2025

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It is hard to write anything about a year when you have lost your father. Everything else pales into insignificance. But in keeping with the attitude of that very same father, 2025 was a year where a lot of other thoughts and experiences ought to be recalled.

One such was the parallels between Jim Corbett's village of Choti Haldwani and the Korean tourist destination of Jeju Island. Having visited both within a few weeks of each other, it was soothing to observe rural life continuing as of old only a few hundred feet from tourist frenzy. In the case of Choti Haldwani, there was also the matter of industrial forestry being ordered to a halt almost 200 years ago from today in a realization well before its time.

The series of visits to the Western Ghats in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu were a welcome reminder that the Himalayas are not the only claimants to mountain splendour. Remote, lush and dripping with life, the ancient mountains of the south warrant further attention. The southern part of India as a whole offers a alternative way of looking at India and that alone is reason enough to delve into details.

The multiple groups of foreign trainees and the monumental task of introducing them to India within the space of a few weeks was a task that I took immense joy in. As I told them, I know a lot about India but what I don't know is far far far greater. It was fulfilling to see them slowly grasp the complexities and impossibilities that made our country special and to also learn how our interests - reading, culture and food - often overlapped.

Health deteriorations and demises in the senior generation were difficult to accept but had to be. The sudden departure of a similarly aged colleague was even more so. His enthusiasm for nature and the accidental encounters in our neighbourhood forests were a part of many daily lives, including mine, and the crude cruel stop to his journey made everyone look for reasons and fail.

On a larger front, the casual hate, violence and other forms of stupidity that were provoked with the Pahalgam terror murders and then proceeded to infect society at large with cute neighbourhood uncles calling for 'Gaza'ing Pakistan and the forceful injection of politics into cricket was also a personal inflection point. What we become is largely driven by what we find pleasure in. If violence is our common love, then there might be not too much difference between us and them. In that department, all of us need to do better.

In Plain Sight

13th November 2024, Kolkata

At a busy intersection in Kolkata, shorn of any elements of nature, this billboard lorded over the teeming masses. The green forests, the fresh air and the clean water promised could only be visualized but not experienced. To use such imagery for a product which has established health risks for users and contributes significantly to the dirtiness of our urban surroundings doubled and tripled the irony. All the more reason for busybees of the city to pause and reflect. Who are you trying to please by winning your race and are those egging you on doing so with the right intentions?

Discarded

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Every new social platform that becomes the talk of town automatically sparks a curiosity in me. I do give it a whirl only to find out that it was not my type in the first place. But that does not stop me for trying the next talked about thing. It was on a wave of such hype, that Discord first came to me and so I ventured forth. The dark UI overlaid with friendly looking characters seemed like a fun place but only for people who knew where to go adding to its charm and living up to its name as some sort of underground gathering. Unfortunately for me, I was then and continue to be overwhelmed by the infinite number of side-tabs, competing conversations and a fountain of activities that I find myself incompetent to handle. Usually I am able to invoke the 'sour grapes' mentality and let inaccessible things be but in this one instance, I keep hoping against hope that I'll figure out a hack to experience the place as committed Discord-ers do. Unlike all of the others which I had so far discarded, here was a platform that discarded me. Have been unable to make any gains in this regard for quite some time now but hey, 2026 is a new horizon.

Submerge

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Other artforms engage too but not in so discreet a manner. Drama, dance, music, movies, art and even graphic novels have a physical presence external to you which make them identifiable as such but words that you are currently reading are suitably undercover. The world which they have encased you in is completely invisible to everyone else and the mental universe you are inhabiting is yours alone. In some ways, it is a waterbody below whose surface you are enthusiastically deep diving in but up above, there are no tell-tale signs.

Quirk

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The laptop charger which will charge only at the perfect amount of connection, not too tight, not too loose. The air cooler that will tumble over at the slightest touch of a stranger but which I have managed to keep stable to keep me company in peak summer. The induction cooking stove that will show an error message if I set the wattage at 1000 W but works perfectly at 800 W or 1200 W. The primary advantage of a machine is said to be that it works without complaints but even factory set-ups have ways of turning out tiny little flaws that are the difference between frustration and completion of desired tasks. Much like people, these machines too needed a gentle hand and patient enquiry to deliver. Like any good manager, I am proud of myself and my team. Hiring and firing is for cop-outs.

Unknot

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As I was discussing with a schoolfriend also in his late 30s/early 40s, our bodies were getting to the stage of how our old PCs were in the early 2000s. Back in the day, PCs running Windows would start running slower with age taking increasingly longer to start up as to shut down. There was also a certain wait time before the older machine warmed up to reach peak performance and this tendency was becoming strangely true of our bodies too. In the years before, our muscles and joints were motion ready and able to display peak performance from the get-go on cricket fields and bicycle rides. Now in the course of a long morning walk, it takes a good 2-3 km of progress before with a burp, certain systems of the physical realm indicated that they were use-ready. The high intensity of youth had once required us to set aside time to pro-actively unwind. We had now reached a stage carrying so much legacy data that we were required to give ourselves time just to unknot.

Stimulants

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In my opinion, it is a cartel. The world woke up and worked just fine for millennia without needing a caffeine infusion. But somewhere along the way, mass production was not leading to mass consumption. So the pushing began and before long, became self-propelled. In drawing rooms around the world, sombre first conferences of the day are held to find an excuse for a cuppa of choice stimulants. Businesses with a keen eye on the dependencies chose to push it further into a kaleidoscope of flavours for all tastes, minor twists developing major markets. Someone somewhere first said "I need my [chai/coffee] to get started". Whether that person was actually in need of a pick-me-up or was delaying getting to work we will never know but the sentiments were carried forward with enthusiasm.