Priya (my wife) and I are on a one year trip around India. We are calling the trip India 360, in which we are trying to cover as much of the country as we can in a year. The trip is from April 2017 to May 2018. While we have been enjoying ourselves and carrying on with the trip as if it were our regular day-to-day life, the reaction that we get from people who learn about our trip varies from mild concern to absolute shock. Trust me, most people are happy with what we are doing, but then….! Continue reading Travelling for a year: not as radical as it sounds
Category: Anecdotes
If I fail..
A friendly conversation,
B: ‘Exam is in a week, why don’t you put more efforts into study. You know this exam is difficult is to crack’
A: ‘Well, that’s exactly why. It’s difficult to crack and I probably won’t. If I put in as much efforts as you do, I’d feel terrible about having failed. Now that I’m cool about it, I wouldn’t feel as bad when I fail’
B: hmmm…
What losing my smartphone in the Himalayas taught me
My wife, Priya, and I were on a 3-month trip in the Himalayas. 25 days into the trip, I lost my smartphone. I carelessly left it behind on a bus and realised the folly only an hour later in our hotel room. The word ‘smartphone’ seems like just one object. However, it is much more. It was my my phone, our Internet connection, our reference book, our compass, etc. We had 65 days to go until we would be back to Mumbai, where I could get a duplicate SIM card. SIM cards are only replaced in a phone number’s home zone. I could have got a new smartphone and used it without the SIM, for other purposes like camera. But it didn’t make monetary sense to buy a smartphone from a showroom in Uttarakhand, when an Internet purchase can be much cheaper. Being on a backpacking trip and staying in different lodges every two or three days, I couldn’t even furnish a postal delivery address. So I decided not to buy a new phone until reaching Mumbai. In this post, I will narrate my experience of life without a smartphone for a little more than 2 months. Continue reading What losing my smartphone in the Himalayas taught me
My tryst with Astrology
Priya, my wife, often talks about a sparsely, but meticulously practised branch of astrology named ‘Naadi Josiyam’ (Naadi Astrology), practiced in Tamil Nadu. She and her mother had found peace in the past after visiting and consulting a genuine practictioner of Naadi astrology. Astrology is complicated science. Much of what we know about astrology is fake and hearsay. In reality, it takes a really knowledgeable and skilled practitioner to make reasonably good predictions. Most of these predictions really materialise. Still, I don’t believe in astrology. But after Priya told me multiple stories about Naadi Josiyam, I wanted the practice tried on me. I wanted to keep an open mind and look at the process as a science. Continue reading My tryst with Astrology
How the world (mis)understands agnostics
You probably know about two types of people based on their faith in God. First, there are believers in God. They may also follow a certain religion. Let’s simply call them Believers in this post. Next, there is a group of people who are certain that there is no God. They don’t believe in religion, don’t like any practices that are religious and do not believe in anything written in the religious books, epics and mythologies. These people are atheists.
I don’t belong to either category. Because, there is a third group of people who don’t subscribe to either school of thought. They just don’t care. These are the agnostics. An agnostic person’s philosophy is, “I don’t know if there is God… and I don’t care. I am glad that belief helps person A. But it doesn’t drive me. But unlike the atheist person B, I don’t believe that faith is blind and that the earth is better off without it. I just look the other way!”. Continue reading How the world (mis)understands agnostics