Quo Vadis?

  This is a long rambling post, one that was put together over a long period of time when I recollected the time I went through the Second wave of COVID. If you do not like long posts stop right here because the post will be taxing, but I decided to put it up because such experiences should not be forgotten. I got vaccinated on the 17th of May, it was my first dose of Covaxin. On the 27th of May I woke up with a mild fever. The symptoms looked like COVID so i went into isolation following the teleconsultation of a doctor. After the usual battle with COWIN the better half landed a slot the following day. To check if she could be vaccinated both of us took a precautionary RTPCR test which returned negative the next day. We informed this to the doctor who was consulting on the phone but she said its symptomatic avoid the shot stay isolated and as primary contact the better half should also isolate. 4 days later the temperature shot up for me dramatically and i visited a doctor who...

  Home is where the heart is. That is why you see homes of so many types from steel and glass to plastic sheets and ropes. Homes are emotional to many and is aspirational to some. For a few there is no place like home, no matter how messy, how odd it may seem to another. For some it is a job as they will only build homes that they can never aspire to live in and make do with tin cans on the site. It has been thirty days to the day we moved in to our own house.   This is not our first house; the first house was intended as a tax saver that has gone not as well as it was planned. Also it was a house that we have never stayed in after a decade of owning it. We wanted a house in the area where we lived for many years now as we found it to be comfortable for a number of reasons but was always outside the budget. After many home searches where we could not find a suitable one that could tick all the boxes in our wish list at an acceptable price, this house happened. As wise mast...

  I have been doing Intermittent Fasting (IF) since the end of October 2020, this was at the end of the lockdown and the effects of IF are visible with the weight and inch loss that has happened these past few weeks. I will not explain about IF or its medical effects but I will share what worked for me. In very simple terms during IF the day is divided into an eating period and a fasting period and for obvious reasons the fasting period is longer than the eating period. So the first question for many will be Why fast? The answer is that fasting is a normal human activity and outside the common religious considerations, fasting helps in a few ways that includes detoxification of the body and giving the body enough time to digest the food. Fasting as a religious practice is common to many religions and fasting brings discipline, it also purifies / cleans up the body. Probably why the wise people used fasts in religious practices to encourage moderation before a feast. IF is bas...

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is something that stuck with me from my MBA needs. We learnt this as part of Organizational Behaviour and how motivation revolved around people finding themselves at different level of needs and so the motivation strategies should be aligned with the level the person is in currently.  If the theory is new to you I will lay it out in simple terms. Man begins with physiological needs, physiological means basic needs to survive like air, water, food, shelter, clothes and reproduction. When a man is not having food to eat will a movie ticket that cannot be sold enthuse him? If you see the image once man achieves his need in one level, he strives to move ahead to the next level. This ascent is natural and ends at the fifth level when man achieves what is called self-actualization where he will be in nirvana and will renounce everything around him. Few achieve stage five, many are content with one of the lower levels and this is normal. What is abnorma...

You walk into a party and the person next to you smells of Hugo Boss but you like Sauvage, you actually cannot stand Boss, what will you do? Remember you do not know the person well, nor do you have any care for his well-being. It is just that you are sure that your Sauvage is always superior to his Boss. Would you then… -           Probably go and tell him have you tried Sauvage? Or why don’t you try Sauvage because of its merits? -           Probably gift him a bottle of Sauvage for an upcoming event so that he can try it for himself and see the benefits? -       Probably call people together and say everyone smell his Boss and my Sauvage and tell everyone which is better? It better be Sauvage. -           Probably go and tell him, you will not wear Boss because you think that Boss is not good and more importantly Boss offends you? -   ...

On a day when we have moved up to third place in the Global Hall of Infamy, when some experts are claiming that the virus is airborne and masks may be needed indoors, we have started Unlock 2.0 In the absence of a viable cure and the highly suspect efficiency of the upcoming vaccines that are to be launched on Independence Day the only option seems to be locking up but it is not possible as it is now about the real type of survival, the fight to put food on the table. COVID then will have to take second place only. The news in Chennai right now is that the traffic is heavy and people are back to work with a vengeance. The heart goes out to all the professionals whose professions have disappeared overnight with little chance of resuming in the old formats. Bookmyshow for instance is now trying hard to sell me tickets to so many events including some happening from people’s homes. Personally I feel we should accept the situation for what it is and with that acceptance we...

We are on the first of July, we are on the thresh hold of what is being called as Unlock 2. Since we know what this innocuous and actually silly term means let us jump into the post. The world has changed, we have changed. The changes will continue.  These days a video channel on YouTube fascinates me, called Living Big in a Tiny House the videos inspire me. The host and presenter is quite likeable and though his lines are so predictable there seems to be some genuine emotions in what he says. In one of the videos he also shared about his climb up to the top from a struggling actor to an Influencer on YouTube with over 3 million followers and making it a full time profession along with his wife / partner. The channel focuses on people who have built small homes on trailers and have downsized their lives to fit into these tiny homes. Most of these home owners decided to give up their old lives and downsized to basic essentials with few possessions. They also changed ...