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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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Solitude Journal - Day 4 - A Soap Opera

I confess I am a bit too dramatic and emotional. I have a theory for why I am this way. It has something to do with Indian Soap operas that my mom watches. I used to be annoyed at them as a kid because we only had one small television in our living room, and there was a pecking order for who gets to choose what we watch. Somehow, I was at the bottom of that order, even below my little brother, despite me outliving him by 4 years. I was always vocal about my hatred towards overly melodramatic and unrealistic stories in the soap operas my mom puts on. But secretly I was hooked to those stories. I used to keep an eye on television from a corner of my eye (I couldn’t give my whole eye; else my brother will know that I am invested in whatever crazy weird family drama is happening on screen and I won’t hear the end of it). These soap operas always have a female protagonist who is portrayed as a victim of the torture inflicted on her by cunning in-laws and a cruel husband. If this happens i...
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Solitude Journal - Day 3 - Life of a Junkie

This morning I woke up and went for a run, like almost every other morning of my life from past one year. The shining star of our planet, Mr. Sun was yet to wake up completely though, so it was still dark at 6:15 AM. I was the only human being out on the streets I need to run through before I reach the infamous Katy trail. And mornings lately have also been hot and very humid in Dallas, so the first 2-3 miles usually feel miserable. But I always persist and get my runs done. When people get to know I run regularly in mornings, they start saying things like “wow, that’s insane dedication to fitness.” But truth couldn’t be any far from that. Calling me a fitness junkie is like calling me an actual junkie. I never touched substances in my life, and I never really thought of myself as someone who is disciplined enough to exercise every day. When I try to explain this in my trademark mumbling, people get confused and just divert the topic to stuff like weather. This annoys me, and I am inte...
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Solitude Journal - Day 2 - Freud and Feynman

Sigmond Freud says “Love and work are two pillars of human happiness.” He is a wise guy, so I will take his word for it. And I do see his point - having someone to love and seeing that love reciprocated makes your heart full in a way that the fat from mcd burgers could never (they only manage to fill one’s arteries). Despite all the horrors of this world, love makes this planet seem like a manageable place. And cherry on top is, in addition to finding such love, when one also has a work where they can meaningfully contribute to the society. I can only imagine the wonders it does to their self-esteem. I personally never shy away from loving and working. But love sometimes confuses me, makes me cry, and breaks my heart. In this case, love is not exactly being an enabler of good work. So maybe it is about time we retire Freud (I know he’s dead, I meant to retire his statement). But there’s an alternate thought process I keep hearing from the modern world. It is to combine love and work ...
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Solitude Journal - Day 1 - I will watch the sunrise by myself

I’ve always felt lonely. As a kid, I had to create an imaginary world inside my head filled with my two favorite things on planet back then – cricket and movies, to deal with all that loneliness. Over time I learned to talk to people and make friends. So, I became friends with all kinds of people - those who believed in different gods, those from different financial situation than me, those who grew up speaking a language I barely know, and those whose life experiences were from every angle different to mine. Yet what connected me with them were always stories, because I am a sucker for a good story. I love telling everyone who lends me their ear my story, and I love it when they trust me enough in return to tell me their story. It makes me feel validated and normal. It makes me feel like I am not the only soul on a deserted planet wandering aimlessly and wondering when this all ends. But here’s a harsh truth I learn every single time. People change and people move on. And when they mo...
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A 1000 Mile Fuss

I remember each and every mile I ran this year. Actually, I don’t. I just lied. Most of it was a blur to me, and somehow I reached 1,000 miles. Honestly, 1,000 miles is not even a big deal. It is just as arbitrary as, say, 267.8 miles. So I am not going to make a big fuss about it. But inside that blurry 1,000 miles, there are some important moments I do remember clearly, like specks of bright and dark dots you could clearly see in a blurry mess of light. Like, for example, I remember helping a very good friend of mine run 25 km for her 25th birthday, and especially the moment when we both ran up a steep hill up the dam to get a broad view of the lake and its horizon. I remember running on deserted roads in India where a three-legged dog started chasing me and I had to sprint, so my dad accompanied me on my next runs on his scooter to shoo those dogs away from me. I remember feeling miserable and alone on my birthday, so I attempted a mile PR because I needed a “win,” and I remember ho...
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Baked Alaska

I grew up in a middle-class household where we had enough to get by with daily necessities. So I never experienced sleeping on an empty stomach, and I was a bratty kid. I was always devising schemes to skip school. I had zero interest in anything remotely related to studying. My father was a wise man. He saw through all this and decided to set me straight after I grew up a little. One of the interesting things he did was to make sure I experienced both how poor and rich people eat. Some days, my mother would try to make me eat some vegetable, and I would furiously protest because it didn’t taste good. Then my father would tell me stories from his own childhood - usually something like they didn’t have the means to eat that vegetable regularly back then, and it was considered a delicacy by them. And here I was, being a little brat, refusing to eat it. That sometimes set me straight and I ate it, and after a while I got immune to it and didn’t stop protesting. He also sometimes took me a...
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On my way home!

I have been thinking about why I keep running into new existential crises almost every week. I am tempted to blame AI for no reason like I usually do, but let me be real and admit it all has to do with the choice I made to book a one-way flight to the United States four years ago. I thought it would be like a trip to Hawaii - I go, have fun, return home, bite everyone's ears off about my experiences in Hawaii even if they don't want to listen. But it turned out to be like space travel. I end up feeling like the only living being floating in vast nothingness, where gravity doesn't exist and sunlight doesn't reach, and don't even ask me about how far I am from home and how lonely it feels. Every day I wake up in this strange place, I experience one of the following two feelings - either an unbearable mental ache where I start cursing a 24-year old me for making the choice that 28-year old me has to struggle with, or a relief and joy that I am floating freely without t...
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