Santhosh's ramblings

A member of my extended family wrote to me this – perhaps after reading my ramblings: “The core difference between reflections/ramblings and research writing at large is that one is a form of human hallucination, and the other is the creation of new knowledge. Reflections can have a fixed time but in research is where "new knowledge" emerges…” My response was, “Thank you for your diagnosis  😌 .”   My reason for such a response is that, for a physician,  hallucinations = major mental illness;  and if  ramblings = hallucinations , then  ramblings = major mental illnesses . Which means all those who ramble and reflect have some amount of major mental illness.   But then, with all due respect, I suppose what the person wanted to communicate was -  “ hallucinatory ramblings ”  or reflections do not last.   But then, is not research writing and scientific reasoning founded in reflection and rambling? Imagining possibilities. The hypothesis on...

The British, along with many other things, left us with a 6 second conversation no starter. And that has become a physiological response (part of life) for most educated Indians. This is – “How are you?” and “I am fine” (or okay, doing well or other variants of fine).  The   Physiological Conversation Killer .    Once we acknowledge that I am ok and you are ok, the conversation ends. Then we struggle for other topics, and so start on climate, politics, and other irrelevant topics. Knowing very well that many a time, I am not okay and the other person may not be ok too, but it is safer to live with the I am ok and you are ok state. At one season of life, when I was engaging with young people (yes, younger than me), I tried a social experiment. I was not really doing ok (emotionally – do not try to diagnose what it is  ) and so decided to respond to “Uncle, How are you” – by a simple reverse question. “Do you want a British answer or the truth?” Most of them did not e...

This has been a season of school and college get-togethers. In fact, I am writing this just after a college get-together. I have hardly attended some of these in the past. I had my legitimate reasons, but I realise it was because I had not prioritised this or seen it as important. A bit too late to recognise this.    There are a few learnings I want to share from last week’s get-togethers.   One – class get-togethers are  where you can be yourself . You cannot wear a mask – metaphorically. In the world out there, you wear multiple masks. Mostly the image mask, without realising that what others know about me colours all the image I want others to see. But in front of people who knew you in your childhood, teenage years and early twenties, image does not matter. You can be who you are, without any masks. If you wear a mask, it will be uncomfortable too. And that was why we were fooling around, maskless!  I wonder if I can live this life in my external engagement ...

A few weeks ago, I preached on “unspeakable joy” and how this joy is given to us permanently (see link below). It did not take long for that joy to dissipate, and I felt like a hypocrite. I had to re-preach the message to myself time and again to recapture that joy, according to how I was feeling at that time.   It did not take major events for this to happen. The death of a few fish I had carefully cared for in a tub. A flowering plant that I had nurtured but refused to produce any flowers. A loved one passing away at 94 years of age. A poor response to one of my writings. A scratch on the car. I wondered, why?   Each of these had upsides too, but I was feeling a sense of lost joy. The fish that had died had given birth to many, and there were young ones around. The plant had one bud which could become future hope. My aunt had lived a full life, contributing to many others - it should have been a celebration. My unnoticed writing was on a “specific topic”, and only a niche re...

Family often has a way of bursting our bubbles or balloons of our egos or ideas - metaphorically speaking. This happened to me last week.    I was proudly displaying my bird feeder and the birds enjoying it, only to be told that feeding birds actually disempowers them. The person argued that the birds might forget how to fend for themselves in the tough world because food comes too easily. While I believed I was caring for creation by looking after the birds, I was being told that I was, in fact, harming them!   Can our good intentions sometimes lead to harm?   The New Year is typically a time when we resolve to do more good for others, spurred on by an inner drive to be more generous and kinder than before. Despite a culture that encourages us to be “expressively individualistic” - I’ll touch on that later - this pricking of my bubble made me consider whether my well-meaning actions might inadvertently be causing damage.   The fish I keep in my tank, surrounded...

The season for resolutions is here.    Through life experience, I have learnt that it is better not to make resolutions or to resolve to fulfil them as early as possible. In the past, I used to forget what resolution I had made. Then I started writing them down (on paper), which became a constant source of guilt. I then decided to go digital - files and folders. Now, my memory does its own thing without my asking - it cannot remember which file or folder things are in. Recently, when looking for a 10-year-old document, I found multiple copies of various versions. I blame it on AI - I did not do this. It decided on its own.   The other issue is that 365 days is too short to complete what I want to. That is when I decided to set decade-long resolutions or seasonal directions for life. But then, I realised the memory problem still affects me! I do not know where or when I wrote or kept the 10-year-old document - hard copy or soft copy.   But I am realising that if I had...