I don't like bookstores where books are not scattered haphazardly. There's something about organisation which makes one not feel free enough to take out a book to browse. The pressure to keep it back where it was is too deterring and too inorganic to browse.

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It's been exactly a month since I started working full-time at a friend's startup—in a marketing role, a job that fundamentally involves writing.

It's been exactly a month since I started using AI for writing.

It's also been exactly a month since I wrote something from scratch, something on YQ, something for myself.— % &To tell the truth, I have just one dream. That of writing a novel.

Just one novel. About growing up around my father. This is the only thing on my bucket list. This is the story behind my three word insta bio: "Will write someday." This is the place I wish to arrive at, the reason I want to live for.

And there's absolutely no hurry to write it. I rather wish to write it with older eyes.— % &So to this person, who's saving himself for a novel someday, it feels as if I'm knowingly eating away at my writer self—the conscientious self that pulls me towards the writer I aspire to be.

And no, it didn't start now with AI becoming my everyday crutch for subjects as frightening as finance. It started years go.— % &In fact, it started with YQ itself, as I betrayed the long form for the short & traded off the endurance I'd built to survive the arid & arduous journey of a novel for quick gratification on a "post", or worse, "quote".— % &I never attempted a novel since YQ. I first lost the muscle, then the ideas stopped knocking too.

Every long-form idea would be filtered for tiny insight, then turned into a little something. A musing a day. A one-liner a day. A microtale a day. A poem a day. All clubbed, the self-congratulatory, a "quote" a day.

With time, I clearly knew how to go from point A to point B in my narrative but I forgot how to get lost that only the scope of a novel offers. And I lost that scope in me too.— % &But somehow, writing everyday kept the fire burning. It allowed my dream to rest, to stay, to linger, to grow deeper, all the while, waiting (without looking) for a start to the novel that could make me jumpstart.

Short-form, or the so-called "quote", helped me too. It allowed me to call myself a writer. To the world, and more importantly, to myself. And it helped me continue writing.

One becomes a writer by calling oneself a writer, they say. A real quote, at last!— % &So to this person, who has time and again felt incapable of fulfilling the one cherished dream, and who's writing something (from scratch, mind it!) after spending the past one month hopping ships named ChatGPT, Gemini to finally settle on Claude, I say this with a rare relief:

This musing is fresh from the pen, typed with hand, no footprints of GPTs whatsoever, unfiltered, unedited, unadulterated, like always. I can still write.— % &Earlier, writing was a way for me to make sense of the world. Now writing is a way for me to figure whether I'm still making sense or not. Or have I lost the muscle? I continue to dream of writing my novel someday. I don't know if I will have the talent left or will AI murder the writer in me, or will my novel be written by an AI when I'm 50.

I can just hope it will be me who writes.
Will write someday. Amen.— % &

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For the entire time I was away from Bengaluru, my Instagram feed was filled with all these videos where there were locals fighting over language, where goons bumped into cars and chased them late nights. I came back scared, a dashcam in place, a Learn-Kannada-in-30-Days book handy with me and "Swalpa Kannada Gotu" on the tip of my tongue.

When the first delivery boy I ordered groceries from called me, I cautiously switched to English, not Hindi like before. But to my surprise, he switched to Hindi upon realising I didn't speak Kannada. He kindly climbed up three floors and handed over the groceries. I offered him water but he politely declined. "Naai saar". I thought of the simplest way to convey my gratitude & I could just come up with one word: Dhanyavadagalu, which I probably mispronounced because he smiled. His smile reassured me. I was needlessly wary of this sweet city from faraway.

Bengaluru is home to so many migrants because locals are tolerant & accepting. All Bengaluru desires of us is to become cognizant to its culture beyond just the CTR ka dosa and MTR ki rava idly. There's no bigger door to the culture of a place than its language. It's on us to learn the language.

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When you meet a guy for dating or marriage, ask them what they like about their mother.

If their answer only contains either of these: her sacrifice, her cooking or how well she takes care of dad and the house and the family, avoid these guys at all costs. What a guy likes in their mother is what they desire of their partner. They haven't grown beyond looking at their mother from the patriarchal lens and would expect the same from their partners in one way or the other. Instead, look for guys who talk about their mother's dreams, if and how she rebelled against the society for being the most authetic version of themselves, how she's found (and often fought for) her independence within and outside her household, how her kindness isn't limited to the husband and kids but to the overall world. Find a guy who loves his mother for being herself, not how father or children or the world expects her to be.

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The vacant space in our hearts
that someone's presence
can only fill.

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On Contemporary History— % &In the book India After Gandhi, author Ramachandra Guha writes how there's no such thing as contemporary history. He mentions this at the end of his magisterial work to justify not devoting pages to India after Dr. Manmohan Singh's tenure. He writes one can only know the historical impact and significance of a government's actions and policies in retrospect. That the present is too near to make complete sense. — % &In physics, in optics specifically, there's a phrase called least distance of distinct vision. The distance one can only see things clearly from, which usually is 20 cms for humans. Bring it nearer and everything gets blurry. It's uncanny how history and physics and biology coincide. While one talks of time and the other of space, both need distance for clear insight.— % &As the country is on the brink of a war, the social media urgency demands us to opine— not just to choose right versus wrong but to choose absolute right versus absolute wrong right away and to make our choices loud and clear.— % &Thankfully, the interdisciplinary nature of war and politics demand us to take time. To quite simply provide the insight of retrospect. To find the perspective that only comes with distance and detachment.

Give it days and weeks (and months and years if needed) to see how the present shapes the future. To find what abates and what aggravates. For a war changes not just geography and history but also the future. Maybe the course of actions will quell terrorism from its roots. Maybe one wrong move can be detrimental for thousands of human lives. Who knows how it will transpire? How can one pin down what an absolute right or wrong will be during a state of war?— % &Our job as citizens is to not hurriedly try writing contemporary history, because remember, remember:

there's no such thing as contemporary history. Most of what we express right now is just a vacuous oft-impassioned opinion with the shelf life of milk. All it will do is help someone milk what they want out of us. — % &

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On Practice— % &Earlier, when I won't practise regularly, every time I'd sit to play an instrument, I'd feel this deep desire to record myself play and share on Instagram. My playing would be rugged, missing rhythm or notes—most times both, hints of the melody scattered within like cement behind peeled walls. I didn't care. Because I didn't practise at all, this was the best of me. I wanted to show off what all instruments I could play, albeit badly, than how well I could play. Some kind friends liked the effort.— % &Ever since I started learning and practising religiously, something changed in me. The desire to record went away at first. Then the desire to play songs vanished. Today, I sat with the sitar for four hours, immersed in just perfecting a particular palta (or a sargam). By the end of it, I'd played the melody so many times that its hum continued to ring in my ears for hours later, even now. As if the melody quietly sneaked into me. Not once did I feel like slipping into a song. Or got bored, which surprised me, because it's difficult for me to not get bored. My playing kept getting faster, it kept becoming more accurate. It felt like a journey, an advancement than an unending loop which such repetitions seemed from outside. What seemed a redundant riyaz earlier became
a familiar friend I came to deeply know.— % &My desire shifted from recording to asking my guru for the next lesson soon. I felt ready, for a change—something I never felt before because I never practised enough. This was why I'd only pick the instrument to play popular songs. It came easy to me thanks to the ear developed because of growing up in a house filled with instruments, since father used to sing. I could play any song on a guitar or keyboard,
so sitar or sax didn't take much time.— % &It's not that the desire to play songs is gone now. I play songs whenever I take a break from playing the lessons. It has become a filler than the primary thing I'd earlier pick my sitar for. And the intent to record? Well, that's gone for good. Every time the vain me wishes to record, the pragmatic student in me screams, "Record tomorrow, you'll be better at it." I concur and go back to the riyaz. The date changes
but tomorrow? Tomorrow never comes.— % &

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Hot mornings.
Rainy afternoons.
Cool nights.

The unsure weather
whispers, "it may"
in May.

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Me: "Log shaadi karke kitne boring ho jaate hain."

One minute later, me to older me: "Ho jaate hain?"

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On Learning & Breathing— % &The year was 2016, the month April. I was living on campus at Ashoka University in Sonipat as an entrepreneur-in-residence.

The university had a lavish swimming pool. For the entire month, I kept showing up at the pool every evening, trying little by little to keep afloat, to not sink, to swim, only to run out of breath or have water slither into my nostrils like an eel—wet and irritable.— % &On the 31st day, I didn't try to swim. I had almost given up and I just lay down in the pool—head up, back on the water, my feet on the pool bed, ready to be swallowed by the water for one last time before I quit. But lo! I didn't sink. I trusted the water and it somehow trusted me back. The water cradled my head and no matter what I did, even when I lifted my legs, my torso wouldn't sink. When I realised I could backfloat and won't drown, it unlocked swimming almost instantly for me.

I'd try freestyle or breaststroke and whenever I ran out of breath, I'd flip 180° and start backfloating, completing my laps, unhurried, breathing normally. Slowly, I started completing laps properly without needing flips, as I learnt to breathe while swimming. — % &Observing my breath was quite explicit while learning to swim. It has become subtler while learning instruments. I have been learning sitar for the past five months since I came home. And today for the first time, I could play a complicated sargam my guru taught me without erring. The more I played, the more I realised what was happening. I wasn't holding my breath anymore. My breath was normal for a change, and my fingers moved on their own. My newfound muscle memory had taken over after months of unsuccessfully trying, failing and trying again. The breath seemed intricately linked to the muscle, which on second thought was obvious. I used to hold breath to provide oxygen to those very muscles—tense with all the work—as I played the notes consciously, from the mind, than subconsciously from the body (should I romanticise it by calling it heart?).— % &Like my time spent at pool for one month straight, I have been sitting for two hours with my sitar every midnight—sometimes to put my mom to sleep, sometimes to wake my neighbours up. The result: my breathing has become normal again. In my head, I'm not sitting with a sitar anymore but just sitting. The novelty of a sitar, and the resulting anxiety of a complicated lesson, is gone. Of course, more complicated lessons and more erratic breaths will follow as I advance as a learner, but this understanding provides me with the 180° backflip to complete my laps without giving up, as I did earlier when I lacked the consistency and discipline for riyaz.— % &Here's the simple truth: at the heart of it, learning anything new is a journey of breath—from panic to calm, from stress to rest, from doubt to trust. Much like we train our muscles by familiarising it with the same thing on repeat, we familiarise our breath by trying every new activity over and over again. That this sequence of notes, this underwater exhalation and overwater inhalation, that this new person who's making my heart flutter is going to be a part of my everyday life and the breath needs to chill the fuck out. Breath doesn't say okay right away. It waits. For that trusting surrender, that free fall into the medium with your eyes closed, and most importantly, for your persisting presence with everything that makes your breath race until it doesn't.

It is there, in that modicum of rest after holding one's breath for long, that the fundamental joy of pursuit resides. If you listen closely, you can hear that one last sigh.— % &

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