What’s the best thing you’ve ever found randomly on the street?

The Treasure Beneath Our Feet: What I Found When I Wasn’t Looking

There are treasures we seek deliberately, and then there are those that quietly enter our lives by accident. The latter often leave the deeper impression, perhaps because they arrive without expectation, without preparation, and without the vanity of pursuit.

The best thing I have ever found randomly on the street was not gold, money, or anything of obvious material worth. It was an old, weather-beaten book.

I remember discovering it almost casually. It lay near the edge of a pavement, partly covered with dust, as though the world had walked past it countless times without noticing. Its cover was faded, its pages yellowed with age, and several corners had surrendered to time. Yet when I picked it up, I felt that peculiar excitement one experiences upon discovering something that seems to have been waiting specifically for one to notice it.

I turned the pages.

There were no jewels hidden between them, no forgotten banknotes, no grand secret. What I found instead was something infinitely more precious: the handwriting of a previous reader. Small annotations appeared in the margins—questions, underlined passages, occasional exclamations, and thoughts written in a hurried hand.

Suddenly, the book was no longer merely a book.

It had become a conversation between strangers separated by time.

I found myself wondering about the person who had owned it. Who were they? What had they lived through? Which sentence had moved them enough to underline it? Why had they written that particular word beside a particular paragraph? Had they carried the book through railway journeys, rainy afternoons and sleepless nights? And how had it finally come to rest, abandoned on an ordinary street?

Perhaps that is the strange beauty of life: we encounter fragments of other people’s stories without ever knowing the whole narrative.

We tend to measure treasure by price. A diamond has a valuation; a coin has a denomination; a painting has an auction price. But some things acquire value through association, mystery and memory. A child’s drawing, an old letter, a broken musical instrument or a book with someone’s handwriting may be worthless to the marketplace and priceless to the human heart.

Finding that book also taught me something about attention.

We spend much of our lives looking ahead—towards the next achievement, the next destination, the next possession. In doing so, we sometimes fail to notice what lies immediately beneath our feet. The world is constantly leaving little gifts along our path, but they rarely arrive wrapped.

Sometimes they are found in a pavement crack.

Sometimes in an unexpected conversation.

Sometimes in a forgotten photograph.

And sometimes, quite literally, in an old book lying in the dust.

I kept the book for many years. Its pages continued to deteriorate, but its meaning deepened. Whenever I opened it, I was reminded that every object carries a history, even when we cannot read it.

Perhaps the greatest things we find randomly are not things at all. They are moments of wonder—the sudden realisation that the ordinary world is filled with extraordinary stories.

We go out looking for something valuable.

And occasionally, life places something precious directly in our path.

The secret is not always in finding it.

It is in noticing.

What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you?

The Kindness I Could Never Repay

There are some acts of kindness that arrive so quietly that, at first, we scarcely recognise their magnitude. They do not come wrapped in ceremony or announced with trumpet blasts. They appear as a hand extended when we are stumbling, a chair offered when we are tired, a patient ear when our words have become tangled, or simply the reassuring presence of someone who refuses to let us feel alone.

The kindest thing someone has done for me was not a grand gesture. It was something infinitely more precious: someone stayed when leaving would have been easier.

There have been moments in life when confidence has deserted me, when circumstances have seemed heavier than my ability to carry them. In such moments, advice is not always what we need. Sometimes we need somebody who will sit beside us without trying to repair us. Someone who understands that silence, too, can be an embrace.

I remember the profound kindness of people who believed in me when I had begun to doubt myself. They did not necessarily say extraordinary things. Sometimes it was merely, “You will get through this.” Sometimes it was a smile, a phone call, a message, or an unhurried conversation. Yet those apparently ordinary gestures became small lamps in dark corridors.

Perhaps that is the secret architecture of kindness. It makes no noise while it is being built, but its shelter can last for years.

We often measure generosity in material terms—what someone gave us, how much they spent, how much they sacrificed. But the rarest gifts are frequently intangible: time, patience, forgiveness, trust and understanding. Money can purchase comfort; it cannot purchase genuine companionship. A thousand words of advice may be forgotten, but the memory of someone who simply stayed can become part of one’s emotional inheritance.

Kindness has another remarkable quality: it often outlives the person who offered it. A gentle word spoken decades ago may still echo within us. A teacher’s faith may continue to shape a student’s life long after the classroom has disappeared. A friend’s forgiveness may teach us how to forgive ourselves. A stranger’s generosity may alter our understanding of humanity.

The older I grow, the more convinced I become that life is not ultimately remembered by its possessions, achievements or accolades. We remember how people made us feel. We remember those who saw our imperfections and did not turn away; those who recognised our silence and did not demand an explanation; those who offered dignity when circumstances had taken some of it away.

The Sanskrit wisdom, “परोपकाराय फलन्ति वृक्षाः”—trees bear fruit for the benefit of others—captures something profound about a meaningful life. The finest human beings, like generous trees, give shade without asking who deserves it.

And perhaps the greatest kindness is to make another person believe, even for a fleeting moment, that the world is still a good place.

I have received such kindness.

I may never be able to repay it adequately. But perhaps repayment is not the purpose. Perhaps kindness is meant to travel forward, from one human heart to another, like a lamp lighting another lamp without diminishing its own flame.

So, when I think of the kindest thing someone has done for me, I do not think of a gift that can be held in the hand.

I think of a presence that held me together when I was quietly falling apart.

And that, I believe, is one of life’s most beautiful gifts: to be remembered not because someone gave us something, but because, for a little while, they made life easier to bear.

If the salary was the same, what job would you be doing right now and why?

If Money Were No Measure: The Job I Would Still Choose

If salary were the same for every profession, what job would I be doing today?

It is an intriguing question because money, for better or worse, has become the great architect of our choices. We are often taught to ask, “What does it pay?” before we ask the more consequential question: “What does it mean?” Remove salary from the equation, and suddenly the façade falls away. What remains is inclination—the quiet voice within that tells us where we truly belong.

If I could choose again, I would still choose to be a teacher.

Not merely because I have spent much of my life in classrooms, corridors and school assemblies, but because teaching is one of those rare professions in which the currency is not money but influence. A teacher does not simply impart information; he leaves fingerprints on the future.

I have always found something almost sacred about the moment when a student’s eyes suddenly light up with understanding. A difficult concept, which had seemed like an impenetrable wall a moment ago, becomes a door. The teacher watches it happen and realises that education is not the filling of a vessel but the lighting of a lamp.

Perhaps I would teach Physics again. There is poetry even in Physics—the universe speaking in the austere language of equations, stars obeying laws written long before humanity learnt to read. To teach a young mind about gravity, light, motion or the immensity of space is, in some small way, to introduce that mind to the architecture of creation.

But I would want to teach more than Physics.

I would teach curiosity. I would teach resilience. I would teach a child that failure is not a verdict but a comma in the sentence of life. I would encourage questions rather than merely reward answers. And above all, I would try to convince young people that education should not end with an examination. The real examination begins when there is no question paper, no invigilator and no prescribed answer.

Perhaps, with salary removed from consideration, I might also choose to be a writer—or better still, remain both teacher and writer. The classroom would give me people; writing would give me solitude. Teaching would allow me to shape thoughts in conversation; writing would allow me to preserve them against the erosion of time.

There is an indescribable pleasure in putting a thought into words and watching it acquire a life of its own. A book can travel where its author cannot. It can enter a stranger’s room years after its creation and whisper something that perhaps the reader needed to hear that particular evening. What greater privilege can a writer ask for?

Yet if I had to choose only one profession, I would return to the classroom.

Because teaching offers something that a payslip cannot measure: the possibility of becoming a small but permanent part of someone else’s journey.

Years later, a former student may remember a sentence, a lesson, an admonition, a moment of encouragement—or simply the fact that someone believed in them when they did not believe in themselves. The teacher may have forgotten the incident altogether. The student may carry it for a lifetime.

That is the peculiar magic of education.

So, if tomorrow every profession came with exactly the same salary, I would not chase prestige, power or comfort. I would look for meaning. I would walk back into a classroom, pick up a piece of chalk—or its modern equivalent—and begin again.

For ultimately, the best job is not necessarily the one that makes us rich.

It is the one that makes us feel useful.

And if I could spend another lifetime doing anything at all, I would choose to spend it lighting lamps.

Share a hobby you’ve picked up recently — what got you into it?

When the Mind Finds Its Music: The Quiet Joy of Returning to the Keys

There are hobbies we acquire, and there are hobbies that quietly find their way back to us. Recently, I have been spending more time with music, particularly the harmonium and keyboard. It is not entirely a new pursuit; rather, it feels like an old friendship being rekindled after years of silence.

What drew me towards it was perhaps a simple longing for something that does not demand achievement. Life is often measured in outcomes—deadlines met, responsibilities discharged, targets accomplished. Music asks for none of these. It merely asks that we listen.

When I place my fingers on the keys and allow a familiar melody to emerge, something changes within me. The world, with its incessant clamour, seems to retreat a little. A tune from an old Hindi film, a bhajan, or a few phrases of Hindustani classical music can open doors to rooms long forgotten. Music possesses that rare alchemy: it can turn memory into melody and solitude into companionship.

Perhaps that is what attracted me most. In an age of notifications and hurried conversations, music offers an oasis of unhurried time. It teaches patience. A note cannot be forced into beauty; it has to be understood, felt and allowed to breathe. Even a wrong note has its lesson—it reminds us that perfection is not the prerequisite for joy.

I have also discovered that learning an instrument is a humbling experience. Knowledge gathered over a lifetime does not necessarily make one’s fingers more skilful. The hands must begin again, slowly and honestly. There is something profoundly democratic about music: the instrument does not care about one’s position, past achievements or age. It simply waits.

Sometimes I play merely to listen to the sound filling the room. At other times, I try to reproduce a melody that has remained somewhere in the recesses of memory. And occasionally, when the notes fall into place almost effortlessly, there is a fleeting moment of grace—the kind of moment for which hobbies are perhaps invented.

What began as an attempt to occupy my time has gradually become a way of inhabiting it.

I think that is the greatest gift of this newly renewed hobby. It has taught me that retirement, solitude or the passing of years need not signify an emptying of life. There are still melodies waiting to be discovered, pages waiting to be written, and mornings waiting to be given meaning.

Perhaps every human being carries an unwritten song within. We spend much of life listening to everyone else’s music. A hobby, sometimes, is simply the courage to hear our own.

And so, I continue to play—not because I hope to become a great musician, but because, for a few precious minutes, the world becomes quieter and the soul remembers how to sing.

What’s the weirdest coincidence you’ve ever experienced?

When Chance Whispered My Name: The Strange Mathematics of Coincidence

There are moments in life when coincidence ceases to feel like coincidence.

It arrives quietly, without announcement: a name appearing after years of silence, a forgotten song playing at precisely the moment one is thinking of someone, a chance meeting in a place where neither person had any reason to be. We usually dismiss such events with a smile and say, “What are the odds?” Yet sometimes the odds seem so improbable that the rational mind is left standing at the threshold of mystery.

The strangest coincidence I have ever experienced was not dramatic. No thunder rolled, no stars rearranged themselves in the heavens. It was an ordinary day, made extraordinary by an almost impossible alignment of circumstances.

I had been thinking about an old acquaintance whom I had not seen or spoken to for many years. There was no particular reason for the memory to surface. I had not looked at an old photograph, heard his name, or encountered anything connected with him. Yet, quite inexplicably, his face returned to my mind with unusual clarity.

I wondered, fleetingly, where life had taken him.

That evening, I went out for an entirely unrelated purpose. In the middle of the crowd, amidst hundreds of unfamiliar faces, I heard someone call my name.

I turned.

There he was.

For a few seconds, neither of us spoke. We simply stared at each other with the astonishment of two travellers who had unexpectedly discovered that their roads, thought to be permanently separated, had somehow crossed again.

We laughed. We spoke of the years that had passed, of people we had known, places we had left behind and the curious geography of memory. But beneath the conversation was an unspoken question:

Why today?

Had I somehow anticipated the meeting? Had his presence stirred an invisible thread in the fabric of memory before I became consciously aware of it? Or was it merely an extraordinarily improbable accident?

Science would probably favour the last explanation. Our brains are remarkably good at finding patterns in randomness. With billions of human interactions occurring every day, improbable events are not only possible but inevitable. Given enough people, places and moments, coincidence becomes almost mathematically unavoidable.

And yet mathematics does not always satisfy the heart.

Carl Jung called such meaningful coincidences synchronicity—events connected not by obvious cause and effect, but by significance. Perhaps that is why some coincidences linger while others disappear immediately. A hundred accidental encounters may mean nothing; one may leave us quietly wondering whether the universe had briefly leaned towards us.

Perhaps coincidence is life’s way of reminding us that we do not possess the complete map.

We like to believe that life is governed by neat sequences: cause followed by effect, decision followed by consequence, yesterday leading logically into tomorrow. But existence is far more labyrinthine. A delayed train, a changed route, a cancelled appointment or a spontaneous decision to step into a particular café can alter the entire trajectory of a day—and occasionally, perhaps, a life.

The weirdest coincidences therefore fascinate me not because they prove that destiny exists, but because they expose the limitations of our certainty.

Maybe there is no cosmic hand arranging every encounter.

Maybe there is.

We simply do not know.

And perhaps that uncertainty is precisely what makes coincidence beautiful.

Life occasionally produces a moment so perfectly timed that we cannot help but pause. We look at the improbable intersection of people, places and time and feel, however briefly, that the universe has whispered something directly into our ear.

I have learnt not to demand an explanation for every such moment.

Some mysteries are not problems waiting to be solved.

Some are simply stories waiting to be remembered.

And whenever an unlikely coincidence crosses my path, I smile and think: perhaps life, in its own wonderfully eccentric way, is reminding me that not everything meaningful has to make sense.

What’s a book you never finished but still think about?

The Books We Leave Unfinished: Why Some Stories Refuse to Leave Us

There is a peculiar kind of book that we never finish, yet somehow never forget.

For me, it is not necessarily the book that defeated my attention, nor the one whose pages became tedious. Sometimes, an unfinished book remains unfinished precisely because it has entered some deeper chamber of the mind. We close it, place it on a shelf, and move on with life—but a sentence, a character, a landscape or an unanswered question continues to knock softly at the door of memory.

Perhaps the book I never finished was Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I began it with the solemn enthusiasm with which one approaches a great mountain. The pages seemed to contain not merely a story, but an entire civilisation—love and war, ambition and despair, history and destiny, drawing rooms and battlefields. Yet somewhere along the journey, life interrupted. The bookmark remained between its pages, an accidental monument to an unfinished pilgrimage.

Years passed.

Curiously, I never forgot the book.

I remembered the sensation of entering its immense world. I remembered its questions more than its answers. What governs human destiny—our choices, historical forces, chance, or some mysterious conjunction of all three? Can love survive the vanity of human beings? Does history belong to the celebrated figures who appear in textbooks, or to the countless ordinary souls who quietly endure it?

Perhaps this is the strange magic of an unfinished book: completion is not always necessary for influence.

Some books we finish and forget. Others we abandon halfway and carry for decades.

There is also something profoundly human about leaving a book unfinished. We like to imagine ourselves as creatures of completion—we finish courses, journeys, conversations and chapters of our lives. Yet reality rarely offers such neat punctuation. Friendships remain unresolved. Dreams are postponed. Questions accompany us to old age. People disappear before we have said everything we wished to say.

An unfinished book mirrors that imperfect architecture of existence.

Sometimes I wonder whether we abandon certain books because we are not yet ready for them. A book encountered at twenty may appear opaque, while the same book encountered at sixty may suddenly seem to be speaking directly to us. The words have not changed; we have.

That is perhaps why some books wait.

They sit silently upon shelves, gathering dust but not surrendering their meaning. One day, we may return to them and discover that the person who opened the book years ago is no longer the person turning its pages today.

And perhaps that is the real reason I still think about the book I never finished.

It reminds me that not every journey is measured by reaching the final page. Some journeys matter because of what they awaken within us. Some stories remain unfinished because life itself has interrupted the reading.

Maybe, someday, I will open that book again.

And if I do, I will not begin from where the bookmark lies.

I will begin as an older reader, carrying with me all the years that have passed between the two pages.

Because sometimes the books we never finish are the ones that finish something within us.

Which fictional world would be the most fun to vacation in?

A Holiday Beyond the Horizon: My Dream Vacation in the Wizarding World

If I could choose any fictional world for a holiday, I would not hesitate to pack my bags for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Why settle for a postcard-perfect destination when one can spend a fortnight where staircases move, portraits speak, trains disappear into enchanted landscapes and a simple wand can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary?

A holiday there would begin, naturally, at King’s Cross Station. I would board the Hogwarts Express with the anticipation of a child and the curiosity of an explorer. As the train slipped into the countryside, I imagine the landscape becoming progressively more mysterious—mist curling over distant hills, ancient castles appearing beyond the trees, and perhaps an owl flying alongside the carriage as if it had a message meant only for me.

Hogwarts would be the centrepiece of the adventure. I would wander through its echoing corridors, examine the moving portraits and lose myself in the enormous library. I would attend a few lessons—not necessarily to become proficient at magic, but simply to experience the delicious absurdity of learning subjects such as Charms and Transfiguration. Imagine failing an examination because one’s feather stubbornly refuses to levitate!

Then there would be Hogsmeade: a village seemingly distilled from a winter dream. I would sit in a cosy corner of the Three Broomsticks, drink a mug of butterbeer and watch snow settle upon the rooftops. There is something wonderfully liberating about entering a world where adulthood momentarily loses its authority and imagination becomes the currency of the day.

But perhaps the greatest attraction would be the Forbidden Forest. I would venture into it cautiously, because every enchanting world needs a little danger. Among ancient trees and silvered shadows, I might encounter centaurs, magical creatures or something altogether inexplicable. A proper holiday, after all, should leave behind a few stories that sound unbelievable when retold.

And then there would be Diagon Alley—a paradise for the incurably curious. I would browse eccentric shops, purchase a wand, inspect magical curiosities and perhaps spend an unreasonable amount of time in Flourish and Blotts. In such a place, even window-shopping would feel like an expedition into another dimension.

What makes this fictional world so appealing, however, is not merely its magic. It is the philosophy beneath the fantasy: that wonder survives when we refuse to become entirely practical. The world of Harry Potter reminds us that courage is not the absence of fear, friendship can become a form of strength, and even the most ordinary person may possess an extraordinary capacity for goodness.

Perhaps that is why I would choose this world for a vacation. We travel not merely to change our surroundings but to recover something within ourselves. And what better place to rediscover curiosity than a universe where the impossible is simply another word for Tuesday?

I would return eventually, of course. The real world would still be waiting—with its clocks, bills, traffic and sensible explanations.

But I would return carrying a wand, a pocketful of memories and, hopefully, a little of the magic I had almost forgotten was there.

Some holidays give you photographs. The best ones give you back your sense of wonder.