What’s something you do completely differently from how you were raised?

Breaking the Mould: The Things I Do Differently from the Way I Was Raised

Every generation inherits more than a surname. We inherit habits, beliefs, fears, manners and unwritten rules about how life ought to be lived. Some of these become treasured traditions; others quietly follow us until, one day, we pause and ask ourselves: Is this really who I am, or merely who I was taught to be?

As I have travelled through the different seasons of life, I have realised that one of the most important forms of growing up is learning to distinguish between tradition and truth.

I was raised in an environment where discipline was highly valued. One learnt to respect elders, fulfil responsibilities, work hard and, above all, endure life’s difficulties without making too much noise about them. Feelings were often private possessions. One did not always speak about disappointment, loneliness or vulnerability. There was an unspoken understanding that strength meant carrying one’s burdens quietly.

Today, I do many things differently.

I believe that feelings deserve a voice.

I no longer consider expressing affection, gratitude or vulnerability a sign of weakness. If I care about someone, I try to tell them. If someone has helped me, I say thank you. If I miss somebody, I do not always hide it behind the convenient façade of being ‘fine’. Life has taught me that words left unsaid can become some of our heaviest regrets.

I have also become less convinced that silence is always virtuous.

I was raised to respect authority, but experience has taught me that respect does not require unquestioning obedience. It is possible to disagree without being disrespectful. It is possible to challenge an idea without insulting the person who holds it. And sometimes, asking why? is not rebellion; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Another difference lies in how I perceive success.

The world in which I grew up often measured achievement through tangible milestones — examinations, employment, status, possessions and social recognition. Today, I measure success rather differently. A peaceful mind, meaningful relationships, intellectual curiosity, the ability to remain kind in an increasingly impatient world, and the freedom to pursue something that gives life meaning seem far more valuable to me.

I have learnt that a full life is not necessarily a crowded life.

I also allow myself more room to pursue things simply because they bring joy. Reading a book, writing a page, listening to music, playing an instrument, watching the evening sky or having an unhurried conversation may accomplish nothing measurable — and yet such moments can enrich a life in ways that no certificate or possession can.

Perhaps the greatest difference, however, is that I have learnt to question the old idea that one must always appear strong.

There is courage in admitting that we do not know. There is dignity in saying that we were wrong. There is wisdom in changing our minds when experience presents us with a better truth. Growing older, I have discovered, should not make us rigid; it should make us more discerning.

Our parents and elders gave us the tools they believed would help us survive their world. But every generation enters a different world. We must therefore preserve the wisdom of the past without becoming prisoners of it.

I do not reject the way I was raised. On the contrary, I am grateful for much of it. It gave me discipline, resilience, responsibility and respect. But I have also learnt that inheritance is not instruction carved in stone. We may honour where we came from while choosing where we wish to go.

Perhaps that is what maturity really means — not abandoning our roots, but deciding which branches deserve to grow.

We are all, in some measure, unfinished manuscripts. Our childhood writes the opening chapters, circumstances add unexpected pages, and experience becomes our editor. Eventually, we pick up the pen ourselves.

And that is when life becomes truly our own.

What are your favorite 5 apps on your phone?

Between the Scrolls and the Silence: My Favourite Ways to Spend Time on the Phone

The telephone has travelled a remarkable distance in our lives. What was once a device meant merely for conversation has become a little universe held comfortably in the palm of the hand. It carries our photographs, books, music, memories, correspondence and, sometimes, an astonishing amount of useless information.

My phone, therefore, is not merely a means of communication. It is a window — and what I choose to look through that window says something about who I am.

One of my favourite pastimes on the phone is reading. I enjoy exploring articles, essays, poetry and interesting pieces of information that happen to catch my attention. There is something wonderfully serendipitous about beginning with one subject and, twenty minutes later, finding oneself wandering through an entirely different landscape of knowledge. The internet can sometimes resemble an enormous library without a librarian, where every corridor leads to another door.

I also spend considerable time writing. A thought can arrive at the most unexpected moment — while having tea, listening to music, taking a walk or simply staring out of a window. The phone allows me to capture that thought before it disappears into the ordinary noise of the day. Sometimes a single sentence becomes a paragraph; a paragraph becomes an idea; and an idea may eventually become a piece of writing.

Music is another favourite companion. My phone gives me access to songs from different eras and different corners of the world. I particularly enjoy returning to old melodies. There is a strange magic in a familiar song: the first few notes can unlock a room in the mind that we had forgotten existed. Music does not merely entertain us; it preserves emotional geography.

I also enjoy watching meaningful videos and documentaries. I am far less interested in endlessly consuming content than in discovering something that leaves me with a question, an insight or a new perspective. A good documentary can sometimes accomplish in an hour what several pages of ordinary conversation cannot.

Of course, there is also the inevitable scrolling. Social media has its charms. One encounters photographs, opinions, humour, celebrations, sadness and occasionally a sentence of such unexpected wisdom that it makes the entire scroll worthwhile. Yet I have learnt that scrolling is rather like eating snacks: easy to begin, difficult to stop, and not always nourishing.

Perhaps my most enjoyable phone pastime, however, is connecting with people. A brief message can cross distances that geography once made formidable. A photograph, a greeting or a simple “How are you?” can remind someone that they have not been forgotten. In an increasingly hurried world, such small gestures possess an understated tenderness.

But I also believe that the phone should have a boundary.

There are moments when I deliberately put it aside. A sunset does not need to be photographed to be beautiful. A piece of music does not always need to be recorded. A conversation does not become more meaningful because it is documented. And silence, perhaps the rarest luxury of modern life, cannot be scrolled through.

The real pleasure lies in using the phone without allowing the phone to use us.

Technology is a wonderful servant but a poor master. My favourite pastime on the phone, therefore, is not any particular application. It is the opportunity to learn, create, listen, remember and connect — and then, when the moment demands it, to switch the screen off and return to life itself.

After all, the most beautiful things in life rarely glow from a screen.

Some of them glow only in the heart.

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.