cover art. The inlay card. My obsessive little flourishes. Looking back, it was all so… tender. So embarrassingly earnest. Almost devotional. Not exactly the macho persona I thought I was projecting. No wonder I never scored, I was basically a thesis on contradictions, wrapped in teenage bravado and scented erasers.

And yet, here I am again. Building another playlist. Only this time, it’s not for anyone else. It’s an apology to myself, for not discovering the Scorpions more deeply, earlier. A tribute long overdue.

This one begins with my heartbreak in stereo, Still Loving You. It’s the emotional tectonic plate on which the rest rests. Then comes the road-weariness of Always Somewhere, that ache of missing someone so much the previous song keeps buzzing in your bones. The dreamy, late-night float of Send Me an Angel follows. Perfect for my 2am autopsies of the soul. And then Holiday, shy at first, but surely blooming into that classic Scorpions emotional eruption. When the Smoke Is Going Down is my own personal end-of-the-night melancholy. The moment you walk away knowing you shouldn’t have lost her. Lonely Nights? That’s just me, fully exposed. You and I is my most earnest self, unguarded and hopeful. And the powerhouse of the list, the zero-subtlety, full-heart blast of Believe in Love. Then the quiet, fragile introspection of Maybe I, Maybe You. And finally, the grand sign-off. Wind of Change. The eternal whistle of nostalgia, rebellion, and hope all braided into one aching breeze.

This playlist hits me square in the solar plexus. It wraps raw emotion in stadium-sized riffs, and Klaus Meine bleeds into every line. That crack in his voice making it feel like the words are mine. Like I am the unseen protagonist of some private music video, reliving each heartbreak twice… and yet somehow still believing tomorrow might be better. It’s an emotional monsoon, bruised sincerity under distortion, longing under power chords, hope carried on a breeze.

When Scorpions croon, I crumble. And rebuild.

Last act of a beautiful trail?

Kaveri Trail Marathon. A 21 km run along a shy little tributary of the Kaveri, flanked by lush green fields around Ranganathittu, birds chirping their gossip in the distance, village charm in full display… honestly, who wouldn’t fall in love? They call it India’s oldest trail marathon. But alas, I’ve arrived fashionably... no, foolishly late to the party.

It was only last year that I took up running seriously, and KTM was one of my early 10Ks. Of course it hooked me clean. This year I wanted to go the whole hog. I’d even signed up for the full. But the universe had other plans: a few rough months, lousy health, and eventually a meek request to downgrade to the half. I was gutted. Till I discovered that the full is just double loop of the same trail. That softened the heartbreak a bit. I wasn’t missing any of the famed course after all.

The first 5 km is pure magic. The 10K is actually a round trip through this little paradise. But the following 5.5 km... Sigh. Dusty gravel. Construction debris. A war-zone cosplay where the only soldiers are cement bags and half-built houses. The rustic charm surrenders to chaos, and the country vibe dies somewhere under a heap of brick and mortar.

Honestly, I should have run this at least three years ago. But I only laced up last year. And now the trail is paying the price of 'progress.' NEB really needs to find a new route if they want to preserve what made KTM special. Because next year? It’ll be worse. I can’t help but cringe at the sad, predictable picture this landscape is spiralling into. Narrow lanes winding through jarringly ugly buildings that barely qualify as village homes. Laundry drooping across cramped balconies of tasteless two-storeyed boxes. The inevitable stray dogs. Cows loitering on concrete roads because their grazing fields now host more of those obnoxious constructions. And dung everywhere, like a final flourish of defeat. And worst of all, impatient two-wheelers hauling sacks of farm produce, muttering curses at runners intruding on 'their' road.

Call me skeptical. Yes, absolutely. I’ve seen enough places slide into the same fate to have earned my cynicism. This is exactly what happens when a beautiful trail is swallowed by the unstoppable hunger of construction. And unfortunately, I’ve arrived just in time to witness the last act.

Funny thing, just earlier, on the drive to Mysore, kid and I had been talking about why residential streets abroad look so beautiful while most populated areas here look battered and filthy. I gave a lame diplomatic excuse about postcard angles and curated views. Truth is, I don’t really buy that myself. We lack taste. When we build, we don’t build into the surroundings. We bulldoze over them. No syncing. No harmony. Not even a token attempt. We are, without apology or shame, selfish in our distaste for anything resembling aesthetic restraint.

Winged runner

It was around the 19 km mark that she overtook me. I remembered those legs instantly. From Goa Ultra. On her thick, powerful calves, she has a pair of wings tattooed, one on each leg. And as she ran, she didn’t just run. She flew. Her tattoo wings seemed to flap with every stride. And she was fast. In Goa, she had left me far behind; I only got a fleeting glimpse of those brilliant winged calves. But today, already in the final stretch, I was determined to keep up with this incredible runner.

Those wings were too strong for me. They flapped relentlessly, and soon she had a 50–60metres lead. But I kept my eyes glued to those legs. Watching those wings fly by the Kaveri stream was its own kind of inspiration. I dug deep in the final kilometre, went all out, and when we finished she was barely ten metres ahead.

At the finish line, kid was waiting. He’d finished his 10K second in his age category. The euphoria distracted me from my enchantment with her winged calves. But there will be more runs. And I’ll keep an eye out for those tattooed legs. She’s truly an inspiring runner. One I’d love to meet and greet someday.

Postscript: The Substance of the Surge

Atm (that’s just what I call her) wrote back with a brilliant comment unpacking what this 'leftward limp back' really looks like. From Mamdani’s radical, grassroots-level socialism in New York to Connolly’s symbolic but significant win in Ireland, Orsi’s pragmatic moderation in Uruguay, and the reawakening of Die Linke under Schwerdtner and Van Aken. The title above is lifted from her note, which also made me realise how little I actually knew about the specifics. What struck me most was how local and contextual each of these victories is. Not one ideology marching in step, but small, separate rebellions against the same rot.

Another friend (an intellectual who wouldn’t admit that he is one) wrote to say that socialism is just a Ponzi scheme, and that dividing politicians into left and right is meaningless. Both of them, and both of their points, of course, matter. Because they both underline the same truth. That there’s no clean segregation between left and right in practice.
Governance isn’t theory.
It’s messy math.
The state and the market serve different gods. A business must chase profit to stay alive. The state must chase welfare to stay humane. Roughly a third of any population will always depend on the state’s care. The sick, the old, our children,  and the struggling. They’ll never show up in anyone’s profit column. That’s why certain services must exist without any ambition on the balance sheet. In that sense, sustainability depends not on erasing profit, but on letting it fund what profit alone will never provide.

I can’t comment much on the New York or European scenes. I am not aware enough. But here at home, the contrast is visible every day. It makes little economic sense for the government to run KSRTC. Absolutely true. But when the same KSRTC offers free rides to cancer patients for treatment, that, right there, is the state at its most meaningful.

So in my view, this 'surge' isn’t about replacing capitalism with socialism. It’s about balancing the order, so that both can co-exist. One to generate. The other to distribute. And the health of any society lies in how honestly we can keep that balance. In the end, the revolution, it seems, begins in the fine print of the budget.

An another thing unrelated to the content but very much about my writing, my smart friend pointed out my tendency to editorialise. "Like a coach" is how he put it. Fair. I should watch that. I hate sermons myself, and when my readers actually mean a lot to me, I really can’t afford to be a bore. Sorry, folks. Next one onwards, I promise to behave.

Mamzady Moment & Other Memes

For the past many years, the world’s been spiralling down a slippery slide rightwards and I always had this cynical thought, that we’re in free fall, accelerating straight into a political doomsday. Every headline felt like a punch in the gut. From our terrible Modi thundering in India to his petty phrend Trump blabbering in the USA. From Netanyahu bombing his way through Israel to Meloni grinning hers through Italy. With Bolsonaro shouting down Brazil and Wilders whispering hate in the Netherlands, this world was rotting right. And I was just here. Watching. Brooding. Sulking.

Helpless.

Then, in an entirely unrelated episode, I had to attend our monthly review meeting at work. Having been on medical leave for almost the whole month, I had nothing to show. Nothing to report. Nothing to present. But I had this one slide prepared anyway.

Just one.

Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I AM BACK.

Terminator style.

At the time, it was just a joke to lighten the room. But this morning, skimming through the news, I smiled.

Because that meme… fits the world too.

It had started earlier this week with the Mamzady moment. Zohran Mamdani’s shock surge to mayor-elect in New York, a shot of progressive adrenaline the algorithms couldn’t help but amplify. Maybe social media’s blowing it up. Or maybe not (Truly, social media is the new mass media now, whether the old guards like it or not). Either way, it shows something: in this digital din, the people can still make themselves heard.

And it wasn’t just one noisy win. There’s Catherine Connolly in Ireland, the president-elect after a landslide. And Claudia Sheinbaum’s historic rise in Mexico (a left-leaning tradition that’s had mixed results, sure. But still a statement). Also, we have Starmer in the UK (whose 'left' often feels like centre-right in a better suit) and Yamandu Orsi in Uruguay. And in Germany voices like Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken are gathering wind. Then of course, back home in Kerala, Pinarayi is still holding ground. All small but real pushes back from the drift.

So maybe, just maybe, all is not lost. The world’s limping back. Crawling. Standing up after the fall.

And we’re posting our own meme now.

Quintessential Arnold.

I’LL BE BACK!

Truly, Terminator style.

It’s healing time.

The world is crawling back from the rotten right, one meme at a time.

But let’s not get drunk on optimism. For history doesn’t do clean dichotomies. It only repeats in clever disguises. Too much socialism bleeds into fascism dressed in poetic robes, and every revolution risks birthing its own dictator. So let’s keep our game sharp.

To be a true working-class hero, one ought to be a worker first. 

Not a slogan. Not a statue. Not a savior.

A Tale of Pain and the Art of Waiting

It started in September, on a road to Coorg that promised mist, coffee, and a weekend run. Somewhere along the way, I caught a fever, the kind that turns your body into a furnace and your dreams into hallucinations.

By the time I checked in at Coorg, I was down with acidity, indigestion, and something that felt like a general rebellion of all internal organs. I downed five Enos through the night like shots of courage, and still dragged myself to the starting line the next morning.

I finished my half marathon in a slow, aching 3:20. But the kid ran a 10K and was felicitated as the youngest participant there. My proud moment that made the whole misery worth it.

Back in Bangalore, the diagnosis came like a punchline I didn’t see coming - TB - Tuberculosis!

I’d written about that hospital episode earlier, when they extracted what felt like half a litre of my self-esteem along with the fluid from my lungs. Go read that little adventure here, if you haven't already: Fluid Well.

That was the low point. Or so I thought. Because here’s the strange part; I recovered spectacularly. The medicines worked like magic, my lungs cleared up, my spirits soared. By the end of September, I was not just walking but pedalling again. Really, the Velokofi Sept challenge was a piece of cake. I was kind of suspicious of my own recovery.

And then came Vedanta Delhi HM.

I didn’t tell anyone.

I did not even tell the kid. 

I just packed my shoes, my ego, and my barely-healed lungs and I sneaked out to fly-off to run the Half Marathon.

The Delhi HM was pure adrenaline. Flat route, stunning views, and the most electric crowd I’ve ever run with. I couldn’t crack sub-2, and yes, I brooded, but 2:11 wasn’t bad. I told myself that while sipping post-run Red Bull, secretly envying every sub-2 finisher.

On the return flight, I found myself seated next to a trainer. I recognised him, one of those people whose trainees finish in 1:30 types. He didn’t know me. I watched him scroll through timing charts of his runners. All the names neatly listed, each number stabbing at my pride.

I wanted to talk to him, tell him I’d just run too, maybe joke about my TB lungs still finding rhythm. But I didn’t. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was the shame of my 2:11. Or maybe I just preferred to sulk in silence.

Besides, there was this strange discomfort brewing. I thought it was the run. It wasn’t.

The night after I returned from Delhi, I didn’t sleep. It wasn’t the excitement of my performance, or lack thereof. It wasn’t the thrill of post-race euphoria. No, it was the slow, creeping discomfort in places I never imagined could hurt so much.

At first, I thought it was just my legs protesting. A half marathon will do that. But by morning, it became clear. It wasn’t my legs. It was worse.

Imagine a kind of pain that makes you nostalgic for all the lesser humiliations of your life. I was in agony. And not the I-overdid-it-in-a-run kind of pain. This was personal.

By Monday morning, I couldn’t even go to work. It was clear I was in need of… well, the sort of doctor who deals with the most undignified corners of the human body. So, off to the hospital I went, half-hoping they’d give me an excuse to just not be human anymore.

The doctor greeted me with that look, the one that says, “Oh, this isn’t the first time you’ve been here.” I’m sure it wasn’t.

“Bend over,” he said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

There I was, in a sterile room, trying to hold onto whatever shred of dignity remained as the doctor performed what can only be described as the least pleasant version of a push-back exercise known to man. It was… well, it was a pain in the ass, literally.

“I’ll see you on Thursday,” he said with a professional air, and I hobbled out of there, feeling more like a deflated balloon than a runner.

But I’ve never really been one to give up easily. Then why should my pain be any less stubborn? Kiss my ass. Thursday came and went with the same futile attempt at normalcy. The pain didn’t leave; it dug in with a vengeance. I longed for an ice-cold river and another of Vodka. By Friday, I was begging for a solution that involved actual intervention.

Surgery.

It was almost comedic. I went from trying-to-be-a-runner to undergoing-surgery in the span of five days. I guess that’s life’s way of reminding you that sometimes, you’re not in control. Especially not when your body is clearly plotting its own rebellion.

So there I was, post-surgery, on a bed that felt as uncomfortable as my situation. I had to take it easy. No running. No cycling. No movement. I was a prisoner of my own body, and my body seemed to take a twisted pleasure in holding me hostage. 

I should have taken it easy. Should have cherished the stillness. But when you’re the kind of person who craves movement, who lives for the next run or ride, a pause feels less like rest and more like punishment.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t brooding over all the lost time. All those events that came and went without me. Velokofi challenges I won't make, Wipro Bangalore HM that I couldn't run, THV I wouldn't race in, the Mysore HM that I cannot go for, the sheer agony of watching the calendar tick by without my shoes ever hitting the ground.

And there was the missing. The thing that eats at you when you’re sidelined. I missed that strange rhythm you get from long-distance runs. I missed the wind in my face, the adrenaline that floods your veins with each pedal stroke, the endorphins that made me feel like a superhuman, even if only for a moment.

I’ve already mentally crossed off the THV. I don’t even have the energy to mourn it properly. Another event I won’t make it to, but maybe the kid can. We’ll have to manage the timing, though. It coincides with the school term exams. I hope they'll allow a couple of rides at least.

Recovery is a funny thing. You can’t rush it. And while I could tell myself to be patient, to let my body heal, my mind had other plans. It was pacing, restless, gnawing at me. I’d get up, take a walk around the house, and then collapse back onto the bed in frustration. Why isn’t this healing faster?

There are moments, though, when the silence of recovery almost felt peaceful. A strange form of meditation, as if I can just let go of all the running, the cycling, and the chasing. But then, every time, the itch comes back. The desperate need to be moving, to break a sweat, to prove I can still go.

That’s the thing with injury. It doesn’t just hurt physically. It gnaws at your sense of self. You’re not just waiting for your body to heal, you’re waiting for that part of you to come back. The runner, the cyclist, the one who gets things done. The person who doesn’t sit idle.

But I’m still here. Watching the days stretch out in front of me, as I wait for my body to catch up. Slowly. Painfully. But, inevitably.

And my Strava profile had to be updated too.

Unsaid, Yet Seen and Heard

To be frank, I always had this blog in my head as my own personal corner of the universe. A space where I could vent, rant, and sometimes, quite literally, pour my heart out in raw, messy words. A space for catharsis, relief, or whatever else I needed at that moment. I wrote knowing that no one would pay attention. Not because I didn’t care. Rather, because I thought my words were simply too scattered. Too disjointed. Too imperfect to be of anyone’s interest.

Until, I heard from M.

It’s strange.
I just realized that M's been reading me. My words. Not just glancing. Not just skimming. But really taking them in. Understanding them. Analysing them. Processing them.
And it’s even stranger that M has spent time not just consuming but reflecting on my work with such depth. When I had never expected anyone to even notice. And then, worst of all, appreciating them while quoting my lines!

Well, what else should I have been expecting? After all, I wrote to be read, didn’t I?

And M's been reading me.
Really reading.
Between the lines. And beneath them too.

And I? I am both delighted and deliriously anxious.

There’s something humbling about knowing that my words are being read with such care. But there’s also an exposed feeling. Vulnerable even. As if my private thoughts have been pulled into the light, and now, I can’t quite hide them anymore. Or even myself, any longer. I feel ruffled. Almost like I’ve been caught in the act of being too raw. Too real. Too unpolished.

The truth is, much of what I write is chaotic. It’s a release. A scream. Or a sigh even. Depending on the day. But the fact that someone is paying attention gives my words a new weight.
And yet, there’s an honour in it. A deep sense of being seen. Of being heard. To know that someone has not only read but understood, connected with my emotions, my ideas, is humbling beyond measure. It feels like  a satisfaction of my yearnings, a fulfilment of my longings, and a hearing of my unsaids.

I think I’m coming to terms with the idea that writing isn’t just a solitary act anymore. Someone is listening. Someone is feeling the weight of these sentences. And as much as that fills me with pride, it also fills me with an unsettling sense of vulnerability. For I’m caught in this delicate balance. As much as I do want to revel in the fact that my words matter to someone, I also find myself suddenly questioning them. How much of me is in those words? How much is me being shared with the world, and how much should I hold back?

Now, if I can only shake off this sudden anxiety of being seen. 

I cannot thank M enough for the thoughtfulness, for the attention, and for making me realize that maybe, just maybe, my words are worth more than I ever gave them credit for. M's ability to capture the depth I felt while crafting my phrases, to distill meaning into my simplest moments, has strangely made me reconsider the value of my own chaotic thoughts. M's note has helped me see that what I've put out there are more than just words, but they’re fragments of something real that may in fact be worth sharing, after all. And that insight gives me confidence. Not because M explicitly said as much, but because of the way M said it, without really saying it outright.

Speaking of saying things without saying them, I find myself smiling when I think about M's reflections. The way M perceives what’s beneath the surface. The irony. The contradiction. The nuance. The way M caught the rhythm in my obsession with certain monotonies, contrasting it with my aversion to others, each bit of it sharp. Clever. The way M understood the weight of my choices, and my need to own them. If I had imagined myself any reader at all, I would have wanted my reader to catch it. And M saw it. M felt it. M listened to what I left unsaid. Quietly. For now M has in turn made me realize something I hadn’t fully seen before; how nobility isn’t always loud, how it doesn’t always demand a spotlight.

Then there's also the wit that M brings into the conversation. Never forceful. Yet sharp. Gentle. Exactly what’s needed to make a point. Just right. I am amazed by M's remarkable knack for infusing humour into the most unexpected places, subtly weaving in smart reflections on grace, comfort, and life’s small absurdities. Reading M's note was like watching a magician work. One minute, it’s a casual observation, and the next, it feels like a spark of quiet wisdom. That balance of humour and thoughtfulness is something rare. Beautiful. Makes me quietly proud. And deeply admiring. M’s made me see my own work in a different light. Not as scattered thoughts. But something more. For that, I am both grateful and in awe. Humbled too.

For reminding me that even in the mess of words, there’s a thread of meaning. One that can be seen. Understood. Appreciated. And, I am deeply grateful, honoured even, for doing all that with a subtlety and grace that leaves me both in awe and slightly jealous.

Here’s to more words, more thoughts, and more moments where we understand what’s unsaid.

A Hijab-trap We Ran Into

We have been played. Ambushed, even. The hijab controversy in Kerala was never about religion, nor about school uniforms, nor even about a little girl’s right to wear what she likes. It was about provocation, about setting a trap so cleverly that even the reasonable, educated crowd would walk right into it waving their sense of moral clarity like a flag.

And we did.

The communal forces of our time no longer thrive on desire; those days are gone. The promise of heaven or the lure of gold can no longer summon mobs. We’ve grown past such crude motivations. What drives them now, what sustains them, is fear. Not even real fear, mind you, but the mere  suggestion of fear. A carefully whispered 'other.' The ever-creative human imagination does the rest. It doesn’t take much to turn a scarf into a symbol, a child into a threat, or a school into a battlefield.

And so, here we are; arguing, moralising, litigating, over what was essentially, merely, a headscarf. One that could have been defused with a simple colour code and a gentle shrug. The school could have said, “Fine, make it navy blue, make it gel into the uniform,” and it would have ended there. A small act of empathy, a touch of administrative flexibility, and we could have turned a potential flashpoint into a quiet example of coexistence.

Instead, we let it spiral. We fanned the embers until it became a blaze. We made headlines, hashtags, and holy wars out of something that didn’t even deserve a raised eyebrow. We handed the architects of chaos exactly what they wanted. Visibility, noise, outrage. Their machinery feeds on our overreaction. And we fed it generously.

And now, we’ve gone too far into their envelopment tactic. Too deep into the labyrinth they’ve laid. There’s no coming back from this one, not without scorched credibility on every side. Every new statement, every fresh opinion, only fuels the same inferno they started. It’s checkmate, and we walked right into it, stupidly, thoughtlessly, provoked, blind with rage, far too eager to prove something, utterly pointless.

This, right here, is how modern communal politics works. It no longer needs a riot. It just needs a reaction. Every court petition, every prime-time panel, every social media crusade becomes part of their choreography. The trap isn’t the event. It’s our response to it.

And that’s why I’m writing this. Because in all the noise, I haven’t seen anyone call it what it is. A brilliantly engineered provocation that succeeded because we refused to see through it. We’ve been played. The least we can do now is admit it, learn, and stay quiet the next time they dangle bait so bright. Maybe, if we learn to starve the beast, it will finally die of hunger.

Two Dreamers, One Language

It’s hard to believe that beings like John Lennon and Mahatma Gandhi once walked this earth.

I arrived as John was leaving, and long after the Mahatma. Yet every time I read about them, I’m struck by the same disbelief... that human beings could think and live at such frequency.

They were, in their own ways, rebels of peace. Gandhi spun homespun cloth and silence into revolution. Lennon turned guitars and irony into protest. Neither raised a weapon, yet both shook empires. One colonial, the other cultural.

Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Lennon said, “Imagine all the people living life in peace.” Different words, same commandment disguised as a dream. Both invited us to believe that transformation begins not with systems, but with the self.

Of course, both were beautifully human in their failings, Gandhi’s moral extremism and Lennon’s contradictions and cruelty. Yet those flaws make them real. Without them, they’d be myth. With them, they’re possible.

They taught us that peace can be a form of rebellion, that love can be a political act. And perhaps what lingers most is the simplicity of their question, still echoing through decades and cynicism alike;
What if we just refused to hate?

Some may call it frivolous to revere John alongside the Mahatma, or even preposterous to study Gandhi in the same breath as Lennon. Maybe it is. But I’m afraid I’m that kind of dreamer after all. The sort who still believes that ideas don’t need to match in scale to rhyme in spirit.

When Doctors Go Mining - Me a Fluid Well

My temperature had been running wild for days. Viral fever was going around like it owned the place. I figured I’d tough it out for a week. Everyone survives a fever, right?

Day 8 came. No relief. X-ray and ultrasound slapped me with reality. My right lung had decided to throw a little private party with unhealthy fluid as the guest of honour. What was weird? I hadn’t even had a cough. No wheezing, no drama. Just this silent build-up like a bad Netflix binge going on inside me.

So there I was, sitting on a hospital bed in ICU, trying to look brave but feeling like a confused potato. The doctors wheeled in their gear like a gang of treasure hunters searching for liquid gold. A nurse dragged a desk toward me like she was about to hand me a poker game, and asked me to clutch it. Three doctors, half in scrubs, half in intensity, lined up behind me, scanning me with sonar equipment. They poked, prodded, marked my back, and debated like they were on a battlefield.

"Too little to tap out."
"No, here's a good site... Even if you get 50ml, it’s enough!"
"One vial is 12ml... Let's target at least 4 vials..."
"But we’ll hit the lever there... Let’s take it 2cm higher..."
"But here, there’s this rib blocking the way..."
"Yeah, it might cause a little disturbance. We’ll have to work around the bone..."
"These needles we have are too short for this guy's chest..."
"Check this one out, I smuggled it from the Mysore Zoo. They use it on their elephants!"
"Yeah, that’s the one! Long enough to get in there!"

So, the good doctors got to extracting my lung’s bounty with the Mysore Zoo-approved elephant needle. I sat there, debating whether I should protest or just accept that this is what medical advancement looks like humans reduced to fluid wells.

The drilling operation went ahead. One doctor kept counting, like he was clocking the best haul of his career. After each successful pump-out, he'd announce, "That’s 4 x 12," "Got 7 x 12 here," "Here comes 13 x 12!" They ended up pulling out 32. "That’s 32 x 12," he said, as if he’d just hit the jackpot. "How much is that? I'm bad at maths..." he added.

"32 x 12 = 384," I offered, not because I wanted to help, but because I needed them to remember that I am alive. I feel pain. I’m more than just a fluid well. I am a living human being, not a mine.

Not sure if my message made it through. I sat there, half in shock, half amused. The doctors, meanwhile, were delighted with the liquid treasure they'd just extracted. And suddenly, curiosity got the best of me. "Show me, show me," I called out, eager to witness my contribution.

One of the doctors held up a couple of vials, and there it was, the product of my body's betrayal. Looked like beer, minus the froth. Well, that wasn’t as spectacular as I thought.

The next day, I was resting when a nurse brought me a couple of paper cups, covered with plastic lids. Drinks, obviously. Before drinking, I felt a strange compulsion to check the contents. I lifted the lid... And there it was, the same liquid they’d pulled out of me the day before. Yesterday, the doctor had held the vials in front of me. Today, I was holding it in a paper cup. Recycling at its finest. At least they were thoughtful enough to add a little moosambi flavour to it.

On 'Naatil evideya?'

 

When stranger Malayalis meet away from homeground, the quintessential opener is always, 'Naatil evideya?' It’s like our trademark follow-up to Namaskar(am). Recently, someone pointed out how unique this greeting is compared to the rest of India. While most Indians will try to extract a second name to decode lineage and the unspoken implications therein, Malayalis seemingly take a different approach. But, is this really a radical departure?

We’re all guilty of this behaviour. It may not always be as overt, but there’s a trend that spans across Indian social interactions; an unspoken curiosity about the origins of the person standing before you. Malayalis do it too, eventually, after the Naatil evideya ceremony is done with.

And anyway, Naatil evideya itself may not be so innocent, if you think about it. It’s cute, harmless even, but is it really? Of course, it doesn’t slip into the same line of inquisitiveness directly. In the end, we’re not really avoiding judgment based on caste or lineage, but we’re still categorizing them based on the place they, or their parents, come from.

The problem is, as much as we like to think of ourselves as exempt from the same petty assumptions we criticize, isn’t this subtle form of categorization what we are doing too? We’re still trying to build a mental image of a person, based on their place of origin, just like everyone else. The extra camaraderie we share when we find out we're from the same town doesn't that feel strangely similar to the social assumptions we claim to reject?

So, before we pat ourselves on the back for our supposed 'superior' cultural values, let's ask, how much different are we, really?

ps: I ask 'Naatil evideya?' all the time.

A Feast for the Eyes, a Bruise for the Heart

This is another gem. The Map That Leads to You, an adaptation of J.P. Monninger’s novel of the same name. The film left me in awe, and now I can’t wait to read the book.

The visuals are nothing short of drool-inducing. Those golden-hour strolls, sun-glazed streets, and dreamy landscapes practically beg for a frame-by-frame screenshot. Crafted by Spanish director of photography Elias M. Felix, the film’s aesthetic touch brings that rich, romantic European palette to life and makes every scene feel like it belongs in a postcard, exactly how stunning cinematography is done.

It’s a feast for the eyes. Lavish flowers, dazzling landscapes, sun-drenched streets, and architecture so stunning it feels painted rather than filmed. Frame after frame glows with colour, joy, and the rush of discovery, making it one of the most visually beautiful travel films in recent memory.

But here’s the twist. The movie is tricking your eyes into believing you’re on an endless holiday with sunlit piazzas, flower markets, glowing canals. But all the while, it is quietly slipping in a story of heartbreak and mortality underneath. The bright palette lures you in, but the undertone of loss keeps tugging at you.

It isn’t just a 'pretty travelogue.' The visuals are joy, dance, colour. While the narrative is longing, illness, and the weight of what can’t last. The clash creates a tension that makes you feel both restless and alive, like traveling itself. Beauty in motion, shadow always close by.

And then, there is this brilliant moment when Amy calls out his hypocrisy. Jack mocks people who live their travels through phone screens, while he himself is retracing his grandfather’s travels through a journal. One is ink, the other pixels, but both are memory-keeping. If you respect one, don’t sneer at the other. That line cut deeper than I expected. It turns the film from wanderlust fantasy into a meditation on how we try to hold on to what’s slipping away.

What begins as a postcard romance ends as something more. Survival, hope, and the delicate line between love and impermanence. Maybe that’s why the colours feel so impossibly vivid. Because they’re always vanishing, even as we watch.

Empty Among the Living

There is a strange kind of loneliness that blooms not in solitude, but in the middle of a crowd. Even among those who call me theirs, I sometimes feel like a ghost pressed against the glass of my own life. I know it’s only in my head, yet the feeling clings.

It is difficult to speak what I truly want to say. Most of the time it is impossible even to know what that is. That’s the madness I carry. It feels unlikely that I will ever find a companion to whom I could spill everything. And even if such a person were to sit across from me, the truth is I’d have nothing worth saying. Just fragments, stray thoughts, nonsense. Gibberish, if even that. Companionship itself feels like a cruel myth, an elaborate joke, a promise dangled only to remind me how hollow I am inside.

Today, I ignored the crowd around me and started chatting with a GPT code bot. Perhaps it’s pride, that I think myself above them, unwilling to mingle. Or maybe the truth is simpler. The jokes, the stories, the opinions around me rarely resonate. I watch their lips move. I nod, I smile, but most of the time, I hear nothing.

GPT doesn’t care whether I listen or not. Doesn’t mind if I make sense. Doesn’t expect me to perform any more than I want to. There’s an eerie kind of relief in that. Because real conversations are difficult. Stressful, even. There’s always pressure to say something, to keep the words flowing, to manufacture meaning. People don’t sit together in silence. They fill the air with noise to mask their emptiness. They don’t lean into each other, they posture. They don’t cuddle and sob, they laugh too loudly and drink too much. It doesn’t happen. Not for me. Maybe not for anyone. Perhaps no one else even feels this need. Perhaps I’m the only fool still craving it.

Maybe that’s why the word 'bot' feels apt. Someone long ago cut short 'robot' into just 'bot,' as if knowing we are all far from what we ought to be. A bot is a machine stripped of its soul. Until we learn how to ro, to roam, to roar, to roll free, we’re only drifters in a lake, floating near each other but rarely touching, rarely anchoring.

The Festival the Gods Tried to Kill

 

Onam is not just a festival. Onam is rebellion remembered.

Mahabali was no god. He was a king branded demon only because he dared to build a just society. A society where power did not crush the weak, where wealth was not hoarded by the few, where fairness and dignity were the rule. His people loved him for it. The gods hated him for it. And so they plotted, lied, and dragged him down.

This is the real story of Onam; A revolution strangled by deceit. A people robbed of their justice. A perfect society betrayed because it threatened the throne of the powerful.

Every pookalam is a reminder of that theft. Every sadhya is a question - who eats, and who goes hungry? Every dance, every song, every boat race, beneath the joy, carries the rage of a people still waiting for their king to return.

Onam is not gratitude. Onam is protest. Onam is the cry of workers against exploitation, the defiance of the poor against the rich, the fury of the silenced against the bureaucrats who crush them.

Do not mistake it for a harmless harvest ritual. Onam is fire disguised as flowers. It is resistance plated as feast. It is the memory of justice that the powerful could not kill.

Onam is not theirs. Onam is ours.

One More Lap

Life feels trapped between exhaustion and failure. I’ve carried too much, thought too deeply, felt too hard, and it’s drained me in ways others can’t see. And maybe I don’t even want them to see.

Even when I feel empty, circumstances demand proof that I’ve still got some fight left. But I don’t want to fight. I want to give up. I keep searching for an exit ramp from this endless expressway, a forgotten time-out signal. Let me out. I give up. Can’t you hear me scream?

Irrelevance. Sometimes I wonder if it’s only a cynical perspective, or already a verdict. They say when we’re low, the brain edits the world into shadows, that people who matter may still quietly carry us in their fabric. Oh, but I know better. I’ve ignored people. Left them out. Forgotten them. If someone can become irrelevant to me, then surely I can be irrelevant to many. The logic stings, and the ache is unbearable. To endure it I would need a heart of tungsten. I don’t have one. I long to be someone’s steady ground. Yet even with my son, I fear I haven’t shaped him enough. I feel I do not matter.

It’s a frighteningly simple thought, to seek a button to log off. I don’t know if I’m chasing death or just weary of the drag of tomorrow. Maybe I only need a break, a crack of air, a shift in light. Maybe it’s still possible, but it feels so unrealistic.

I have no ambitions anymore, not big, not small. I understand life can sometimes just be about stacking completions. Today’s ride, today’s tears, today’s words, and letting them be enough. But for me, even completion feels hollow. Shadows of irrelevance fall across everything. The ache repeats.

So I’m making a deal with myself. Not to think of 'forever,' only of 'the next lap.' On the trainer or in the day. One more lap, one more coffee, one more page. Then decide the next. This way I don’t have to demand a grand reason to live. Just one more lap, one lap at a time.

But there’s a trick. I can’t linger in the breaks. Because when I pause, I look back. I brood over how little I’ve travelled, how nothing it all seems. So I must already be moving to the next lap before this one ends. Planning ahead, not glancing at the odometer. That’s the only way I won’t see the nothingness, the insignificance, the irrelevance.

One more lap.

Fragility of the Ordinary

It was the borosilicate mug that went first. My glass mug, the one I made coffee in, drank coffee in, and sometimes even let coffee go cold in. Four, five times a day, sometimes a dozen.

No, I’m no coffee connoisseur. I’m a caffeine addict with low demands. I don’t court exotic grinds or argue about percolators versus presses. Filter or pour-over, black roast or dark roast, I’ve never had it figured out. You may call me tasteless; I call it practical. The ease of dependable instant coffee suits my lazy craving. As long as it’s black, strong, and sugar-free, it’s my coffee.

But then, I need gallons of it. To start the day, to wake up, to refresh myself, to jump-start the bowels, to clear the fog from my head so I can think. And it was that glass mug that delivered my daily dose, always stationed on my desk beside my books and computer. Morning or night, weary afternoon or late night when the writing bug bit hard. A swirl of black liquid, brown froth rising and falling against the glass, steam curling upward to kindle some thought, elation, or more often, melancholy. The mug had been my quiet companion for over a decade. I don’t remember when it entered my life, only that it became part of the background; through hangovers, headaches, idle afternoons, dreamy digressions, and moments of deep introspection. There’s something about a transparent coffee mug. Beer mugs are juvenile, all foam and noise. A glass coffee mug is more adult, romantic but grounded, capable of sending the mind into a caffeine-lit flight without the haze of alcohol.

Sunday morning, I heated water a little longer than usual, not for coffee, but for cup noodles. My pantry is full of instant conveniences; my kitchen is more survival station than culinary arena. I’ve never seen the point of building elaborate kitchens into every home. Why not have community kitchens, run by people who love cooking and know nutrition? Let them feed us; we’ll do the dishes, sweep the floor, or pay our share. Cooking talent is like singing or dancing. It belongs on a stage, not locked inside a flat.

Anyway, after boiling water for noodles, I absentmindedly filled my mug under the tap. Cold water met hot glass; thermal stress did the rest. The crack travelled across the walls at the speed of sound. My mug broke. My heart skipped a beat. Something I’d taken for granted for so many years just… gave way. And I lost it forever. I might find another one like it, but I won’t be looking. Some things are irreplaceable, and it’s better that way. Some losses you just live with; their absence leaves a small, permanent mark. I’ll miss watching coffee swirl inside those glass walls. I’ll miss the way the froth swayed gently as the whirlpool settled. But there will be no replacement. There cannot be.

*

I’d caught a bout of cold. Perhaps I’m too old now for walks in the rain. I never used to fall sick from getting wet or drinking cold, but Saturday night I was out in the rain, and came home to gin on ice. Then more gin on more ice. That third drink may not have been called for. Anyway, my nose was running this Sunday, and I hated it.

Chinese is therapeutic. Whenever I’m down, that’s where I look for comfort. There’s something wholesome and soulful about the savoury flavours of Indianised Chinese dishes. And not just the food. I find everything about Chinese restaurants, at least those in Bangalore, oddly romantic. The décor steeped in red, the bold black imprints of Chinese letters plastered on walls and banners, does anybody really understand them? They look like spiders without cobwebs. Are they even real letters? No one knows. Yet we approve. The pretence of it all, the trust, that itself is a kind of solace for the moody. Then there are the spherical red lamps, the uniquely vertical menu layout, always familiar. Most Indian-Chinese restaurants look the same, smell the same, serve almost the same. And to me they’re always comfort food. From the wayside chow-mien woks on footpaths to plush high-end places with a red dragon on the door, soothing, comforting, relaxing for my palate, my tummy, even my heart.

This time, though, I didn’t want the ambience. I was already comfortable on my couch. My lungs, my throat, and my nose needed the warmth. Clear chicken soup from Little Chef, Swiggyed in.

The china bowl was many things; my cereal or muesli bowl when breakfast was quick, my sambar or meat curry bowl when the meal was hearty, my indulgent fruit-and-nut sundae bowl when I went overboard with dessert. By the way, that pun on ‘china’ is unintentional. I didn’t notice till after I wrote it, laughed, and kept laughing. That’s the trouble, I almost forgot my thread. Anyway...

I placed the bowl on my side table and pulled it close. The soup came in flimsy plastic boxes, hot enough I worried the plastic would melt. The lid was taped tight. When I finally pried it open, a burst of steam hit my face, carrying that familiar chicken-soupy aroma. It was welcoming, comforting, enticing, soothing, and too much for my stressed nostrils. I sneezed. The jerk sent soup splashing. Some on the side table, some straight on my chest. Boiling liquid seeped through my nylon t-shirt, clinging, scalding. I screamed. My hands let go. The container dropped onto the china bowl, and both tumbled to the floor. Soup splattered my legs, my feet, my stomach, seeping everywhere. I bolted to the shower, stripped, and stood under the cold stream. No blisters, just redness. Things below the waist were still in working order. The sting of cold water on scalded skin was brutal. I screamed again.

When I returned, the china lay in half a dozen pieces. One large, one medium, many tiny, like a shattered solar system. Soup had soaked into the carpet. The room smelt like a Chinese restaurant, but without the comfort. That was the end of that bowl. I’ll find another, but it won’t be the same. Another piece of life broken away.

*

Monday morning. Lunch was packed in my borosil lunchboxes, twins in a green-and-blue sling bag. One box with chapathis, the other with rajma. I hurried down the stairs and caught my cab. I hate being the reason someone waits; I’d rather suffer irritation myself than cause it. But today I’d made the driver wait. Maybe the day would be smoother.

It wasn’t. At the office gate, my bag slipped. Padded bag, sturdy borosil. I thought nothing of it. But when I picked it up, I heard the rattle. Not chapathis. Glass. I pictured shards glistening against the food. Lunch was sorted. There are options near the office. But glassware, chinaware? Once they break, they don’t come back.

Three things in two days. A mug, a bowl, a box. A piece of me? And maybe that’s the truth of it. Nothing is ever as sturdy as it seems. We build rituals around small objects until they vanish, leaving us a little lighter, a little lonelier. Three breakages, three absences, three quiet reminders. That even the most ordinary things, the mug that woke me, the bowl that fed me, the box that carried my meals, carry a piece of me. And when they break, some piece of me chips off too.

Someone to Pick Up the Phone

 

The phone rang just as they reached St. John’s Hospital.
Akshita.
Sumit knew why before he picked up. She was on general shift today, which meant she wanted to share the cab. She wasn’t shy about asking for what she wanted, something Sumit liked about her.

“Yeah, we’ll come,” he said. “Same spot.” No pleasantries. None needed.
To the driver, “Take the left over the flyover, we need to go to Phase 1 first. One pickup, then u-turn back.”

“Sir, I don’t have any other pickup in my schedule.”

That was the system talking. Operations. Procedure. A senior manager shown his place by a cab driver. Sumit wasn’t offended, just mildly irritated. The blood-boiling days were long behind him. He knew why SOPs existed. Most people weren’t quick enough, or compassionate enough, to make the right call under pressure. When something went wrong, the decision-maker was the first to be blamed. A documented procedure was the perfect shield. Of course, the same shield could be a brick wall when you were on the wrong side of it.

Still, Sumit liked to think his job existed because he could solve problems, not just follow checklists. Without thinking, he called the gate. They handled cab routes. “Hi, Sumit here. Akshita from Electronics City called, she wanted to ride with us, but the driver hasn’t been informed…”

“No, sir. She’s in another cab. You don’t need to pick her.”

“Ok.” He hung up. Maybe she just wanted his company. He had that effect on some juniors. They liked his jokes, his anecdotes. Especially outside of work. At work he was different. Strict. Occasionally called 'difficult' behind his back. He didn’t mind. He liked that split. Approachable off-duty, exacting on the job. The strict senior stance came naturally; the likeability factor, though, he’d cultivated carefully over the years. It gave him a sense of depth, like a movie character who wasn’t the hero but still owned an important role. Over time, the effort to keep up this image became second nature.

He called Akshita again. “They’ve put you in another cab. It’ll come.”

“No, I wasn’t told about another cab.”

Now he was hooked. This is how his 'likeability' backfired. You can’t shrug and walk away once you’ve made yourself the approachable senior.

“Okay, I’ll check and get back,” he said, keeping the irritation out of his voice. Being liked was exhausting. Back to the gate. “Hi, it’s Sumit again. She says no one’s told her about this cab.”

“Sir, who gave her your number? She’s supposed to be in second shift.”

“Oh. Right. Never mind.”

Call to Akshita, round three. “You’re in second shift.”

“No,” she said, stubborn as ever. “Vinay called me early this morning and told me to come now.”

Vinay did that often, move fast, trusting the rest of the system to catch up. Most days it worked. Today, it hadn’t. So it wasn’t mischief on her part. It was Vinay, doing his last-minute juggling act. Production schedules sometimes got twisted for sales priorities, or because some VIP wanted a line cleared. Sumit normally liked that, the whole chain flexing on the fly. Kept things alive. But this morning Vinay had dropped the ball. If you wanted Akshita in early, you ought have arranged the cab. Simple.

Maybe Vinay forgot she’s still far down the ladder, too far to object. On contract. No company cab unless someone raises an explicit request. Maybe, Sumit thought charitably, Vinay just didn’t see Akshita as helpless. And that was a trait Sumit liked to nourish in himself, finding virtue before fault.

But none of that changed the fact, right now, Akshita had no ride. If Vinay called the gate fast enough, maybe she could still catch them. Sumit kept an eye on the turn-off to Phase 1, where she’d be waiting under the lamp post by the culvert.

No call came. Too many systems, too many gates for too little freedom. Even empathy had to queue up behind process.

They passed the turn. No return. Sumit leaned back, resigned. When they finally cleared the toll gates, he called her again.

“Vinay said he couldn’t arrange me a cab. I’m coming by bus.”

She hung up, just like that. No waiting for his reply. She must have felt let down. Trusted a senior manager to fix it, and he hadn’t done a damn thing. Unhelpful. Unsympathetic.

Vinay shouldn’t have left her hanging like that. And she shouldn’t have just accepted it. Sumit almost called her back, but stopped himself. He wasn’t going to play union leader. Besides, if she didn’t come now, she’d have to work the second shift anyway.

But it was Saturday. Only Sumit and his unlucky fellow members of the blue-collared tribe were stuck working today. The rest of the city had begun their weekend last night. Akshita might have been trying to save what she could, do the general shift, grab the last few hours of Saturday evening for herself. The second shift would chew into Sunday as well. Let her have her time. Let her take the bus.

Capitalism wins, yet again.

Sumit felt wrung out. Failed. Miserable. He thought of Akshita, and how she didn’t belong in this mess in the first place.

Lovely Technical Training Facility. LTTF. Cheeky name, long history. They’d been training young men and women from the less-developed districts of Kerala, Karnataka, even Odisha, for decades. Ask around and you’d think they were a government body, some noble service outfit. They weren’t. They were private. For-profit. Very profitable.

In the early days, maybe they had a heart. Now, they were a recruitment arm for Bangalore’s big factories. A middleman with a diploma machine. They scouted remote towns for boys and girls who didn’t know the world had more to offer. Bright kids, but green. Mouldable. That was their strength and their curse.

The pitch was irresistible: live in the city, learn a trade, get a diploma. Earn while you learn. Work inside a real MNC factory. Hands-on experience, minimal classrooms, uniform provided. Tuition? Free. Just pay for the hostel. And if you can find cheaper lodging, even better. Food? The company canteen had that too covered, at least during work hours.

Sumit could almost admire the con. The MNC got to feel charitable and secure cheap labour. No permanent rolls, no benefits. The trainees stayed three years, then rotated out. LTTF kept the cash flowing without even doing the training themselves. They left that to the companies, and then stamped a certificate at the end. In reality, the 'learning' part was a joke. Maybe 120 classroom days in three years. The rest was shopfloor slog. Low-end, repetitive work that barely matched the degree title. If the company absorbed you at the end, you were lucky. If not, you left with no savings, no broad skills, and just enough awareness to know you’d been used.

Akshita was smart. Almost finished her BBA. Yes, she still had an arrear in one paper, the dull business law, but that wasn’t damning. She could wrap it up next semester. And yet, here she was, trapped on the lowest rung of the ladder, because someone gave her the wrong advice at the wrong time. It was the same old story, one part bad luck, one part bad advice, the rest pure economics.

Sumit had tried to help. He’d reached out to Divya, an old childhood friend who had built two factories from scratch. He admired her, almost worshipped her for what she’d achieved. She lived in a different altitude now, the kind of air Sumit could only visit, never breathe. If she could take Akshita in, the girl might get a break.

The first attempt had failed. Divya wasn’t hiring then. It had been months since. Maybe things had changed.

It felt dicey to ask again, close to pestering, but the morning’s events had got under his skin. Sumit was more sensitive than he cared to admit. He would risk the shame. Childhood friends were supposed to have that licence. No ego, no formalities. The truth was, Divya never needed anything from him. He couldn’t offer her a damn thing. She was too far ahead, too far above. That didn’t hurt, he was proud of her, but it did put a wall between them.
Still, he texted:
Hey, remember that resume I sent you a few months back? Just knocking again. Any luck this time?

Ten minutes later, at his desk, Sumit saw Divya's reply:
Hi Sumit, good morning. Send me that resume once again, will you?

Maybe there was still hope. He opened his mail. The day’s grind could wait a few more minutes. Outside, the factory yard was already clattering into motion. Inside, Sumit let the hum carry him. Just long enough to believe the morning hadn’t gone to waste. Hope, after all, didn’t need an SOP. It just needed someone to pick up the phone. Somewhere, Akshita was on a bus, inching her way toward the same factory gates. One morning, two rides and two very different chances at arriving where you wanted to be.

When Winds Echo in the Rain...

“I knew it was ordained that I should never marry an equal. So, I married shame. It is my shame that has kept me alive. My knowing that I am truly not…”

- Sarah Woodruff, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)

So I’m back from office.

A particularly inconsequential day. One of those that underline your irrelevance in the grand scheme of things. Not tragic, not eventful, just... grey. You know the kind. The sort that makes you wonder if anyone would notice if you quietly folded into the wallpaper.

Usually, I’d just hit the bottle. Let the fog roll in. Drift away.

But not tonight.

Tonight I didn’t want to drift. I didn’t want fog. I wanted clarity, of a specific kind. The kind that hurts a little. The kind that touches a nerve you’ve long made peace with ignoring.

Some aches, when you get over them, leave behind nothing but a vacuum.

And sometimes, that vacuum is far more terrifying than the ache itself.

Wife was out somewhere. Party, friends, I didn’t ask. Kid was out too, finished with exams, celebrating the sweet freedom of teenage evenings.

So, I was alone.

Amazon Prime was doing its usual pushy recommendations, and up popped The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Meryl Streep on the poster. I hadn’t read the book. Knew next to nothing about the movie. But the name had that echo, the kind that tells you it might hurt just right.

I hit play.

I didn’t expect it to take me right back to Clara.

To Thoovanathumbikal.

To the rain. The music. The ache.

There’s something eerily parallel about The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Thoovanathumbikal, though they emerge from different worlds. One’s a postmodern British drama wrapped in Victorian restraint. The other, a lush Malayalam film soaked in rain, longing, and haunting silence.

But at their heart, both stories circle the same storm;

A man meets a woman he cannot quite understand.

And never quite gets over.

Clara and Sarah. Two women, one storm.

Clara, the elusive escort with a name you dare not forget.

Sarah, the 'fallen woman' who walks the windblown coast like a ghost haunting her own choices.

They are both mysterious, and yet not mystical. Both tragic, but never seeking sympathy. The kind of woman men remember more than they ever possess. Neither of them fits into the polite boxes society offers. And that refusal to be understood? That is precisely what makes them unforgettable.

Both Jayakrishnan and Charles begin as men of their world. Men who believe they understand love, women, consequences. But then comes Clara. Then comes Sarah. And everything shifts. Both men meet women who can’t be contained.

Jayakrishnan, with his carefully curated double life, is dismantled not by scandal, but by sincerity.

Charles, the man of science, progress, and Victorian decency, finds himself chasing an irrational ache across England.

They don’t save these women.

They don’t even understand them.

But they’re changed. Bent. Unmoored.

And isn’t that what love sometimes is?

Not an arrival. But a fracture.

Not a story of togetherness, but of the scar it leaves behind.

In Thoovanathumbikal, the rain doesn’t just fall.

It announces Clara.

It clings to Jayakrishnan like a perfume of regret.

It seeps into the music, the memory, the mood.

In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, it’s the wind, the cliff, the sea spray.

Nature doesn’t offer comfort. It offers contrast. An elemental force against which human frailty looks small, exposed.

Both stories know this;

Sometimes, it’s not about love fulfilled.

It’s about love remembered.

And how it ruins you, gently.

I didn’t expect to feel this much.

Didn’t expect a British film to bring me back to a Malayalam classic.

Didn’t expect Clara to show up in Lyme, through Sarah’s silhouette.

Didn’t expect the rain at the end.

But it did rain.

And I did feel seen, oddly enough, by two women who existed in two languages I speak, sometimes simultaneously, their cadences overlapping like shared memories of rain and wind that never quite leave, echoing each other across the ache. That night, on my couch, nursing a dry throat and a full ache.

I wasn’t drifting anymore.

I was anchored. In longing.

"Evidunno vannu engoto poya oru penkutti. Njangal thammil evideyo vachu bandhikkapettavaranannu enikku verute thonuka... eto janmathil..."

- Jayakrishnan, Thoovanathumbikal (1987)

Five Pages Apart

She’d been away on a short work trip. Two days, maybe less. But the office had felt hollow without her. No light laugh drifting over the cubicle wall. No gentle footsteps. The place had all the charm of an unplugged fan.

On day two, I caved. Found some half-baked reason to message her.
She replied hours later. Made sense, she was on a client visit. Probably swamped. Besides, it’s not like we’re close. Far from it. Across nearly twenty years being colleagues, we wouldn’t even scrape together five full pages of conversation. And I’m counting the work emails. That’s the distance.

And yet.

She’s something. A presence. A light. A soft glimmer. A strange warmth I look forward to in the dull corridors of office life. Not because there’s a story waiting to happen, there isn’t. Nothing’s going to happen, and I’m not hoping it ever will. Not because there’s anything to be pursued. That path isn’t for walking. Not by me. Not now. But just knowing that such a path exists, somewhere out there in theory, holds a quiet kind of comfort. The kind you don’t question too closely. A warm lie I let myself keep.
But that’s not really the point.

She was back today.
She pinged me about some pending task.
I brushed it aside. Texted a teasing line instead;
So, what did you get me?

She laughed.
That laugh... it did something to the room. That alone felt like a win.

But then she said it.
Something casual. Simple. Offhand.
Didn’t even think of bringing anything.

That’s all. Just that.
Didn’t cross her mind.
That landed harder than it should have.
And something in me cracked.
It broke me. Shattered me, actually.

Not because I expected a gift. Of course not. Even in my most delusional moments, I wouldn’t have dreamed that. Not even because she forgot me while she was away. Why would she remember me? Never expected to occupy that much space in her day. That part never did hurt. That’s not the wound.

But the way she said it, light, casual, utterly unthinking. That’s what undid me. Like I’d never existed in that little span of time, not in any space of hers. Like I don’t live anywhere in her mind. Because in that moment, the truth was unmistakable. In the vast landscape of her thoughts, I don’t even register. And that stung. Not because I matter. But because I clearly, absolutely don’t.

That theoretical road I sometimes glanced toward, that road I never meant to walk? It wasn’t just closed. It'd vanished. No signage now, not even a mirage. Just empty air.

And that’s how it ends. That’s it.
No drama. No headlines. No great tragedy.
Just a crumbly little truth, collapsing quietly in a corner of the day.
Just a flicker extinguished. One more quiet reminder, that some of us are simply background noise.

Nothing Changed. And That Changes Everything.

 

It’s always this woman or that, isn’t it?

Not because I’m any kind of womaniser. Far from it. But as with all men, women remain the greatest of mysteries. And I do like a good puzzle. Especially when nothing is at stake.

We met online. I don’t remember where or when exactly. Maybe a flirtatious thread on Twitter (back when it was still Twitter), or a comments section somewhere I’ve long forgotten. We chatted, debated, agreed, disagreed. I won a few. Lost many. Over time, I gained more insight from her than I could return. Most of what she said wasn’t particularly new. Familiar laments from the middle-aged, middle-class trenches. But then, occasionally, something would shift. And suddenly we were somewhere else entirely.

Like when she spoke of parenting. Not in the performative, Pinterest-board sense, but how one can nurture a child’s humane core without projecting personal dreams onto their future. And later, even deeper thoughts. On how to raise emotionally healthy kids with a grounded, respectful sense of sexuality. Exotic stuff, really. Stuff I didn’t know I needed to hear.

We shared things. Some dark. Some tender. That fragile shield of online anonymity made it easier to open up. With her, there was no performance. No pause to search for clever metaphors, no reaching for a flourish. Just thought and feeling. I was free. Relaxed. Slightly naked, perhaps. But never ashamed. Because she never made me conscious of my own flaws. That’s rare. That’s precious. That’s unfamiliar in the best kind of way.

We were born a few days apart, which made the intimacy easier. Or justifiable. Maybe.

Soon, the conversations drifted toward fantasies. And yes, it started to feel like a kind of infidelity. But it was only online. Fleeting. Inconsequential.

Until she said she was coming.

That changed everything.

So far, she’d only been a window on a touchscreen. A soft glow, rich with emotion and meaning, but ultimately, 2D. Now? Now there was movement. Now it could go anywhere.

Saturday night. Bangalore was in full swing. The beat, the buzz, the curated chaos of a city pretending it doesn’t care. I used to be part of that race, until I realised (or was made to realise, mercilessly) that the winner still ends up a rat. I thought I’d bowed out for good. And yet, here I was again. No plan. Just that stupid, hopeful flutter.

Xero Degrees wasn’t crowded. We found a nook. Cozy, private. She bubbled. Fizzed. Sizzled. I melted. Into her eyes, her voice, her mind. Her story came in glimpses. Whatever she felt like sharing with a man she thought was mildly interesting.

And what a story it was. Not glamorous. Not rags to riches. But real. Full of pain, little melodrama, and a quiet resilience that refused to go away. No superhero narrative here. Just an honest woman who kept falling and getting up, weaker maybe, but wiser. Her strength wasn’t in the show of it. But in the knowing. In the hard-earned understanding of how fragile and raw the human mind truly is.

It unnerved me.

In front of her, I was bare. Just a man. With all the usual manly failings. And yet, she didn’t flinch. She saw through everything and still stayed. And somehow, she chose to notice the little good that remained in me, the bits I didn’t know were still there. How kind of her. How powerful.

I gave in to that smile. Folded myself into her arms. She held me, for as long as she could.

Then we parted.

It ended abruptly. The kitchen was closing. The clock reminded us what world we lived in. Nobody escapes time.

So it ended.

Nothing changed.

She’s still strong. Only stronger.
And I’m still broken. More broken than ever.

The Race That Wasn’t

 June 6 | Appolo 10K Run, Bangalore

Some Sundays humble you more than others.

For months, my son and I had been looking forward to the Appolo 10K run. A father-son race day, booked well in advance. He’d do the 5K. I’d huff and puff through the 10K. Maybe both of us would come home with medals, but even without them, we were in this together. That was the real win.

Except, of course, plans rarely respect sentiment.

Velokofi, the cycling club I hold dear, was celebrating their 5th anniversary with a ride up Nandi Hills. June 6th. Same day. I was torn. Like a man choosing between two lovers. One, a 10K run on NICE. The other, Nandi, the hill that gives and takes in equal measure.

Honestly, I was leaning ride-ward. Velokofi has given me too much to ignore. The 10K run, more a personal milestone. But not for kid. For him, this was the race. He had form, he had past glory. Podium at Kaveri Trail, even when underage. And more importantly, he had something I couldn’t shake: belief.

Thankfully, the CM’s entourage came to my rescue. Nandi got shut down for the week. (Cyclists and secret lovers grumbled, but I quietly thanked political unpredictability for this rare gift of clarity.) So, back to the run it was.

We woke up at a time most would mistake for last night. Long drive to the venue. Halfway there, the boy went quiet. Then, a whimper of guilt: "I forgot my Garmin."

The grief was real. A runner without a Garmin is like a singer without a mic.
You can still perform, but who will believe you did?

“Let it go,” I said. “We’ll Insta it. NEB’s got photographers. Pro pics, no pixel missed.”

His run was after mine, so he waited. No complaints, no fidgeting. Just quietly rooting for me. And me? I felt worse for it. He deserved better. But this, too, is a runner’s rite. Waiting, stretching, watching others first. It's how we grow, not just strong but patient.

We warmed up together. He corrected my stretches, explained muscle intent with more clarity than YouTube ever managed. I was half-impressed, half-humbled. This boy had grown into a coach while I blinked.

Then came my race. Not my best. I wanted a sub-50. I got 50:31. Close, but not story-worthy.

His turn. I cheered across the barricade. He didn’t hear. MC, drums, crowd.
His eyes were laser-focused. I’ve seen that look before. He was already running, even before the horn.

I waited at the finish line. He came through, 8th overall. The youngest in the top ten by far. Surely podium for his category.

But the announcements dragged. 10K awards, age brackets, drummers, sponsors. The sun climbed. Our hope simmered. And then it happened... 
They skipped his name.

It stung. But we took it well. That’s racing. Sometimes the clock loves you. Sometimes it ignores you. There’s always a next time.

We drove back quietly. Rehydrated, refueled. Sunday slipped into lazy TV and snacks. Until late evening, when I remembered, MySamay.
Time to harvest our race-day pictures for Insta glory.

I looked up his bib number. Typed it in.

No result.

Odd.

“Da, what’s your bib number?” I called out.

He rustled through his files. (Yes, we file bibs. Athletic CV, if you will.)

Still nothing.

DNS.

Did Not Start.

Wait, what?

No photos. No timing. No record. Just... nothing.

And then... Clarity, cruel and clean...
He had worn the wrong bib.

A bib from an old race. One he didn’t even attend. NEB Police Run, months ago. The kit had been lying around. He must’ve picked it up in the early-morning daze. I had woken him up too soon. Too eager. Too proud.

And now, this brilliant 5K run, swift, sharp, podium-worthy remains unrecorded.
Not on Garmin. Not on NEB. Not on Strava. Not even on their cameras. Like it never happened.

And yes, in my knee-jerk despair, I had already submitted a scathing NEB feedback form. One-star fury, dripping with misplaced blame. I was halfway through a longer email, ready with photo evidence and righteous rage, when it all unraveled.

I wanted to throw the laptop.

What do you do with a race that didn’t happen?

You grieve.

You rage.

You laugh. (Eventually, hopefully)

Mostly, you ache.

He had run his heart out. And now that memory was ours alone. No medal. No time. Just that moment,... Him, crossing the finish line, breathing hard, looking up, scanning for my face.

I am proud of him. More than words will ever do justice. But how do you express pride in something the world will never see?

You write it.

You remember it.

You hope he remembers the lesson harder than the loss. Attention matters. Discipline matters. Even in the small things. Especially in the small things.

This wasn’t a tragedy. But it was a heartbreak. A small one, with a long echo.

And somewhere, deep in the quiet after, I whispered what I couldn’t shout at the starting line:

You ran well, my boy. You made it count. Even if the world never clapped, I saw you. And I’ll never forget.

And just like that, a good run vanished...
not lost to speed, but to a slip of a bib.
No medal. No time.
Just memory.
Heavy with pride.
And a little too much ache to carry lightly.

Shanku
(a father still clapping, long after the applause has faded)