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The Making of a Dumb Datum

Imagine 10,000 years in the future. Two archaeologists are digging a site, and they find the remains of human bones. They take those remains to the lab, perform tests on them, and try to reconstruct the habits and lifestyle of that human. Say those bones belong to me. They are trying to find out my story, how I lived, what I ate, where I traveled, etc. Once they find all the info they need, they toss it into a museum where they store all other such ancient human remains they find. I was essentially one data point to them in trying to understand how humanity evolved over time. Or I can also call myself a “datum”, the singular form of data, literally one piece of information to solve a bigger puzzle. Honestly, I don’t need 10,000 years to become a datum. I am already a part of several datasets people use these days to study many things. So for that objective learner, I am already a datum. Now let me get to how I got the dumb part of it. I have had an interesting and eventful life so far...
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A Stunted Plant

The philosopher in me tells me that life is all about thinking rationally and moving through time in a just and kind manner. The runner in me tells me that life is all about setting goals and tolerating all the wear and tear of training required to reach those goals. The curious person in me tells me that life is all about asking interesting questions and working out the answers to them from the first principles. Most days, one of these three personalities help me see the big picture and keep moving. But I think they may have reached their limit today. I feel like I am lying on the ground because I am actually stuck. It’s an annoying feeling, because while I like to believe that I am moving in a straight path, the path seems to be circular in reality.  All this reminds me of a story my father used to tell me from his own life, when he was a single young man living away from his family to make a buck. It is a story from mid 1990s. My father often used to eat breakfast at a diner n...
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Light of God

I have always been fascinated by light. It started with all the Hindu Mythological media I used to consume as a kid. God always had a bright halo of light behind him, and that enabled this idea in my head that light is a sacred thing. And later on, since I was a curious kid, I used to stare intensely at bright street lights while clutching on to my father’s shirt, sitting on the back of his motor cycle. In my head it was a stare down contest with God, but it probably was just the precursor needed to trigger my hidden superpower of double vision (or Astigmatism, as it is called in the scientific terms, which resigned me to wearing eye glasses with high power for rest of my life). Now as a fully grown adult, I am grateful that my contests with God are limited to relevance of religion and purpose of human life, both of which don’t require staring into the street light from my balcony. But roughly six months ago, a friend asked me if I know the reason why sunsets are red. I told him I ...
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Pigeon's Nest

I have been running a lot lately. I ran 300 miles within last 7 weeks, and my running mileage for this year is now at 1312 miles. But stats are misleading as they don’t always give the full picture. The reality is that these 300 miles have come at the expense of a few other things. I am always exhausted, I haven’t been eating very well and I lately developed sore throat which is messing with the quality of my sleep. I noticed some of these early signs two weeks ago, so I had come up with this genius idea of stocking up on delicious ready to eat stuff, like microwavable butter popcorn and basil pesto sauce I can just mix with cooked rice and eat. But I have also been dealing with this classic case of zombie brain due to all the exhaustion. I managed to burn the popcorn in my microwave yesterday because for some reason I put it at high setting for 4 minutes. Now my entire home smells like burnt butter popcorn, which makes me lose my appetite for popcorn. And don’t even ask me about t...
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Heaven is overrated

I woke up with a sore throat and a mild flu today. It was about time I fell sick, considering I roamed in cold sand dunes last weekend, and I kept running in chilly fall mornings of Dallas this week. But I ignored it as usual and was prepping to go for my run. Then it hit me out of nowhere. By “it”, I mean Train’s ‘Drops of Jupiter’ song. I haven’t listened to it in a long time, so I have no clue why my brain suddenly craved to listen to it. But I obeyed my master and played the song (flies right in the face of all the stoic philosophy I have been reading lately, which keeps hammering the idea of having dominion over the mind with various analogies).   I think drops of Jupiter is easily one of the most wonderfully existential lyrical prose written on this planet by humans. How can one counterargue this statement after reading the below lyrics? Tell me, did you sail across the sun? Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded And that Heaven is overrated? It ...
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Beauty and Terror

 I have always been someone who is capable of experiencing life profoundly. That is what made me a writer in the first place, and it also enables me to connect with people at a deeper level. But this also has some side effects. For example, I always felt a roller coaster of intense emotions at a higher rate than other organized adults. This eternally running roller coaster taught me that the highs of life – love, laughter, safety and pleasure, can be fleeting and are immediately followed by crushing lows – heartbreak, tears, fears, and pain. So, I am fiercely protective of all the good and beautiful moments of life, and have difficulty letting them go easily. Yet it is a great irony that the number of things I had to let go in the 28 years of my life so far is greater than the number of things I could hold on to. So, maybe life is not supposed to be this battle between the acts of holding on and letting go. Then what exactly is life supposed to be? I am not sure. I am still you...
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A Man from Guatemala

I was feeling slightly worse today, and as if to add to it, the air conditioning in my apartment stopped working. I was internally like “great, one more worry for me to handle now.” I put up a maintenance request with my apartment management – “AC stopped working, it’s getting hot in here, por favor SEND HELP!”, and they sent help. A short man with a weary face but an innocent child-like smile knocked on my front door. In broken English, he communicated that he was there to install a temporary window AC for tonight. I was like “alright, come on in.” He installed it, and while leaving, he stopped in my living room and glanced at something. To be honest, my living room is full of clutter lately, with books and sticky notes spread everywhere. I was curious to see if he’d react, and then he reacted, but his reaction was unexpected - he asked me where I was from. I replied “I am from India, what about you?”, and he said something that I couldn’t quite understand. Took me 3-4 repetitions f...
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The Future, The Past and The Present

I got back into reading stoic philosophy lately, and it helped me realize an interesting fallacy of my brain. If I think of my brain as an optimization solver, its objective function is to maximize my chances of survival. Time flows in three distinct categories of past, present and future, so my brain applies a separate logic to each of them. Future is considered as the most important piece, primarily because main objective is to see as much of future I can. Therefore, in a particular day, most of the thoughts and emotions generated are about how I can conserve my future. Naturally this means, present and past are relegated to play supporting roles. For example, two main concerns of my future are how my career will pan out (considering the changes in tech due to AI and a fickle visa situation), and if I will be alone for the rest of my life. Most of my present is muddled by the worries about these concerns, which are not in my control. Past is a whole different story, because while...
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