My Book

 About my remembrance from childhood

When I was just a few years old, my parents then took me to the school festival where I was one of the participants and I remember having performed in relay race, drawing competition and a few other contests. The festival had culminated in balloons of all different colors being thrown into the bright sunny white, blue sky by many people including me that too with arms wide open and a widely open chest. I still have fond memories and a vivid remembrance of two red balloons taking off from my sprawling hands. I was barely seven years old then when it was time for me to leave the Bokaro township in Bihar, India. We were being transferred to Ranchi.

At Ranchi, I remember that we started living in B/31 at Satellite Township and were flanked on either side by neighbors who had children of my same age. We immediately forged a solid bond and started playing cricket, watering the garden, cycling, and other fun activities on a daily basis. Later, I found that my classmates from the Delhi Public School Ranchi used to live in slightly afar houses though those were within a kilometer. So, I used to go their houses and introduce myself to them in a very shy manner. From there, I learnt to find and identify new friends or new neighbors and reach them out by going to their houses and by later inviting them to my house, and then to appreciate the power of not-so-immediate neighborhood because they were living slightly afar from my house.

All this while, my parents did a very good job at my upbringing. I was quite talented in studies, drawing, arts, and poetry. My parents kept motivating me to draw and paint such as my father at the terrace told me that he would pay me proportionately to the quality of my drawing. I would fondly draw one nice art every day and put the keeps in my red piggy bank or gullak.

I began playing flute which immediately gave me a lot of relief and joy. Whenever I would travel in train to Jaipur or Delhi, I would carry my white flute and play it when nobody was around.

I also vividly remember playing a long game of football with my friends and coming back to home drenched in rain and sweat, and then my mother attending to me to change my clothes, with me thanking the God to allow me to play such a wonderful game. I immediately became a football fan and that too a maniac one, with my friend Sumeet Saluja where we would constantly be found playing in the ground and in our school, and we together rooting for Argentina then Netherlands then Spain. We would also be found booing away other kids who were born-fans of Brazil or any other country.

Coming back to the beautiful game of lawn tennis. At Ranchi, I made two friends who were quite good at playing lawn tennis. I used to regularly watch them and one day decided to play with them. I lost both my matches to them. Their names are Amit Vijayvergia and TN Vijay. Those twin losses motivated me to continue to play the game. However, due to a lack of enough support or grounds, I was not able to fructify my passion. So, I decided to take it up as a serious sport when I grow old which meant that when I was capable enough to draw my first salary.

I had to struggle a lot to earn my first meaningful salary, which came in the form of internship in USA at the age of twenty three.

 

My first salary

I got my first chance to play lawn tennis in Minneapolis USA when the CFO or Chief Financial Officer of IDeaS Inc. offered to play a full set at a court near the office. I immediately agreed to him, though he won the match 6-2. I was feeling confident then because I had been playing tennis at Blacksburg Virginia USA and my body was in good shape, and I had recently defeated a big bulky Phillip Stephen in Blacksburg.

 

 

Books

I have long had a passion and a hunger to read books because it is the books that give me perspective of life, and all the successful top people in the world have a habit of reading non-fiction books. In the last thirty days of this year 2026, I have already finished reading eight books. Now I have loaned two more books from the Coforge Public Library in Gurgaon. I have a habit of changing the genre or the variety of the books. Currently, I am keeping myself occupied with two books – Triggers by Malcolm Goldmith, and Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark. My interest in books was rekindled when I read such purposeful books by highly acclaimed authors as Arthur Haily (Airport, Wheels, Jeffrey Archer (Kane and Abel, A Quiver full of arrows), Amitabh Ghosh (The Calcutta Chromosome, A Sea of Poppies), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), and of late David Baldacci (Mercy, The Sixth Man, The Camel Club, King and Maxwell, Simple Genius). Two particular books that were very impressive and left a profound impression on me is Bertand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I did not like Ayn Rand’s book or Robin Cook’s medical thriller books. John Grisham and his books constantly captured my attention only to see it wilting away.

Reading the book Nudge by Richard Thaler upon the recommendation of my IBM Mentor Dr. Niraj Ranjan Sharma when I was already about to be forty years old aroused in me an interest for such psychology books so much so that I got a patent filed in psychology with Dr. Sharma. The book “Triggers” is also about psychology.

 

Listening to Podcast

I have made it a habit in the past eight months or so to listen to meaningful podcasts. I learn so much from merely listening to podcasts. Dr. Andrew Huberman and Chris Williams are a few noteworthy people who I regularly listen to.

 

 

My learnings from job:

I have learnt a lot from the job industry of Analytics and Data Science. Generally, I have been blessed with amazing managers especially during my stint at IBM India.

To prepare targets and then to approach any target with a brick-by-brick foundation approach is what has stuck to me like a leech. Any milestone should be met with at least ten thousand hours of my efforts and inputs.

The corporate world is full of people with sublime talent and a huge hunger to accomplish something. The best advice I can give to anyone is to identify and socialize such precocious talent and then to follow them, irrespective of their age or background.

Another vital learning at job is to be as succinct as possible including in my mannerisms, and in the conduct on email or chats. It is quite difficult to provide a brief summary of your views to a curious inquisitive set of people in your group.

I am a sincere believer of having fun at work. We should regularly play games while at work, go for long walks, and participate in all the team bonding activities. Dancing and Toastmaster are other nice activities that I would recommend everybody to do at work. Bringing a Calendar such as ‘This Day That Age’s can really pep you for the remainder of the day. Also, bring a mini basket where you can put the basketball in its net and gain yourself some confidence that would be enough to nudge you to achieve some truly remarkable things on that day.

Practice yoga with a group at 10 AM or 11 AM every day when you go for work. Then repeat that yoga exercise at 4 PM for fifteen minutes.

My hobbies and interests:

I am a person with variegated interests and hobbies. I never get tired of indulging in different activities. These days, I enjoy playing a game or two of pool at V Club Gurgaon either alone or with one of the club members or managers. With playing tennis, doing long brisk walk, cycling and writing and participating in society matters as my perennial pivots for pass-times, I have time and again tried with challenging myself in such sports as swimming, kite flying, and hiking. I was never great at any such activity or sport. For instance, I was at best a college level semi-finalist in chess and badminton tournaments. I kept trying my luck with Rubik’s cube and the hard Sudoku puzzles but couldn't succeed in acing those. I consider myself a bits-and-pieces player in almost all the sports and activities, which I feel is far below the amateur level.

I don’t like to give up things easily.

I like to indulge in nature by touching the trees or listening to the great vibes sung by birds chirping in the morning hours. I particularly enjoyed the sunrise and the sunset scenes at Bali, and the sunset scene at Kanyakumari India.

 

My dreams:

I always wanted to launch a start-up of my own. Another favorite ambition of mine is to run as long and as hard as I can. I feel that my body now finally permit to challenge myself in that regard. My another dream is to open a library where a book reading culture can be inculcated in India. I am quite impressed by the book reading frenzy in several parts of India. However, due to our overall poor education or literacy rate when compared to Vietnam or other emerging nations, there is a massive room for improvement in the LQ or the Literary Quotient.

My yet another dream is to travel to Japan and Czech Republic as both are beautiful countries.

I also wish to write a technical book such as my tips and tricks on Data Science. I have already published numerous blogs and stories on LinkedIn and Medium.com. So, it is just a matter of aggregating the content from here and there, combined with a spark, to prepare a compendium like that.

 

My tours and learnings from those:

I have traveled to Hong Kong, Macau (both Company sponsored travel), Mauritius, Vietnam, Bali, Singapore, Malaysia and lived in USA. Within India, I have scaled the hills of Coorg, went to Kashmir to play sled in snow, shouted the maximum out of my lungs at Attari-Wagah border, and went to offer my prayers at Sona Girji temple in Madhya Pradesh.

On Company sponsored travel, I have lived in Mumbai for three months and Indore, Pune and Chennai for two days.

 

 

When Comebacks meant something: A ‘Love’ Letter to Mental Toughness

There was a time when a comeback wasn’t just a statistic. It was a statement of character.

·       When Stefan Edberg served and volleyed on grass, knowing one bad step could end the point or the cold notion of seeing the ball fly past him gazing stupidly at it along with the crowd mocking at his choice or lack of fighting from the baseline.

·       When Steve Waugh walked in with Australia collapsing and decided the match would bend to his will.

·       When VVS Laxman, elegant and stubborn, refused to believe that a follow-on meant surrender.

·       When Brian Lara carried an entire cricketing culture on his bat, alone, against the best bowlers on earth.

These weren’t just performances. They were acts of defiance.

Then came the eternal crowd favorite Roger Federer. He dominated for a long while only to be dethroned by Rafael Nadal and later by Novak Djokovic both by battles that brought brute-force.

In tennis before Djokovic’s era of elastic defense and near-perfect baseline insurance, going one or two sets down meant something darker:

·       You were outplayed tactically

·       You were exposed mentally

·       You were often physically compromised

Coming back required risk-taking, tactical nous or reinvention, and an emotional regulation without coaching or analytics.

When Ivanisevic won Wimbledon in 2001 as World No. 125, it wasn’t because the margins were small -- it was because the margins were brutal.

Today, comebacks from two sets down are impressive, yes, but they often feel inevitable, engineered by fitness, data, and attrition.

Earlier, they felt earned.

·       Edberg was an epitome of purity of skill + moral courage at the net

·       Steffi Graf brought ruthless clarity, no drama, no noise.

·       Martina Navratilova was all about reinvention before reinvention was fashionable.

·       Gabriela Sabatini was pure grace and elegance under unbearable expectation.

·       Roger Federer exalted us with effortless dominance built on obsessive precision that was both related to watching with eyes wide open as well as the slender margin of points he won along with his sub-strong serves.

They shared something subtle but rare:

·       They didn’t outsource belief.

·       No mid-match reassurance.

·       No data dashboards.

·       No psychological scaffolding.

They trusted internal coherence — knowing who they were under pressure.

Steve Waugh and VVS Laxman were not aggressive in the same way. Lara was not patient in the same way. Yet all three possessed temporal courage — the ability to stay present longer than opponents. Waugh believed pressure was a privilege. Laxman believed time could be bent. Lara believed brilliance could outweigh fear

Kapil Dev, Waugh, and Lara remind us that mental toughness is not volume, rather it is duration.

Messi, Argentina, and the Longest Comeback of All

Messi’s World Cup win in 2022 wasn’t a match comeback. It was a life comeback. It was fifteen feather-like but later foggy years of:

·       “Greatest, but…”

·       Finals lost

·       Retirements reversed

·       National disappointment absorbed silently

·       Being labeled as a fraud by a journalist

Argentina lost their first match of that World Cup in Doha Qatar despite being a goal up to an opponent that would blow the lights of any football follower, Saudi Arabia. Messi still chose belief over bitterness. That is not resilience. That is identity-level toughness. At the final, his team had to see his side sucked into being level with France not once but twice, just like it had happened a week ago against Netherlands.

 

Beyond Sport:

·       Michael Schumacher: Surviving 13 years after a coma is the ultimate endurance test — no crowd, no trophies, no comeback arc.

·       Ian Thorpe dominated swimming not through chaos, but control.

·       Vishwanathan Anand won across eras, formats, and generations, quietly disproving the myth that genius fades.

·       Al Pacino — whether on stage or screen — reminds us that presence, not volume, commands respect.

Different fields. Same spine.

So what really is mental toughness? Not just grit. Not just resilience. Mental toughness, across all your favorites, equals:

·       Identity Stability – knowing who you are when outcomes wobble

·       Temporal Patience – staying longer in discomfort

·       Skill Purity – fundamentals that don’t panic

·       Selective Emotion – intensity without loss of control

·       Meaning Beyond Winning – purpose that outlasts results

That is the real linkage.

 

Why it feels different today

Modern sport is optimized:

·       Analytics cushion variance

·       Fitness reduces collapse

·       Coaching fills emotional gaps

We get excellence — but fewer miracles.

 

My heroes came from an era where:

·       The mind had to do more of the work.

·       And that’s why they still matter.

 

Eternal Prime

Truly great athletes don’t peak once. They establish an eternal prime — a standard of courage, elegance, and belief that time cannot downgrade. Edberg. Waugh. Laxman. Lara. Navratilova. Graf. Federer. Anand. Messi.

Different arenas. Same truth: When systems fail, the human core decides. That’s not nostalgia. That’s legacy.

There was a time when sport rewarded difference, not conformity. When style itself was a risk. When belief had to be self-generated, not outsourced to systems. That is why the names that stay with us—yours and mine—share something deeper than greatness.

 

The Artists of Unrepeatable Courage

·       Gustavo Kuerten: A clay-court poet with scoliosis scars and an open heart. Kuerten didn’t just win Roland Garros three times — he humanized dominance. Drawing hearts on clay after victories, he proved toughness can coexist with joy. Mental toughness doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it smiles through pain.

·       Fabrice Santoro: The anti-template. With no power and no intimidation, Santoro defeated giants using memory, geometry, and emotional neutrality. In today’s algorithmic tennis, Santoro wouldn’t be “optimized.” In his era, he was indestructible. Toughness is also refusing to play someone else’s game!

·       Rohan Bopanna: he epitomize longevity as defiance. While others faded, Bopanna reinvented himself in doubles, peaking after 40. Not explosive. Not loud. Just precision, partnership, self-knowledge, and staying relevant is its own comeback.

 

Cricket’s Guardians of Meaning

Rahul Dravid: If mental toughness had a conscience. Dravid absorbed pressure so others could flourish. In Adelaide, Rawalpindi, and countless quiet hours, he showed that strength isn’t domination, rather its availability.

Yuvraj Singh: Talent wasn’t his comeback. Survival was. Six sixes, World Cup heroics, then cancer — and back again. Not just to play, but to perform.  Courage is continuing after applause ends.

Kevin Pietersen: Flawed. Brilliant. Uncontainable. KP reminds us toughness is not obedience. Sometimes it is self-expression at odds with systems.

Greatness doesn’t require harmony — it requires conviction.

 

Fast bowling is courage made kinetic. Gough bowled belief into English hope.

Shane Bond burned brightly despite a body that refused cooperation.

Daryl Mitchell embodies modern grit — flexible, adaptive, unglamorous. To run in knowing your body may fail — that is mental toughness.

 

Beyond Games: The Physics of Belief

Usain Bolt: Speed with joy. Bolt didn’t just break records — he relaxed under pressure. While others tightened, he smiled. True dominance feels light.

Neeraj Chopra: Silence. Precision. History. In a country starved of track-and-field icons, Chopra carried expectation without noise. No theatrics. Just execution.

Toughness can be quiet and still historic.

 

Across tennis, cricket, athletics, swimming, chess, cinema, and life itself, my eternal favorites share five invariants:

·       Identity before outcome

·       Skill purity under pressure

·       Longevity through adaptation

·       Resistance to system-level conformity

·       Meaning beyond metrics

 

Whether it’s:

·       Santoro slicing geometry,

·       Dravid blocking time,

·       Messi rewriting destiny,

·       Schumacher surviving unseen battles,

·       Anand outthinking generations,

the message is the same.

 

Why the magic feels rarer now

Modern sport minimizes collapse. But collapse is where character reveals itself. Earlier, coming back from two sets down meant technical reinvention, emotional risk, or existential pressure. Now, it often means endurance, data alignment, and attrition, all of which is impressive but less poetic.

 

Eternal Prime -- Some athletes peak. Yet others establish a standard. They don’t belong to eras. They belong to principles. There are a numerous examples but a select few stand out for me --

·       Edberg. Kuerten. Santoro. Waugh. Dravid. Lara. Yuvraj. Federer. Navratilova. Graf. Anand. Bolt. Chopra. Messi. Argentina.

·       These players are epitomes of brilliant tireless contributions to the game of football yet silent in their personality that it provides me a large amount of mental calmness and relaxation just by thinking of some of their iconic playing styles or jerseys -- Juan Riquelme, Veron, Javier Zanetti (all Argentines), Roberto Carlos and Kaka (both Brazilians), Michael Ballack (Germany) and Vargas (Chile).

Different sports. Same truth: When optimization ends, the human core begins. That is not nostalgia. That is a philosophy of greatness.

So, tomorrow, when I see myself 0-6 trailing badly in the first set or two, then the eternal love of playing the game in the manner most magical of me, I know from deep beneath that I can upturn that situation by winning the next three sets each six games to love!

Our Family Trip to Tijara Rajasthan on January 25th 2026

My Family Trip to Tijara Chandaprabhu Digambar Jain Mandir

Yesterday, amidst cold wave and single digit temperature and with the weather forecast of Delhi NCR showing severe winds blowing, I decided to take my family along with my parents to Tijara at Rajasthan. It was always meant to be a 2 hour long journey that would be met with countless roadblocks due to Government doing road construction activity on NH-48 which connects Gurgaon to Dharuheda. We packed ourselves in our big Maruti car and did a meticulous time bound planning and packing with everyone having picked their favorite seat in the car for both the to-and-fro journey. I got to pick the best seat which was next to the driver. As soon as we left Gurgaon, we saw a long imposing truck-packed section of the road at Manesar that kept giving the impression that it would be a much longer than 6 minute road congestion that was being shown by the GPS in our mobile phones. I took it as the perfect moment to continue reading the Daniel Goleman book "The New Leaders" from where I had left off the previous night. Just reading twenty pages of that fascinating book's chapter on how to become a visionary leader filled the hope inside me that we will soon beat this Manesar traffic and reach Tijara in time to have pooja there. 

On the road, we saw plenty of sunflower plantations that were interspersed with wheat which was much smaller in length than the sunflower plantations that had flanked those wheat crops from three sides. Upon seeing this, I realized that it will not take much time for those wheat crops to outgrow the sunflower plantations as the wheat crops can reach ten to twelve feet height. Nonetheless, the wheat crops looked so bright that their image outpowered the beautiful yellow speckled sunflower plants.

We missed the final turn to the temple due to lack of enough signboards, and reached two kilometers ahead as a result. Then I told my driver to ask the people nearby to guide us to the right path to the temple.

Upon reaching the temple, we immediately went to the lunch facility where we saw a nice service by the workers there who were serving some hot and delicious yet nutritious food. One thing good about the food in Jain temples is that it is very healthy and nutritious and there is no food item that is made from any underground crop including potatoes and onions.

After finishing our meal, we did some pooja and aarti. We started with doing aarti of Chandapraphu bhagwan, then Parshavanth bhagwan, and then Lord Mahavir. My father had bought some "chaatras" to be offered to Chandapraphu bhagwan by my father, my son, and I. This also became our first meaningful group-photo taken this year outside of Gurgaon!

Then, we went for performing "vedi" or parikrama or rotation for three times inside of the temple. Inside the temple are two more idols or moortis which made us stop and offer our prayers to them. There are a lot of meaningful scriptures etched on the temple walls that kept drawing my attention while performing those vedis.

Then we went to an adjacent small building where the ash or "mitti" of Chandapraphu bhagwan was kept along with Padmavati lordess idol. We offered our prayers to them as well. I then prayed to the feet of Chandapraphu bhagwan and felt purposeful.

Then we all crossed a bridge to reach another temple area with a large statue of Chandapraphu bhagwan in a sitting position. It is surrounded by idols of all our 24 Jain tirthankaras. We offered our prayers to all of them.

Upon finishing our ritual, we did some shopping and ate a delicious fresh and hot aloo chat along with some other snacks and then sat in the car for our return journey. 

Then, I saw water sprinklers sprinkling water in lush green fields with a soothing stillness on both sides of the road, unlike the noise due to constant honking on the Gurgaon roads. We also saw two peahens and some more flora and fauna.

We played some music of my son's choice to when we saw the Aravalli mountain range appear on our right side thereby reminding that we were not more than an hour away from our home.

It was out first family trip to Tijara in four or five years, which ended in a purposeful and a meaningful way.

Nature Flows

Today morning, I went for a Sunday cycling on the vast expanse of trees in South City 2 Gurgaon and then in Malibu Towne which offers an even more expansive set of trees that begins with a big Banyan tree. The thought crossed my peaceful mind two days ago.

It is the birds that cross the branches of those trees and then the trees by communicating first in groups of two and then slowly building an army of cute, colorful and chirping among each other in conical formations that attracts me to such splendid cycling sorties every Sunday.

Soon, I come back home to watch the Sun breaks through and rips apart the dark, cloudy skies that have been wrapped under the clutches of the Moon. The energy and the rays emanating from the Sun make me awake and sit erect on my chair to watch the beaming bright light that lifts my spirits and cortisol levels enough to pep my energy and enthusiasm that carries my through the day.

Generally, I go for a saunter after that which is at 8 AM. I do not carry my phone or watch any screens until I am done with my morning walk. My body clock is enough to remind me of my walking time. When my wishful feet carry me downstairs for a walk, then my already erect spine due to the blessings of being with the big bright Sun make me look in a relaxed manner only at the trees and their leaves and begins to wonder about their formation. Slowly, a small smile crosses my small yet smooth cheeks, enough to slip through to my walking partners, who also look at the bright trees that have been only recently draped in bright sunshine from the Sun.

Upon reaching home by 8:30 AM, a cup of coffee in my made in Kerala tea pot awaits me which further reinforces my immensely gratifying experience since the morning that I had spent in cycling, then being with the Sun, and then a saunter with my friends where I had first gazed at the wonderful trees, the leaves on them, the immense sunrays falling on them, and now with my neck and eyes firmly fixed on focusing the blue Sky that is interspersed with white clouds which I know from my past two days of experience will soon turn grey and then congregate to darken to become black, which would be enough to pour some shower on my face for which I had been yearning since months which feels like years.

 

Finding happiness is important though being joyous is significantly more important

My kids are dearest to me. My son enjoyed his seventh birthday wherein he played a game of dart with his newfound friends in our new house.

Every morning, I connect with trees and the sound of birds chirping.

I make it a point to connect with my morning walking pal as well as evening walking pals.

Sometimes, we play badminton or go to the gym or burst into peels of laughter. Occasionally, I run for 500 to 1,000 meters. I get inspired by those around me who run at least three kilometers to as much as twenty-eight kilometers at a stretch.

I like doing yoga such as Surya Namaskar. It is then when I feel like connecting truly with my body and with the God. I have not been doing it for two months. I will surely do it today as well as tomorrow. Deep breathing is another activity which helps me a lot.

Sometimes, I play lawn tennis on clay court to express myself, my game plan, my stamina and my overall balance and state of mind.

I like to cycle a lot and now I can cycle for long distances and at moderate to high speed.

I like to read a lot such as fiction by David Baldacci, non-fiction and management books such as Deep Work by Carl Newport, as well as editorial page of various newspapers. These days, I am reading the books “Clear Thinking” by Shane Parrish and “David vs Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell. Reading nice books gives me a lot of perspective and a motivation to excel in writing and communicating with others.

Solving crosswords and sudoku are among my long-time favorite hobbies.

I also like to read sports pages and research papers. I myself have written several poems, short stories and other creative pieces in my personal blog.

Until two months ago, I liked to eat a lot of sweets but now I am practicing self-control and restraint to minimize its intake. I like to climb stairs, and I feel that doing so has made me fitter and leaner and grow younger. I believe in indulging for three to five minutes each day in some intense workout such as brisk walk, running, dancing, yoga, etc.

These days, happiness is measured by the size of your house, the brand of your car, the job and the salary and the designation that you have, etc. However, with this comes a great deal of responsibility which if not done properly can lead you to be bereft of your joy.

I like to walk on the balcony these days and to watch the vast expanse of trees and the sound of birds chirping on those. Sometimes, I would pluck a leaf from a neem tree and chew it for medicinal benefit. This is the way I feel connected with nature.

I like to play a variety of board games such as chess, carrom, pool, etc. I never get tired of playing those games. I have also learnt the basic level of swimming.

 I feel that these sports can teach us various concepts of how to apply various principles of science, as well as to find some joyous moment and to live in those moments once those games are over.

I like to listen to old Bollywood songs, radio, Sufi songs, and music of various genres across all the languages. It soothes my mind.

I like to mingle a lot with people and to make new friends and to widen my network.

I sincerely believe in expressing gratitude to a person who has done good for me. I also believe in apologizing for my actions to someone who may have felt hurt by my actions.

I have got vivid memories of my college batchmate Saurabh planting two trees together in our college garden.

 

 

 

 

The still sinew

It was the evening of September 4 in the year 2021. I was watching a wonderfully evolving five-day test match between India and England. It was the third day and it already felt like a fascinating eternity in which I had found my life captured in it. The Indians had started batting on Day 1 in utterly hopeless fashion only to find themselves being given a sinew to clutch hopes from Shardul Thakur who had effervescently blazed and blasted fifty-seven runs off a mere thirty-six deliveries. He was very much threatening to be the latest avatar of Lord Krishna, whose birthday had gone by three days earlier on August 31^st.

Parallelly, I was also watching the historic day for India when we won two gold medals for the first time on a single day in Paralympic sports in Tokyo, an event that can be juxtaposed or even dared to beat the often-justified hype around the normal Olympics.

Coming back to the test match cricket. Indian bowlers had rekindled hopes of stealing the match by showing steel during the final hour of play on Day 1 when they dashed three top order England batsmen. Since then, I have been ogling at the match with great adulation and hope to learn some lifelong lessons. I have not been disappointed with Ollie Pope hitting a quite marvellous and magnificently composed eighty-one runs, and Chris Woakes offering so much variety, composure, runs and wickets. I instantly took an idyllic photo of those two nice human beings playing the hard way but looking so soft and pleasing to my eyes.

England then raced to a 99-run lead. India was relying on one of their bowlers to limit the fast-vaulting English lead to below the three-figure mark. It was then as if Lord Krishna heard it and offered a chance by dismissing the England team for a lead of 99 runs.

It was the last straw that Indians were mentally telling themselves to hold to. Within ten minutes, Rohit Sharma and Rahul came out to bat, and what I saw later across twenty-four hours is the Lord Krishna like quietness, calm, yet mischief being shown by Rohit Sharma. He didn’t race to his first foreign century in this format. Instead, he gardened his way to that milestone. The three flashes of Lord Krishna that he showed were when he smashed a sixer to reach his milestone of a hundred runs, followed by his raising his bat every so softly and humbly that the English fans sitting far in the stadium could feel a friendly twinge in their spine that led them to stand up and give an adulation and honour. The last and final flash reminiscent of Lord Krishna showing by Rohit was when he could not resist the temptation to smash the new cherry out of the ground, and in the process, flicked the ball straight into the waiting hands of the fielder who was stationed at the boundary.

In this entire process, I feel that the English fans and cricketers would have felt the still and stable charming influence of Lord Krishna in Rohit. They would also realize that it was quite the last sinew that he had provided to India for completing what would be a truly pyrrhic victory but most importantly, to show the world the way to behave, play and celebrate in a quiet and still manner. His demeanour also teaches us to how to respect the thing we love the most, such as cricket, and to always be generous, humble, and tempered and mild mannered.

Performance speaks louder than words.

The pain that he endured when the cricket ball was hitting him on his legs, hands and each sinew later eventually got transformed to a beautiful rendition of runs, style, grace and the last straw that Indians were so hopefully yearning for in order to complete the victory, and to transcend the way the world looks at Indians as pleasant, graceful, caring and hard working.

His performance is perfect in its timing as it came just a few hours before Teacher’s Day.

The raw, uncut, pristine flock

Today, I was given the honour of reviewing my daughter's artwork. I call it an honour because arts is something built upon since my childhood days when my father had spotted my early talent and had rewarded me consistently based on the quality of my artwork and more so for how much he used to like my piece of abstraction represented on a sheet of paper. Then I had soon blossomed into a full-fledged painter and had begun painting aeroplanes, flowers, faces of beautiful people, parrots and then nature. It was this transformation from aeroplanes to nature that had captured my imagination so much so that I still benefit from that. Whenever I get drowned in the depression given by the man-made structures, there is something that I can sense and smell from the perfume of the air that comes to my rescue to provide bright and vivid creatures of nature that I can cling to. Today was an inch perfect example of that. I had got the chance to help my daughter with drawing a large tree draped under the hot Sun and housing a woodpecker and above all a sweet squirrel. The fluffy tail of that cute animal piqued my interest so much that I began looking at the different colours and hues that don its body. I could quickly spot a pattern with three colours present on its body. Later, I also realized that it can become a pet for the humans because of the sweet camaraderie it shares with us. I was stunned to see the raw speed of such a tiny creature yet a pristine and a rich flock of hair on its fluffy tail and elsewhere on its near invisible body. No wonder humans have been inspired by this creature and made movies such as Ice Age and its sequels. It has not been raining since several weeks in various parts of north India. A primary reason is either too much pollution of air due to vehicles occupying the road or the cruel trimming of trees as if they deserve a haircut during this summer season. If we would have allowed the vast trees to live freely and not chopped off the leaves and the branches from it, then we would not have been bothering about why the God has kept us bereft from the beautiful rain. This event of my virtually seeing a squirrel capturing my imagination which the tall buildings or the guzzling cars acting as spoilers has been enough to make me realize the importance of living with the nature and being with the nature at all times. It might rain tomorrow as is predicted by the Indian Meteorology Department and people may use that water to wash all the sins they have committed in the past. However, it is the smell of the rain and even more important the smell of the predicted rain that I am more interested in, and I have already got the fragrance of that smell! I would like to end this piece of artwork by saying that the nature has taught me to stay humble, happy, hopeful and hirsute in all times.

Run we can, and…

It was the London 2012 Olympics when we were all curious to know whether our all time great Abhinav Bindra who had famously won the gold medal in the Beijing 2008 Olympics will continue to win us more medals. We also wanted to see if the investment in the athletes will pay off. We were able to win six medals then, which is the richest haul in any Olympics for India till date. Once those games had culminated, it gave me the impression that we had won at least ten medals. We had struck silver and bronze, but our victories were looking so pyrrhic that the individual gold medal performance of Bindra was already bested by the combined ‘team’ performance of our London-bound athletes. So much so that my British colleague who was interning in India had hailed the Brits’ countless medals in equal light as India’s overall performances. However, then the fear of not being able to strike medals in team events was not up to the mark for India. That fear came back to haunt the Indian team in Brazil where the 2016 Olympics were held, and we ended up with two silver medals both in individual sport. We celebrated Dipa Karmarkar’s fourth place finish with such elan that we completely covered our mind with our incompetence in team sports.

Where India falters time and again is in not taking sports as a serious path to success. It is sport that gives us resilience, tests our resolve, sprinkles us with hope, fills us with buoyancy, gives us courage, and most importantly, makes us rise above every negativity of life such as hate, religion, race or caste.

We must excel in sports and give our Government a gumption to invest at least a billion dollars for the next Olympics.

We have been found floundering in swimming, cycling and countless other sports that require us to run. The meaning of a gold medal is that one needs to literally outrun and out-chase all the opponents.

We as a nation in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have failed to take as a personal insult when we go down fighting in a boxing match to China, or a table tennis match to a Hong Kong citizen who was born in China, or to a swimming semi-final qualifying heat to a Chinese Taipei citizen.

We as a nation have consistently failed to flame our inspiration from athletes of different race or religion who have won gold medal out of utter hopeless situations. The victory of the Tunisian who upset all odds to beat the fan-favourite Australian for a swimming gold medal will be a story that will always be etched in gold for me.

We as Indians wilfully obliterate our perspective of why some people such as a woman from Bermuda chose to renounce their British citizenship to go to Bermuda and defeated a Brit by a handsome margin to strike Gold medal in triathlon that too under extremely bad weather.

We must begin to excel in the power of learning from others and in giving credit where it is due. We must respect the value of the Gold medal for the winner when we don’t even reach the podium or are not good enough to be qualifying for it.

We must not sit back and harp upon our flash-in-the-pan victories even if they had come in a team event, although that rarity had happened to us more than four decades ago when we had won our last Olympic Hockey gold medal.

We must not count on odds to wait for the Chinese woman gold medalist to get disqualified so that our own silver medalist can somehow escape with a gold medal.

The single most important step that is required for all of us is to be mindful of the tropical climate of the Indian subcontinent and thereby to allow every single Indian to run and chase the glory. We must keep inspiring everyone to assign equal importance to running on the land, under the water, or in the form of a triathlon, even if it requires us to do that under the cold conditions of Himalayas or to go to China or Russia for practicing. We must encourage the children to best out their lungs and to identify their own halo of Gold medal in equal stead as the visualization of the Ohm chanting. We must live, breathe and learn from sport every single moment of life. We must let women take a lead in sports. We must not repent why chess or cricket have not yet been included in Olympics. We must value team sport significantly above an individual sport. We must clap the winners and learn from the struggles of every champion who is not an Indian. Above all, we must stop our extremely bad habits of indulging in cricket, Bollywood, politics and corruption.

To win a medal in Olympics requires nothing short of a Herculean effort. Let us call it an ‘Indian’ effort in the future. Together, when we have run a billion miles, then we must remind ourselves of “We can!” and then offer our own brand of Indian-ness to the world in the future Olympics. A target of 2 Golds, 3 Silvers and 10 Bronze should be enough for us to see us be eligible for hosting our own Olympics.

If some sane Indian person encounters this blog while she is running, then who knows we may inspire her to win a Gold medal in the present Olympics itself!

Toolchain “Over-take-over” to fight Covid-19

It is very important to anticipate the onset of a tsunami or a clear and imminent danger. Covid-19 second wave has proved to be a tsunami that too of unforeseen and magnanimous proportion. It has ravaged thousands of houses as well as households.

To put it succinctly, it has overtaken the comfort factor and the breathing space of many people world over, with India becoming the latest nation that is seeing dance of death on a daily basis.

It has shuffled the mindset and questioned the thought process of the most rational people.

There are so many theories being propounded about the origin of this coronavirus.

It is imperative that we understand the pain, the suffering and the shock being borne by countless Indians, yet formulate a resolve and collectively leverage all other tools that we have got to fight against this deadly devastating disastrous disease. We should prepare a diverse dashboard which mentions the benefits due to all the tools in the armoury that we have devised to tackle this virus.

We should look beyond finding the count of at risk and Covid-19 infected people in our near vicinity starting from five hundred meters in India’s famous Aarogya Setu app and augment it with the following:

Finding the count of at risk and Covid infected people in our near vicinity starting from ten meters.

How many people were able to heed the advice of someone whom they trust, and had got saved by that advice.

 The number of people who got cured due to the help provided by their neighbours. This is important to do because currently the Aarogya Setu app only works to frighten us by alerting us in Orange colour even if we are living directly above or below someone who is Covid-19 positive. Whereas the need of the hour is to combine forces and together fight this pandemic.

 The proportion of people who are vaccinated in the society where you live.

The number of masks that you have been wearing consistently since the last seven days.

 The number of people who you have succeeded in wearing a mask in your neighbourhood or society.

 Social distancing norms.

 Yoga and other exercises meant to increase the capacity of your lungs and to keep you from being mentally anxious or distressed.

 Not panicking no matter what the situation is.

Building knowledge about the pandemic.

Getting keenly involved in home bound activities such as reading, cooking, etc.

Hand wash using soap.

Keeping an empathetic attitude towards others at all times.

Watching news only for a few minutes in the morning.

Whilst each of the above-mentioned ideas may have contributed to saving precious lives, it is now vital to unite all these ideas to create a collected benefits due to these tools and to create a “halo” effect on the troubled infected patients.

Once we prepare such a variegated dashboard, only then can we be enarmed enough to wage a battle with this invisible beast called coronavirus.

Flow-chart

Life is like a flow-chart. It begins with how to start it when we are running to crawl then walk. Once we know the magic formula, then we assume that we will go with the flow and escape unhurt. However, if we start getting hurt or punished due to deviating from the predetermined steps, then panic, fear and other problems can quickly seep into our system. This can in turn result in a few people trying to exploit our situation by pitying,  bullying or fleecing us. When fear, greed and other challenges hit us together, only then we realize the importance of preparing a dashboard or a chart of real time updates about the challenges being faced and the possible solutions for dealing with those challenges. When we come out of a torrid trouble by often a hit-and-trial manner, then we reflect upon how we had learnt from our past mistakes or how those wounds continue to inflict on us. Having said that, Covid-19 is not any normal disease because it has the potential to spiral into an invisible tsunami from which not even any combination of human beings or their intelligence can truly define the new normal.

Now I want to make a chart to depict how well we cope with the following new unknowns: 1) how likely are we to contract Covid-19 virus when waiting patiently for our turn to get vaccinated at the long queues in the vaccination centre, 2) whether we can ever find merit in finding the degree of infection in patients who get vaccinated twice, 3) whether we can ever devise a technology to detect a person wearing a handkerchief or wrapping a sari dupatta on his or her mouth masquerading a mask, 4) the number of non-stop numbing hours being put by doctors and health workers who have been treating the Covid-19 infected patients, 5) will the Covid-19 news of patients painfully testing positive finally yield to the balancing act of “negative” upon the tsunami of patients staging full recovery. Even if 300 such patients get recovered on any given day, I can resonate that news with the 300 Spartacans who had successfully kept thousands of Xerxes army at bay in one of the most famous wars.

What the numbers fail to report in a dashboard like Worldometer is the varying degrees of fight put up in a ferocious level as if to deny Covid-19 from breaching their defense. Other features such as the colors of joy, relief, faith or the attritional approach taken during the long quarantine period in their tears does not get captured in those dashboards for Indians. There should be a case for launching such a beautiful and inspiring dashboard.

Finally, with this blog, I pledge the support of everyone to recognize the importance of staying strictly confined to their homes and to believe in scientific research and innovation to pull our way out of the powerful willy-wobbly web that we have created for ourselves. This is a wonderful opportunity to recognize the beauty of diversity among us and to help each other in a selfless way as though we all belong to some part of a communion.

The colloquial insignia

The new horizon makes us leap to frantically search for motivation and what will keep us going during this post Covid-19 era. With new variants being found in various nations, you can never be certain whether and when to wipe this virulent virus from the Earth. The most predictive distress is due to the dire threat of it being spread to such lovely birds and animals as koala bears, peacocks, dolphins and kittens to name a few, for their fond and friendly “hi-five” capability to their human friends upon the slightest gesture given to these grand lovely species.

Yet people have become so besotted with wearing face mask that they now feel that their photo will get masqueraded behind the veil of a mega cloth, and render their presentability and handsomness into oblivion. Even more of a creative yet fretful sight would be when we find a red colored mask covering the beautiful nose of a dolphin or a grey mask to not allow the lustre of a peacock to radiate. Although it would be quite a fun to watch any kitten ensconced safely beneath a mask of any shape, colour or size!

We have caused the coronavirus to create crippling crisis in not only our lives but also for other living beings.

The least that we can do is to start respecting people beginning with those living with us and then near us. We should strive to salute their spirit for whatever good deeds that they have done or are thinking of doing, for it is this capability of thinking about others and putting the community’s interests ahead of our interests that can alone safeguard the reputation of the human being, once it becomes extinguished or engulfed by the gigantic yet invisible threat of the coronavirus.

We can begin with realizing that giving a mere salute to an otherwise ordinary worker can raise his self esteem as well as lift the value of the nation in front of your own eyes, for you never know the value of that worker to the nation.

The beauty of giving a salute is that is can be silent and can be good for posture as it forces us to visualize the national flag getting raised.

The challenge for all of us is to find those people who deserve our salute and to then record their marvelous acts in our diary of colloquial insignia.

Once we realize that it will take a collective effort for all of us those living with us or nearby us to fight this pandemic, we will start contributing to the society by creating badge of honour or as I call “Colloquy of Insignia”, for these are acts that can raise us to the level of earning an insignia yet in an informal way. We can furtively say “I salute you” to an unmasked yet spirited or a helpful or a friendly neighbour, or we can “Hello” twice and then wait for the reciprocation by your neighbour. Also, you can pick every Saturday to make a handful donation to a needy person who has to win bread for his struggling family and does not have the money or the food or the clothes to do so. Those tiny acts may eventually contribute you to expanding the dimensions of your thought process or your well being, or both, which are pivotal to succeed in today’s competitive environment.

The key is to not rush but rather let such moments flow into you and inspire you to force yourself to think positively about others so that they too can start thinking good about you, with the end result being mutual respect or collaboration, and benefit to the society or the nation.

We can spare some soft laughter for those who choose to befriend us only virtually such as on Zoom meetings!

I would like to end this story by saying that a photo of yours inside an Insignia can reveal so much about your inner confidence as well as hint at the numerous acts of sacrifice and kindness that you would have done in order for others to view you from the glass of repute that had culminated in this most humanitarian award.

You have to believe me when I say that I had found two people who directly benefited from my positive approach while I was penning this story in the last twenty minutes!!

 

About my boy

About my boy child

I have got two kids, the elder one being a girl who will turn six of age next month, and the other being a mere fifteen months old boy.

Typically, the girl is more attached to her father during the first ten years of her life, and then with her mother after that. In my case too, she has shown attachment to me in her first five years.

Whereas, the boy is always more attached to his mother than to his father.

This “skewed” bondage also results in the mother developing more

 emotional bondage with her kids.

My boy is already showing glimpses of having innate curiosity to explore different locations, toys, people in our immediate vicinity, and “things” to eat. He does not really mind if he is happily munching a torn ragged piece of paper or wildly hogging on only two or three pieces of pomegranate. He does not how to distinguish between the edible and non-edible food yet.

Having grown up in the outskirts for Delhi, I quickly developed a culture of food, something which is a hallmark of Delhi. I also quickly latched on to the hustle-bustle and the outcome-based attitude of Delhiites. I wish that my boy also gets blessed with assimilating these benefits that Delhi has to offer.

Only yesterday, my family was watching a very nice movie “Bala” featuring my favourite actor Ayushmann Khurranna. It was a stunning and a highly captivating movie. However, for me, the most learning came from my boy.  I was enthralled to find that my boy had enjoyed unabated in the vast open stretch of brightly lit shopping mall with only a handful of people near him, after coming out of the dark film theatre in a disconsolate mood. That he repeated this behaviour when we took him back to the movie

Just like me, he likes freedom too. I always had my points of views and wanted to spew those out either through the medium of news reports or via publishing in blogs. I do not know if my boy would be equally marauding and hungry in expressing his points of views, but it would be a good to have trait.

Now coming to the bad habits. Some of my girl’s bad habits have steadily and on occasion swiftly crept in to my boy, such as yelling and yearning to always take him out of the house for a quick walk or a lazy recline in our new car. He is so fond of changing the gears in my car! Whereas my girl was always fond of taking the driver’s seat and bossing the wheel!

It is the other bad trait that I want to hinge this blog on. That bad habit is that my girl, just like many other kids of her age across the globe today have started being selective in their choice of food and their choice of content to view on television, Youtube, or on mobile phone. The perspective of the kids is reducing every day, and it is also making them hooked on to the highly addictive world of video games, virtual world that is often shown with bright colours, and with tremendous layers of aggression. I find such content to be completely detached from the real world situation and how to cope with the demands of living each moment in the real world. For instance, my daughter needs a

lot of assistance in eating her meal. She cannot appreciate my spending two hours sweating out under the hot Sun in playing lawn tennis. I do not want to use this blog as sounding board, but I need my boy to come out with me and train himself hard in jogging, playing tennis, football, and all other games that require physical activity and training. The trouble today with the gadgets is that one song (or any other content) will have dozens of similar content (for instance, for a popular Bollywood song, there would be  a tomboy who would be singing, a coterie of seven kids attempting to dare a dance step on that song from the terrace of their home, etc.), which has the effect of keeping the viewer in that virtual yet vortex like world that does not let the viewer come out of that world. What I would want him to understand is that the best friends have got a lot of meaning movies in common, and that he should project his most favorite movies along with lessons learnt from those movies in his first blog. That would be special feeling too!

In the end, I want my boy to approach life with dignity, to always be classy, to show off with black or grey goggles but not to overdo the art of marketing oneself, by saluting heroes like Abhinandnan Varthaman but not to overdo patriotism, to publish books and blogs, but not to project himself as bookish, to express his points of views on multiple burning and pressing topics – such as Delhi burning due to stubbles put on fire, how to improve the happiness quotient of oneself, how to value small things like growing of plants, cultures of various countries that I used to so dearly learn from the splendid stamps that were around me during my childhood – all concurrently, yet not in a boorish manner.

Next, I want to mention some quantifiable things.  Some people say that it is the first time that the child learns to walk is the most pivotal moment in its life. However, I have now discovered that we need to timebox the moment when the child learns how to avoid jumping into troubles when it attempts to reach the object that is placed in front of it. This is because it does not know how to learn and apply cognitive abilities to find alternate ways that are safer and easier to reach to the object that is lying in front of it. Only yesterday, I was scared to find that my boy attempted to jump off the sofa to reach to his blue bicycle. Whereas a safer path would have been to step down from the sofa and then walk towards that bicycle. It is yet another revelation that he has not yet learn to climb down from a sofa! So, for me, it would be fascinating to know when he learns to step down (say from sofa) and then safely walk towards that object of interest. To diffuse the situation, I had pushed that bicycle out of his sight and far from the sofa. His only tools and weapons to save him from such situations at this age are his cute shouts.

I also want him to imbibe my good habits, which are walking under the Sun, walking bare foot on wet morning grass, experiment with mixing and matching of food (e.g., pomegranate with samosa!), how to connect with neighbours, and how to develop an empathetic attitude towards others yet have a sense of humour. He should work with full honesty throughout his life and always value nature, simple living, and a benevolent attitude. He needs to understand in due course of time that I have always valued fiction above non-fiction, abstract ideas above those that can give you short-term gains and living in the present than worrying about past or future.

He needs to learn from me how to value learning from reading, from gaining perspectives of different people across the world, and how to take things in perspective before jumping to any conclusion. He also needs to learn from me how fast I can arrive at mathematical computations, sometimes faster than a calculator. He also needs to learn from me how to stay away from air conditioners and all the things that enslave you. Finally, he needs to learn from me that I am learning from my within and from the Research fraternity the time when he would stop making silly mistakes.

I wrote this blog while being seated at my rocking chair.