Santhosh's ramblings

I watched a children’s movie last week –  Swapped (Netflix) . (Yes, I still watch children’s movies; the child in me lifts its head and its desires now and then. I wish it did so more often, but most of the time it stays suppressed.). This blog is a movie review too.  (I am not advertising Netflix). The story goes like this: The Pookoo live by one rule: hide today, alive tomorrow. For ages, these chipmunk‑like creatures thrived on their quiet island in the middle of the valley river. Predators were rare, piplet seeds were abundant, and life was predictable. But Ollie was different. Curious and eager to explore, he ventured beyond the island and introduced himself to a Javan - a bird. Though the Javan couldn’t understand him, Ollie taught it how to open piplet pods. Unfortunately, Ivy, the bird, summoned its entire flock. Soon, Javans swarmed the island, devouring every seed. The Pookoo were forced underground, scraping by on leftovers as winter approached. Ollie blamed hi...

Let me start with a disclaimer – The thoughts and characters in this piece arise from imagination and experience. If they seem to echo anyone in real life, that resemblance is unintended.   I am confused a lot these days. Nothing special about it; I usually am. But it is more than just confusion – a  Disorienting Dilemma . Two decades ago, when I was travelling frequently, I would visit every bookshop I could, especially at railway stations and airports. I used to see more books on atheism, trying to disprove religions as a myth. Today, I see more books on religion. Not spirituality, but more about religion and religiosity and history of the same.  In my middle age, I was almost certain that the world was becoming more secular and irreligious; today, there seems to be a renaissance of religiosity. But is there a renaissance of spirituality? I am not too sure. Just to clarify – Religiosity is about belonging to a tradition, while spirituality is about personally seeking th...

Our nation is going through, supposedly, one of the worst heat waves in history. The challenge this year, it seems, is that it happened much earlier. I am not sure if temperatures are higher than last year, but the heat wave has come earlier than previous years.  Traveling and talking to friends across the nation, every community talks about how this year is worse than the last. Bangalore, Vellore which we experienced, Nagpur and Delhi, friends talking about it. (But then, I hear it every year).  But the hope is that this too will pass, at least in some parts of our nation. But this would have left its destruction, with a few lives lost, crops failing, personal economy challenges for rural agrarian life. These will be just a few numbers that will appear in the media for a few days, and then be forgotten.   The thing I love most these days is the car AC, with its auto mechanism. It has a built‑in thermostat and adjusts the flow of cool air to maintain the temperature at wh...

A recent conversation converted to blog   As you look ahead, I want to be honest: the world you’re stepping into isn’t simple. In less than a decade, things have become… complicated. Our generation has left you with more problems than we inherited. I’m sorry about that - truly.   But here’s the hopeful part: every mess is an opportunity in disguise.   Anne Lamott once wrote, “Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground - you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip.” I relate to that deeply - especially when I look at my own shelves.   And that’s our hope for you: that you’ll be the ones who discover treasures in the mess, clean things up, and build something better. History shows us that, the generations that inherited a confused and complex world, did much better than the others.    How Did We Get Here?   There are many reasons, but th...

As I travelled through a bustling city, I couldn’t help but feel a little down seeing all the posters and adverts promising never-ending youth and glamour. Huge billboards showed off products and services that claimed to keep you looking and feeling young. Among them were ads for big hospitals offering total health and everlasting youth! But is any of this actually true? Or is it just a story made up for business, something many of us end up chasing? It’s as if we’re told that growing old doesn’t have to happen, at least for a while, and we all get swept up in make-believe. We ignore the reality of mortality for this dream of staying young.    Oddly enough, I was on my way to a classmate’s funeral - a friend my own age who passed away suddenly. At the same time, I was also keeping in touch with someone younger than me, who had suffered an unexpected heart event in a faraway place, helping them decide what to do next. It made me stop and think—what’s really true for me right no...

A warning – this blog is primarily for people of my age. Others can read it but I will not be responsible for any consequences thereof.   I spent much of my time reading about leadership (in years gone by). A good book I read was by Bobby Clinton on leadership (The Making of a Leader by Robert Clinton). He talks about the six stages of a leader’s life, and the last stage is afterglow. I am still trying to understand how the afterglow glows. I am still revising my foundations.    And if we look around at global and national leadership, we find many who think they are still glowing, though observed evidence says otherwise. Remember the emperor’s clothes story? https://americanliterature.com/author/hans-christian-andersen/short-story/the-emperors-new-clothes   More on this later. But then reading an incident in the good book today raised a bit of confusion in my mind – nothing new about confusion – that is why I ramble.   “The camp had finally grown quiet after yea...