The other day, a friend dropped in from Mumbai and asked if I could meet him the next day. My answer was curt and unlike what I usually respond with. I said, “No. I am busy.” After I sent the message, I sat a while, looking at it. The message looked rather forbidding, casting a […]
It is bitterly cold. The tea stall owner is doing brisk business. I am wearing thick gloves and wrapped up in a long coat, but I can still feel the cold seep in through to my bones. My taxi driver, a smiling Nepali who speaks little English, promises me that he will wait, so I […]
It’s a walk of faith, I tell myself. I would walk 800-km from France to Spain to find faith. A walk to dispel my inner cynicism and believe in the essential goodness of humanity. That walk is the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrim trail that starts in different places in Europe, culminating in the […]
I am always baffled when someone says I inspire them. I simply can’t believe that. How can you not know what a fraud and impostor I am? But unlike me, I want to share with you those genuine people who inspire me. The Happiness Series, I hope, will chronicle what I see in you and […]
We live in a world where hope seems dry; where the dreams of our lives flutter like dusty rags; where we flounder in the decay of our putrid emotions. And then…you see this. I had just gone to the hospital to get my monthly injections when my Dad told me to stop by at a […]
I am sitting on Marina Beach, Chennai on an upturned canoe sometime in 2004. Next to me is a guy – Suresh. I watch the waves recede. Ebb. Flow. Recede. Relentless. Suresh turns to me and breaks the silence. “So, let’s talk about you and me.” I almost fall off the canoe and hurriedly clamber […]
If you go to Bhutan, and you must because it’s my favorite country, then you will find that for a nation that pursues ‘Gross Domestic Happiness,’ its people are curiously obsessed with death. And since I am obsessed about happiness, then it follows that I am obsessed with death too, right? So, one day, I […]
My friend and I look forward to Saturdays. That’s our long run day. That’s the day I write in our workout worksheet: Long run at a conversational pace only. After a week of pushing each other to run faster, we love our Saturday when we run at our own pace with nothing else but the […]
About 29 days ago, I promised my friend I would write a novel. I didn’t think I would meet that promise. I told all of you that I would write 75,774 words. I didn’t think I could. Yet, here I am. Bleary-eyed. Utterly drained. Exhausted. Enervated. Yet…after 29 days of frenetic writing, the ‘The Star […]