I Chew, Therefore I Am: A …-Year-Old’s Guide to Eating Like a Philosopher Who Actually Enjoys His Lunch

What are your best healthy eating habits?

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I Chew, Therefore I Am: A …-Year-Old’s Guide to Eating Like a Philosopher Who Actually Enjoys His Lunch

I have spent a lifetime eating. Not in the Instagram-influencer, protein-shake-and-kale sense, but in the sincere, slightly obsessive, very human sense. After six decades of culinary triumphs and spectacular self-inflicted gastric tragedies, I have arrived at a few eating habits that have not only kept me healthy but have kept me sane.

I share them here not as a nutritionist — heaven forbid — but as a fellow traveller who has finally learned that food is not fuel. Fuel is what you put in a Morris Minor. Food is philosophy with flavour.

1. The Sacred Art of Actually Chewing

For years, I inhaled my meals like a Dyson on turbo. I thought speed was efficiency. The Stoics would have called this folly. The modern gastroenterologist calls it heartburn.

My first and best habit now: I chew. Thirty-two times, if you want a number. Not because some Victorian naturopath said so, but because if you are going to put a samosa in your mouth, you owe it the courtesy of a proper conversation before you swallow it.

Nietzsche said, “He who has a why can bear almost any how.” I say, he who has a why should at least chew the how. Chewing is meditation. It is the only time in adult life when doing less, more slowly, makes you look wiser rather than lazy.

2. I Do Not Dine With My Phone. The Phone Dines Alone.

I used to eat with my phone propped up, scrolling through headlines about how everything we eat will kill us. The sheer existential irony was lost on me.

Now, I have a rule: no screens at the table. No news, no reels, no urgent WhatsApp forwards about turmeric curing existential dread.

The plate deserves monogamy. When you eat while watching a political debate, your body doesn’t know whether to digest the dal or the argument. It usually fails at both. The result is what Sartre might have called nausea, and what my wife correctly calls indigestion.

Eat with humans. Or eat alone, like a monk. Both are noble. Eating with your phone is just an anxious ménage à trois.

3. Eat Less Than Your Ego Wants, More Than Your Guilt Allows

In my twenties, I ate to show off. In my thirties, I ate to cope. In my forties, I ate because the thali was unlimited.

Philosophy taught me temperance, but experience taught me portion size.

I now follow what I call the 80% Doctrine. I stop when I am 80% full. That remaining 20% is where wisdom lives. It is also where the second helping of biryani lives, but we cannot have everything. Aristotle called it the Golden Mean. My grandmother called it, “Leave some room, or you’ll snore like a tractor.”

Hunger, I’ve learned, is a terrible master but an excellent advisor. Listen to it; don’t obey it.

4. Breakfast Like a King, Lunch Like a Prince, Supper Like a Pauper Who Has Read Camus

I front-load my day. A proper breakfast — eggs, fruit, oats, or a gloriously unapologetic South Indian spread — is non-negotiable. Lunch is substantial and respectful. Supper is light, early, and exists purely to give my dreams something pleasant to work with.

Eating a heavy meal at 10 p.m. is not dinner; it is a dare to your metabolism. The universe is absurd, as Camus said, but there is no need to make your digestive system prove his point at midnight.

5. Gratitude Before Gluttony

This is my most unfashionable habit. Before I eat, I pause. For two seconds. Not to pray to the god of protein macros, but to actually acknowledge that this food exists, that someone grew it, cooked it, and that I am lucky enough to afford it.

It sounds soppy. It is revolutionary. In a world that treats food as content, gratitude turns it back into sustenance. It stops you from eating like a dustbin and starts you eating like a human being.

Try it. Your rotis will taste better. I promise.

The Final Bite

My best eating habits, then, are not about superfoods or superhuman discipline. They are about behaving as though eating still matters.

We live in an age that wants us to optimise everything — even our lunch. To track it, to hack it, to biohack it until all joy has been thoroughly extracted and replaced with data.

I prefer to chew slowly, to put my phone away, to leave the table slightly hungry and entirely content, and to remember that a good meal, like a good life, is not about how much you consume, but how fully you taste it.

After all, Socrates never said, “Let food be thy medicine” — that was Hippocrates. Socrates was too busy asking what food means. And frankly, after a good rasam, I think I finally have an answer.

Bon appétit. Or as we say in proper UK English: tuck in.

Book Review: Debts of Silence by Prashant Kumar Lal

Where Every Ledger Hides a Ghost — A Bombay Noir That Audits the Soul

Book Review: Debts of Silence by Prashant Kumar Lal

Available on All the Amazon Platforms Worldwide

Genre: Crime Thriller / Forensic Mystery / Literary Noir
Setting: Contemporary Bombay

Debts of Silence is not your conventional whodunit. It is a forensic procedural with a conscience — a novel that asks what price we pay for the truths we choose not to speak.

The Premise

The tagline says it all, and brilliantly so: Forensic Auditor. Haunted CBI Past. A Trail of Hidden Assets. Bombay’s Smoking Ruins. A Sacred Object, A Deadly Price.

Our protagonist is a former CBI officer turned forensic auditor — a woman who trades in numbers, not hunches, and whose gloves are both literal and metaphorical. Crouching in a rain-slicked Bombay lane, ledger in one hand and a sacred, charred relic in the other, she is called to unearth the truth from ashes — both financial and human. When a trail of benami assets, burnt files, and a revered object collides with the smoking ruins of the city, her audit becomes an exorcism of her own past.

Lal sets up a compelling high-concept hook: what if the biggest fraud isn’t on the balance sheet, but in our silence?

Character and Craft

The choice of a female forensic auditor as the lead is refreshing and timely. She is not the hard-drinking, rule-breaking detective of old Bombay noir; she is meticulous, observant, and quietly haunted. Her CBI past gives her grit, but her present as an auditor gives her method — a fascinating duality that Lal exploits well.

Bombay itself is the second protagonist. Rendered in monsoon noir — wet pavements, shuttered bakeries, distant church spires, auto-rickshaws blurring past — the city feels lived-in and bruised. You can almost smell the rain on hot concrete and the smoke from something recently burnt.

Themes That Resonate

This is more than a crime novel. Lal, with a keen eye for systems, explores:

The Cost of Complicity: How institutional silence becomes a debt that compounds with interest.
Faith vs. Finance: The collision of a sacred object with the profanity of hidden wealth is a masterstroke. It asks whether some things should remain beyond valuation.
Truth as Forensics: The idea of “unearthing the truth of ashes” is powerful — both as a literal forensic act and as a metaphor for post-tragedy India.

Writing Style

Lal’s prose is atmospheric and precise, much like his protagonist’s work. The narrative is lean, visual, and cinematic — you can see this on screen. The cover itself tells you the author thinks in frames. His background lends authenticity to the forensic audit trail — the jargon never feels forced, the process feels real — without losing the lay reader in spreadsheets.

The pacing is deliberately slow-burn in the first act, establishing mood and motive, before tightening into a taut second half.

What Works Exceptionally Well

Original Protagonist: A forensic auditor is a first for Indian crime fiction and instantly memorable.
Authenticity of Detail: The world of hidden assets, shell companies, and investigative procedure rings true.
Mood and Place: A superb sense of Bombay noir that avoids cliché.

A Small Note

If there is one place where the novel could breathe more, it is in the personal stakes. The “haunted past” is hinted at so tantalisingly on the cover that one craves a few more quiet, interior moments with our auditor when she is not auditing. A deeper dive into her CBI exit wound would make her final reckoning even more devastating.

Final Verdict

Debts of Silence is an assured, intelligent, and deeply atmospheric debut. It succeeds because it refuses to be just a thriller — it is a story about how numbers never lie, but people do, and how some debts can never be written off.

For fans of S. Hussain Zaidi’s gritty Bombay, Meeti Shroff Shah’s forensic detail, and classic noir with a modern, ethical core, this is a must-read.

It doesn’t just solve a crime. It audits it.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

A searing, sophisticated thriller that proves the most dangerous ruins are not those left by fire, but those left by silence.

The Art of Not Falling Apart: Confessions of a Chronically Optimised Human

What are some life hacks that you practice?

The Art of Not Falling Apart: Confessions of a Chronically Optimised Human

I have never been one for those austere, joyless productivity gurus who tell you to wake up at 4 a.m., drink celery water, and journal your way to enlightenment. Life, in my experience, is far too gloriously chaotic for that. So over the years, I have developed a personal arsenal of life hacks — not to become a billionaire or a monk, but simply to avoid losing my keys, my temper, and my spectacles (which are usually perched on my own head).

Here are the ones I actually practise, with almost embarrassing regularity.

1. The Sacred ‘Oh, For Heaven’s Sake’ Basket

Every home has a Bermuda Triangle. Mine used to be the entire house. Now, everything that has no fixed abode — remote controls, rogue chargers, inexplicable Allen keys from flat-pack furniture, and those loyalty cards you swear you will use — goes into one rather handsome wicker basket by the door. I call it the Basket of Existential Dread.

It does not organise anything. It merely organises the chaos into one location. When guests arrive, I look tidy. When I need something, I know exactly which pit of despair to rummage through. It is minimalism for the morally flexible.

2. The Two-Minute Tyranny Rule

The internet says: “If it takes less than two minutes, do it now.” I say: “If it takes less than two minutes, do it now, or it will take on a life of its own and begin to judge you.”

Replying to that message, rinsing that mug, hanging up that shirt — if I don’t do it immediately, my brain will file it under ‘Urgent and Deeply Personal’ and remind me at 2:17 a.m. with full orchestral accompaniment. Swift action is not about efficiency; it is about preventing future me from staging a full-blown internal tribunal.

3. I Name My Chargers Like Royal Heirs

I have stopped pretending I am a person who remembers which cable does what. So now, they have names and personalities. Sir Charges-A-Lot is the long, reliable one for the laptop. The Diva is the temperamental fast-charger that only works at a certain angle, under certain moon phases. The Usurper is a cheap knock-off that gets dangerously hot and is treated with appropriate suspicion.

Labelling them with tiny bits of washi tape has saved me from that primal scream of plugging in a dead phone overnight only to discover I used the cable that charges at the speed of continental drift.

4. The Strategic Lie to Myself

My calendar is a work of creative fiction. If I need to be somewhere at 6 p.m., I tell myself it starts at 5:40 p.m. I know I am lying. My brain knows I am lying. Yet, astonishingly, it still falls for it. Every single time.

It is the only healthy relationship I have where gaslighting is not only acceptable but actively encouraged. I arrive on time, slightly smug, and everyone thinks I have finally become a punctual adult. I have not. I have just become a more cunning procrastinator.

5. The Photo Inventory of Genius

Before I dismantle anything — a plug socket, the inside of a cupboard, the alarming tangle of wires behind the television — I take a photograph. A dozen, actually, from angles that would make a crime scene photographer proud.

My memory is a magnificent palace, but the storage room for ‘where that tiny screw went’ has been permanently closed for renovation. The photo saves me from that classic finale where you have three leftover parts and a profound sense of unease.

6. The ‘Do Not Engage Before Tea’ Protocol

I have learned, through many regrettable emails, that I am not to be trusted with decisions, opinions, or heavy machinery before my first cup of tea.

So, all important notifications are on silent until 8 a.m. The world can wait. The world, in fact, should wait. Nothing good has ever come from replying to a passive-aggressive message whilst still half-composed of dreams and bedsheets.

In short, my life hacks are not about hacking life at all. They are about making peace with it. They are small, slightly ridiculous treaties I have signed with my own forgetfulness, laziness, and flair for drama.

They will not change the world. But they do mean I can always find my spectacles.

And that, dear reader, feels like victory enough.

Karma Isn’t Revenge, It’s a Mirror: Why I Have Come to Believe in It

Do you believe in karma?

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Karma Isn’t Revenge, It’s a Mirror: Why I Have Come to Believe in It

Do I believe in Karma?

For many years, I would have given you a very intellectual answer. Today, at this stage of life, my answer is much simpler: Yes, I do. Not because I have seen the universe punish someone, but because I have seen life quietly reflect who we are.

Let me be clear about what I mean by Karma. I don’t mean it in the way it is often used on social media — that instant, dramatic revenge. “He did wrong, so Karma will get him.” Life is rarely that theatrical.

The Karma I believe in is the one our elders spoke about. In Sanskrit, Karma just means action. It is not fate. It is not a judgement. It is the simple, profound law that every action carries an energy, and that energy has to go somewhere.

Over the decades, I have come to see it work in three ways.

1. Karma lives in our own mind first.

When we act out of anger, jealousy or dishonesty, we are the first to pay the price. We lose our own peace. Sleep becomes lighter. When we act with generosity and honesty, even when no one is watching, we become more at ease with ourselves. In that sense, we receive our Karma instantly.

2. Karma lives in our relationships.

This world is smaller than we think. How we treat people when we have nothing to gain from them — the waiter, the junior colleague, the stranger on the phone — that behaviour eventually becomes our reputation. And reputation travels faster than we do. I have seen kindness extended twenty years ago return as an unexpected helping hand. I have also seen arrogance from the past close doors in the present.

It is not magic. It is simply that people remember how you made them feel.

3. Karma lives in who we become.

This is the most important one. Every small action is a practice. Every time we choose the easy lie over the difficult truth, we practise becoming a person who lies. Every time we choose discipline over convenience, we practise becoming a person who is strong.

We are not just doing things. We are becoming someone through what we do. That becoming our real Karma.

I do not believe Karma means that good people will never suffer, or that difficult times are a punishment for past sins. Life can be deeply unfair, and to say otherwise would be unkind and untrue. Sometimes good people face terrible hardships, and that is not their fault.

But I do believe this: while we cannot always control what happens to us, we can always control what we send out. And what we send out shapes the world we have to live in.

Karma, for me, is not about fear. It is about responsibility. It is a gentle reminder that my thoughts, my words and my actions are not isolated. They are echoes. And I want to be mindful of the echoes I leave behind.

What about you — do you see Karma as a spiritual belief, or simply as life’s way of mirroring us?

What People Actually Want to Read (And Why Most Writing Misses It)

How do you write what people actually want to read?

What People Actually Want to Read (And Why Most Writing Misses It)

Most writing advice tells you to “know your audience.” True, but useless. Here’s what actually works.

Start with a problem, not a topic

Nobody wakes up wanting to read about “productivity.” They wake up annoyed that their to-do list never shrinks. Write to the annoyance, not the abstraction. The best headlines and opening lines name a specific, recognisable frustration or desire within the first few seconds — because that’s how long you’ve got before someone scrolls on.

Get to the point, then earn the rest

Readers grant you their attention in instalments, not all at once. The first sentence buys you the second. The first paragraph buys you the rest of the piece. So front-load the payoff: say the useful thing early, then spend the rest of the piece proving, illustrating, or complicating it. Save the throat-clearing, the “in today’s fast-paced world” openers, for the bin.

Specificity beats eloquence

“Many people struggle with time management” is forgettable. “I lost four hours last Tuesday reorganising my inbox instead of writing the report that was actually due” is not. Concrete details — numbers, names, moments — do more work than polished abstractions. They let the reader picture the thing, and pictures stick.

Write sentences a person would say out loud

If a sentence would sound strange coming out of your mouth in conversation, it’ll read strange too. Long words and formal constructions (“utilise,” “in order to,” “it is important to note that”) don’t make you sound smarter — they add friction. Cut them. Short, plain sentences aren’t a lesser style; they’re usually the harder-won one.

Give the reader something to do with it

The pieces people remember and share tend to leave them with the next action, a reframe, or a line they can repeat to someone else. Not every piece of writing needs a call to action, but it should leave the reader slightly more capable, entertained, or understood than before they opened it. If it doesn’t, ask what it’s actually for.

The real test

Before publishing anything, read it back and ask: would I stop scrolling for this? Would I send this to a friend? If the honest answer is no, the fix usually isn’t better vocabulary — it’s a sharper problem, an earlier point, or a truer sentence.

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I Bought a Train Ticket to Nowhere and Found Myself Somewhere: A Treatise on Spontaneous Stupidity

What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?

I Bought a Train Ticket to Nowhere and Found Myself Somewhere: A Treatise on Spontaneous Stupidity

Let’s be honest. Most of my life has been meticulously planned. I make lists for my lists. I check the weather three days before I need to dry my socks. Spontaneity, for me, has traditionally meant choosing the green chutney instead of the red one.

So, the most spontaneous thing I have ever done deserves some context.

It was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday in November. 3:47 PM. I was at the railway station to see off a colleague. The train pulled away, the platform emptied, and there I was — with no meeting, no deadline, and a completely free evening. A dangerous combination.

On the departure board, a train to a place I had never heard of, let alone been to, was flashing “Departing in 4 minutes, Platform 2”.

I looked at my sensible shoes. My sensible shoes looked back at me. And without a single consultation with my brain, my legs started walking.

I bought a ticket. Not a return. Just a one-way ticket to utter randomness.

Philosophers will tell you that freedom is an illusion. That we are slaves to habit, to consequence, to our calendar invites. They are probably right. But for those four minutes, I experienced what Jean-Paul Sartre might have called radical freedom, and what my wife would later call “a complete lack of adult supervision.”

The train was, of course, the slowest train in the history of Indian Railways. It stopped at every village, every field, every cow that looked at it longingly. I had no bag, no toothbrush, no plan. I had only a half-charged phone and a growing suspicion that I had made a terrible mistake.

And that was precisely the point.

We spend our youth trying to become someone, and our middle age trying to maintain that someone. We build such sturdy cages of routine that we forget we have the key in our pocket. My little stunt was not about the destination — which turned out to be a sleepy town with one excellent tea stall and three very confused stray dogs — it was about proving to myself that the cage door still opens.

I sat at that tea stall for two hours. I watched a man argue passionately with his goat. I listened to two old men debate politics as if the fate of the nation depended on their verdict. No one knew me. No one needed anything from me. I was, for the first time in decades, not “useful.” I was just… present.

The hilarious part? The entire grand adventure cost me Rs. 85 and a mild panic attack when I realised the last train back was at 9 PM. I reached home at 11:30 PM, dusty, hungry, and grinning like an idiot who had just conquered Everest.

My family thought I had been kidnapped.

When asked where I had been, I could not give a satisfactory answer. How do you explain that you needed to get lost on purpose?

Kierkegaard said that life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. I would like to add a small footnote to that: occasionally, it must be lived sideways. With no map. On a Tuesday.

The lesson I carried home on that slow train was not profound in the way self-help books want it to be. I did not find my life’s purpose in that unknown town. I found a very good samosa.

But I did learn this: Spontaneity is not about being reckless. It is about reminding your soul that it is still allowed to play truant. We are so terrified of wasting time that we never waste it beautifully.

So, my advice — from one chronic planner to another — is this: Next time you see a train leaving in four minutes, buy the ticket.

Even if you just come back. You will return a slightly different person. Slightly dustier. And with a far better story to tell than “I checked my emails.”

Steal Back Your Day: The Real-World Guide to Making Time for Self-Care

How do you make time for self-care?

Steal Back Your Day: The Real-World Guide to Making Time for Self-Care

Self-care does not need a spare weekend or a scented candle empire. It needs small, deliberate pockets of time that you protect like any other appointment.

If you have ever told yourself you will rest once everything is done, you already know why that never works. Everything is never done. Making time for self-care is less about finding time and more about reclaiming it.

Here is how to do it, without guilt and without overhauling your life.

1. Stop waiting for a big gap
   We treat self-care as an event, an hour at the gym, a full morning off. That mindset makes it easy to postpone.

Reframe it as micro-moments. Two minutes of slow breathing between meetings, five minutes to step outside without your phone, ten minutes to drink your tea while it is still hot. These count. Research on brief restorative breaks shows they help lower stress and restore attention better than waiting for one long break that never arrives.

2. Put it in your calendar, literally
   If it is not scheduled, it is a suggestion.

• Anchor it: Link self-care to something you already do. Stretch for two minutes after brushing your teeth. Walk after your lunch call.
• Block it: Create a 15-minute recurring block titled “reset”. Treat it like a meeting with yourself. You would not cancel on a colleague lightly.
• Protect the edges: Set a firm start and end time for work or chores. Self-care often lives in the boundaries you keep.

2. Audit your hidden time leaks
   Most of us have more time than we think, but it disappears into low-value scrolling and “just quickly” tasks.

Try this for one day. Note where 10-minute chunks go. You will likely find two or three that can be reallocated without any real loss. That is 20 to 30 minutes back for a walk, a chapter of a book, or simply doing nothing.

4. Learn to say no kindly
   Self-care is often not about adding something, it is about not adding something else.

You do not need a long explanation. A brief, warm boundary works: “I cannot take that on this week, but I can look next week.” Each no to something draining is a yes to something restorative.

5. Build rituals, not resolutions
   Resolutions rely on motivation. Rituals rely on repetition.

• Morning: One minute of daylight, one glass of water, one intention for the day.
• Midday: Stand, roll your shoulders, look out of a window for 20 seconds.
• Evening: Write down one thing that went well. Put your phone to charge outside the bedroom.

Keep it so small you cannot fail. Consistency beats intensity.

6. Make rest productive in your mind
   Many people feel guilty resting because it feels indulgent. Reframe it. Rest supports concentration, mood, immune function, and relationships. It is maintenance, not luxury.

Ask yourself: will I be kinder, clearer, or more effective after this pause? Usually the answer is yes.

A simple starter plan for this week

Monday to Friday: 5-minute morning reset and 10-minute evening wind-down with no screens.
Wednesday: 20-minute walk without podcasts or calls.
Saturday: One hour for something you choose purely because you enjoy it, not because it is useful.
Daily: One protected boundary, for example no emails after 8 pm.

Start with two of these, not all of them. When they feel easy, add another.

Making time for self-care is not selfish. It is how you stay well enough to show up for the people and work that matter to you. You do not need a perfect routine, you need a repeatable one.

What is one 10-minute pocket you could reclaim tomorrow?

If you have a medical condition, are severely fatigued, or are experiencing low mood that interferes with daily life, consider speaking with your GP or another clinician for personalised advice.