I bought two books on Jun 27, using a Champaca gift voucher that was about to expire. I didn’t need the books, but it was …there. So I ordered “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger and “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport. Now, the latter, I was really looking forward to because it’s ongoing and eventual goal to successfully subscribe to and practice the “philosophies” of digital minimalism - a topic highly relevant today and definitely more so, tomorrow. ...
I’ve been trying to develop certain habits for the longest time. One of them is better consistency in writing. On this website alone, this is my 86th post, but I’ve had the site for a little less than 6 years now. And for the last few years, every now and then I’ve had streaks of 1-article-per-month. But at that rate, it’s not quite a habit. Today I was listening to this podcast interaction between Tim Ferriss and the author of Atomic Habits, James Clear and while most of the content was familiar to me the way non-fiction dialogue is, this quote - “Reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule " struck me as extremely effective in conveying that which has been said a million other ways before - “Progress over perfection”, “Don’t break the chain” etc. ...
I sat down on the pavement facing the sunset and opened up the Parle-G packet. There must have been others who followed the crackling opening of the cover with the subsequent sating of his hunger , for he bounded up to me from nowhere at the sound. Unexpected but welcome, the visitor padded the ground next to my feet and looked in turn at me and the yellow cover in my hand. I held one of the biscuits out in front of him and he bit at it from my hand pausing right at the intersection between my fingers and the biscuit. He waited eagerly and yet patiently, while I had one as well. ...
I don’t know anything about ants On my kitchen platform sits a steel plate. This is not the permanent position of said plate. It has been placed there only temporarily and at the time was for the purposes of holding something that will be described in the very next para. The steel plate, last night, was filled with some quantity of water, perhaps to the 75% mark and squarely in the center of the circular plate sat a plastic container which housed, as of that moment, 2 Gulab Jamuns. ...
A post on a book club group on Facebook about the book “Bhagavad Gita As it Is” triggered this memory and I wanted to “pen” it down while I still remembered it - I don’t care much for religious scriptures anymore except for the mythological offerings that are still very interesting (pardon the harsh tone and read on 😅 ) but I have one memory associated with this book that stands out. We had a quiz contest in school that I was a part of (because my teacher no doubt thought - “This guy is good in Spoken English. Must be good at interpreting scriptures as well.”) . Anyway, I turned out to be surprisingly decently smart about it and learnt enough for the quiz and our team made it to the semi finals (?) where we got weeded out but were sitting in the audience like sheep on a farm looking at birds flying in the sky. 😕 ...
Today I learnt that there’s this term called Bildungsroman . I tripped upon it while I was pondering the commonalities between Harry Potter and Naruto , about how both of them were underdogs, cursed at birth - one with a horcrux, and the other with a curse-mark, grew up effectively with no one to love them till they were of a certain age but are both intended for great things and grow into their respective savior roles. The genre itself doesn’t require the main character to be a “hero”, but the stories do intend to show the psychological and moral growth of said character. ...
Recently at the theater, I accidentally stood up in attention for the Vicco Vajradanti ad expecting the National Anthem in the sequence. To my surprise there was another dude who’d also stood up. He was looking around the theater in embarrassment. Our eyes met. I instinctively and hastily waved at him, breaking my fixed posture. In that split second, he also understood and waved back and even grinned for good measure. I gestured wildly to mock-indicate that I’d catch up with him later. He understood and gestured appropriately. As I resumed my seat, I wondered how wonderfully and smoothly that whole episode had gone. I shook out of my reverie to see a bunch of people glaring at me for remaining in my seat. ...
The fan hung lazily and looked at the other occupants of the room - A lamp, a table, a chair and a human. The human seemed lost in thought. And he didn’t seem like he would be getting off the chair anytime soon. Which meant the fan wouldn’t have to move anytime soon either. That was a relief. It sighed noiselessly. As its eyes drifted from one wing to another looking at through its limited, yet relatively broad perspectives, it got a different angled view of the room everytime. It wondered what the human was thinking about. He didn’t seem to do much at all. He always sat there for most of the day, except to get up and look through a slit in the door and yell at a passerby (what what could be made out) - the fan had learnt a lot of what we humans take for granted, purely by observing and listening over the time it had hung around in the room since its time of installation. Two years . Had it only been that long? It had spun so much, that it felt a bit more woozy everytime. And maybe it was imagining things but it seemed to be descending a bit more of late. Oh well. The mind, even a metallic one can play tricks on you if you’re as dizzy as you were after tens of minutes of spinning. It jerked out of its reverie as the man got up from his chair. “Oh boy. Here we go again”, it thought to itself. He walked up to the only switch on the wall and turned it on. Slowly, the fan began to spin. 30 rpm….60 rpm…130 rpm…200 rpm..All the way upto its maximum set 350 rpm. The fan felt breathless at this point. It wasn’t a new sensation, but this time, it felt a bit more breathless than usual. It gave in and tried to become one with the spin. But something…something was wrong. The stem gave way and jerked away from the ceiling, tipping to one side first and within the fan could realize it, the cable connecting it to the ceiling Snapped and it spun at an angle, into the air, in an arc and towards the unsuspecting man. The fan closed its eyes as it unintentionally sliced the man’s head clean in two and crashed into the wall opposite his seat just above the table. It tried to open its eyes…No..eye..The other eye seemed to be missing. And it realized that it had no sensation anywhere else. But it didn’t matter. The spinning had stopped. ...
A friend recently asked me what he should use if his usecase is that he just wants to pen down some thoughts on the Internet. I thought I’d list all the different ways I host my different websites that I have for different usecases. Maybe one of these will help someone else stumbling across this page as well - I initially started off with Static Site Generators and later adopted Medium, Wordpress and Substack over time. I’ve abandoned Medium now. ...
Blue Leafy flew…guided by the breeze that propelled him over the heads of the people that constituted the busy road. He flew even higher and further for a few seconds as he reached the chimney of the restaurant at the end of the road, then he descended..softly landing at the base of what he saw was the arc of a three-dimensional rubber surface. “This is it”, he thought, “This is how it all ends.”. ...