Mumblr Bytes

“I just want to this about that.”
― Steven C. Smith

The Leisure We Forgot

Mumblr Bytes, , , ,

It was a Dallas morning, in early June this year.

Already warm. Already bright. My daughter and I were sitting in the small garden behind the house, doing nothing in particular. The kind of nothing that usually lasts only until someone reaches for a phone.

She spotted it first.

A still insect clinging to a blade of grass. Perfectly formed. Perfectly unmoving.

Dead, we assumed. And declared so. Quickly.

We still leaned in. Looked closer. It did not have the careless look of something crushed or abandoned. It seemed intact. Intentional. As if it had chosen that exact spot.

We began guessing. Beetle? Grasshopper? Something more interesting? We debated seriously, the way children do, and adults quietly enjoy. We turned it gently. Examined the legs. The head. The odd lightness of it.

Then the realisation arrived. With some help.

It was not an insect at all.

It was a shell.

A cicada had grown inside it and, at some point, calmly stepped out. Growth completed. Old skin left behind. No drama. No hurry. Just a quiet exit under the Texas sun.

What surprised me later was not the discovery itself, but how I felt afterwards. I was strangely energised. Light. Refreshed. We had not rested. We had not done anything useful. And yet something had shifted.

I noticed that I had been fully present. Not half-there. Not thinking ahead. Just there, crouched in the heat, absorbed in a small mystery. And I found myself wondering why that felt so restorative. It felt like leisure, though nothing about it resembled how leisure is usually described.

Wonder at Cruising Altitude

Two days later, I was flying from Dallas to the East Coast. Seatbelt light on. Coffee barely drinkable. Clouds stretched endlessly beneath the wing, like a slow, patient design lesson. Somewhere between cruising altitude and mild jet lag, I was reading David Steindl-Rast.

Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk best known for his writing on gratefulness and everyday spirituality. Not the dramatic kind. The attentive kind. And there it was, tucked into the page as if it did not need emphasis.

He wrote that leisure is not the absence of activity but the presence of wonder.

The line landed differently at 35,000 feet. The Dallas garden returned instantly. The shell. The crouching. The strange lift I had felt afterwards. That moment finally had a name.

Around that time, the idea of leisure had been circling me anyway. Conversations with friends. Reading and writing essays to clarify what leisure meant to me. Many of my friends seemed drawn to the same question. How to make time for leisure. How to protect it. And, how to schedule it before it slipped away.

Steindl-Rast’s line quietly undid all of that.

Leisure had not arrived because time had opened up that morning in Dallas. Time had not changed at all. Attention had. Wonder had been allowed in. Leisure and wonder, I realised, have less to do with calendars and far more to do with how awake we are to the moment in front of us.

Children seem to understand this without effort. They do not ask whether something is useful before being fascinated by it. A shell on a blade of grass is enough. Adults tend to wait for permission. Or purpose. Or a clear outcome.

That cicada shell offered none of those.

Not even an invitation to look closer. It sat there in casual indifference, until attention and curiosity cast their quiet spell. Something ordinary came alive. The mind loosened. And, without effort, it relaxed.

And that, it turns out, was plenty.

Leisure came not from creating space, but from entering the moment more fully.

It is December now. Many people are looking ahead to leisure. Calendars are being cleared. Time is being protected.

On that bright June morning, we discovered that the cicada shell has a small crack along its back. Nothing dramatic. Just enough for something larger to leave. I like to think wonder works in much the same way. It does not wait for empty days or perfect conditions. It slips in through small openings, through moments when attention loosens and something ordinary is allowed to surprise us. And it refreshes the soul in a remarkable way.

Yes. We could stop sealing every moment shut and not wait for free time to soak into leisure!

Books in the Time of Dopamine

Mumblr Bytes, , , ,

The Bangalore Literature Festival has been around since 2012, but I always managed to miss it. My first glimpse of it was through friends and colleagues at Founding Fuel, Charles Assisi and NS Ramnath, authors of The Aadhaar Effect, when they spoke at the festival years ago. Since then I have been meaning to attend. Something or the other kept coming in the way. Then I read the founder’s comment on Founding Fuel about moving the festival from the five-star comfort of The Lalit Ashok to the wide open public grounds of Freedom Park. I remember thinking, Freedom Park? Interesting. The irony and the possibilities jumped out at once.

And so I finally went. The first thing that greeted me was a tall mosaic figure holding a bright red surfboard-like object with the word Freedom splashed across it. Not exactly what the British officers had in mind when they built the place, but a cheerful indication of what the day held. A few steps further was the bright @blrlitfest sign in pinks and blues. If you ever needed proof that literature can trend, this was it.

If you want to experience the full irony of modern life, go to a place once built to keep people in and watch thousands walk in voluntarily, some even jogging, to attend a literature festival. Freedom Park, the former Central Jail of Bangalore, is now a pleasant expanse of trees, sunlight, ideas, and, for a day at least, more book-loving humans than you could shake a bookmark at.

The symbolism was impossible to miss. Once, Freedom Park held prisoners in barracks with concrete beds and narrow passageways where freedom was a rumour. Now those same spaces hosted sessions on Sanskrit, parenting, news, men’s rights, and All India Radio. Chairs and yoga mats were laid out neatly across old prison beds, and people sat on them happily, notebooks open, as if taking notes in jail was the most normal thing in the world.

Bayonets and Books!

The watchtower stood tall and white in the centre, looking gently puzzled by its new job of overseeing conversations instead of convicts. A sepoy cast in stone held his rifle and stared ahead, while festival banners fluttered around him. If he ever imagined he would spend eternity watching people queue for author signings and filter coffee, he revealed nothing.

Entry was through two long parallel walls once built to contain bodies. In the evening they glowed red and seemed delighted to welcome minds instead. I could almost hear Bill Bryson remarking how human beings are the only species that would turn a former prison into a venue for people who willingly sit for hours listening to strangers discuss how to live better, write better, and occasionally argue better.

Inside the Festival: Ideas, People, and a Whiff of Possibility

The crowd was a marvellous pot-pourri. Teenagers with tote bags. Elderly couples who looked like they had stepped straight out of a Sunday crossword. Children trotting towards the #CLF area, drawn to colourful cloth canopies and cheerful storytellers. And of course a smattering of stars from Day One. Banu Mushtaq. Vir Das. Santosh Desai. Vivek Shanbag. And Shashi Tharoor, freshly returned from shaking hands with Vladimir Putin, which is not a sentence I ever expected to write. Yet there he was, surrounded by admirers, looking as though world diplomacy was merely a warm-up act for a weekend lit fest in Bangalore.

What I enjoyed most was how many remarkable authors simply wandered about. No entourage. No velvet ropes. You could walk up, say hello, and they would smile like old friends. In a world where even mid-tier influencers travel with ring lights, this felt wonderfully human. A free world, at least on that patch of reclaimed earth.

The children’s section was buzzing. Under a rainbow of cloth shades, kids sat on red chairs and listened wide-eyed to storytellers and wildlife experts. A far cry from my childhood, when literary glamour meant reading an author interview in The Hindu framed stiffly against a bookshelf. These children had open skies, soft grass, and sessions under trees. My younger self would not have known where to look.

There was also the small matter of the prison of devices. Everywhere I looked, people had put their phones away. Not in silent mode. Not in airplane mode. Properly away. Buried in bags. Forgotten. Occasionally taken out to check programme changes, especially after the Indigo fiasco caused some authors to miss their slots. It was as though the old walls had agreed to keep the devices inside and let the humans escape.

The fashion added its own subplot to the day. There were the formal types in suits. The linen types whose clothes took a moment to arrive after they did. The tight-fit types who seemed to have been sentenced to mild compression. Prints with camels, checks, stripes, feathers, hats, turbans. Greens, blues, greys, and salt-pepper combinations that could have been a paint chart. A riot, and a joyful one, united by a love for books.

I also met a few old friends, people I had worked with years ago. Some were authors now. We talked about books we were reading and books we were pretending to read. We shared recommendations. We spoke of manuscripts in progress and our quiet ambitions to one day contribute something that would sit on a table like the ones before us. These small reunions made the day feel less like an event and more like a homecoming.

Book buying was brisk. I picked up a few myself. At the end of it all, the young lady announced proudly that they accepted no credit cards. Instant debits from bank accounts are perhaps the truest measure of commitment. People paid anyway. I did too.

The organisers deserve every bit of credit. They created something warm, open, and quietly defiant at a time when reading is supposedly declining and AI, we are told, is sharpening its knives for books.

But at Freedom Park, of all places, there was a whiff of possibility. Under the watchtower that once surveyed prisoners, I watched hundreds of people sit under an open sky, listening, questioning, dreaming, and shaping answers they would take away.

Reading keeps us human. Writing keeps us honest. And festivals like these remind us that imagination is still, thankfully, unjailable.

Stop the Play, I’m Still Thinking

Mumblr Bytes, , , , , , , ,

A Night of Theatre, Memory, and the Scripts That Refuse to Leave

Some theatre evenings feel like performances. Others feel like mirrors. This was the latter.

I expected the inaugural Udayan Bhattacharya Memorial Lecture at Nehru Centre to be solemn. Instead, it turned out warm, thoughtful and quietly humorous. The evening opened and closed with Tagore songs sung softly, as if reminding us that culture breathes best at its own pace. It was also the evening I was properly introduced to Sahana, Mumbai, a remarkable collective that has spent decades nurturing performing arts in the city with quiet resolve.

An Evening To Remember

At the centre of it all was Sunil Shanbag, one of Mumbai’s most respected theatre-makers and a protégé of the legendary Satyadev Dubey. He had the ease of someone shaped by decades of rehearsal rooms, difficult scripts and stubborn hope. Shanbag spoke calmly, stroking his goatee now and then, and made the history of Mumbai theatre feel less like a lesson and more like a stroll through a familiar neighbourhood. He offered hope simply by holding history in one hand and possibility in the other.

Somewhere along the way, a small door opened in me too, a familiar pathway to my own dalliances with theatre from years ago.

The Plays That Found Me

My introduction to theatre did not come with spotlights or pedigree. I was discovered by Prof Elango at Fourthwall, at The American College, who plucked me out of wayward obscurity and gave me a role in a play titled In the Name of God. One moment I was minding my own business, the next I was on stage wondering which limb was meant to move first. Theatre does not wait for you to be ready. It simply says, “Your turn.”

What followed was a fast, compressed and surprisingly thorough education. A little Shakespeare, a little Chekhov, and then The Zoo Story, the two-person pressure cooker that offers no escape and no excuses. Those early plays left an imprint, the way a river leaves its mark on stone. They shaped how I listened, how I observed, and how I carried myself long before I understood what they were doing.

Plays do not end when the curtain falls. They end when they are done with you. They return in airport queues and quiet mornings, tapping you on the shoulder when you least expect it. A play you performed at nineteen can return at forty with a completely different meaning. Theatre builds an internal archive without asking for permission, and it keeps adding to it long after the stage has gone dark.

For that imprint I owe a lifelong debt to Prof Elango and everyone at Fourthwall. Their passion ran on a different voltage and it sweepingly carried me along. Without them I would have remained exactly where I was, minding my business instead of discovering a new way of seeing and being.

And it was that way of seeing and being that sat upright that evening, listening to Sunil Shanbag narrate how Tagore’s play Dak Ghar had travelled all the way into Nazi Germany, slipping quietly into the shadows of the Warsaw Ghetto. It felt less like a history lesson and more like a reminder that stories often go further than their writers ever imagine.

Tagore, Korczak and a Lesson I Was Not Expecting

To understand the story, it helps to picture the Warsaw Ghetto in the early 1940s. A sealed district created by Nazi Germany. Starvation, cold and constant deportations. Entire childhoods cut short before they had begun.

In the middle of this was Janusz Korczak, whom I have been reading about ever since that evening. He was a paediatrician and educator who ran an orphanage with fierce tenderness. He believed children deserved clarity and dignity even when adults around them had lost both. His compassion was stubborn in the best possible way.

Shanbag described how Korczak used Tagore’s Dak Ghar to prepare the orphaned children for the idea of death. Amal, the sick child in the play who dreams of the world beyond his window, became a mirror for children whose own world was closing in. For many of us, this was the first time the Warsaw Ghetto was introduced not through numbers but through a play, through frightened children performing a gentle story, and through one man’s determination to give them a last taste of imagination.

The part that stayed with me came after the play. A few days later the children were marched away with hundreds of others towards the trains that would take them to a concentration camp. Adults around them wailed and collapsed. The children walked in silence, steady and composed. One of them held a violin and played as they moved. They were as ready as children can ever be for a fate they did not choose.

It struck me that the evening was as much an education about Korczak as it was about Tagore. Sometimes we learn about literature through the lives it touches. And sometimes we learn about history through the plays it chooses.

That night Korczak became the teacher and Dak Ghar became his chalk. Shanbag kept weaving that story through Mumbai’s own theatre tales, stories that were no less fascinating in their own way.

The Spaces That Built Mumbai’s Theatre

Shanbag’s stories reminded me that theatres do not just host plays. They build cities. They shape how a place thinks and imagines, held together not by budgets but by conviction.

Much of that conviction came from people like Dubey, who kept appearing in Shanbag’s telling. Dubey could spot actors who did not know they were actors, push them into difficult roles, and treat theatre as oxygen rather than entertainment. That energy seeped into the rooms where Mumbai’s theatre first found its voice.

Chhabildas: A School Hall That Sparked a Movement

The way Shanbag described Chhabildas, you could see it. A modest school hall in Dadar. A high tiled roof. A storeroom pretending to be a backstage. A toilet that worked on its own mood. Almost no equipment. And yet it became the beating heart of experimental theatre. For nearly two decades, dozens of groups performed there across languages, on diwans and rattling steel chairs, with traffic, vendors and radios leaking in from the street. On one night, even a murder downstairs.

In Shanbag’s telling, Chhabildas thrived not despite its flaws but because of them. The room taught theatre makers to be inventive, honest and fully awake to life.

Prithvi and NCPA: Spaces That Grew a City’s Confidence

Prithvi and NCPA, as Shanbag described them, were Mumbai’s two strictest teachers. Prithvi demanded intimacy, its thrust stage leaving no place to hide. NCPA offered the opposite lesson, insisting on scale and discipline. Together they taught artists to stretch, adapt and rise to whatever room held them. They were not just venues. They were training grounds.

Why Money Cannot Be the Only Question

Shanbag also traced how things shifted after 1992. As the country opened its markets, theatre was nudged into the logic of “an evening out.” Plays became shorter, lighter and more “dinner-friendly,” trimmed to suit appetites rather than ideas.

But Chhabildas reminded me of something else. Art does not need money to live. It needs people who care enough to rehearse after work, to perform in hot rooms, to sit on diwans and steel chairs and still feel something. Chhabildas did not decorate Mumbai. It animated it. It kept the city honest and awake.

Somewhere between the pollution outside and the conversation inside, something shifted. The air in the hall felt lighter, as if talking about plays and playwrights could momentarily clean a city’s lungs. It left me with nostalgia, a hint of melancholy, and most unexpectedly, hope.

Art that depends only on money cannot build a city. It can only decorate it. But art that depends on love and belief gives a city a soul.

Why Theatre Matters Even More Today

In a digital age we have traded presence for convenience. There is more to watch than ever, yet far less to truly feel. Our attention has become a marketplace and everything wants a piece of it.

Which is why theatre feels almost radical now. People in one room. Shared breathing. Shared laughter. And shared silence. No pause button. No algorithm.

Culture is not luxury. It is how a society remembers to stay human. And theatre remains one of the few places where India’s astonishing diversity gathers, listens to itself and recognises its own depth.

A week later, it still sits with me.

Stop and Smell the… Tyres?

Mumblr Bytes, , , ,

There are mornings when coffee wakes you up. And there are mornings when the coffee seems sluggish compared to the news.

On my LinkedIn feed popped an interesting post by Intellectual Property thought leader Latha Nair: “India just got its first smell mark, that too smelling of roses! 🙂 And it must be a sweet feeling for any trademark enthusiast from India!“

That was the moment my coffee stopped being a beverage and became a witness to history.

The details were even better. Sumitomo has “apparently been infusing the floral fragrance of roses into its products as an integral component of its business strategy and product development since 1995.”
And a 13-page order from the Controller General now trailblazes India’s journey into the world of non-conventional marks.

The coffee sputtered and screeched down my alimentary canal as I checked again if it was Sumitomo the tyre company.

Yes. It was.

A tyre company applying for — and getting — a smell trademark. That too, of a rose. To be infused into its products?

But here is where the fun truly begins. To register a smell, you must represent it graphically. So Sumitomo submitted a graphic of a “rose-like smell”, with the assistance of IIIT, Allahabad.

A picture of perfume?
A drawing of aroma?
Some sort of curvy line that looks like a rose caught in a Wi-Fi signal?

Which makes me wonder: What would the official graphic be for the smell of coffee?
And when do we get an emoji for “wake up and smell the coffee,” because modern civilisation is clearly running behind schedule?

Her post also quotes the order, in impeccable judicial calm, that “the scent of roses bears no direct relationship with the nature, characteristics, or use of tyres.”

I think that translates to: “This makes no earthly sense, and that is exactly why it qualifies.”

Honestly, understanding why a tyre smells like roses is about as clear as solving this week’s crossword with last week’s clues. You know something is happening. You just cannot explain what and why.

It is one of those “fact is stranger than fiction” moments.
Science fiction predicted teleportation and aliens.
Reality gave us perfumed tyres.

I am still trying to imagine that “rose-like smell” graphic.
My nose says yes.
My brain says absolutely not.
And my coffee says, “Please leave me out of this.”

What a Life Touches

Mumblr Bytes, , , ,

I never met Ramki Sreenivasan. Yet I’ve heard his name often enough from friends and colleagues for him to feel familiar in the background. Like someone whose work you recognise before you recognise the face. I’ve read his writing, followed his work from a distance, and mourned his passing quietly.

Reading NS Ramnath’s piece on Founding Fuel, and seeing the images from the award instituted in his name, made me pause. Not as much in sorrow as much in meaning and celebration. A life like his leaves a long trail. For people, for places, and for everything that flies, swims, crawls, or blooms.

The Founding Fuel link below gives greater context to this piece.

The award created in his name is not just a reminder of his work. It is a quiet act of love from his family and friends, who continue to keep his spirit alive in the field he cared about.

Ramki treated conservation as serious work. It needed persuasion, evidence, and courage. He didn’t photograph wild places as a hobby. He helped protect them. The tools were cameras and lenses, but the work was closer to activism.

A reminder of that impact came from an unexpected place: a tribute from Neiphiu Rio, the Chief Minister of Nagaland.

Condolence letter from Nagaland’s Chief Minister

Political leaders rarely stop their day to acknowledge conservationists. Nature seldom makes it to the official list of people politics thanks. So when a state leader publicly honours a man who helped protect migratory birds, it says something about the work. And the scale of it.

The Cost We Forgot to Count

The damage we do to the environment is often invisible to us. We track inflation, GDP, stock indices, petrol prices. We complain about shrinkflation in our biscuit packets. But we don’t notice the shrinkflation of habitats. Forests thinning. Rivers narrowing. Skies losing their travellers. There is no mainstream index that measures the cost of losing forests, wetlands, or birds. It is a bill we are already paying. We have just settled for not seeing the invoice.

We don’t see ecological loss because it rarely comes as one dramatic event. It shows up quietly: fewer bird calls in the morning, a river that smells different, a fruit that no longer grows where it once did. These changes arrive disguised as “development” or “progress.” And because they don’t show up in quarterly earnings or political slogans, we treat them as background noise. By the time we notice, the damage is already permanent.

That’s where lives like Ramki’s shift perspective. They remind us that conservation is not fringe activism. It’s maintenance. It keeps the world in working order so that both people and wildlife can live with dignity. If the forests fall silent, we lose an entire vocabulary of life.

Small choices matter too. The plastic bag we refuse. The holiday we plan differently. A school project about migratory birds instead of zoo favourites. Culture changes through small, repeated acts of responsibility. And through teaching our children to relate to the planet as a neighbour they share life with.

Ramki’s life and work set a benchmark. This is a call to match his stance, not his scale. Most of us will not save a neighbourhood, let alone a species. But we can choose not to help erase one. That is a modest place to start, and perhaps the most honest one. 

Some lives add noise.
Some add followers.
A few quietly make the world better.

Those are the ones worth paying attention to.

Here is the Founding Fuel essay by NS Ramnath for more context and links to Ramki’s work

Watching The Wind Work

Mumblr Bytes, , , , , ,

One bright afternoon in Manly, I stood by the water and found myself watching the wind work. The sea was calm, the sky spotless, and a light breeze played around like it had nowhere in particular to be. Then a boat caught the wind, its sail filled, it leaned slightly, and began to move. Just like that.

You cannot catch the wind with your hands. You can wave, grab, or plead, but it slips right through. Yet stretch a bit of cloth in the right way, and the same wind will take you places. The trick is not strength, but alignment.

We do this in life all the time. We try to hold on to things we cannot. Control people. Plan every detail. Manage every outcome. All we end up doing is flapping about like a loose sail. The world moves anyway; the only choice we have is how we set ourselves to it.

The sailors made it look effortless. A tug on a rope here, a small turn of the wheel there, a quiet adjustment to the wind. They did not fight it; they worked with it. When the wind changed, they changed too. Calmly. In rhythm.

Lessons from the Shore

Perhaps that is what wisdom looks like. Knowing when to act and when to let the wind do its work.

And yes, there was a little competition too. You could see one sailor glance sideways at another, quietly comparing. Humans will be humans. Even grace comes with a touch of rivalry.

Standing on shore, I realised that the boats moving best were not the ones straining hardest. They were the ones that had learnt to work with the wind.

Maybe that is the real art of living. You cannot hold the wind. You can only understand it, trust it, and let it carry you forward.

PS: Here are some other posts from the trip down under.

The Brown Snake and I

Mumblr Bytes, Travel Tales, , , , , , , ,

It was one of those Brisbane evenings that felt neatly put together. The moon hung above the Story Bridge, the bridge glowed in red and gold, and the river below reflected it all as if it knew its role.

This is the Brisbane River. But long before it became a postcard, it was Maiwar. The river of the Turrbal people, the first caretakers of this land. They lived along its bends for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the 1820s. For them, the river was everything. Food, road, temple, and teacher.

The Meeting Place and a Cricket Fortress

The Turrbal people had names for every turn of the river. Woolloongabba meant “meeting place.” It still lives up to that name. It is now home to the famous cricket ground, The Gabba, where every few years India meets Australia to settle who really runs cricket.

In 2003, Sourav Ganguly’s brave century on a green, bouncy pitch showed that India had grown tired of being called timid. Then in 2021, a young, injury-hit team came back to do the impossible. Breaking Australia’s 32-year unbeaten record at the Gabba with courage, calm, and a touch of cheek.

It wasn’t just a win; it was a story of belief and joy. Many said the fortress had fallen. I thought otherwise. In fact, the Gabba stood taller for it. It proved again why sport matters: to host rivalries, to test effort, to stretch courage, and to honour that often-abused but still-revered phrase, the spirit of the game.

Funny how I started writing about the river and ended up at the cricket ground. But then again, the river has seen it all. Floods, bridges, and the odd boundary.

The River That Refused to Straighten

People call the river, ‘Brown Snake’. And the name fits. It winds through the city, calm and sure of itself. People jog along it, sail on it, build towers beside it and sometimes, when it floods, remember who’s really in charge.

Along its banks, the city gathers quietly.

Queensland’s Parliament House sits near one of the curves, looking calm and serious as if the river is ready with the next question. The kind that would embarrass a minister and still ask the opposition what they were doing all this while. A little further down, government offices line the shore, their glass windows catching the light. Across the water, old timber homes in Teneriffe stand beside tall new apartments, both pretending they belong together.

Kurilpa Bridge — a web of light and steel across the Brisbane River. It carries walkers, cyclists, and late-night wanderers
Kurilpa Bridge — where steel meets stillness, and the Brown Snake plays along.
The Neville Bonner Bridge — Brisbane’s newest way to cross the Brown Snake, or to stop halfway and take another photo of it.

At South Bank, the Wheel of Brisbane turns slowly over the river. It’s a giant Ferris wheel that looks like it’s keeping an eye on the city. At night, its lights shimmer on the water, mixing with reflections from cafés and bridges. Downstream, near the University of Queensland, students walk and talk by the water, thinking of exams, futures, and maybe nothing at all. The Brown Snake watches them all, moving quietly past.

The Brisbane River tracing the city’s heart . A ribbon of water, movement, and memory.

Later that night I read how early European settlers once tried to make this river straight. They brought dredges and plans, confident they could tidy nature’s design. The Brown Snake was fiercely Australian. It refused and kept curving and silting as it pleased, reminding everyone that some things are meant to meander.

Bridges, Lights, and the CityCat

Sixteen bridges now cross this river. The old Victoria Bridge has been rebuilt more than once. The Story Bridge, born in the Depression years, is Brisbane’s favourite landmark. Every night it glows like a festival — blue, gold, purple — changing colour depending on what the city is celebrating or mourning.

I took the CityCat a few evenings. Long, sleek, and painted in cheerful blues and whites, it glides along the river like a quiet promise. Office workers scroll on their phones. Tourists seem to take the same photo over and over. An extended hand holding a phone and clicking a picture is a standard feature! Somewhere, a child points at the moon.

The Story Bridge. Proof that even steel can smile when the lights come on.
The Brown Snake seen from above. Calm, luminous, and endlessly patient, holding Brisbane in its curve.

On one side, picture-perfect apartments lean over the water, all glass and balconies. On the other, green parks and old timber wharves stand calmly, pretending not to notice. The air smells faintly of salt and weekend plans.

The Rivers That Made Me

Somewhere between two stops, my mind wandered home. To Madurai. To the Vaigai. The river I grew up by. Once the pride of the city, now mostly a trickle between bridges that are newer than the water beneath them. Still, people cross, live, and hope. That’s what bridges are for.

And then I thought about space and wondered how many people live per square kilometer relative to spaces that I am used to.

Brisbane breathes at around 176 people per square kilometre.

Madurai hums at 8,800.

Mumbai roars at 33,000.

For ordinary people, that’s not density. That’s destiny.

Here, everyone seems to move. Running, rowing, cycling, sailing. But try getting a doctor’s appointment, and you’ll learn what patience truly means. The Brown Snake has its own pace, and so does the city.

Vaigai trickles. Maiwar flows. Mumbai surges. Each carries its own rhythm and lesson.

What Rivers Teach Us

As the CityCat slipped under the Story Bridge, the moon brightened above, and the Brisbane River — the Brown Snake — shimmered gold. The ferry hummed softly, carrying people home, and I felt the city exhale.

My mind darted back to the waters I’ve known: the restless sea in Mumbai, the fading Vaigai in Madurai, and this calm, brown river in Brisbane. Each carries its own rhythm . The sea crashes, the Vaigai sighs, the Brown Snake flows and forgives.

Mumbai teaches me motion. Madurai teaches me memory. Brisbane, perhaps, teaches me stillness and flow. Together, they remind me that home is not fixed to a pin on a map. It is a current that carries you forward, again and again, asking you to move, to meander, and to remember.

Rivers don’t just flow; they hold time. They carry stories we’ve forgotten how to tell. Stories of people, floods, bridges, and beginnings. The Brown Snake has watched Brisbane rise, falter, and rise again. It asks for nothing, but it seems to remembers everything.

Maybe that’s what rivers teach us in the end . That strength isn’t about speed or noise, but about keeping on, quietly, towards the sea.

Between the Big Blue Sky and the Brown River

Mumblr Bytes, Travel Tales, ,

I met him on the CityCat. Brisbane’s river ferries glide along the brown river, under bridges that look like bent straws, past cafés and joggers who seem permanently cheerful.

Joseph was a deckhand. A big native Australian with shoulders that looked built for the river. His job was to haul the rope, open the gate, wave people in, and make sure no one fell into the water. He did this every few minutes, at every stop. Do that a hundred times a day and anyone would be bored to death.

Not Joseph.

He moved like it was his first day at work. Cheerful. Focused. Alive. There was a bounce in his step and a twinkle that matched the river’s shimmer.

It was a Sunday evening. I had time to kill, so I stayed on the ferry all the way to Hamilton, where the boat turns and snakes back again. When we docked, I asked him, “What makes you smile and work so hard?”

He paused, smiled wider, and said, “I love the river. I love the big blue sky. This river is mine. This sky is mine. And when you come on board, sir, it gives me joy to take care of you.”

It wasn’t corporate enthusiasm. I’ve been around long enough to smell PowerPoint sincerity from a mile away. This was real.

We started talking. We spoke about people, work, and how both of us survived Covid. His words were simple, but the kind that stay with you. As I left, he said, “Take care, mate. Come back soon.”

A few days later, I boarded a Singapore Airlines flight home. The service there is famously polished, like chrome. An air hostess with a more than merely perfect smile welcomed me aboard. Encouraged by Joseph, I asked the young lass the same question.

“What makes you smile and work so hard?”

She smiled her perfect smile. The kind they probably practise before every flight. She thought for a fleeting second, and delivered her answer with the poise and precision Lee Kuan Yew might have admired.

“I have to,” she said. I liked her honesty and told her that.

Through the flight, she was impeccable. Efficient. Precise. Polite. Nothing wrong. Nothing missing. Except something invisible.

As I got off, I said, “Good luck.” She blinked, surprised. Then said, “Goodbye, sir,” and went back to her line of farewells.

Two smiles. One sculpted by discipline; the other shaped by the river and the sky.

Between the big blue sky and the brown river perhaps lies the distance between precision and presence.
Between duty and delight.
And between, having to and wanting to.

The Light Within Resilience

Mumblr Bytes, , , , ,

It’s Diwali. Deepawali as it’s called back home. The word comes from deepa (lamp) and avali (row) — a row of lights that celebrates the victory of clarity over confusion, of faith over fear.

Every story behind this festival begins in darkness.

Ram returns to Ayodhya after exile. Krishna ends Narakasura’s reign. Kali restores balance when chaos reigns. Guru Hargobind walks free from Jahangir’s prison, taking fifty-two kings with him into freedom. Of course, there is more. Each story carries the same thread — a new beginning after struggle, a moment when courage finds its footing again.

Resilience often begins quietly. It starts when everything feels uncertain, yet something inside whispers, try again. It grows when we pause, look around, and ask, what still holds true?

Finding Light – within and around.

There is much darkness in the world today — conflict, fatigue, and loss. Yet if you look closely, there are sparkles everywhere.

Like the taxi driver who tells me he is doing one extra round after a fifteen-hour day so the old-age home he supports can have more sweets for Diwali.

The air hostess who wipes away a tear as she wished me back a happy Diwali. Her first one away from home after being married for three weeks.

The corporate head who breaks down privately after losing colleagues in a freak accident, yet steadies himself so others can lean on him.

My newspaper agent in Madurai who still walks up, asks how I am, and waits — really waits — for an answer.

A neighbour who lost her husband but still smiles, still finds small ways to be kind, still shares a bit of joy.

Light finds its way through people like them. Human beings, in their everyday acts, are remarkably resilient.

Resilience is the art of standing up again. As Albert Camus wrote, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

So if the light around you feels faint, light a small lamp anyway. If your work, your idea, or your courage feels tired, let Diwali remind you that the glow returns in time. In people. In you.

May you find the light within, even as the ones on the window sills flicker bright. And may you notice the light in others. The kind they may not wear on their sleeve, but quietly keep alive for the world.

Happy Diwali.

Win or Die: Notes from a Noisy Nation

Mumblr Bytes, , , , , , , ,

“There are only two possibilities here, right? Win or die.”
That’s not a war general. That’s Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI.

He said this after his fledgling startup made an audacious offer to buy Google Chrome just as Google was considering acquiring his company. It wasn’t a stunt. It was a statement. Stand your ground. Don’t wait to be chosen. Act. Or disappear.

The clarity in those three words hit me harder than I expected. Because it reminded me of something else entirely: home.

A few months ago, I was traveling overseas. I was in Queensland, Australia. Clean air. Empty roads. Birds louder than people.

A woman who had once travelled to India leaned in and asked, not unkindly, “How do you live there? You’re packed like sardines.”

Fair question. All of Australia has as much people as in the city of Mumbai. We are packed. In trains. In queues and contradictions. We live close—to each other, to chaos, to survival.

And for millions, survival itself is a kind of victory.

India Wasn’t Meant to Make It

In 1947, perhaps that was the national mood. Survival. That’s all we had. A bruised nation, a broken economy, and a whole lot of people with very little of everything else.

India wasn’t meant to make it. Winston Churchill famously scoffed that India was just a “geographical expression” and predicted it would splinter into chaos after the British left.

We were a “developing country” before the term became polite. A country stitched together by courage and imagination.

And Yet—Here We Are

Seventy-eight years later. Messy. Loud. Functionally dysfunctional. Fractious. But moving. Rising.

There are parts of India today that can beat the world on any stage. Others still trying to find the stage. And yet others just finding their feet.

We are world-class in patches and at cross purposes in others. But we are trying. We are showing up. That counts. India is no superpower. But it is a super possibility. Our lived experiences vary more than all climate zones of the world. But deep down, the story is the same. The fight is the same.


One. Because of Many.

What makes India remarkable isn’t just its size or scale—it’s its stunning, often stubborn, diversity. Languages, cultures, cuisines, gods, gods within gods. We are made up of parts. Gloriously different parts. And yet, we are one. Not in spite of our differences, but because of them.

This plural existence that is messy, layered and opinionated is not a bug in the system. It is the system.

It may look inefficient from a distance. And may confound those seeking sleek, clinical uniformity. But in India, sameness has never been the soul. Diversity is. And that predates independence!

To truly be Indian is to celebrate that. To respect what is not ours. And honour where we came from. And to defer, with humility, to where we are headed.

We can disagree—on politics, beliefs, or the best way to eat dosa. But when we hold hands, we can move forward. That is our superpower.

One. Because of many.

Victory Means Living Fully

Victory, my dad used to say, is living to your full potential. Anything less, and something inside quietly dies. You may not acknowledge it at first. But a part of you knows. And shrinks a little further each time.

That’s the real journey. Especially for a country like ours. To go from simply surviving to fully showing up.

From “How do you live there?” to “How do they do that?” That arc takes courage. Not the loud, chest-thumping kind. But the quiet, daily, persistent kind.

The kind that keeps going even when things seem okay. The kind that still believes.

Aravind Srinivas’s clarity in that pithy statement reminded me of the many times India has stood at a cliff’s edge and chosen to jump forward—uncertain, unready, but unwilling to back down. Here are my top five moments India had no choice but to Win or Die. Of course, these are through my imperfect lens. And you would have yours!

Five Moments India had no choice but to show up. And win!

1. 1991: Economic Liberalisation

India was on the brink. Foreign reserves were down to a few weeks. A default loomed. As a last resort, the government flew out gold reserves to secure emergency credit. In response, Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Narasimha Rao dismantled decades of economic protectionism. And how! The reforms were unpopular. Risky. Uncertain. But the alternative was collapse. That pivot didn’t just save the economy. It opened up opportunity for millions. Win. Or die.

2. 1960s–70s: The Green Revolution

Post-independence India was trapped in a cycle of food shortages and foreign aid.
Famines were frequent. Hunger was normalised. Then came a wave of scientific intervention: high-yield seeds, irrigation projects, fertilisers. Led by M.S. Swaminathan and supported politically, the Green Revolution transformed agriculture. India went from begging for grain to becoming self-sufficient. And feeding a large and growing population! More than food, it was about dignity. Win. Or die.

3. 1983 & 2011: Cricket World Cup Wins

In 1983, India entered the World Cup as rank outsiders. The West Indies were expected to cruise.
But Kapil Dev’s team defied every expectation and rewrote history at Lord’s.
It wasn’t just a cricketing upset. It was a shift in national imagination: maybe we can win.
In 2011, the stage was different. India was expected to win. But the pressure was immense.
When Dhoni hit that final six, it wasn’t just a sporting victory—it was emotional closure for a generation.
Two decades. Two trophies. (Read more)
Same mindset: Win. Or die.

4. 2016 onwards: The Data Disruption

Before 2016, mobile data was expensive and unevenly distributed. Internet access was a luxury in many parts of the country. Reliance’s Jio changed the game. Offering cheap data and forcing every telecom operator to adapt or perish. It became more about participation than a phone plan. Rural India started streaming. Teenagers started coding. Small businesses went digital.
Digital inclusion became the new frontier. Win. Or die.

5. 2010s – Present: Aadhaar and UPI

How do you bring a billion people into the financial system? You start by giving them a unique identity—Aadhaar. You link that to banking, subsidies, and digital payments. And build UPI. Today, Indians make millions of real-time transactions a day without cards or cash.
It’s not flashy, but it’s revolutionary. No other country has done it at this scale, with this quiet confidence. Win. Or die.

The Thread That Connects Them All

There are countless others. Partition. Operation Flood. The space programme. The vaccine rollout. Operation Sindhoor. Kargil and other wars. And so on. Besides the ones that make it to the news, there are several personal and community triumphs in unnoticed corners of the country. All of them have imperfections galore. But each one is stitched with the same thread: courage in the face of reality. The refusal to be defined by what is. And the constant push to discover what could be.

More in the Tank

Because in this messy, magnificent democracy of ours, there is always more fuel in the tank of potential. Something that we can access when we come together with mutual respect and collective intent. And when it comes to embracing Win or Die, the latter isn’t really an option.

Happy Independence Day.