Sunday Posts

Is there anything I believe in? This is one of those profile questions that pop up in diversity and inclusion forms. I prefer not to tick 'prefer not to say' as it seems disingenuous. I believe in something  though it is hard to categorise within those neat boxes. I was born a Hindu and believed in something. It was not just the festivals and holy days, not just the prayers and wishing for a blessing - those were all part of my childhood! But it was more than that: I thought like a Hindu and still do. I feel a part of the universe in me; I feel the debt I incurred to the universe, and to my ancestors, at my birth, and live everyday to pay it off; I know the I came from the universe and to it, I shall return.  But few beliefs I grew up with fell away with time. The caste hierarchy, in a sublime way, was part of my social sense. I was conscious that marriage to a non-brahmin would be unacceptable. It took time, travel and engagement with more enlightened people for me to move be...

My greatest fear is that of mediocrity, of ordinariness. This ranks even higher than that of diabetes, which, given my family history, has the best chance of eventually killing me.  But I would rather be killed trying to stretch myself than live as deadwood. This is why I am usually so weary of all the well-meaning advice about work-life balance. My friends complain that I am too old school and don't care about physical or mental health. Apart from the key fact that I only work for myself and choose to do what I do (a privilege many people around me doesn't have), the whole work-life balance, for me, is a bourgeois consumerist trope to keep people looking elsewhere for meaning. My heroes - people who moved civilisation forward, Tagore, Gandhi, Einstein, Leonardo - wouldn't have time for such luxury. At the other end of the scale, 90% of the humanity wouldn't have any choice either, living hand-to-mouth or (for women in particular) work being the daily life itself. But, ...