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Right of Passage - How I wound up as something of a car enthusiast!
I grew up in Mumbai with nary a want or thought for a car. A senior of mine from college sent me a picture of him with his car in the US. And the image stuck. In the US, the most remarkable thing you see are the parking lots — stretching out and occu... Read more
How to not care about what other people think
It is an advice given often — to not care about what other people think. It cannot mean that you disregard other opinions completely. Not caring is to care, and then to let it rest. We have to agree to disagree, and accept with empathy that the beare... Read more
Serendipitous Encounters
By sheer chance, I discovered the guitarist, Uli Jon Roth. To me, he was a potent musical force who could play the best guitar solos ever! But no one had heard of Roth and the Internet wasn't yet a thing. So it all lent an incredible air of mystery t... Read more
The Value of a PhD: Waste of Time or Way of Life
What is the role of a PhD in society and what of the lack of a significant salary premium over a lower degree? But being an academic is a way of life. An academic is one who is some where between a cynic and a romantic, as skeptical in her rigour to ... Read more
The Ambivalence of Loneliness
As an infant baby, it is inconceivable that we can be left alone. Yet we want solitude from strangers. We don’t want to be lonely, but we want to be left alone. This ambivalence continues all the way into adulthood. Continuous loneliness depletes us,... Read more
Want to be a better reader? Start writing!
By reading we implicitly bestow a measure of trust in the writer. Maybe our trust-meter is obsolete. Writing being mightier than a weapon is a notion that humankind has known right from when writing became a thing. And the Internet has amplified the ... Read more
Lessons from a Sabbatical
A sabbatical is work and it requires a workspace, an individual’s cocoon. A working schedule is a way to focus on work rather than daydream about how your sabbatical has gone so far. All work and no play can be quite dull and there’s nothing quite li... Read more
Lego Assembly at Happy 5th!
We got the idea of assembling Lego bricks as one of the activities in Laasya's birthday party, We decided we would make it a scripted building activity with instructions. Based on what we had, we decided to make a Lego railway track system and many s... Read more
Why we walk
Walking is fundamental to humans. When we walk, the scenery and the soundscape change, and yet at a gentle enough pace that lets us take it all in. We walk to clear our head — to satisfy the need for a sense of motion, and also as a bonafide social a... Read more
How I came to take a Sabbatical
I remember the day I quit my job to take a sabbatical. I did enjoy working at my last workplace. Yet, I felt like a spectator rather than on the field, for anything other than work. A vacation is a traditional remedy for such a malady. So I went on v... Read more