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.

If you could go back and witness any historical event, which one would you pick?

If I Could Return to One Moment in History

Some moments belong to history; others belong to the human conscience.

If I were given the improbable privilege of turning back the hands of time and standing, even for a few minutes, inside one historical moment, I would choose 15 August 1947—the dawn of India’s independence.

Not merely to witness the lowering of one flag and the raising of another, but to feel the pulse of a civilisation awakening after nearly two centuries of colonial rule.

I imagine Delhi before sunrise: the air heavy with anticipation, the streets filled with ordinary people carrying extraordinary dreams. Somewhere, a mother might have whispered a prayer for a future she would never see. Somewhere, a young freedom fighter might have stood silently, remembering comrades who had sacrificed everything but would never witness the freedom for which they had struggled.

And then, at midnight, history would have crossed an invisible threshold.

India was not simply becoming politically independent. It was attempting to reclaim its voice.

I would want to stand there and listen—not merely to the speeches, but to the silence between them. For history is often recorded in proclamations, treaties and dates; yet its deepest meaning resides in the emotions of those who live through it.

I would look at Jawaharlal Nehru delivering his celebrated “Tryst with Destiny” speech and wonder what those words meant to the millions who had endured poverty, imprisonment, discrimination and uncertainty. Independence was a magnificent promise, but it was also an immense responsibility.

Yet I would not wish to remain only in the triumphant moment.

I would want to walk through the following days and witness the paradox that accompanied freedom: celebration on one side and Partition on the other. The same dawn that illuminated hopes also cast long shadows across Punjab and Bengal. Trains carried not only passengers but grief; borders were drawn on maps, while human lives were torn from familiar landscapes.

Perhaps that is precisely why I would choose this moment.

History rarely offers us uncomplicated victories. The birth of a nation can simultaneously be a celebration and a wound. Freedom can arrive carrying both flowers and ashes.

If I could return, I would not attempt to alter history. I would simply observe, listen and learn.

I would ask the people of 1947 what they imagined India would become. Did they dream of an India without hunger? An India where education reached every child? An India where caste, poverty and prejudice would gradually lose their grip? Did they imagine technological progress, bustling cities and a nation capable of speaking confidently on the world stage?

And perhaps I would ask one more question:

“Have we fulfilled the promise you made to the future?”

That question would be uncomfortable—and necessary.

Seventy-nine years later, India has travelled an extraordinary distance. Yet history reminds us that political independence is only the first chapter of freedom. A nation is truly free when dignity is not a privilege, education is not a luxury, justice is not selective, and opportunity does not depend upon the circumstances of one’s birth.

I would therefore return to 15 August 1947 not because I believe the past was better, but because the past gives the present a mirror.

Standing there, amidst the flags, speeches and dreams, I would perhaps understand something profoundly simple: every generation inherits a freedom that another generation struggled to obtain, and every generation must decide what it will do with it.

I would return to that dawn carrying no desire to rewrite history.

I would return only to listen.

And when the clock finally brought me back to the present, I would hope to carry one message with me:

Freedom is not a destination reached on a particular midnight. It is a promise renewed every morning.

Ink Beneath the Skin: The One Word I Would Carry Forever

If you had to get a tattoo right now, what would it be and why?

Ink Beneath the Skin: The One Word I Would Carry Forever

If I had to get a tattoo right now, I would not choose a name, a date, a quotation or an elaborate symbol. I would choose a single word:

“Still.”

A small word, almost austere in its simplicity, yet capable of carrying an entire philosophy of life.

Still means many things. It means quietness, but also continuity. It suggests something that has not been swept away by the storms around it. A tree may bend in a tempest and still remain rooted. A lamp may flicker in the wind and still give light. A human being may be bruised by life and still choose to rise the following morning.

That is the tattoo I would want—not merely an ornament on the skin, but a reminder etched into the body of something the mind too easily forgets.

Life has a peculiar habit of taking away what we once believed indispensable. Years alter our faces, circumstances rearrange our priorities, people enter and leave, ambitions change their names, and yesterday’s certainties become today’s questions. Yet, somewhere beneath all these alterations, there remains a quiet self that whispers: Continue.

Still.

The word would remind me that endurance is not always heroic. Sometimes it is simply getting out of bed when the heart would rather remain beneath the blanket of yesterday. Sometimes it is opening a book when the world has become too noisy to read. Sometimes it is writing one more page, taking one more walk, listening to one more piece of music, or watching the evening sky without demanding an explanation from it.

I have always believed that the most profound battles of life are fought without witnesses. No medals are awarded for surviving disappointment. No applause follows the private decision to begin again. Yet those invisible victories often constitute the architecture of character.

Perhaps that is why I would not choose a tattoo that declares I conquered. I would choose one that quietly says, I remained.

There is something deeply Indian in this idea. The Bhagavad Gita speaks of steadiness amidst the turbulence of circumstance—the sthita-prajna, the person whose wisdom is not easily shaken by pleasure or pain. One need not proclaim such steadiness; one must cultivate it. A tattoo, then, could become less decoration and more a personal sutra—a thread of remembrance worn close to the skin.

And why the wrist, perhaps?

Because the wrist is where time is measured.

Every glance at it would become a small encounter with the past and a quiet instruction for the future. The word would sit there like an old friend:

Still here.

Still learning.

Still hopeful.

Still creating.

Still becoming.

Age, I have learnt, is not merely a number accumulated by the calendar. It is a library of departures, discoveries, mistakes, recoveries and unfinished sentences. The temptation is to believe that certain chapters have closed permanently. But perhaps life is less like a book with numbered chapters and more like a river—always moving, occasionally changing its course, never entirely abandoning its source.

So, if I had to get a tattoo today, I would choose neither rebellion nor vanity.

I would choose remembrance.

One word. Four letters. A lifetime of meaning.

Still.

Because the greatest declaration is not that life never wounded us.

It is that, despite everything,

we are still here.

When Two Paths Quietly Become One

How did you meet your significant other?

When Two Paths Quietly Become One

Some meetings are announced by destiny with trumpets; others arrive so quietly that we recognise their importance only much later. I belong to the latter kind.

I did not meet my significant other in some cinematic setting, beneath a dramatic sunset or amid a symphony of violins. There was no thunderclap announcing, This is the person who will change your life. It was, in fact, an ordinary meeting—almost deceptively ordinary. Yet life has a curious habit of concealing its most consequential moments beneath the cloak of the commonplace.

We met when neither of us perhaps understood how profoundly a single introduction could alter the geography of the years ahead. At first, there was no grand romance. There was conversation, curiosity, a gradual recognition of temperament, and that elusive comfort one occasionally discovers in another human being—the feeling that silence does not need to be filled.

What drew me was not merely appearance, charm or the superficial sparkle that often masquerades as affection. It was something quieter: a certain steadiness of character. There was warmth without pretence, strength without arrogance, and an ability to make an ordinary moment feel less ordinary.

Love, I have come to believe, does not always arrive as a storm. Sometimes it is like dawn. The sky does not suddenly explode with light; darkness simply begins to retreat, almost imperceptibly, until one realises that the world has changed.

Our relationship, too, grew by degrees. Conversations became longer. Familiarity became friendship; friendship acquired tenderness; and tenderness slowly became a bond strong enough to withstand the inevitable weather of life. We discovered that companionship is not merely about sharing laughter. It is also about learning each other’s silences, respecting differences and remaining present when circumstances cease to be kind.

Years have taught me that a significant other is not necessarily the person who completes us. We are not half-souls searching for another half to become whole. Rather, the right person walks beside us while we continue the lifelong work of becoming ourselves.

There are moments when I look back at that first meeting and marvel at the strange architecture of fate. How many apparently insignificant encounters pass through our lives without leaving a footprint? And how extraordinary that, occasionally, one encounter becomes a doorway.

Perhaps that is the real mystery of love—not that two people meet, but that among millions of possible encounters, two lives recognise something in one another and decide, consciously or unconsciously, to remain.

If I were asked today how I met my significant other, I could describe the circumstances. But circumstances are only the prologue. The deeper answer lies elsewhere.

I met someone who gradually became familiar, then precious, and eventually indispensable to the story of my life.

And perhaps that is how the finest love stories begin—not with a dramatic declaration, but with two ordinary people meeting on an ordinary day, unaware that destiny has quietly turned the page.

The Sacred Art of Touching Feet: When Respect Becomes a Gesture.

What’s a cultural tradition from your country that you love?

The Sacred Art of Touching Feet: When Respect Becomes a Gesture.

Every culture possesses certain traditions that survive not merely because they are ancient, but because they continue to whisper something meaningful to the human heart. In India, the tradition I have always found particularly beautiful is touching the feet of elders as a gesture of respect and seeking their blessings.
To an outsider, it may appear to be a simple physical gesture. To me, it represents something far more profound: the graceful acknowledgement that wisdom is not always acquired from books, and that age, experience and the lessons of a lived life deserve reverence.
There is something almost poetic about the moment. A younger person bends; an elder raises a hand in blessing. For a fleeting instant, generations meet—not through argument or instruction, but through silence. The gesture seems to say: I honour the journey you have travelled; may some of its wisdom illuminate mine.
Indian civilisation has traditionally understood knowledge as an inheritance. The Guru-Shishya tradition, our scriptures, epics and countless oral traditions all reflect an abiding respect for those who have walked the road before us. Knowledge, in this philosophy, is not merely information to be acquired; it is wisdom to be received with humility.
And humility is perhaps the most beautiful dimension of this tradition.
We live in an age that sometimes confuses confidence with certainty and youth with omniscience. We celebrate speed, novelty and disruption, occasionally forgetting that experience is a library no search engine can fully reproduce. To bow before someone older is not necessarily to surrender one’s individuality. It is to acknowledge that one’s own perspective is incomplete.
There is also something deeply egalitarian about the emotional principle behind the gesture. The blessing that follows is not a transaction. It cannot be bought, measured or quantified. It is a moment of goodwill—an older hand resting above a younger head, silently wishing that life may be kinder, wiser and more generous.
Of course, traditions must evolve with time. Reverence should never become servility, and age alone should not become a licence for authority. Respect must be reciprocal. The young deserve to be heard, just as the old deserve to be honoured.
That, perhaps, is the distinction between tradition and ritual. A ritual is something we perform; a tradition is something we understand.
What I love about this Indian custom, therefore, is not the act of bending itself. It is the philosophy concealed within that movement—the gentle reminder that we are not self-created beings. We are the inheritors of languages, memories, sacrifices, ideas and values that preceded us.
In a world increasingly enamoured of the new, there is dignity in remembering the old.
Perhaps that is why I still find something profoundly moving in the sight of a young person bending respectfully before an elder. It lasts only a second, yet it contains an entire philosophy of life: remember where you come from, honour those who walked before you, and receive wisdom with a heart humble enough to learn.
Traditions such as these are not chains binding us to the past.
At their finest, there are bridges between generations—quiet bridges across which wisdom travels.

The Day I Would Steal from Time

If you could relive one day from your past, which day would it be and why?

The Day I Would Steal from Time

If I were given a strange, impossible gift—the power to turn the hands of the clock backwards and relive one single day from my past—I would not choose a day of achievement, applause or triumph.
I would choose an ordinary day.
Perhaps that is the peculiar cruelty of growing older: we spend our youth waiting for extraordinary days, only to discover that the days we eventually miss most were astonishingly ordinary.
I would choose a day when life had not yet acquired its full weight. A day when the morning seemed endless, the afternoon unhurried and the evening carried no anxiety about tomorrow. A day when I did not know that some people I met would eventually become memories, that certain places would disappear, and that some doors, once closed, would never open again.
I would wake before the world became noisy.
I would listen carefully to the sounds that once passed unnoticed—the stirring of the morning, the distant voices, the rhythm of footsteps, perhaps the call of a bird perched somewhere beyond the window. I would not reach immediately for a telephone or worry about messages waiting to be answered. I would simply sit there and allow the morning to exist.
How rarely we inhabit the present while it is actually happening.
When we are young, we are forever leaning towards the future. We want the next class, the next examination, the next promotion, the next journey, the next achievement. We are impatient to become someone. And then, almost imperceptibly, the future becomes the present, the present becomes the past, and we discover that we have been rushing through the very life we wished to preserve.
If I could relive that one day, I would slow everything down.
I would look more closely at familiar faces. I would listen when someone spoke, instead of preparing my reply. I would laugh without wondering whether the laughter was worth remembering. I would walk through familiar streets as though seeing them for the first time.
And I would pay attention to the little things.
The smell of food being prepared. The warmth of sunlight on an old wall. The sound of rain against a roof. The rustle of pages in a book. The melancholy beauty of an evening sky. The peculiar comfort of a place that felt permanent only because I did not yet know that nothing is permanent.
Perhaps I would also say a few things that I once left unsaid.
That is one of life’s most persistent tragedies: we often discover the right words after the moment in which they mattered has passed.
I would say, Thank you.
I would say, I am sorry.
I would say, You mattered to me.
And perhaps, to some people, I would simply say, Stay a little longer.
But time does not negotiate.
The ancient Greeks imagined Chronos as the inexorable force of time, devouring everything in his path. The Indian imagination, too, has long understood the terrifying majesty of Kāla—time as both creator and destroyer. We may build monuments against oblivion, write books, preserve photographs and fill cupboards with souvenirs, but time remains undefeated.
Yet perhaps there is another way of understanding the past.
We cannot return to yesterday, but yesterday can return to us.
It comes in the fragrance of rain.
In an old song.
In a forgotten photograph.
In the turning of a page.
In a particular evening light that suddenly transports us across decades.
Memory is time’s secret rebellion against disappearance.
So, if I could relive one day, I would not try to change history. I would not correct every mistake or rewrite every decision. I would not attempt to manufacture a perfect life.
I would simply experience that day more completely.
For perhaps the greatest illusion of youth is believing that happiness announces itself.
It rarely does.
Happiness is often disguised as routine. It sits quietly at the breakfast table. It walks beside us on an ordinary road. It waits in an afternoon conversation. It hides inside a familiar melody. It accompanies us through days we barely notice.
Only much later do we recognise them as treasures.
If I were granted that impossible day, I would therefore make myself a promise: I would not take a single moment for granted.
And when midnight finally arrived, I would not plead with time to give me another day.
I would simply whisper, Thank you.
Because perhaps the purpose of reliving the past is not to remain there.
It is to return to the present with wiser eyes.
We cannot relive yesterday.
But we can live today in such a way that, years from now, when memory comes knocking, we will have a beautiful day to open the door to.
And perhaps that is the closest thing we have to travelling backwards through time.