I didn’t know her personally, yet I felt an unexpected sense of loss. It surprised me. It had been a long time since I'd felt genuinely sad about someone I'd never met. Perhaps it wasn’t the loss of a great theatre director that affected me. It felt like the loss of someone who had spent a lifetime understanding people. That kind of person feels increasingly rare.

Vikram Gokhale, Naseeruddin Shah and Nana Patekar are some of my favourite actors. It was through their interviews that I first learnt about Vijaya Mehta. They never spoke of her as a legend. She was simply Bai. The affection in their voices was unmistakable. When the people you admire admire someone else that deeply, curiosity becomes inevitable. That’s how I found myself going down the rabbit hole of her interviews.

I realised I wasn’t really watching interviews about theatre anymore. I was listening to someone who had spent a lifetime paying attention. People like her seldom speak only about their craft. Somewhere between theatre and life, the two become impossible to separate.

One interview, in particular, stayed with me. She said,

“I have learnt that makeup is something that hides an actor. It is supposed to be used to reveal the character.”

I must have replayed that part three or four times.

It was just that morning, I had received a delivery of a lipstick I had been eyeing for a while. Before I even tried it on, I’d already sent photographs to my closest friends. I smiled when I realised that. By the time I finally stood in front of the mirror, the lipstick had already done something far more interesting. It had connected me to people.

And standing there in front of the mirror, I caught myself wondering...

What has makeup always meant to me? I don’t wear it because I want to become someone else. I wear it because it makes me feel a little more like myself. I don’t remember when I started wearing makeup. Like most women, it probably happened gradually. A lipstick here. Kajal there. The occasional foundation for an event. Through all of it, I’ve never once looked in the mirror hoping to erase the woman looking back at me. If anything, I’ve always wanted my inner personality to come through a little more clearly.

My lipstick may not always be perfect. Sometimes it has disappeared after the first cup of coffee. Sometimes I’ve forgotten to check if it’s smudged before walking into a meeting. Oddly enough, none of that has ever shaken my confidence. My confidence was never sitting inside the lipstick. It had arrived much before the lipstick did. The lipstick simply made it visible.

That thought stayed. Like good thoughts often do, it refused to remain where it began. It wasn’t about the lipstick anymore. It became about almost everything I choose to bring into my life. A notebook. A pen. A watch. A bag. A perfume. None of them are accidental. Some things feel like home.

Which brings me back to Vijaya Mehta.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if she was never really talking about makeup at all. Maybe she was talking about truth. Theatre workshops don’t merely teach actors how to perform. They teach them to observe, to listen, to question, and in doing so, to understand themselves a little better. Every character they inhabit reveals something about the person beneath it.

Life, I think, works much the same way.

Every day gives us a new stage, a different audience, and a different role. We step into meetings, conversations, homes, and friendships, carrying different responsibilities, but hoping not to lose ourselves in any of them. Some straighten a tie. Some wear a favourite watch. Others need none of those rituals at all.

The rituals change. The intention doesn’t.

That’s why the mirror has never really asked us who we want to become. It only asks whether we’re ready to be seen.

It’s been a couple of days since that conversation, and somehow that one question has refused to leave me. I’ve replayed it in my head more times than I care to admit. Why do we? Of all the possibilities our imagination offers us when we think about intelligent life beyond Earth, why is fear almost always the first one to arrive?

The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. We’ve never met an alien. We’ve never had a conversation with one, never exchanged ideas, never shared a meal, never even conclusively established that intelligent life exists beyond our tiny planet. And yet, almost every story we tell ourselves begins with invasion, conflict and survival. Before we’ve learnt a single thing about them, we’ve already decided that we need to defend ourselves. It made me wonder whether our imagination says far more about us than it ever could about aliens.

That’s probably why Steven Spielberg’s E.T. has stayed with me for so many years. This time, what struck me wasn’t the alien. It was who reached him first. It wasn’t the scientists. It wasn’t the military. It wasn’t the adults with all their technology, instruments, and protocols. It was a child. Elliott never begins by asking whether E.T. is dangerous. His first instinct is curiosity. He asks, “Who are you?” He sees someone who is lost before he sees someone who is different. The adults, on the other hand, do what adults often do. They analyse, classify, and contain what they don’t understand. Somewhere along the journey of growing up, curiosity quietly gives way to control. Perhaps Spielberg was gently suggesting that curiosity isn’t childish at all. It may well be the purest form of intelligence we possess.

I don’t remember ever looking at the night sky as a child and wondering whether the stars were dangerous. I only remember wondering what lay beyond them. Summer vacations often ended with us lying on terraces, trying to count stars before giving up because there were simply too many. As a child, I was awestruck by TV shows like Star Trek, which invented stories about interplanetary travel, imagined worlds we would never visit, but it always made me wonder if someone, somewhere, might be looking back for us, too. Children have a remarkable relationship with uncertainty. They don’t see not knowing as a problem to be solved. They see it as an invitation to ask another question. Somewhere between growing up and growing older, that relationship changes. We slowly begin to confuse certainty with intelligence, as though admitting “I don’t know” is a sign of weakness rather than the beginning of understanding.

Of course, evolution has a perfectly good explanation for this. For thousands of years, assuming the worst kept us alive. If the bushes rustled, it was safer to imagine a predator than the wind. Our ancestors survived because they were cautious. Fear wasn’t a flaw; it was a survival strategy. Evolution optimised us to stay alive, not necessarily to understand everything around us. The world we live in today, however, asks something more of us. It asks us not just to rely on instinct, but to question it.

I see the opposite instinct every time I spend time with my nephew, Ayan.

His curiosity isn’t satisfied with the first answer. He uses it as a stepping stone to the next question. He’ll ask why something happens, then why that answer is true, and then why that happens. If my explanation doesn’t satisfy him, he’ll observe, experiment, ask someone else, or come back to the same question another day. There is no embarrassment in not knowing. There is only excitement in finding out.

Sometimes I catch myself answering him too quickly, eager to move the conversation along. Adults are busy. We mistake efficiency for wisdom. Children have no such urgency. They’ll happily spend twenty minutes trying to understand something that most of us stopped noticing years ago. They’re not collecting facts. They’re building a way of looking at the world

.Watching Ayan has made me realise that children don’t carry the burden adults often do, the burden of appearing knowledgeable. They are perfectly comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” In fact, that’s where all their adventures begin.

Perhaps that’s why my brother’s question kept growing in my head. It stopped being about aliens. It became about everything unfamiliar. New ideas. New technologies. Different cultures. Different generations. Remarkably, we sometimes struggle to understand our own children, or our parents, despite sharing a home and a lifetime. We call it the generation gap, but perhaps it’s simply the curiosity gap. Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking each other enough questions.

And yet, something extraordinary happens whenever humanity faces a shared calamity. An earthquake doesn’t recognise borders. A pandemic doesn’t distinguish between religions. A flood doesn’t care which generation you belong to. In those moments, the labels we’ve carefully built begin to dissolve, and we remember something much older than nationality, politics, or identity. We remember that we’re simply human.

Fear has an extraordinary ability to unite us. Shared suffering reminds us that we are all connected.

I wonder if curiosity could do the same.

We know so little about the universe. We’ve barely explored our own oceans. We still don’t fully understand consciousness. Most of the cosmos appears to be made up of things we can’t yet explain. Every scientific breakthrough answers one question only to reveal ten more waiting behind it. For a species with so many unanswered questions, we can be remarkably certain.

Science has never progressed because someone declared, “I already know.”

Every meaningful discovery I can think of began with someone quietly admitting,

“I don’t know.”

Those words are not an admission of ignorance. They’re an invitation. To observe a little longer. To ask another question. To listen before concluding. To change our minds when new evidence appears. There is a quiet confidence in that. Intelligence isn’t measured by how many answers we have. Maybe it’s measured by how comfortable we are saying, “I don’t know.”

If we ever do encounter another civilisation, I hope our first instinct isn’t to ask how we defend ourselves. I hope we ask the same question Elliott asked.

“Who are you?”

Perhaps that’s the question we should ask more often. Not just of aliens, should we ever meet them, but of people who think differently from us, of children whose worlds we no longer fully understand, of cultures we’ve never experienced, of technologies we instinctively fear, and of ideas that make us uncomfortable. Life may never introduce us to an alien civilisation, but it introduces us to something unfamiliar almost every day. Perhaps the greatest sign of intelligence isn’t how quickly we defend ourselves from the unknown. Perhaps it’s having the humility to admit that we don’t know enough yet, and the curiosity to stay with that uncertainty just a little longer, until fear quietly gives way to understanding.

What struck me most was how different it felt from staying connected online. No matter how many messages, calls, or memes we exchange, there is something about sharing ordinary moments that changes the texture of a relationship. Morning tea. Lazying around. Inside jokes. Conversations that continue long after dinner.

For a few days, I stopped feeling like a visitor in their lives and started feeling like I belonged in them again. The strange thing was that those few days also reminded me of the people I no longer spend time with. People who once felt just as close. Some of them still do. And that got me thinking.

Do we outgrow people, or do we simply stop investing in them?

The older I grow, the less certain I am of the answer.

Some people once occupied entire chapters of my life and now exist as occasional birthday reminders. Friends I spoke to every day who somehow became people I think about once in a while, when Google Photos throws a memory.

I went to school in Mumbai, and many of those friendships still live here with me. Yet I see some friends from Pune more often than people who are technically just a few kilometres away. Somewhere along the way, I learned that proximity and presence are not the same thing. Living in the same city does not guarantee a place in each other’s lives.

For years, I accepted the explanation that people change, priorities shift, and relationships naturally run their course. Lately, I wonder if that explanation lets me off the hook too easily.

I’ve killed a few plants in my lifetime. Not because I intended to do so, but I simply forgot to water them. Relationships feel much the same.

The friendships I have lost did not disappear dramatically. They faded through small omissions. A call I said I would do but never made. A message I meant to send. A visit I kept promising and postponing. Nothing significant enough to remember, yet somehow enough to change everything.

The older I get, the more I notice adulthood doing this to me. My time feels scarcer. My attention feels fragmented. My emotional energy feels budgeted. Without realizing it, I find myself making decisions about where I invest it. The friendships that survived in my life rarely did so because of grand gestures. More often, they survived because, as friends, we kept finding small ways to remain present.

A call. A visit. A shared meal. A message that simply said, “I thought of you.”

The older I grow, the more I realise that every meaningful relationship in my life has asked for the same thing. My time. My attention. My presence. This is most obvious with family.

As a child, life was wonderfully tax-free.

Food appeared on the table. Birthdays organized themselves. My biggest contribution to the family economy was occasionally being asked to switch off a light or bring someone a glass of water, and like every Indian kid told to study well.

Childhood was essentially a fully subsidized welfare scheme.

I don't remember becoming an adult. I only remember the responsibilities arriving. Much like the Income Tax Department, family responsibilities suddenly discovered my existence as I got better at swiping cards.

At first, the deductions were small. A phone call home regularly. A long-distance cousin’s wedding that I had to go to. Showing up for a family gathering and giving up a night out with friends. Just the basic once in a while, nothing alarming.

But then came the real adulting, with promotions and appraisals. The salary grew, and so did my indulgence in single malts and gins. Apparently, I missed the subtext that so do the tax slabs.

Before I realised how seriously I was adulting, I found myself helping with hospital visits, setting up family banking for my mother, and becoming her emergency contact. This, for my mother, who not so long ago filled out my school admission forms.

I was always looking for ways to reduce my tax burden, wiggle my way out of responsibilities that felt like deductions from my freedom. Until last year, when life decided to conduct an unexpected audit, and I lost Aai.

Her passing left behind a void that was impossible to miss. But it also revealed something I had never fully appreciated. For years, I had been living inside a web of relationships that Aai quietly maintained. The phone calls she remembered to make. The birthdays she never forgot. Through these small gestures, she nurtured the relationships. The quiet, invisible work of keeping people connected.

I inherited the returns of those investments. The problem was that I had mistaken those returns for permanence. What I did not realize was that I would one day inherit the responsibility of maintaining them. And that is where the real challenge exists. Appreciating a safety net is one thing. Becoming part of the team that builds and maintains it is something else entirely. Perhaps that is what adulthood ultimately reveals

Losing Aai taught me something I wish I had understood earlier. Relationships do not survive because people care. They survive because someone keeps showing up. Often without expecting anything in return.

Maybe that is why those few days in Pune felt so precious. They reminded me that relationships do not survive simply because they matter.

They survive because, despite busy calendars, expanding responsibilities, and increasingly complicated lives, as humans, we continue finding ways to remain present in each other’s lives. That’s a choice we have to make, to spend time, pay attention, and be present.

Perhaps we don’t outgrow people at all. We stop calling. We stop visiting. We stop showing up. And one day, we realise, we’ve grown apart.

When I was younger, I thought heroes were people who saved the world dramatically. I thought being a hero meant becoming powerful and invincible. Somewhere along the way, without realizing it, I found myself shaped by a very different kind of heroism.

Not the kind that destroys.
But the kind that protects being human.

Long before MTV came to India, I knew Michael Jackson only through sound. He existed for me as a voice first. Through cassette players, radio stations, borrowed recordings, and many a school assembly.

And then MTV arrived.

Suddenly, the voice had movement. The videos were spectacular, and the moonwalk amazed me, of course. But even after finally seeing him, it was songs like Heal the World and I’ll Be There that quietly tugged at my heart.

I belong to a generation that believed every word he sang.

So when Michael said, “Heal the world, make it a better place,” I genuinely believed humanity would come together and do exactly that. Somewhere deep down, I believed I was one of the children the world would protect if enough people cared.

Maybe that sounds naïve now. But there was something beautiful about growing up with that hope.

When I watched Michael, my eyes welled up when I heard:

“We are the world
We are the children…”

Because the song reconnects me to a version of myself I am scared of losing. The version that still believes kindness can save people.

Somewhere along the way, Michael made softness feel safe. He made kindness feel powerful in a world that constantly teaches us that tough means strong.

As a child, I never realized how difficult it was to conserve kindness in the real world. Kindness felt instinctive. We apologized quickly. We cried openly. We trusted each other easily. Adulthood slowly taught us caution instead. Sensitivity became something to hide, vulnerability became childish, and cynicism began masquerading as intelligence.

Somewhere between growing older and becoming practical, many of us lost the version of ourselves that believed the world would actually heal. Maybe adulthood is just the slow negotiation between staying soft and learning to survive.

And every time I listen to those songs, I briefly reconnect with that child again. The one who still believed vulnerability was part of being human.

Perhaps that is why David Attenborough felt so important to my generation. Last week, as the world celebrated his 100th birthday, I found myself unexpectedly emotional. Because I realized he never really taught us science.

He taught us wonder.

Before climate anxiety became a headline and a statistic, there was simply his voice carrying us through forests, oceans, deserts, and melting glaciers, reminding us that the Earth was alive in ways we were too distracted to notice ourselves.

And during COVID, when the world had suddenly shrunk to the size of our homes, I found myself constantly returning to documentaries like Our Planet. While the world outside felt frighteningly still, I kept returning to images of whales surfacing through dark oceans and forests, breathing quietly somewhere far away from human panic and chaos.

What I found here was not loud optimism. But the quiet reassurance that beauty still existed in the world. He made the Earth feel less like a planet and more like home, like something I belonged to. And maybe because I deeply connect with photography, the experience of watching the beauty of nature unfold on the screen in such vividness became even more profound. The visuals were not just beautiful; they felt almost spiritual.

While reading tributes to him turning 100, I felt this strange wave of gratitude realizing millions of people across the world probably felt the same thing at once, that this man had quietly altered humanity’s emotional relationship with the planet itself.

That is an extraordinary thing. To spend your life making people care. Not through fear. Not through outrage. But through awe.

Not everyone who raises you lives inside your home. Some arrive through songs. Some through documentaries. And years later, you suddenly realize they were quietly protecting parts of you the world was trying to harden.

That is why seeing David Attenborough turn 100 felt emotional. That is why hearing Michael Jackson still hurts in places I cannot fully explain. They reminded me that gentleness is not weakness. That awe is not childish. That caring deeply is not foolish. Sometimes it feels like the real tragedy of adulthood is not losing innocence, but losing your ability to care.

And maybe that is why I still return to them, because some part of me is still trying to protect the softness the world keeps asking me to outgrow.

There is something unsettling about that thought, to be that far from Earth, held up only by trust in science, in people, and in something you cannot fully control. What struck me was not just how far they were going, but how much time it must have taken to bring an idea into fulfillment, years of building, waiting, and choosing this over everything else. Perhaps space is not distance at all, but time stretched beyond what we have experienced.

And yet, while they were suspended in space, breaking barriers we once thought impossible, back on Earth, we continued as we always have, moving through another war within the same atmosphere that sustains us.

I found myself looking at both, and not knowing how to feel them at the same time.

That contrast stayed with me longer than I expected. Somewhere in it, I found myself thinking about human emotions, how we are capable of feeling so deeply, and yet remain unchanged in the present, justifying what we need to when we need to.

What stayed with me even more was how quickly we move past it, how something extraordinary, or even devastating, has become just another piece of information we scroll past. Somewhere along the way, we stopped having the time to fully feel anything, or perhaps we simply stopped staying with things long enough for them to be felt.

Somewhere along the way, we also began treating time like something we own, translating it into the language of money, something we can save, spend, and invest, as if it behaves like a resource that can be managed with enough discipline and intent. Time feels like an investment, where the way we choose to spend it carries its own risks and rewards, some of which can be measured, while most can only be felt.

This is not a new thought, as ancient texts long before we began measuring time in hours and calendars were already trying to understand what time was doing to us and what it meant to live within it.

I had been thinking about time in abstract ways until it showed up in a way I could not distance myself from.

Last Sunday, I went to sleep with these thoughts, only to be woken up the next morning with the news that a friend had lost her mother. A million thoughts were running through my head about what I should be doing, and I chose to go and meet her after finishing some work.

She was making the hardest decisions of her life.
And somewhere in between, so was I.

I told myself I had enough time to close things at work and still make it to the funeral.

I could not.
And now, that is what I will remember.

Some days feel like they belong more to my calendar than to me. Alarms decide when I wake up, calendars decide what matters, and I move from one scheduled block to another. By the end of it, every minute has been accounted for, and yet almost none of it feels fully lived.

I have caught myself checking the time without needing to, almost as if I am measuring my own life in hours, sitting with nothing immediate to do, and still feeling like I am running out of something I don’t know how much of I have.

We often say time is fair, that everyone gets the same 24 hours. Some people are healing, some are surviving, some are chasing, and some are simply waiting for something to change.

The hours are equal, but their weight is not.

I found that most solutions in modern life revolve around the idea that if time can be managed more effectively, life can be brought under control. The more I think about it, the more it feels like time was never meant to be controlled in the first place.

It was only meant to be observed.

Maybe what we call distance was never out there at all, but time we were yet to live through. And in living through it, something within us was always shifting, even when we did not pause long enough to notice.

Time was never passing us; it was quietly turning us into someone we did not notice becoming.

It is the day of the monthly baithak at Adi’s sitar learners’ community. A small, almost unassuming gathering of budding sitarists, musicians, aficionados, and a few like me, who come to listen. In that space, I am not performing or analysing, just present, learning in ways that do not always announce themselves.

I walked in today, and the setup was getting ready. Sir’s living room is transforming into an event venue. A lush carpet strewn across the floor, waiting to become a stage. The floor is being cleaned so that the audience can take their seats. Microphones are being positioned carefully, attempting to catch the detail of every note. The electronic tanpura hums softly from an iPad, its steady tone blending into the room. Adi is bent over his mixer, adjusting the tabla, turning tiny knobs until everything settles just right. I find myself a spot from where I can capture moments of today’s gathering in video and photos.

There is something about this space that resembles an event I get to attend. And yet these baithaks are not quite that. They are quieter, more honest. A space for students to present what they have learnt and practiced, because at some point, practice must leave the safety of repetition and aspire to become a performance.

As Adi takes the stage, he adjusts the frequency of the strings to Raga Jog Kauns, he nods to the percussionist, and begins his Alaap. The alaap unfolded slowly, almost like the room was being tuned along with the instrument. There was no rush, just a careful, deliberate exploration of each note, letting it settle before moving forward.

As the jod emerged, there was a quiet shift. The structure began to take form, the rhythm finding its way in, almost like a conversation gathering momentum. And then, somewhere along the way, came the taans. Quick, intricate, demanding, complex.

It was in one of those moments that it happened. You can see it happen in an instant. A slight hesitation, the mind catching up with the hand, and for a brief moment, the slip of the note feels louder than the music itself.

But what stayed with me is not the slip; it is what follows.

A brief falter, and then a return. Almost as if nothing happened. Not because it didn’t matter, but because he chose not to stay there.

There is a quiet kind of forgiveness in that moment, not the kind we speak about, but the kind we practice without naming. An acceptance that something went off, and it does not get to decide what comes next.

Sitting here now this evening, it begins to feel like this isn’t just about music at all.

The act of accepting a mistake does something to you. It steadies you. There is no scrambling to cover it up, no energy spent pretending it didn’t happen, no quiet panic trying to preserve an image. Just a simple acknowledgement and a return.

And in that return, there is power.

Because when you can meet yourself in that moment without turning away, you become harder to shake. There is less for the world to use against you when you are not hiding from yourself. You are not waiting to be exposed; you have already seen it.

Perhaps that is where humility comes from. Not from thinking less of yourself, but from seeing yourself clearly and being at ease with what you see.

It also makes you wonder how early we are taught something very different.

To avoid mistakes. To get it right. To not fail.

As children, so much of what we hear is caution. Don’t do this. Thats not how to do it. Don’t embarrass yourself. And slowly, without anyone intending harm, mistakes stop feeling like a part of learning and begin to feel like something to avoid altogether. A child hesitates, not because they cannot learn, but because they are unsure if they are allowed to.

Fear quietly replaces curiosity.

But sitting in that room, watching those performances, it feels unmistakably clear that learning has never existed without the possibility of getting it wrong. In fact, it depends on it. To know what not to do is often as important as knowing what to do.

And this is where teaching, in its truest sense, reveals itself. Not in how much we instruct, but in how we respond when something goes wrong. Because in that moment, we are not just correcting an action, we are shaping a person’s relationship with failure.

To correct without instilling fear, to guide without taking away dignity, to allow someone to stumble without making them feel like the fall defines them. Because the way we are held in our mistakes becomes the way we learn to hold ourselves.

When that space is given, something powerful begins to take root. A quiet strength.

The ability to take risks without the constant fear of failing. The ability to try, even when the outcome is uncertain, because somewhere along the way we learnt that if things fall apart, we can still return. We can recover.

And that changes how we move through the world. Risk begins to feel like a possibility instead of a danger. Confidence is no longer loud or performative; it is simply the willingness to engage, even when things may not go as planned.

Over time, that willingness shapes something deeper than skill. It shapes who we become. Our choices, our voice, our sense of self. All of it, quietly, begins with acceptance.

And in that sense, it almost doesn’t matter whether you are a world leader or a budding artist. The stage may change, the stakes may rise, but the moment remains the same.

A slip. A pause. A choice.

To stay there, or to return.

And maybe that is what stayed with me from that afternoon. Not the perfection of the performance, not the notes that landed exactly where they were meant to, but that one brief moment.

The slip.
The pause.

And the quiet decision… to continue.
Learning.

The contrast felt strange. A small act of planting life on my balcony, while somewhere far away, the world seemed to accept war as another ordinary headline.

As I looked at the plants, a quiet metaphor came to mind. Our generation has grown up to become like succulents. Plants that survive harsh climates adapt quietly. They store what they can. They endure long dry spells. They adjust to change without protest.

Perhaps that is what the last twenty-five years have done to us.

Growing Up in Crisis

For many of us millennials, adulthood began in a world already shaped by crisis. The century opened with the shock of the September 11 Attacks. The images from that day reshaped global politics and placed terrorism at the centre of international security. Soon after came the Iraq War, raising difficult questions about how quickly diplomacy could give way to force.

Before the world could absorb those consequences, another shock arrived. The Global Financial Crisis shook economies across continents. Markets collapsed. Jobs disappeared. Stability suddenly felt fragile.

My niece Treesha belongs to Gen Z. She stepped into adulthood during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Her generation entered adulthood at a moment when the entire planet paused together. Cities fell silent. Flights stopped. Schools closed. Fear travelled faster than the virus itself.

Yet there was something unusual about that moment. The enemy was common. A virus. Not a nation. Not an ideology. Not another person.

Hospitals replaced trenches. Scientists became generals. Vaccines became the ammunition. Borders closed. Economies halted. Millions across continents came together to fight an enemy that could not even be seen with the naked eye.

For a brief moment, humanity remembered what collective action could look like.

My generation learned resilience through uncertainty. Treesha’s generation seems to value empathy, mental well-being, and cooperation across borders. Our priorities may look different. Yet both generations carry a quiet hope for a more humane world.

The Return of an Older Script

But in recent years, the world has quietly returned to an older script. Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza dominate global headlines. Tensions simmer across the Middle East. Diplomacy struggles to keep pace with escalating hostility. In its place, we hear the language of deterrence, retaliation, and military readiness.

At the same time, technology moves forward at an astonishing speed. Artificial intelligence evolves rapidly. Large language models reshape industries. Digital systems reorganize economies.

The contrast is striking. In the digital world, progress feels relentless. In the physical world, conflict feels stubbornly unchanged.

It raises an uncomfortable question. After centuries of war, two world wars, and even a shared battle against a pandemic, did humanity truly learn how to avoid conflict with itself?

When Technology Promised Something Else

When I stepped into adulthood in the early years of this century, I felt quietly armed with possibility. A cell phone in my hand. A laptop on my desk. The internet is unfolding around us like an endless library.

Technology seemed destined to reshape economies and solve problems that earlier generations had struggled with. Knowledge could move freely across borders. Collaboration could happen across continents. It felt possible that shared information might make the world more cooperative.

Yet somewhere along the way, the promise of technology outpaced the evolution of our politics. Military strength still defines influence. Nations compete fiercely for control over artificial intelligence, data, and digital infrastructure. The tools that once promised connection now deepen rivalry between states.

A Different Way of Thinking About War

Drawn by that thought, I walked toward the book cabinet in the living room. On one shelf sat George Orwell’s 1984. Right beside it rested a worn copy of Snippets from the Gita. The contrast felt almost deliberate. One book imagined a world shaped by power and control. The other reflected on duty, responsibility, and moral balance.

Standing there, I wondered how differently civilizations have tried to understand war.

The philosophy of the Gita approaches war through a moral lens. It does not celebrate violence. Instead, it asks when the use of force becomes morally unavoidable. The Gita frames war through the idea of dharma. The responsibility to uphold justice and protect the moral order of society. Violence is never presented as the first option. It emerges only when injustice persists, and every effort to restore balance fails.

The text also insists on restraint. The purpose of war is not conquest or revenge. It is the restoration of fairness and the protection of the innocent. In that sense, the Gita views war not as triumph but as a burden. A difficult duty is carried out only when all other paths have been exhausted.

Gandhiji drew from these traditions in his own way. He emphasised moral courage as a lesson of the Gita that was necessary in confronting injustice while exercising restraint. His philosophy acknowledged the complexity of human choices. Perhaps that is why our generation sometimes feels strangely numb to conflict. Crisis has become a familiar climate. News cycles move quickly from one war to another. Outrage fades faster than it once did.

Like the succulents on my balcony, we have learned to survive difficult climates. But survival alone cannot be the ambition of civilization.

A Quiet Hope

Later that morning, I stepped back onto the window to check on the tiny succulents. The soil was still damp from watering. The plants sat quietly in their pots, storing what they needed for harsher days.

Watching them, I wondered whether humanity, too, can learn how to endure difficult seasons without destroying the common fabric that sustains us.

On weekends, I like watching old Hindi movies. Since Aai passed, this has become a quiet way of feeling connected to her. It reminds me of good times with her. When the same roads I once walked with Aai and Baba appear in an old film, a waterfall of memories begins to flow, drenching me in moments where I perhaps felt the most honest love from my parents. Core memories unlock softly.

It is February 7, 2026. I am watching Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. The D’Mello Bridge in the film that stands at Clare Road junction has collapsed. Watching the movie is special. It takes me down memory lane to old Mumbai, and suddenly I saw myself walking with my mother to school. I went to school on Clare Road. Every year, we bought my school shoes from the Bata and Corona shops under that bridge. A part of me still stays back in that shop, coaxing my mother to buy the pink lace shoes.

And yet, I am pulled into a present-day conversation. We are already discussing plans for March 15. As if it isn’t surprising enough that it is February 2026, I find myself holding such concrete certainty about a future date, almost as if life can be predicted just by looking at my calendar. In a city like Mumbai, with its relentless pace, my work calendar and social calendar seem to be at war, each trying to prove which one is more overwhelming.

The fact that I am living in my present while already knowing what is in store at least forty-five days ahead begins to bother me. Just a day earlier, a work outing was announced for mid-March. On the same weekend, my former organisation invited its alumni for an event in Pune. Both are good things, yet the clash of dates slowly grows inside my head. I know I will have to make a difficult choice.

Knowing things in advance is not always bad. In a fast-moving world like ours, where families and friends are now global citizens, planning ensures that meetings happen with intention, not by chance. Yet I find myself uneasy with another phrase—taking out time; as if time were a physical object stored somewhere outside us.

It pulls me back to a different past, when a ringing phone carried complete mystery. You never knew who was calling or what news waited on the other side. I think again of Aai, who never used a smartphone and remembered important numbers by heart. I remember how her face lit up when someone called after a long time her laughter, that brief pause from the present. Those were happy years. Unpredictable years. Years full of small surprises, whether in travel or in life.

Watching the film, I realise that my restlessness is not really about clashing dates or missed events. It is about something quieter. About how differently time once moved. About how lightly the future sat on our shoulders then, and how heavily it sits now.

Somewhere between memory and planning, a question begins to form not just about the city, but about the way we live inside time itself.

What does it really mean to live in the future?

For many of us, it begins innocently. Planning feels responsible. Certainty feels comforting. A date on the calendar gives shape to days that might otherwise fall apart. In Mumbai’s restless rhythm, looking ahead feels like survival. We book joy the way we book travel. Even rest needs appointments.

Somewhere along the way, preparation quietly becomes pressure. Tomorrow stops being a direction and starts becoming a landmark. The future no longer waits at the horizon; it is asking to sit inside today, asking to be managed and controlled. I catch myself always arriving mentally before I arrive in person. Playing out situations, conversations in my head, long before they’re scheduled. In doing so, something small but sacred begins to thin out, the ability to be where we already are with our full body and mind.

Surprise that once felt like warmth is now ian nconvenience. Uncertainty once carried softness, not stress. We have started postponing the present, saving our attention for a better tomorrow that never fully arrives but certainly becomes a past we don’t recognise.

Vacations become the interest we pay to recover the lost time. We travel far just to meet a slower version of time, a place where mornings are determined not by alarms but the angle of light that falls on the ground, where afternoons stretch without apology, where doing nothing carries no guilt. For a few brief days, urgency loosens its grip.

I am amazed at how this softness lives more permanently in villages and small towns, in evenings that arrive gently, in tea poured without looking at the clock,
in lives measured by presence rather than productivity.

There, the future is not chased. It unfolds. Chance still has an opportunity. Perhaps sustainability is not only about land or resources. Perhaps it is also about the speed at which a heart can continue to feel without risking a burnout, physical and emotional.

So how do we hold the future without losing the present? It is simply by paying attention.

Taste the tea before it cools.
Finish a conversation without reaching for the phone.
Some days are ordinary, boring, and that is perfectly acceptable.
To trust that uncertainty is sometimes a space where life can still surprise.

When I think of Aai, this is what returns most strongly.
Not advice. Not instruction. Just a way of living inside time that did not feel hurried.
Even simple days felt complete.

Listen! There I go, typing listen as if time itself might pause to hear me.

Later that night, after the film ended and the house returned to silence, I opened my calendar again. March 15th was still there. So were the choices waiting around it. And in that small, ordinary moment:

Tomorrow had not been waiting for me at the horizon.
It had already crept into my present. I also feel something quieter than adjustment.
A small refusal to let the present disappear unnoticed.

One year from now, this present will already be a memory.
Maybe living well is nothing more complicated than this: to notice when tomorrow enters today, and still choose, gently, to remain. That is where the future you want truly begins.

I was on my way back from work, tired in that quiet, end-of-day way, when the rain hung in the air, pouring most dramatically, just persistently. Near the gate, half-soaked and entirely unimpressed by the weather and how a delivery guy had treated it, was a scrawny kitten. Too small to be fearless, too defiant to be afraid. The kitten looked at me like it was asking me to avenge the other human for this crime. While I save that encounter for another day, for now, you should be aware that the kitten is now part of our permanent clan.

We didn’t know the gender then.
What we noticed instead was the energy.

Mowgli was relentless. Leaping off furniture, chasing invisible enemies, knocking things over as if gravity were merely a suggestion. A feline dynamo, unpredictable, curious, and just wild. One look at that confidence and, without much thought, I assumed this kitten was a male, and named him Mowgli wild, unruly, impossible to contain.

A few weeks later, at a routine vet visit, the truth emerged.

Mowgli was a girl.

My immediate reaction, which utterly surprised me in retrospect, was “Wow, I thought, she has such boyish energy.”

Almost immediately, I caught myself.

Why had I equated boldness with masculinity? Why did chaos, curiosity, and confidence feel inherently male in my head? That small, passing thought lingered longer than it should have. It hit a nerve, not just about gender, but about how casually we assign meaning to behaviour, especially in love.

That’s when an old, almost throwaway line resurfaced in my mind:
Men are like dogs. Women are like cats.

I used to roll my eyes at this comparison. That was mostly because of how I’d heard it used. In Hindi movies, “kutte” is said with the kind of disgust only perfected by Dharmendra as the ultimate insult. Women became cats: moody, mysterious, sitting on compound walls, judging the world. Put like that, of course, I wanted nothing to do with the metaphor.

The problem wasn’t really the comparison. It was how carelessly it was handled. Completely missing the point that both are different personalities. I started seeing the dogs I actually know and began recognising their personality traits, the loyal street dogs outside my building, always present, always hopeful, always showing up. Having lived with Melody for 13 years now, I knew long ago that cats are not cold, as most people misinterpret, but they’re rather cautious, precise with affection, choosing their moments; it began to make sense.

Seen that way, the comparison was oddly familiar.

The difference wasn’t about man, woman, dog, or cat, but how we trust and how we love.

Men, I’ve noticed, often love out loud. They show up, check in, and constantly seek clarity. When something feels off, they want to address it immediately! Sometimes their affection is visible through their confusion. Their need for reassurance isn’t insecurity; it’s seeking connection.

I, on the other hand, love more like a cat.

I observe before I approach. I need time to feel my way into closeness. Too many questions at once make me retreat, not because I don’t care, but because I’m still listening. When I go quiet, it’s rarely punishment. It’s processing.

While neither is wrong,

Dogs want to be loved openly.
Cats want to be understood quietly.

There have been instances whereI’ve been misunderstood for my silence, just as I’ve misunderstood urgency for pressure. I’ve mistaken consistency for boring routine, while my need for space has been read as distance. More than once, trust didn’t break, and love didn’t actually fail; it just got lost in translation.

Dogs think love is presence.
Cats think love is attunement.

Dogs feel safe in routine.
Cats feel safe in emotional accuracy.

What I did realise was that the relationships that stayed with me over the years are actually the ones that felt real, and weren’t perfect. The moments that stayed with me, the ones that felt like real connection, were when we tried to learn each other’s language instead of defending our own.

When someone didn’t rush me, but waited.
When I didn’t retreat into my shell and pretend to disappear, but explained.
When reassurance and space stopped competing and started coexisting.

These days, watching Mowgli making space for herself in the house, claiming her territory from Melody, being bold yet affectionate, independent, and sometimes entirely uninterested in fitting a category. I smile at how right we were about her energy, but so wrong to root it in gender.

She didn’t need to be softer to be feminine.
She didn’t need to be louder to be strong.

I am hopeful that trust and love work the same way.
It’s about recognising the one in front of you, trusting them and choosing them, again and again, and agreeing to meet them where they are.

I go to bed on time now.
At least that’s what the alarm thinks.
Sleep shows up politely, diligently,
but my eyes pretend they didn’t get the memo.

I lie there, missing
an older version of myself.
Not the dramatic kind,
just the one who felt things
without worrying about what background music
would best explain the moment.

They said, look within.
I did.
It’s a bit quiet in there,
So occasionally I step outside,
stealing warmth from songs,
from people,
from strangers who don’t even know my middle name.

Everyone is full of advice.
They give me to-do lists
when I’m just looking for a listener.
Someone who doesn’t interrupt
with solutions in bullet points.
Someone who lets me ramble
and nods.

That’s enough to make me feel heard.
And then maybe,
My eyes will finally
close in calm slumber.

Thank you for listening :)

The kind of afternoon when the city hums softly under the drizzle, tea feels earned, and doom scrolling feels inevitable. Somewhere between raindrops and notifications from the Women’s World Cup, I stop at a post about Jemimah Rodrigues.

Not for her innings, but for the caption below her image. It read;

*It’s Jemimah Rodrigues, the face of belief, courage, and dreams fulfilled!*

Beautiful words, they made me think, it’s been a while, I haven’t seen them used for a male cricketer. Men are “explosive,” “dominant,” “fearless.” Women are “elegant.” The difference may seem small, but language has always carried weight in cricket. The way we describe the game often reveals what and who we value.

From Passion to Power

In the 1990s, cricket spoke the language of *craft*. We heard commentators and read sports columns that used phrases like “solid defence,” “gritty innings,” and “building partnerships.” Newspaper columns the day after the test matches got over unfolded like sagas; poetic, slow, deliberate, and full of emphatic pauses.

By the 2000s, as the game caught pace and ODI’s took over the TV screens, the lexicon grew sharper: *“powerplay,” “strike rate,” “death overs.”* Commentary became analytical, data replaced poetry, and players turned into “finishers” and their “impact” based on the “time spent in the middle” became dominant. Then came T20 cricket’s linguistic revolution, where “Bazball,” “match-ups,” and “power-hitters” redefined excitement itself. How well a ball is hit means how high it went or how far it went. How well a ball is bowled is measured according to the speed of the ball!

The elegance of Cricket’s vocabulary evolved with its tempo: from paragraphs to sound bytes, from adjectives that defined passion to those that verbalise power.

Where the Women’s Game Fits In

In the midst of this transition, I’m riddled with the question of where the women’s game stands today. The fact is, women’s game bridges both worlds. It has the classical base of the 1980s cricket, full of class, where the geometry of the cover drive makes the fielding at silly point look like modern art. For a long time, women have been wooing Indian cricket from the stands, but now, as they take a stance on the pitch along with the athleticism, the ambition is palpating. Over the years, the sport has created a generation unafraid to take risks, yet rooted in precision who do justice to the classical definition of cricket of 80s.

Women’s cricket is about *power through skill.*”

Smriti Mandhana’s placement, Shafali Verma’s balance, Richa Ghosh’s clean hitting: every shot is measured, intelligent, intentional. The power is quieter, but no less lethal. This is the reason commentary often can’t resist falling back on “grace” and “poise.” Women can’t just *hit hard*, they also *do it beautifully.*

A Mirror of Evolution

To everyone who is now catching up to Indian women’s cricket thanks to the team reaching finals of the World Cup, the women’s game isn’t behind; it’s *in translation.* It’s walking the same evolutionary arc men’s cricket did, only faster and more self-aware.

- If the 1980s were about patience and character.

- Then the 2000s brought strategy and control.

- Now 2020s thrive on data and entertainment.

Women’s cricket today carries all three: the passion of the past, the intelligence of the middle, and the energy of the now.

The Language of the Game is elegant, but biased

From *“occupying the crease”* to *“owning the moment,”* from *“crafting an innings”* to *“clearing the ropes,”* the words we use tell the story of where the game is going. But they also tell us how we still perceive women in sport, often through the lens of aesthetics rather than authority. It’s time we recognised that the women’s game isn’t softer cricket; it’s smarter cricket. It reminds us that timing is a strength, and subtlety can still dominate and win the game. While the perception of men’s cricket has become an arms race of muscle, the women’s game is like an art school; the emphasis is on skill.

The Final Word

Cricket has always told its story through language.

And right now, the women are rewriting the script, one clean shot, one new word at a time. Today it is Champions!

To make sure that this would become a learning opportunity, we created an 8 member organizing team of Grade 6 Girls. While I was in charge of getting the speakers, the organizing committee took care of planning the schedule, making the invites, designing the questionnaire, and conducting the interview with our speakers. I was fortunate enough to get four extraordinary, highly enthusiastic speakers who were more than happy to come and interact with the class. Our speakers represented four fields – Entrepreneurship, Academia, Leadership, and Sciences. The organizing team worked diligently throughout February, to make sure every detail of the program was perfect.

As the day of our first session dawned, excitement levels were at an all-time high! Grade 6 was determined to put their best behavior on display. We had Ms. Sayalee Marathe, Founder and Creative Director at Aadyaa, a jewelry start-up, as our first speaker. From what it takes to start a business to ensure it thrives, we truly had an opportunity to hear from the best. The discussion ranged from dealing with a competitive market to understanding the important character traits required to become a successful entrepreneur. The girls and boys were wonderstruck as she explained the intricacies of jewelry designing, choosing different materials, and making unique handmade pieces. The creative dimension associated with the profession resonated with several students and several boys from the class expressed an interest in becoming jewelry designers in the future!

What would it feel like to learn a college-level subject from a college professor (who also happens to be Didi’s teacher) as a Grade Six student? Day two, gave Grade Six an opportunity to find out. Our second speaker, was Ms. Saylee Jog, an Economics Professor at Gokhale Institute of Economics and Politics, Pune.

The class explored the ideas of consumer behavior, producer behavior, demand prediction, and more. The interaction greatly motivated the class to develop an economic lens of looking at everything around them. Post the session, my co-Fellow and I were inundated with questions about getting into college and pursuing Economics!

Teach For India Didis and Bhaiyas are an integral part of our school. Day three, gave Grade Six a chance to immerse themselves in the world of Teach For India Pune, with Deepika Didi. Our third speaker, was Ms. Deepika Guleria, Senior Manager for Partnerships, at Teach For India, Pune. A former Teach For India Fellow herself, Deepika was able to introduce the development sector to the class, which was a completely new and fascinating concept for them. The session opened new doors for imagination, as the kids enjoyed learning about the different aspects of Fundraising and Development.

With most of the class aspiring to become a doctor in the future, our fourth and final session with Dr. Meenal Sohani was a huge success. A renowned Pune based doctor and counselor, Dr. Sohani helped the kids understand medicine as a career and introduced them to the importance of mental wellbeing. Hearing from a doctor and learning from her experiences was a hugely motivating experience for Grade Six.

Once our sessions were done, it was important to help the class synthesize their understanding. I gave them a few personal response reflection questions, to encourage them to think and articulate their learnings. I was amazed as I read their submissions – every student had perceived each session in a very different way. Students who generally took little interest in writing and expressing themselves had taken a lot of effort to submit their work. A lot of responses also spoke about how a certain speaker had inspired them to pursue a similar career. Most importantly, however, my students realised the importance of making opportunities available to every person, irrespective of their gender. Understanding the lives of these four speakers helped them visualize the idea of empowerment and how it might look like in real life. We also tried to collectively build an understanding of the importance of gender equality for everyone through classroom discussions and learning circles. We explored the idea of gender roles and how they set us all up with unfair, discriminatory expectations. Several students shared their experiences of gender roles and prejudices. Boys spoke at length about not being allowed to express themselves creatively while girls spoke about the unreasonable expectations put on them.

The sharing happened in a very organic way – every student in the room was respectful of the other. The question they were trying to grapple with, was far from simple. Yet, each one of them articulated with the conviction that this unfair system needs to change for it benefitted no one. The class values for my class are Liberty and Equality. A lot of their answers and opinions were shaped on these lines, and the sixth graders came to terms with the fact that the world outside doesn’t necessarily uphold these values. While the realisation can be daunting for a person (especially a twelve-year-old), my students chose to take it with a pinch of optimism. Their resolve to change things for themselves and those around them gave me hope that the status quo can change. These kids will go on to become citizens of this country and contribute to developing the societal conscience further.

Getting selected to teach 10^th standard was a bit of a curveball for me, I really wasn’t expecting to teach a class of kids only a few years younger than me. I had very little knowledge about how the state board syllabus works, and I didn’t really understand the context of the classroom I was going to be working in either. And I struggled. I really, really struggled. The struggle was of course, due to all the reasons I have already outlined, but a lot of it was due to my own perception that I had to be perfect.

I had this vision in my head of what my classroom would be like, and it took a very difficult conversation with my children and my co-fellows to realise that maybe the vision of the teacher I wanted to be really didn’t align with the type of teacher that was required to teach a class of 16-year-olds, months away from sitting for the first standardised board exam of their lives. Also, this notion that I had to be some sort of superhuman was really getting in the way of my interaction with the kids. I was too busy focusing on the classes and their outcomes, and not enough time getting to know the kids. Part of that was because my co-fellow and I had to finish our syllabus in time for the pre-board exams, and due to all the time I spent in the beginning just figuring stuff out, I only really hit my stride in October. The syllabus had to be completed by the second week of December.

Help is always there for those who ask for it

I sat down with a planner and all the lessons I hadn’t finished, and I made a schedule for myself and decided that enough was enough. I was going to make this work but I wasn’t going to do it alone. I started relying upon the students more. “Guys, can you read this before class?” “Hey guys, do this work before the next class.” “Hey guys, let’s all stay back for an hour today?” “Hey, I think this student didn’t understand the topic today. Could you explain it to them?”

Once the pre-boards started, my co-fellow and I completely shifted our focus to training the kids for exams. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t creative work but it was engaging and it took a lot of commitment. I showed the kids each set of pre-board papers they sat for— 5 exams in total for the two subjects I taught, for 37 students—and asked them the same questions, “Where are you struggling? Pick out those questions, pick out those chapters. Work on them.” I made some students re-write their entire exams. And while all of this was happening at school, my co-fellow and I were making home visits to find out how our kids were preparing at home and what our kids would be doing after the 10^th. We found out that so many of our kids really had no idea of what they wanted to do and very little idea of the streams and options available to them. That’s when we started working with the Student Alumni Wing of iTeach, which works with kids from lower-income schools on post 10^th opportunities.

Our kids started their board exams on the 4^th of March. They were supposed to end them on the 23^rd but due to the coronavirus pandemic, they weren’t able to do so. The pandemic forced is to shift priorities and find out what the situation was for our community and families, most of them daily wage workers, and then reach out and fundraise to be able to support them during these times. Thankfully most parents are returning to work now, and the students, my co-fellow and I are just anticipating their results, coming out sometime in June, and I just got the good news that three of our girls were shortlisted for the Mahindra International School scholarship. Maybe they get in, maybe they don’t. But they tried anyway, and that’s what counts.

So really, if there’s anything that I learned it’s definitely this: teaching kids isn’t just about class. It’s about all the relationships you form outside that classroom-with kids, co-teachers, and co-fellows. Those relationships and the support you receive from them are the only things that get you through the dark days, the days you feel nobody has your back.

Because help is always there for those who ask for it.

Subscribe now

As Teach For India Fellows, many of us including me were Reading Comprehension teachers in municipality schools. As part of our teacher training, we learned the IDEEP practice for teaching kids how to get started with writing. By far this was the toughest ask of being a language teacher. It took a while to get used to the English my kids knew and for me to figure out what needed to be worked on to help us both get started. My kids were innocent little 5th graders studying in a government school in Yerwada, who would just as easily make a mistake between “it” and “eat”, “this” and “these” and “sit” and “seat”. While we were navigating English pronunciations, and punctuations while reading and speaking, writing was a new Monster to deal with and we all had a long way to go!

1. IDEATE

After 10 years of working, in 2018, I had a feeling that I was not investing in my efforts in the right place. Working in the managing committee of an international digital marketing company, a partner of the company on paper, and managing three different teams just didn’t feel good enough. It took a while to come to terms with the fact that I could take a risk and steer my life in another direction. While exploring other alternatives, I was kindly reminded of the Teach for India fellowship, by a dear friend (also known as my husband :-)) and I dove right in. Although my heart was in the right place, landing the fellowship meant I had to do a ton of reflection even before I made an application. This not only helped me answer the questions in the application form but also gave me the clarity to press the submit button. A vague IDEA to do something for society, leverage my potential to uplift those around me found my way to the sector I care about the most, education.2. What kind of community are you looking to build here

2. DRAFT

I love to learn, and given an opportunity, I don’t think I would want to stop, ever! So when fellowship offered me a chance to be back at a college campus for a whole 5 weeks, I was excited and petrified. The classrooms and sessions were super fun, but I ached to sleep in my bed. The first few days were tough, early mornings, long hours, learning concepts you’ve never heard before, teaching in summer school, and failing miserably. But the toughest part of it all was, keeping a straight face through it all, continuing to learn. The Institute challenged me to explore all dimensions of my emotional and mental strength. It helped me unlearn my biases and become more accepting of myself and others. Of course, it’s not an overnight process and I don’t always get it right, but today I accept myself with my flaws. As we concluded five weeks of Institute, singing, “We are the ones, we are waiting for”. Each one of us knew in our hearts of hearts, a new ‘YOU’ was taking shape

3. EDIT

Equipped with pedagogy, methodology, and the newly acquired title of “didi”, I made my way to my school. There is no training in the world that teaches you to deal with hostility. There is no secret superpower that helps you cope with the feeling of alienation except for the power of love and the power of reason. As a woman, it will be fair to say that I have had to work my way up the ladder to find my place and my voice in life, I had to deal with something similar in the school system. My kids were more considerate than the system. Coming face to face with some of the flaws in the Educational system and feeling completely helpless. I realized that I can’t fight them but only try to fix them with patience and virtue. So I started working on my fellowship, bringing in a more productive line of thought, focussing on things I can change and that led to two memorable events

4. ENHANCE

Immersing myself in the unpredictability and uncertainty of the outcome was a very conscious choice. In such situations, there is no way to know, just how much is enough. Most of the days, anything I did, didn’t work, sometimes I surprised myself with the most unexpected results. I struggled to find a normal, till I realized there isn’t supposed to be one. I found myself in the most extraordinary situation and if I chose to keep my lens focussed on the ordinary I would learn nothing from the Fellowship. When I was in school, I learned the most from being on the student council and participating in sports. If I have to attribute the never-give-up attitude to anything, it has to be to sports. Teaching as leadership is an important aspect of the Fellowship, it presents you with a unique challenge of being competitive and fair at the same time. It’s a fine balance of biases and beliefs.

We held the investiture ceremony for the student council and a sense of achievement came over me like never before. A realization that it is these small victories that will eventually win us the war. With a house system in place, after the student council invested, the school team got the much-needed ecosystem to execute other plans. The whole month of January was planned as a culture month on the theme of patriotism leading up to Republic Day. Every Saturday we held house competitions for poetry recitation, speech, singing, and dancing. It was decided that the winners of each will be performing on Republic Day. PMC teachers paired up with TFI fellows were the house mentors and it was the student leaders who got their teams together, practiced, participated, and led with a sense of belonging and accountability. Competitiveness was in the air and every house gave its best to win at everything. The school team put their back into making this successful and the result was a student performance to remember. I think we all felt our purpose was complete.

5. PUBLISH

Every fellowship story is incomplete without its characters! The school team played a huge role in all aspects of my story. From handling complex emotions to understanding each other’s problems. The weirdest of conversations at the Tapri, some unforgettable night-outs and birthday celebrations, the joy of finding Delhi-wale Chhole and panipuri in Pune, and spending 12 hours at TOIT, we did it all. Of course, occasionally, we took the kids for a climate protest march, talked to them about fundamental rights, explained the pre-amble, introduced them to rock music, Winnie the Pooh, The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Chak De India and even attended the sit-in protest at Pune’s Shaheen Baug. I don’t know if it was the distance or the seriousness of the situation that got to us, but we became closer than ever before during the lockdown. I miss these crazy, funny, determined friends. Each one with unique qualities and a special place in my Fellowship story.

“If you get, give.If you learn, teach.If you have power, empower.”
-Maya Angelou

This quote often reminds me of how far I have come in this journey. I entered my class with this thought in mind and made conscious efforts to build it in the minds of my students. I always told them that opportunities will be provided, but making the best out of it is your choice and if you make that choice or not, make an effort to make that opportunity available for someone else who values it. Throughout the past year, I have been working with the module of independent learners and collaborative effort ie learning through self-awareness for self-transformation and growth and supporting each other to achieve that. This quote has come to life in the four walls of my class in various contexts.

My name is Arunima Sengupta and I am a proud Teach For India fellow. I am a didi to 66 loving 7th graders at Dixit Road MPS, Vile Parle East, Mumbai. From the starting of the year, I have been focusing on extra-curricular to fuel student growth and development. I have tried to expose my students to the best possible ways to gather knowledge and develop their skills and interests.
It has been my dream to make the best out of my capabilities and interests from the time I have begun my journey as a Fellow. A year into my classroom and I find myself discovering and merging my colors with the bounty of talents of my students.

When I entered my classroom in June I had realized that there was a considerably large amount of work to be done to channelize the varied energies I saw and felt in those four walls. I had made up my mind to look at the all-round development of my class as a whole. So I started with what has required the most ie discipline in these students and regard for each other. I then introduced them to social sciences which were not taught to them before in order to inculcate the values of curiosity and interest in learning and researching. As my classes went on from being disruptive to a class where time flew and students were waiting back from their break time, I knew I could take the next step.

I started a drama club (The Drama Llamas) in August 2019. I chose to start a drama club as I realized that these students struggled with expressing themselves and thus faced confidence and adjustment issues. With a group of 12 students, I started off by taking sessions thrice a week after school and realized that the students started enjoying it. I taught them the 9 emotions in acting and set 4 short plays. This is where I made use of my direction skills as I once directed plays in my school and college days. In the process of teaching, I was in turn learning and polishing my skill sets.

As these students gained confidence over talking on stage, an opportunity came up. Without thinking, we took it up. It was the Brihanmumbai Street Play Inter-school Competition. My 12 students participated and represented the school with 8 more students from our school. I got the chance of directing this play and we won the first prize for the regional and zonal levels for our play “Khoya Khoya Chand” based on digital India. We qualified for the all-Mumbai finals and stood 2nd. We were also featured in an Urdu newspaper on winning the zonal level. We also won the first prize in Play competition for our play “Darwaza” based on religious intolerance at Sangam 2019, a Teach For India inter-school cultural competition. We also won the first prize for the best science project working model at Sangam 2019. In addition to that, we won the first prize at BalJallosh 2019 for our drama “Sochna Zaroori hai” based on the topic: Save Earth. Five students from our drama club also participated in the essay writing competition on the topic: Nature awareness at BalJallosh and out of 343 entries, we bagged all the three prizes. The three students out of the five from our school stood 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. We were also invited to the KE Ward office to perform our play “Darwaza” at their Diwali celebrations. We also won 1st prize for best cultural drama for our play “Diya” based on culture, superstitious beliefs, and devotion through humanity at Balakotsav 2019.

Since January 2020, I have been consistent to provide these opportunities through dramatics, financial literacy workshops, and other opportunities to perform and to showcase their talents. The Drama Llamas, my drama club was invited to three separate events to perform: Rotary Club of Parleshwar’s event Kaladarpan where they performed “Darwaza”; at the Kids Education Revolution 2020 where they performed “Padhe ho? Yaa Badhe ho?”, a play based on the difference between knowledge and studying; and at Dramebaaz Chapter IV where they performed “Diya”. I have also been successful in establishing a girl’s football team and a boy’s cricket team recently giving importance to sports as a medium of instilling values like self-confidence, team-work, punctuality, etc with the help of Lantern Edusports. My co-fellows also started an art club (smART) and a literature club (Saug’s Totts) to facilitate learning through art and expression. 6 of our students put a craft stall at Kaladarpan. Two students have bagged the best actress award for their roles in two different events. One student has got the opportunity to go on a radio show for bagging the best actress award for her role in the play “Main Maut Bol Rahi Hu” based on tobacco awareness at Salaam Bombay’s all Mumbai drama competition.

As a school team, we started noticing considerable changes in these students. These extra-curricular have immensely helped students to focus on academics, gain confidence, present their views, and showed overall development in class. Many of them missed school regularly. But, the discipline that was created through these extra-curricular, especially through the Drama club which was carried on to class. We used to practice from 1 pm to 8 pm after school and noticed that these students who once used to miss school, came to school at sharp 7:30 am and attended school, paid attention, completed notes, and cheerfully and passionately pursued dramatics as their field of interest. We noticed a great shift in their behavior as well. They are well-mannered, show values of respect and empathy, show leadership qualities while working with teamwork as their core value. Their focus has increased and confidence has risen to achieve greater things in life. These extra-curricular have shown a boost in achieving academic excellence and increased participation in class.

I have always been determined to make learning possible through expression. It has shown great results in academics as well, in the answers I check and when my students go on platforms to perform and speak. They have a deepened understanding of their community and the world now. They can differentiate between what is wrong and right behavior. They prefer collaborative learning and understand the values of team-work and hard-work. The students themselves have come up with a lot of project ideas related to the context taught in class to present their learnings creatively. As for student behavior, I have noticed a considerable change in the students, the once rival students have started helping each other to solve doubts and worksheets. Some students who struggled with basics have started seeking help from other students who are good at the subject and they willingly give up their break-time and help too. They have started developing the regard for each other which will grow and strengthen with time.

As a class, we have promised ourselves the following guidelines or principles that we continue to strive for:
“As a class, we have and will always promise for performance over victory because our performance will determine how we see ourselves and how we want to see ourselves (a value of self-awareness).”
“As a class, we have and will always promise for progress over excellence because our growth determines how we excel (a value of self-worth).”
“As a class, we have and will always promise for perseverance over comfort because our grit and determination will pave the way for our dreams (a value of self-confidence).”

With the current Covid-19 lockdown situation, students have been actively responsive in terms of learning and sharing their artwork and extra-curricular activities through WhatsApp. We have been successful in helping their families with groceries and they have been supporting us with co-ordinating. Their grit, sense of possibility, and optimism in this situation inspire me every single day. This makes me realize that Maya Angelou’s words have successfully come alive beyond the four walls of my classroom.

After a year, I can say with pride that their ‘I WANT’, ‘I CAN’ AND ‘I WILL’ attitude has been built. As their didi, this makes me believe in the thought I entered my fellowship with and continue to believe in: ‘I WANT’, ‘I CAN’ and ‘I WILL TEACH FOR INDIA.’

Recommended to read: https://blawghh.com/in-which-trupz-says-travel-helps-builds-character/

What is so special about the Goecha la trek in Sikkim?

The Goecha La trek in Sikkim, India is known to be a picturesque trek through the Khangchendzonga National park.. The highlight of the trek being the grand views of Mount Kanchendzonga from Dzongri top and viewpoint 1 of the Goecha Pass. Apart from this, you get to walk in the Rhododendron forests of Phedang. The great Himalayan plains of Thansing and Lamuney. Another beautiful attraction on this trek is the Samiti lake which is a glacial lake. Let me break it here itself, the websites say Geocha La is a Moderate – Difficult level trek, for the most part, it is difficult, especially if you are going in the winter season like we did! This trek gets you closest you can to view Mount Kanchendzonga from the Indian side.

If you are loving the photos, you will love the video blawghh series of the Goecha la trek in Sikkim 2017 on Youtube

What are the essential things to pack for the Goecha la trek?

Goecha la trek in Sikkim| Essential things to pack for any Himalayan winter trek

1. Rain jacket

2. Poncho

3. Fleece jacket thin

4. 2 walking sticks

5. 1 pair of gloves

6. 1 Balaclava, very useful in protecting ears and neck from sun and wind!

7. 1 woolen cap

8. 3 pairs of quick dry trekking pants (full length)

9. 3 quick dry t-shirts (full sleeves)

10. 1 pair of thermals

11. Dry fruits

12. 6 energy bars

13. 2 rolls of tissue papers

14. UV protected sunglasses

15. Essential medicines

16. 2 pairs of cotton socks

17. 2 pairs of woolen socks

18. 1 torch

19. 1 headlamp ( i recommend this since it leaves your hands free for using walking sticks)

20. 2 one liter water bottles

21. 55-liter backpack

22. 15-liter daypack

23. Sunscreen, moisturizer, lip balm other toiletries

24. Good fitting trekking shoes

25. 1 pack of Wet wipes

There is a list compiled here by the good folks at IndiaHikes which I used as a reference packing for this trek

The idea is to travel light with basic and important necessities. Also you have to be comfortable with the fact that you may not get a chance to bathe, so carry wet wipes and use them frugally.

Goecha la trek day 0 – Pune – Delhi – Bagdogra – New Jalpaiguri

October 20th was the day, Diwali was just over and we set out for our first pitstop to New Jalpaiguri. Prajwalit, Adityo and I left from Pune to Delhi in the early hours of the morning. Bhargava would join us in Delhi from Hyderabad. He made it on time and after a quick lunch, it was time for our 2-hour flight to Bagdogra in West Bengal. Our stay for the night was in the city of New Jalpaiguri(NJP). The Kali Puja was just over, but some of the pandal decorations were still around. We didn’t have a lot of time to explore NJP and we were only there for one night. We walked around the street a bit to find some lunch. We had some “Aloo Panner” which was delicious along with some really hot chapati. Then we all napped a bit for some much-needed rest. The evening was uneventful, a small stroll down for some tea and we retired for the night. Before that, we got confirmation that the car, that was to take us to Yuksam will arrive the next day at 6.30 am.

Goecha la trek day 1 – NJP – Legship – Yuksam

Our sacks were packed up, day packs had now come out. The light cotton clothes were lined with thin fleeces. It was now time to cross over from the outskirts of West Bengal into the lush greenery of Sikkim with the Teesta river for the company for most of the way. We would be passing through the towns of Legship, Jorthang, Gyalshing. The total journey time would be about 7 – 8 hours not including breaks along the way, We had ordered some early breakfast but were surprised to find out that apart from tea not much can be available. So we decided to eat something along the way to Yuksam. The car arrived to pick us up on time, it wasn’t the most comfortable looking vehicle. It was an old jeep with no bucket seats. Assuming hilly and winding roads ahead, we all knew that it wasn’t our most preferred choice of transport but we had to make a start to the trip and getting to Yuksam was more important, so we took the risk.

New Jalpaiguri is very close to the border of West Bengal and Sikkim. We would be crossing over into Sikkim near a place called Melli. Our first halt was near Lohapul at Mama Hotel. “Luchi” which is Bengali means Puri and Aloo bhaji were devoured here, along with some yummy Aloo Parantha with pickle, and of course some much needed ‘Chai’.

Where can you have breakfast en route to Yuksam from NJP?

Breakfast at Mama Hotel, Loha Pul, Darjeeling, West Bengal 734008. Tel: 076024 36384

The happy trekkers with their tummies full, now made their way to Melli. The crossover at Melli was easy, the driver had the required papers and our backpacks did the remaining. As soon as we entered Sikkim, the landscape changed, the roads were winding and narrow with lush green forests all around. Although a very small state, it is important o know that 35% of Sikkim is covered by KhanchenDzonga National Park. Even though you are in a vehicle, you have to cross between valleys to get to Yuksam. There are single lane metal bridges that are built over the river that help you cross. The rattling of the bridge decks and the fact that you are about 500ft above a glacial river make it a very exciting drive. We could see the impact of an increase in tourism here, next to the single lane metal bridge a two-way concrete bridge is being built.

A couple of hours of driving and it was almost time for lunch. The driver recommended we should wait at Gurung, Hotel at Legship for lunch and took us to this lovely homely food place. the lady serving told us that they are serving organic food and even the chicken served there is organic! The boys continued their vegetarian streak and we got served with some piping hot dal, rice, vegetables and the red chilly pickle or the “Dalle”. The ambiance at the Gurung Hotel was homely and the food was delicious, Adityo surprised himself with the ‘Dalle” when he mistook that for a cherry tomato and attempted to eat the whole of it. We all teared up, the 3 of us thanks to how hilarious his situation was and Adityo because he seemed to have become a fire-spouting dragon!

Where can you have lunch en route to Yuksam from NJP?

Lunch at Gurung Hotel: Legship, Sikkim 737111. Tel: 081458 94311

The remaining journey was uneventful until we saw a road sign that said “Yuksam 10km”, we started making calls to Mr. Gurung who was a trek co-ordinator to locate the guest house. We had booked the Geocha la trek in Sikkim via Thrillophilia who then helped us find the Red Panda Tours and Travels, our local guides in Yuksam. Its only after reaching the village of Yuksam did we realize how big the village is! There is only 1 main road that runs through the entire village and all the hotels, homestays are all along this road. In the middle of the main road is the infamous main market area that has a couple of shops selling trekking gear and winter gear. “Gupta’s restaurant” is the most significant landmark on this road. It seems like in Yuksam, the world converges at Gupta’s. As Yuksam is the base village for many treks in this region, you get to meet and interact with a lot of other trekkers here. Also, Gupta’s serve amazing food and is open until late.

So after checking into our guest house, we made it to Gupta’s. The climate was beautiful, perfectly chilly and clean mountain air, we decided to walk around and explore the village. Our appetites were worked up so we ordered some Chowmein. We had 2 days in Yuksam, since we were informed that there will be another group of 4 people from Bangalore who would join us the next day. This meant that we could explore some more place in Yuksam.

More to come of the adventurous trek of Goecha la, which by the way has not even begun yet! In the meantime feast your eyes with some photos

What are the top 5 interesting places to visit in Yuksam?

1. Kartok Lake

Kartok lake

2.Coronation Throne Of Norbugang

Coronation Throne, Norbugang

3. Dubdi Monastery

PC Kothanda Srinivasan – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, Link

4. Khangchendzonga National park

Khangchendzonga National park

5. Gupta Restaurant

PC Nilabh Singh

Youtube | Goecha La Trek 2017 | Himalayan Trek | Video Blawghh Full HD Part 1

Youtube | Goecha La Trek 2017 | Himalayan Trek | Video Blawghh Full HD Part 2

A few weeks back there was an interesting post on Twitter by @IndiBlogger where they asked to share blogging tips with fellow bloggers.

There is so much content already on this topic and so much new that is being written with every new development in search engines and digital marketing it’s hard to come up with a single tip that would make a difference.

The initiative by Indiblogger got a lot of response from the Twitter community: MyBloggingTips

Learning from my own experiences, I decided to put together my top 10 tips that have helped me get back to blogging. I encountered the world of blogging since 2005, at that time it was more of a personal blog on Blogger (blogspot) which I somehow got bored of due to its limitations in UI and design. Around 2008 I started with my WordPress blog and that’s how the name ‘blawghh” originated. I did write regularly but a full-time job and growing work responsibilities kept me away from blogging for a long time. Finally, in 2018, I got my own domain and here we are today.

Top 10 blogging tips to grow a successful blog for newbies and beginners

Before you start writing a blog, go over these tips and work out your own regimen. By experience, I know that it is very easy to get stagnated and if your intention is earning money from your blog, then you have to treat this as work and be very professional in your approach. There are many enthusiastic folks, who wake up one day and decide “I want to write a blog” and then they directly jump to reading articles about “blogging for money”. What happens is that because you don’t have a clear direction, you end up not fulfilling both your desires of blogging and earning money through blogging. To succeed in blogging and then generating an income from it, I believe that these 10 tips are very crucial. In this post, I have touched upon SEO and digital marketing very briefly, a detailed post on digressing SEO for blogging better left for another day.

So summing up my top 10 blogging tips to grow a successful blog for beginners and newbies:

1. Define the purpose of your blog

2. Use tools to get organized

3. Create a blogging schedule

4. List down your blog topics

5. Study Basic SEO

6. Research about your topic

7. Keep your language simple

8. Use visual aids

9. Understand what your readers like to read

10. Be interesting, intriguing and informative

One of the reasons why I love blogging is because I get to learn so many new things, like creating this infographic! Do let me know how you liked it and share your own tips as well 🙂

Have you ever wondered how rumors spread? Rumors have some characteristics, that make them interesting and people get excited about them which why they spread so fast.

2 important characteristics of a rumor

1. A rumor should be informative:

A rumor is usually about something recent that people are interested in. so, if you are able to add more information to what is already true, you’ve just added that desired cherry on the cake.

2. A rumor cannot be verified

This is extremely important, because if the source of the rumor can be verified then point 1 automatically gets nullified. This makes it necessary for whatever (mis)information to have no source to trace it back to.

Now that we have these 2 points clear, lets look at why rumors spread?

4 reasons why rumors spread:

1. Uncertainty:

The explosion of information in the internet age, circular reporting, almost makes it impossible for people to know whether they know everything. Since people find the same information from all the common and well known sources, at times they are intentionally seeking an alternate view which satisfies their uncertainty.

2. Anxiety:

Uncertainty often leads to anxiety. Since we are looking for answers to come to us faster than the speed of light, there is a raging eagerness to know everything right now. People dont have the patience to wait for the right answer, they just need some answer now.

3. Negativity:

Have you ever heard of a positive rumor? A rumor that has been started for the benefit of people? I still haven’t found any such attempt. The intent of widespread of (mis)information or rumors is usually a negative one. They are used for sensationalism, creating a divide with a potential risk of playing with emotional psyche or sentiments of people often religiously motivated these days.

4. Sharing important (mis)information improves social status:

Lets not kid ourselves, we are all vying for those likes, retweets and comments on social media. However, at times we do fail to realize in that bargain of achieving social stardom, you are participating in falsehood of some kind. People do go to extreme length to achieve a social status.

As children, most of us have played the game of “Chinese whispers” and had a good laugh at the end of it. If you have to digest the above points more subtly then let me tell you spreading rumors is nothing different from playing Chinese whispers. Till the time this was all talk it seemed pretty harmless. People would talk behind others peoples backs and everything would seem quiet and hush-hush. The advent of the Internet and social media has now provided a means that now people can read, see and share everything they see and read. The rumor or (mis)information has escalated to the stature of “Fake news” and spreads like wildfire.

5 fake news messages I received on WhatsApp:

1. Indian national anthem declared the best in the world by UNESCO

TRUTH: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/unesco-india-national-anthem/

2. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared best PM by UNESCO (again)

TRUTH: https://www.hoaxorfact.com/politics/unesco-declared-modi-best-prime-minister.html

3. New notes of Rs. 2000/- have nano chips inside them which will enable tracking them!

TRUTH: https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/nope-rs-2000-note-does-not-have-a-gps-nano-chip-inside-it/

4. WhatsApp to start charging you money to send messages

TRUTH: https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/28030005/

5. Rare photograph of India Prime Minister as a sweeper

TRUTH: https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/01/21/modi-photoshopped_n_9035576.html

These very popular but false WhatsApp forwards satisfy all the criteria that define a rumor as well the reasons why rumors spread. As long as these Chinese whispers were non verifiable it was fine, but the good part about the Internet is that there are now websites which help identify fake news. More mainstream news websites are joining in to contain the situation and inform the people that these are fake news, just Google any of the above 5 and you can see the result for yourself.

In India, in the last couple of years there have been incidents which were incited due to such rumors or fake news. People lost lives. Angry mobs of people took law and order in their hands. This is not good for any city. state or country. Fake news must be contained. People need to educate themselves and those around them. But the question remains, how do you spot fake news? Here is a very helpful infographic by IFLA that teaches some basic fundamentals of how you can verify news as true or fake

Source: https://www.ifla.org/

There are no dedicated sites for India that help identify fake news, so here’s a video by Dhruv Rathee that explains how to spot fake news in India

Few steps you can follow before sharing any message you received on social media

1. Don’t believe everything on social media, Facebook and WhatsApp will not ask you to forward or share anything

2. Just Google IT: There is sufficient evidence if the news is true or fake, you can tell mostly from the 1st page results if you search some of the key terms of the message.

3. Check the source. Is the source creditable? If you have doubts simply don’t share or forward

4. Is the news helpful or positive? Or will it cause more sensationalism? Is it playing on your emotions? This is upon your logical reasoning where you can decide what you do next

5. Use social media responsibly: Evelyn Hall has said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” It is not necessary for everyone to agree on a subject but it is important for everyone to be tolerant of others opinions, beliefs and sentiments.

6. Educate yourselves and those around you about spreading, sharing anything without verifying the authenticity.

Do share if you have any more instances when you received fake news on email or WhatsApp in the comments.

Some popular websites that bust fake news worldwide:

1. Hoax Slayer: https://hoax-slayer.com/

2. Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/

3. Hoax Fact: https://www.hoaxorfact.com

4. Urban Legend: http://urbanlegendsonline.com/

I was immediately taken to my younger years when knew him as the “funny man” in Marathi, and for some reason, my father had loads of tapes of him. It was much much later that I figured out what an icon of Marathi literature he was. Literature, music, acting, orating Pu La Deshpande has many facets to his body of work and one cannot argue that he excelled at all of them.

Many years after my father had passed away, I chanced upon those cassettes and the curiosity to know Pu La Deshpande better led me to read his books. My most favorite of his writings is called “Mhais”. The essay paints a picture of a State transport bus en route to Chiplun in Konkan, Maharashtra and the happenings of the travel journey which are dictated by the ‘Mhais” (buffalo)

The beauty of Pu La Deshpande’s writings is in his unique characterization. I distinctly remember how he had sketched the “Inspector” from a village arriving 0n the scene in a Jeep etc his mannerisms, how the people would react to the arrival of the Police. The dialogue “Diiiriver kone”, read by Pu La himself in a deep, husky voice has me as one of the people traveling on that bus with all those people. His description of the surrounding and the situation is so vivid that his words make the character and the scene come alive. Another one such essay I absolutely love is “Raosaheb”, or as I like to imagine Raosaheb as a gentle giant, whose innocence and love would melt your heart.

One of the greatest gifts Pu La Deshpande had was the ability to laugh at everyday problems. There was no huge plot or a climax that was revealed at the end, but it was a reassurance that if you take problems not too seriously, they are quite comical and easy to handle. Very few people have this talent, I believe through Pu La Deshpande’s works he intended to pass this on to his audiences.

Years later, when YouTube arrived, I was hooked to watching Pu La Deshpande’s ‘kathakathan’, an equivalent of stand up comedy in those days. The only difference being it was apolitical, devoid of using any expletives with clean content. The audiences also I believe were much tolerant, one of his humorous essays “Mumbaikar, Punekar Ka Nagpurkar?” I’m sure would have rubbed off otherwise in today’s day and age. I’m sure though that if someone would have protested to his views, Pu La would’ve converted that also into some more writing.

While I am writing this, I am listening to “Mi ani mazha shtrupaksha” and am left wondering what Pu La Deshpande would’ve written about the world today? In his birth centenary year, it only seems apt that a biopic commemorating his life is being made by Mahesh Majrekar. One can only hope that he does justice to the marvel that is Pu La Deshpande.

Pu La Deshpande books and other works I have read:

• Marathi Vangmayacha (Galeev) Itihas (मराठी वाङ्‌मयाचा (गाळीव) इतिहास)

• Hasavnuk (हसवणूक)

• Batatyachi Chaal (बटाट्याची चाळ)

• Khilli (खिल्ली)

• UralSural (उरलंसुरलं)

• Purchundi (पुरचुंडी)

• Vyakti Ani Valli (व्यक्ती आणि वल्ली)

• Batatyachi Chaal (बटाट्याची चाळ)

• Asa Mi Asami (असा मी असामी)

• Varyawarachi Varaat (वा-यावरची वरात)

• Ti Fulrani (ती फुलराणी) based on Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

Pu La Deshpande: Raosaheb

Pu La Deshpande: Mhais

Pu La Deshpande: Mumbaikar, Punekar ka Nagpurkar?

Here is also a brilliant Marathi blog “Pu La Prem“

In the last decade, I have made so many friends who love to travel! Some of them travel often, some of them travel together as a couple, some solo and some travel not as frequently as they would like to. But, if there is one thing that is common among them, it is that they are ‘different’. No, they are normal human beings, but they choose to think different about LIFE and everything around them in general. This got me thinking, why? Why are they different and what makes people who travel stand out from the crowd? Eventually, I came to conclude that traveling and exploring new places helps develop your personality and adds to your character, here are some reasons why:

1. Travelling gets you to shake out of your comfort zone

Dalai Lama has said, “Once a year go someplace you’ve never been before.” Very few realize that traveling does not mean collecting travel stamps on your passport but it means to gain new experiences. There is a thrill in traveling to a new place. For me personally, right from taking the flight or train to reaching the actual place, every milestone is thrilling. Every journey has its own flavor and that’s what makes it special. When you travel to a new place, at first it is unknown, a couple of days spent in a new place and it all starts becoming familiar, the air, the surrounding, the people start feeling known and you begin to fit in. Learning to communicate with absolute strangers, walking in a lane you have never before, trying a new dish or even participating in some cultural activities in some way force you out of your comfort zone to do or try something different. You often find yourself in never before situations when you travel and that’s the true fun part.

2. Travel to learn something new

In school, I remember reading about Hsuen Tsang, a Chinese scholar who traveled extensively in India. Traveling teaches you much more than what you would learn from a classroom or your job. For some of us who are students of LIFE, traveling is our only EDUCATION. Thanks to the internet, you have all the information at your disposal. Until you don’t experience what you read first hand, you are still left wanting. Don’t get me wrong, when I say learn, I don’t only mean learn about the place, you learn more about yourself also.

There are so many beautiful places to see around the world! The ancient relics and monuments are the living remnants of history, as we know it. Travel makes you more open-minded to explore and experience new things. Learning about different cultures, food, history and the people. I’ve been amazed by some of the people I have met on my travels, their stories and the experiences they have shared have helped me realize a lot about myself.

3. Traveling is good to be able to disconnect and reflect

In our constant and relentless effort to be connected with everything and everyone, we have forgotten that we have the option to disconnect. Whether it is social media, television or other distractions, the need to know and keep up with everything is so strong that it has engulfed our personal space, time and become a routine.

Travel helps me break this routine. When I am traveling I like to imagine the world without cell phones and Internet. So my first instinct is to buy a map of the place I am going to then rely on Google maps. Traveling slows things down, giving you time for self-exploration and introspection. Travel helps to listen to your instincts and act on them. Away from crowds, familiar surroundings and away from distractions helps me put things into perspective.

Most of us living in cities are overwhelmed keeping up with the expectations of big city life! Being at 10000ft, in the cold winter of the Himalayas, having to wait for a good 30 minutes only to be able to drink a cup of warm water made me realize how taken for granted these luxuries are for us in cities. A sunset with splashing colors or viewing millions of stars under a clear sky, one realizes these are the rarities of life we have forgotten to appreciate in comparison to the man-made grandeur.

4. Traveling taught me to do the best with what I have

Even the best of plans can go awry in an instant! Traveling comes with its set of problems, missing flights, losing baggage or being lost yourself. How you handle them all while being in unprecedented territory helps you grow as a person. There is only so much one can plan and be careful about! Traveling though is not about certainty, its what you do and how you react to a given situation that differentiates a catastrophe from an adventure.

My trip to Ladakh a few years back was one such adventure where catastrophe turned into an adventure of a lifetime. The group was stuck in a village called Rumtse a few 100km before Leh. A small village, Rumtse had room for maybe 300 people, but because of a landslide, a huge part of the road was literally washed away and now close to 1000 people were stuck. We had to spend the night in someone’s kitchen. 6 people with our luggage in a room which was no more than 10ft x 10ft. Would you believe this is one the most famous travel story told and all 6 of us reminisce about the incident? That night we all learned a lot about each other, our tolerance, ability to adapt, our problem-solving skills and who snores the most :P. The positive that came out of it was that despite the slight roadblock in Rumtse, everyone wanted to carry on further to the trip and remaining 13 days were most memorable.

5. Travel and learn to manage your expectations

Someone has said, “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey!”. Each travel journey is different and extremely personal. In the very same place, on the very same path, at the same moment, different individuals have different experiences. At times you become aware of your own strengths and capabilities, and sometimes you have to come to terms with your limitations.

So where are you planning to travel next?