It Was...Just A Puddle

A toad and a mouse came upon a puddle of muddy water while they were walking together one summer afternoon. “Puddles are good,” said the toad. “I can lay in them and cool off on hot days, and that makes me feel happy.” “Puddles are bad,” said the mouse. “If I fell into it my fur would get wet, and that makes me feel upset.” 

But the puddle was not good or bad; it was simply a puddle, regardless of how the toad or the mouse chose to feel about it.

Have you been noticing this lately?

In random conversations… with colleagues, friends… even during those chai breaks or casual chats.

No one says it directly. But it’s there.

That slight pause before someone says, “Yeah… work is going fine.”

That half-laugh after talking about appraisals.

That quick subject change when the conversation gets a little too real.

Last week, someone mentioned they got a  good increment.

Everyone said the usual things, “Party kab?”, “Well deserved!” They smiled. Said thanks.

Then, almost as an afterthought, they added—

“Pata nahi… kuch feel hi nahi hua.”

It was said casually. But it stayed.

Another conversation - A friend talking about their new role, bigger team, onsite movement.

On paper, everything had moved forward.

But somewhere in between the updates, they said— “Same hi hai yaar… bas pressure aur badh gaya.” And then they laughed it off. We all do that. 

For years, the plan is clear.

Study well. Get a good job. Grow. Earn more. Upgrade life. And to be fair, it works.

You do upgrade things. Your phone, your house, your travel plans, your food choices.

Life looks better.

But conversations haven’t upgraded in the same way. Somewhere, they’ve become quieter. A little more… surface-level.

Because every now and then, if you sit long enough, the real sentences start slipping out—

“Bas chal raha hai…”

“Pata nahi kya chahiye…”

I’ve probably said ‘bas chal raha hai’ myself more times than I’d like to admit.

And then I read this article. About a guy from Bengaluru. Seven years in corporate life.

Four job switches. Multiple hikes—big ones.

On paper, everything had gone right.

And yet, he said he still felt… empty.

Maybe work is like that puddle. We keep expecting it to feel a certain way. Fulfilling. Exciting. Meaningful. And when it doesn’t… we call it empty. But maybe the emptiness isn’t coming from the job, or the salary, or the routine. Maybe it comes from the gap

between what we expected to feel…

and what we actually feel. Maybe the goal isn’t to avoid puddles or to stay stuck in one puddle.. Maybe it’s to stop expecting them to feel like something they’re not

So what do we do with that?

Maybe not chase another version of the same puddle. Maybe not label it too quickly. Maybe just understand our own lens a little better.

What makes something feel meaningful to me? What drains me? What quietly feels right, even if it doesn’t look impressive?

Because the world around us might not change dramatically. But the way we experience it can. And maybe that’s where things start to shift. Not outside. But in how we see what’s already there.

Delivery Leadership: More Than Plans and Metrics

Nobody tells you this when you become a delivery leader. They tell you about deadlines.

They tell you about escalations. They tell you about revenue, margins, and utilization.

But nobody tells you about the emotional invisible work that is required to be carried.

In the early days of my career, work felt simple.You had tasks. You completed them. You logged off. If something went wrong, it was a problem to solve and not a responsibilty you had to carry. I even thought it was great fun to lead. You have a team that does the work.. And then I stepped into the shoes of a Delivery leader.. Along the way, as roles changed and responsibilities grew, something else entered the picture, something no job description ever mentions - people, uncertainity and accountability without full control.

As a delivery leader, you are not just managing work. You are managing expectations, anxieties, egos, insecurities, and sometimes even silence. You are also making decisions with incomplete information, balancing trade-offs that are never as simple as they appear. Even fulfilling hiring requirements is not straightforward; it is a constant balance between urgency, quality, and factors beyond your control. You are accountable for outcomes, even when you don’t control all the variables that influence them. You respond to stakeholders who want certainty, when all you have is evolving clarity.You absorb frustration from one side and try to protect calm on the other. And in between all this, you are expected to remain composed. Always.

There are days when the toughest part of the job is not the work itself, but the conversations around it.

Telling someone they are not performing well.

Holding back your own irritation to keep the team motivated. Listening to complaints that have no immediate solution. And sometimes, just choosing not to react even when you want to. What makes it harder is that this emotional effort is invisible. No dashboard captures it. No report highlights it. No metric rewards it. But it is there in every decision you make,

Recently read the book - Being Ordinary & Doing Extraordinary things - by P.R.Krishnan.

What struck me was how deeply relatable it felt. The book is not about extraordinary leaders in the traditional sense. It is about the 99.99% of professionals who quietly build organizations through consistency, resilience, and teamwork. It speaks about leadership as something practiced every day, in small decisions, in difficult moments and in how we show up for others. 

Delivery leadership often looks exactly like that- Ordinary. There are no grand moments. No applause. No visible milestones that capture the effort behind the scenes.

It is just a series of days handling one issue after another, having one difficult conversation after another, showing up even when you are  tired.  Sounds boring? And yet, in these ordinary moments, something meaningful happens. A team feels supported. A situation is handled with calm. A decision is made with balance.

Maybe that is what extraordinary really looks like. Not big achievements, but small, consistent acts done with awareness and responsibility.

We spend so much time chasing 'extraordinary' milestones that we forget the value of showing up with balance and responsibility in the boring moments.

​If you’ve had a week of 'just' handling issues and having difficult conversations, know that this is the work. It isn't a distraction from leadership; it is the heart of it.

Leadership is not just about what you deliver, but what you quietly carry.

Harmony with A. R. Rahman

It began with a sentence. Or rather, half a sentence, spoken in an interview. And just like that a legend was promptly recast as the villain of the week for the news cycle.

The conversations ballooned into debates on nationalism, loyalty, history, terrorism, secularism, films, and, inevitably, the moral worth of entire communities.

All of this from a fragment.

What was entirely missing from the outrage was something far more basic than ideology and that is proportionality. A passing remark (yes, in a foreign media interview) was treated like a political position paper. An opinion was examined as if it were a declaration. 

The scale of the response had very little to do with the scale of the statement. Somewhere along the way, reaction detached itself from stimulus. When that happens, volume replaces judgement, and speed replaces understanding. We stop asking whether a response is appropriate and focus only on whether it is loud enough.

To advocate for proportionality is not to dismiss the genuine hurt that words can cause. Feelings of betrayal or offense are often rooted in a deep love for one’s identity or country, and those emotions deserve to be heard. But when a single fragment becomes the basis for judgement, conversation gives way to verdict and verdicts leave no scope for disagreement.

And yet, if there is something quietly reassuring about this episode, it is this: the noise never lasts. What endures is the work, the music that has consistently transcended language and ideology without making a spectacle of itself. Perhaps that is the real lesson. Proportionality is not just restraint for the sake of politeness; it is a form of maturity. It is a musical sense that knows when to pause, when to lower the volume, and when to let the melody breathe.

​In that sense, harmony is not the absence of difference, but the art of holding differences together without turning every note into a clash. It is not about everyone saying the same thing; it is about allowing those differences to coexist.

​The debate will move on, as it always does. The music will remain, doing what it has always done best: bringing people together without asking them to agree first.

"We are divided by race, country and religion, but the sound is beyond boundaries. Music brings unity. So I think that's the only hope." 

- A.R Rahman: Harmony with A R Rahman

A Year of Quiet Understanding

As this year comes to an end, I find myself less inclined to evaluate it in terms of milestones achieved or goals missed. Instead, I find myself pausing more than planning. Not the kind of pause that demands answers, but one that simply notices how the year has felt. Somewhere along the way, while turning forty, I felt a deep longing for understanding myself and others.

The world today feels deeply polarized. We are encouraged to pick sides, defend beliefs, and prove correctness. In a world that is increasingly loud, silence is often misunderstood. It is mistaken for indifference, confusion, or even disengagement. But silence can also be a conscious choice... a form of respect for complexity. Not every thought needs articulation, and not every difference needs resolution. Some things ask only to be held, not solved.

These days even the environment feels unsettled, air is often difficult to breathe (I live in Delhi NCR :)) , making the idea of pause almost literal... But sab chalta hai.. kya rukta hai. Staying aware mattered, but so did knowing when to step back, to protect one’s inner balance from being shaped entirely by the noise outside.

This year has gently taught me that allowing silence is not about withdrawal, but about depth. It is in these quiet pauses that empathy grows and perspective settles. When we stop rushing to respond, we begin to listen, not just to others, but to ourselves.

I realized that this year I read and wrote more than any other year. Books became quiet companions, and the act of writing allowed me to pause, process, and understand myself and the world around me. 

As I step into a new year, my intention is simple. To carry forward this ability to pause. To listen more than react. To allow space for differing truths without feeling the need to conquer them. If the world continues to grow louder and more divided, may I respond by deepening my presence. And if I cannot be present in that polarized world, may I be able to step into the world of my books or my inner world.

Ending the year with a little more quiet.

Aleph, By Paulo Coelho : When Spirituality Gets Tangled With Desire

I started reading Aleph many years ago. I still remember liking the opening pages… and then, like many books that start strong but somehow slip away, it found a place on my shelf and quietly gathered dust.

This Diwali, while cleaning up my things, I came across it again and realised I had never actually completed it.

So I picked it up once more, hoping this time it might spark some reflection.

The opening felt mystical, almost meditative. A man searching for meaning, setting off on a journey across the world to reconnect with his spirit.. It sounded like the kind of story that gently nudges you to look within.

Paulo feels spiritually stuck despite all his success. So he boards the Trans-Siberian Railway, hoping travel will bring him back to faith and clarity. Along this journey, he meets Hilal, a 21-year-old violinist who claims to share a connection with him from a past life.

The idea of souls crossing paths across lifetimes intrigued me. The book was about to reveal a profound universal truth through the Aleph moment. It felt deep.

But as the story unfolds, that spiritual beauty slowly gets overshadowed... that profound, universal search starts feeling like a specific, personal drama.

The bond between Paulo and Hilal becomes oddly intimate. It is described as something symbolic, something happening at a soul level, but it did not sit well with me. A 60-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman sharing that kind of closeness felt uncomfortable. The bond should have remained purely platonic, especially in a story positioned as a spiritual journey.

Aleph felt like a journey that began with promise and then lost its direction midway. Just like we humans do sometimes. When we lose our moral compass, the thin lines between soulful connection and inappropriate closeness can blur. What could have remained pure or meaningful can quickly turn into something uncomfortable and gross.

In the end, I closed the book feeling thoughtful, but not entirely moved. It left me with mixed emotions. There were a few sparks of wisdom, wrapped inside a story but not the universal messages that I had hoped for.

Soul connections are beautiful, but only when they honour the soul.

World Peace or World in Pieces ? - II

When I wrote this piece back in 2011, I held on to a simple prayer: “Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.” More than a decade has passed since then, and the world has only grown more complex. Conflicts continue to erupt in different corners of the globe, divisions run deep within societies, wars still rage, and even in our daily lives, anger and division find their way into conversations, families, and communities.

At times, I wonder if total peace is even possible. Maybe peace and unrest are like the two sides of a coin. The ancient wisdom of yin and yang tells us that light cannot exist without darkness, and perhaps peace cannot exist without a measure of unrest. One reminds us of the value of the other.

So, instead of dreaming of a world where conflict disappears, maybe our role is to nurture peace wherever we can. Even a small act, a kind word, a forgiving heart, a calm response, becomes a ripple. And though the larger world may never be free of unrest, those ripples can still spread far.

Peace, then, is not a destination. It is a choice we keep making, again and again, even when the world tells us otherwise.

So, I return to my simple prayer, now with a little more understanding:

Let there be peace on Earth…

Not a perfect peace, perhaps, but a peace that flickers, that struggles, that survives amidst unrest.

Let it begin in me...

In the calm words I speak, the small kindnesses I offer, the quiet patience I practice.

Let it reach my home, my neighborhood, my city, my loved ones…

Let it ripple, imperfect and persistent, through a world that may never be fully at rest.

If we hold our small flame of peace steadily, even a fractured world can shine in fragments.

May each of us choose peace, again and again, and may that choice be enough.

AI Yug: The Battle Within and Beyond

News Headlines these days regarding AI are sounding scary:

“Robots may soon give birth to human babies.”

"AI won't need to take orders from humans soon: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt"

“Google issues red alert as AI-powered cyberattacks target Gmail users.”

"Scary AI incident: Agent deletes data, tries to hide the truth, and lies"

These aren’t movie trailers or sci-fi book plots. This is the world we are walking into.

When we watched Robot some 15 years ago, it felt like pure fiction. Who would have thought we’d see shades of it becoming reality so soon? Remember that last scene, where the robot dismantles itself piece by piece, saying something like:

"I am not your enemy. I am only your reflection. If I destroy, it is because that destruction already lived in you."

And it made me wonder...

They say every yug brings with it a different kind of battle.

In the beginning, In Satyug it was said to be Devlok vs Rakshas Lok;  gods and demons locked in combat across the heavens in the cosmic world.

Then came Treta Yug. The war descended to earth, human against human. Rama against Ravana. Dharma against Adharma, fought on the battlefield of kings and kingdoms.

By Dwapar Yug, the fight had drawn even closer, not distant nations or strangers, but one’s own blood. Pandavas and Kauravas. Cousins divided by greed, pride, and the lust for power.

And then Kali Yug. Here, the battleground shrank even further — not out there, but within ourselves. A daily tug-of-war between the good me and the bad me. The voice of conscience whispering one way, while desire pulls another.

But perhaps, as we stand today, we are witnessing the dawn of something beyond Kali Yug.

A new chapter. An AI Yug.

Here, the conflict is stranger than ever before — not between gods and demons, not even between families or within our minds. It is between us and what we ourselves have created.

A mirror of our intelligence, our ambition, our restlessness. Machines that think, that learn, that sometimes even surprise their makers.

And so, the question returns to us in a different form:

Will this creation serve us, or will we end up serving it?

Will it bring light, or will it magnify our shadows?

Every yug, after all, was never really about the enemy “out there.”

It was always about what we chose to nurture — the divine or the destructive.

The battlefield may change… but the choice remains the same.