Luck, much like money, time and physical energy, appears to be a finite resource as we travel through life. We notice it when it comes our way and feel its absence when it does not. But perhaps what we see, recognise and count as luck is only the visible part. There may be a much larger, unmapped portion hidden somewhere along the road of life.
We cannot discover it simply by waiting for it. We have to move. We have to work, take decisions, take risks and keep exploring. In that sense, our work is the digging through which we may uncover what was hidden from us. And when we uncover something, we may not immediately figure out if it’s good luck or bad luck.
This is why luck and effort are so difficult to separate while we are actually living our lives. We work, make decisions and take risks, but then something happens that we could neither have planned nor controlled. Our effort takes us forward; luck determines, at least partly, what we encounter on the way. Only later do we begin to understand how the two worked together.
This becomes especially important when we are young. We do not have the patience to wait and see what life will reveal. We want to move forward, achieve something and prove ourselves. We need the feeling that we can do it. Sometimes that feeling becomes overconfidence. We believe we can move mountains.
Looking back, that overconfidence may appear foolish. But at that age, it can be a great force. It gives us the vigour to accept challenges we may otherwise avoid. It makes us persist in our exploration further, especially when the first attempt does not give us the desired result. We keep digging because we believe that something worthwhile must be there.
And this is where failure may enter the journey.
When our first attempt fails, we are forced to look at the other side of the problem. What appeared to be a dead end, may reveal another direction. The result may not be what we originally wanted, and it may not even be the maximum we could have achieved. Yet it may be meaningful enough to make us continue.
So failure is not always the end of an effort. Sometimes, it changes the direction of the effort. What began as a search for one thing may lead us to another. At that moment, we may name it as a compromise. However, later, we realise that the compromise itself had become a part of the journey.
I have seen something similar in the mining industry. When the drilling begins, it is based on survey information and an expectation about what lies underground. Suppose we expect metallurgical coal, used for making steel, but instead find coal of lower quality, more suitable for a power plant. The result is not what we originally expected.
Yet in our final discussion, we could present our findings differently: we had explored this new low-grade coal for power generation and had discovered another resource. The coal had not changed. What changed was the meaning we gave to the result. Perhaps we can do something similar with our own lives.
As we grow older, we remember our successes more readily when speaking to the next generation. Some failures remain quietly hidden. We may be shy about discussing them, or may not want to expose the whole truth of our disappointments. A difficult decision may later be described as a necessary choice. A disappointment may become an experience. A result that fell short of what we wanted may become a compromised success.
But with age comes something youth does not have: time to review our own past. The failure that once hurt us may have pushed us in another direction. The opportunity we missed may have made another opportunity possible. The result that seemed inadequate at the time may have proved sufficient for what came later.
Slowly, the separate events begin to lose their sharp boundaries.
Old age may have weaker legs, but the years those legs walked have gathered a great deal. Success and failure, luck and effort, achievement and compromise— have all been experienced, and have left a residue.
At this stage, we can look back and ask again: how much of our life was created by our own effort, how much by luck, and how much by destiny?
There is still no mathematical answer.
The luck we could see and count was finite. But perhaps the unmapped portion was much larger than we knew. We encountered some of it through our work, some through our decisions, some through failures and some through circumstances entirely beyond our control.
By then, the dissection hardly matters.
What mattered at twenty may not matter in the same way at eighty. The young person wanted to know whether he had won or lost. The older person can see that both winning and losing contributed to the person he eventually became.
This is where the horizon becomes meaningful.
We know that the horizon is technically an illusion. There is no physical line where the earth and sky actually meet. Yet from a distance we see it as a beautiful, cohesive boundary.
Perhaps a long life looks like that when viewed from old age.
When we are close to each event, we see separate colours. This was luck. That was hard work. This was a failure. That was a success. Here we made a mistake. There we achieved more than expected.
But when we move far enough away, the separation becomes less important.
Everything begins to merge.
The visible luck and the luck we never recognised, the effort and the overconfidence that gave us the courage to make it, the failures that forced us to change direction, the compromises that later acquired a different meaning, the successes that gave us confidence. even the disappointments we once preferred to hide — all of these become part of the same picture.
A rainbow does not ask us to identify which colour contributed more than another. Its beauty lies precisely in the fact that different colours exist together and create one whole.
Perhaps that is what a long life finally gives us—not an exact account of how much was luck, how much was effort, and how much was destiny, but the ability to see them together.
We may still remember the failures. We may still wish that some things had happened differently. But we no longer need to live by the accounting system of youth, where every event must be declared a success or a failure.
We can simply cherish the whole.
And perhaps that is what we finally have to offer the generation that comes after us. Not a perfect story in which everything went according to plan, but a real journey in which we worked, took chances, failed, adjusted, accepted compromises, discovered unexpected opportunities and kept moving.
The rainbow is not a record of perfect colours.
It is beautiful because all the colours are there.
Perhaps life is the same. The luck we saw, the luck we never saw, the efforts we made, the failures we endured and the compromises we accepted have all travelled with us.
Only at the end do we have enough distance to see what finally emerged — a cohesive rainbow—something not merely to explain, but to cherish, to enjoy, and perhaps, with honesty and affection, to show to those who will continue their journey after us.
Kuldip Raj Chopra is a retired mechanical engineer and graduate in Industrial Engineering. With a distinguished career spanning over 36 years in the coal industry, he retired as a Chief General Manager. Now, in this reflective phase of life, he applies his deep understanding of systems, effort, and balance to the human journey, exploring the intersection of timeless philosophy and everyday generational wisdom.
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It was just another meeting to catch up. The topic that cropped up was about downsizing. One of my friends, now in her sixties, realised that her house was filled with too many things. I do not know whether she had just heard about Marie Kondo, but that was what she had been talking about all night.
It all started when she was growing up among the members of the lower heap of the food chain. Her elders told her to value everything in life. She was taught that even a small twig has its use: to pick the teeth. The compulsion to keep and not waste began.
As life improved and she began climbing the food chain, the desire to immortalise memories of the good times trickled in. Buying mementos to mark each life’s milestone became imperative. Over time, the collection became something she would be proud of.
Then the senior years trickled in, and there she was, cooped in an empty nest without her offspring, but a bungalow full of nostalgic memories and mementoes. Caring for these objects of endearment soon became a chore. They meant nothing to others. The question of what would happen to them began to play on her mind. They would become a burden that nobody would want to carry.
Slowly, she started getting rid of her belongings, a figurine here and a saree there, leaving only a bare minimum for sustenance. In the name of philanthropy, she gave some of her belongings to the needy. To her loved ones, she gave them in the name of family heirlooms. The question is whether the others showed equal enthusiasm for owning them.
Her case also reminded me of another elderly couple who would proudly show off all their awards and a precious collection of items from around the world, as they had been stationed in various parts of the world under the umbrella of the Commonwealth. Every nook of their living room held a story from their many years of wedded bliss; a token from Somalia, a gift from Delhi, a piece from Borneo, and so on.
The next time I saw her, she was a widowed wife of 80-plus with the memory of a 60+ years of married life and a house-load full of, by that time, what she viewed as a load of junk. The mementoes were just too difficult to keep up with, and she had forgotten why and where she and her husband got them in the first place. She too was trying to dispose of them with the help of her daughter through a jumble sale, who was more than glad to do it in the hope of getting more living space.
Then there was another recent situation that set me off into overdrive. One of my old friends passed away suddenly. Lying in a coffin in a complete state of bliss, my friend was without a care in the world. Outside his house compound were his three prized superbikes, which attracted more attention than the rest of his family members. Now they stood unwanted. My friend’s wife could not wait to dispose of them to the first bidder. At least my friend, being a Chinese person, would have an effigy of a motorbike made, or even a sample of his previous VW Beetle collection, for the last journey before he was cremated.
Now, after watching the latest Hollywood interpretation of Homer’s epic poem Odyssey and reaching out to educate myself on Iliad and the lessons from them, one thing is clear. The purpose of these poems is not merely to showcase the valiant battles that the great warriors of the Greek generals won nor are they about the trophies and spoils they took back or the fantastical journeys they sailed. It is all about the experience and emotion associated with those moments. The warriors live on in the memory of their feats, nothing more. Everything else decays; so do relationships. The only remaining proof of their existence, it seems, is memory and the intergenerational recital of the epics through oral traditions.
So, for us in the 21st century, we do not have to compose poems to remember our lives by. We have the luxury of being able to store them in the clouds, guarded by angels, and probably will meet the same end after our demise. This seems more prudent than cluttering our borrowed spaces with an unnecessary carbon footprint that could burden future generations and be labelled as hoarding.
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Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.
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“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
In our teenage, my sister and I used to haunt three libraries in our town.
One was a tiny, dark place, where older people sat outside in the evenings, reading newspapers and chatting; where all the books I wanted, battered, doodled, faded and ripped as they were, were crammed into one shelf, maybe two. I would head directly to these shelves; never even moderately curious to turn to the rest of the small library. Books that went missing or were never returned were not replaced. The books I wanted—by a beloved author or the next in a series or a new one I had heard of—were almost always checked out by someone else, and once in a while, if I’d find some of those much-desired books in transit, I would consider it magic.
The second was a larger and more frequented library in the heart of the city, with a range of medium battered books and a few good-looking ones. People who read them scribbled on their margins; sometimes the pages were torn. The books were bound tight and often we had to prise the binding apart to read. There was a moderate fine if books were lost or overdue. Readers would hide the books they wanted in a different shelf in a different part of the library so that they could find these during their next visit. Yes, it worked most of the time.
The third was an elegant, vast, air-conditioned, foreign space where we stepped into, holding our breath, for fear it would shatter its grandeur and sanctity. We had to take our shoes off at the entrance—the whole process giving a holy air to the place. We thoroughly enjoyed sinking our feet into the soft carpet. It would not be an exaggeration to say walking was one of the highlights of the library. Many of the readers hovering around the bookshelves looked befittingly intelligent, haughty and grave. The books were well maintained and arranged; and fines followed you home and lingered outside your door if you defaulted.
It gives me goosebumps when I recall youngsters slipping in and out of libraries with books under their arm, a sight I don’t see much these days for a variety of reasons. In the 80s and 90s, we were advised to keep story books away and focus on studies. Today we request and plead with our children to read a book or two.
Some of the books in the first library and perhaps in the second as well, were not recommended by grown-ups. No, we were specifically forbidden from approaching ‘those books’—they were ‘trash’. I concluded that books with intimate pictures on the cover were trash. They wrapped them in white paper to conceal the covers. In fact, the white wrapping signified a forbidden book. It also became the symbol of rebellion: when their teenagers walked about with white books, parents could only glare. I also associated some authors with this qualifier: ‘trash’. I dutifully kept my eyes away from them, however intriguing they seemed.
Years later, I would discover that some of those novels were actually thrillers and quite entertaining ones at that. The juicy cover picture served the purpose of enticing enough to make readers curious, and yet very little within the story would justify the image.
“The pleasure of creativity can erase any pain.” – Dr Nawal El Saadawi
When I started writing earnestly and was ready to release my work into the wilderness, I was, like any other writer, apprehensive about how it would be received. More than whether it would be disliked or ignored, I was worried that it would be of so poor a quality and would be considered ‘trash’. I had no clue what went into attaining that label, nor how to protect myself from it. I laboured to infuse energy and life and gravity into my writing so that it would be perceived a serious piece of work.
I have always been plagued by the question of what constitutes ‘trash’ or even ‘bad’ writing.
How do we, as readers and writers, distinguish good writing from bad?
A seemingly simple problem with a clear solution; however, it is anything but.
Surely a person who has been devouring books since the age of nine or ten, has grown up to be a decent judge of writing?
I am still unpacking the answer.
Bad writing could manifest itself in the form of poor language, unoriginal style, weak structure, unconvincing plots or flat characters, and generally would be unable to stand on its own. Good writing could excite the reader—by its concise, sharp and taut quality, rich characters, and its ability to surprise.
However, sometimes the difference is subtle. It is a feeling, rather than a quantitative measure of what went right or wrong. Reading is a subjective experience. One person’s ‘brilliant read’ could be another’s ‘trash’ or ‘boring stuff’.
One has only to take a glance at some of the reviews on critically acclaimed titles to know there is no such thing as a work that is loved by every single person who has read it.
Copied below are actual reviews on a renowned book by a Nobel Prize winner:
“I thought it was kind of boring.”
“This may be my favourite book of all time.”
“Pretentious, with poor descriptions and transparent characters.”
“The storytelling is so exhilarating that one gets goosebumps.”
The author may be beyond caring but the rest of us are around to assess their work.
A book that critics wrote off as mediocre becomes an overnight best-seller. A cleverly written, intriguing story with deep, unforgettable characters vanishes into the folds of history with not so much as a ripple. Every so often, out of the shadows of controversy emerges a superb piece of literature, taking off to heights unexpected. There is no formula to success in writing. Many factors apart from the quality of writing contribute to it. In fact, the very term ‘success’ defies definition. Famous critics, reviewers or others whose voices matter, can steer popular opinion in a certain direction as would clever marketing strategies. These are days when sales numbers do not necessarily mean what we think they mean.
No one sees your writing the way you do. No one.
Similarly, we can never really see our writing through another person’s eyes, and hence, never objectively judge it. The best we can do is to put some distance between us and the piece, come back to it weeks or months later and see if it still holds its ground.
By gauging the quality of writing in the works of both prominent and unknown authors, digging for their strengths and weaknesses, searching for the definition of ‘bad’ writing, I am trying to find the answer to the real question, simmering beneath the skin: How do I decide if my own writing is any good?
Am I a good writer?
There is a shift that happens almost overnight when you, as a discerning adult, transform from a ‘reader’ to a ‘writer’. From a person who praised or critiqued books with abandon, you have become one who appreciates the effort that goes into conjuring and creating something out of thin air.
All of a sudden, you have the superpower to see the writer behind a book, as though she were seated before you: working, seeking perfection, tearing her hair apart, rewriting, doubting and second guessing herself, pouncing on the perfect phrase, jumping for joy, sinking to the ground, all in a matter of minutes. You’re kinder to her and her creation, since you know the struggle so well.
I have heard writers (real as well as reel) declare that they have always wanted to write, and that they have been writing from the time they could pick up a pen.
I wish I had something similar to say but the truth is that although I did scribble in my teenage, I neither considered myself a writer, nor wanted to be a writer, and not even called my produce ‘writing’. It was just something I had to get out of my mind so it would not torture me so — jot it down, complete or not, and toss it to a side. If it clawed its way back into my mind, I would develop the idea and complete it—or procrastinate enough so that it died in my mind too.
A couple of friends who were allowed to read my writing were warned to keep their mouths shut about it. To this day, I have no clue what I was so terrified of. Of being laughed at? Of being read? Of being seen? Of being found? Of being ignored? Or was I not even sure? Had I tried to analyse the source of the fear, I might have found the courage to overcome it. I was intensely possessive of what I wrote, because it came from a well deep inside whose existence I could not explain or justify.
Like any wise teenager, I tore most of those writings apart, even set fire to some, so there was no way to judge their quality. What I remember makes me cringe a bit—but I consider it a good sign, because that is where I began.
Years later, when I got to the point of daring to call myself a writer, I sought the purpose of writing, several times: why do I want to write stories? Why do I write at all? Whence comes this beast, thrashing about in the dungeons of my mind? Why this unrelenting torment until I release it?
An answer would help me ascertain the best way to tackle the beast. The quest took me way back—to the point where I started reading.
As children, all of us loved listening to stories; many of us enjoyed reading as well. Books were perhaps the only engagement we had, apart from games.
Stories were captivating; they left us wanting more. When a narrative got dull, we could stop listening or reading. But what is it in stories that captivated us? Why did the thought of a book waiting for us, a story to come back to after school or work, excite us?
Books take us to worlds hitherto unknown; to people and cultures unfamiliar; to points of view unheard of. Add a breath-taking book cover to the mix—and there are no words to explain the exhilaration. That is the straightforward, simple response.
But no, I am not satisfied, so I dig deeper. What do we feel when we are reading a story; when we finish reading a story? Where does the hunger for the next book spring from?
In the midst of a particularly entertaining novel, I found my answer. The main character, lost and dejected like me, did something to change her life. She took a stand and went forward with a decision she had been postponing for long out of fear. I read that paragraph many times. I found that I could do something similar—and I did. I cannot recall if the outcome changed my life in any significant way—but the act of performing it did. The few hours I engaged in it, I was saved from darkness. I realised that I needed to keep changing my life in bouts and escapades.
Isn’t that the whole essence of life—not the outcome, but the journey? The book provided me with an answer not only to the wretchedness I was feeling, but also to my question—what do stories do?
Stories open up new possibilities. We read stories because somewhere in those pages we are going to find an idea; a solution. They may not solve all our problems, but they give us a direction. We realise we are not alone in this. We are reminded of how alike we are, across countries, across continents, across cultures, across genders, across race. The stories, for a brief moment in time, hold our heads above water. We breathe in huge gulps of air.
Which brings me to the next revelation—when we read, we are looking for a connection, of the kind that we don’t always find in real life. We connect with the characters, we identify with them and their challenges, we guide each other. We make friends with their friends. We fall in love with the people they fall in love with. We become them, flaws, follies, foolishness and all. Their embarrassment becomes ours. At the end of the book, we feel satisfied (though we want more) and we feel stronger and ready to take on the world, albeit for a short while.
We read and write stories to establish human connections. We read and write to feel less lonely, less depressed.
“How many times have people used a pen or a paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?” – Virginia Woolf.
Left to itself, the human mind has the tendency to sink to the bottom. Attaining peace is a daily struggle. We need to find a reason that has the power to raise our heads above the surface. Stories do that for us. For some of us fortunate enough to be able to create stories, all the more so. Isabel Allende writes in The Soul of a Woman: “I am grateful to that unhappy childhood because it provided ample material for my writing. I don’t know how novelists with happy childhoods in normal homes manage.”
The more miserable you are, the more meaningful and impactful the stuff you churn out. I am certain this applies to all forms of creativity. You have this vast reserve from which you can dredge out diamonds. I suppose the twisted way of putting it is, be happy you are miserable—misery makes you a genius.
One thing is certain: no one is coming to save us; we have to save ourselves. It’s a heady fact that simultaneously empowers and petrifies us.
And to save ourselves, we seek connections: a touch, a hug, a kind word, a compassionate look, a listening ear. However much we desire to live without depending on others, the universal truth is that, at some point or another, we would lean on them, and they on us.
When we write, we are doing the same thing: looking for connections in the world we create. If we feel them ourselves, so we can offer them to the reader.
We write to find and provide solace.
We write to find someone; often ourselves. At other times we write to get back at people we can’t in real life. It is liberating.
We write so as to do things we cannot in real life. We take flight in those pages, though in reality we are confined by infinite human laws. We write to break free. We write to support causes, we write to explore our stance.
It is said that when we write we are talking to ourselves; explaining and describing to ourselves; causing the situation to present itself before us in all its colours.
Even in an unlikely fictional world, one finds the author lurking between the lines. Her philosophy, her ideas, her notions and her truth jump at you. The exceptional writer does not distinguish between the story and herself. She becomes the story. The reader does not identify where the author ends and where fiction begins.
“For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.” – Langston Hughes
Human beings achieve immortality through their legacy. We read authors from centuries ago, see the world through their eyes, and realise, to our surprise, that they experienced pretty much the same prejudices and problems as we do in the 21st century.
Parents comment that their children are smarter than their own generation, older people speak of better times in their youth, there is always a war going on somewhere, bigotry thrives, slavery and oppression change forms and evolve, privileged people live comfortably and blame the underprivileged for their situation, the voiceless continue to suffer, everyone is unhappy.
Our convenience would always be the driving force of our progress. Any technological development that makes our lives simpler and allows us to be lethargic, would flourish. Everything else is a side dish.
I want my writing to survive. I want it to mirror today’s world. I want a future reader to earn a glimpse into my neck of the woods in this century. I want them to consider how similar life is, even when it is different. I want to reach out and hold their hands. Because the more we try to change, the more we go back to our original instincts.
For a person who was once mortified of her writing being seen, who was possessive about her thoughts and creativity, this desire seems strange: for her writing to be read and analysed and discussed and taken apart by the rest of the world—because it would mean she has lived. She has struggled. She has been brave. She has fallen and picked herself up. So many times. One has to pass through the long, dark tunnel of despair and emerge to have that change in perspective.
Creating art that survives is the only way a person can hope to achieve immortality. For most of us, the real question that keeps us awake at night is: will my writing outlive me?
Jeena R. Papaadi is a writer based in Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram, with six published books. Her work has appeared in several publications including The Hindu, Borderless Journal, The Hemlock Journal, Usawa Literary Review, The Wise Owl and Kitaab. Jeena’s work is listed at: https://linktr.ee/jeenapapaadi
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My grandfather never laughed loudly. He always let out a quiet giggle, mouth slightly open, his breath coming out in bursts. He was sincere in his smile and laughs. I remember that laugh more than almost anything else about him. More than his words, more than his stories, sometimes even more than his face. It was the laugh of a man who had made his peace with the world, who trusted it completely.
He trusted God the same way.
There was something else about him. Something nobody fully understood. Something he never explained. Not to my father, not to anyone in the family, and certainly not to me, a young schoolboy visiting from Jamshedpur every six months, more interested in his stories than in the reason he had left Mysore.
My grandfather had earlier worked in the Royal Court of the Wadiyars of Mysore. The Wadiyar court was one of the most cultured, refined establishments in all of India. A world of scholarship, music, art, and power. My grandfather moved in that world. He had a position there, proximity to something grand. And then, at some point in the early part of the last century, he left, quietly and completely.
He returned to Munganda, a small village in East Godavari, Andhra Pradesh, that appeared to exist slightly outside of time. He never went back. He bought a farm in the village. Grew rice. Settled into village life as though the court had never happened. As though Mysore were a dream he had quietly decided to stop having.
No one knows why he left.
He never said. He felt no need to explain. He had simply followed the wind, and the wind had brought him home. That was the part I could never name.
Every six months, I would travel from Jamshedpur to Munganda, crossing the distance between India’s two worlds – North and South. My grandfather would be waiting at the railway station. Within hours, we would ride together to the market, buying potatoes, onions, spinach, dal, and groceries, and then, go as always, to the Ganapati Temple nearby.
The temple was not magnificent. We would sit in a corner, hands folded, eyes closed, lips trembling quietly as we recited the shlokas[1]. I never understood them.
Around us, other devotees sat in the same silent trance. Couples, elders, young mothers. All of them somewhere between this world and another.
My grandfather prayed for everyone. Not just for us. Sarve Janah Sukhino Bhavantu. May all people be happy. That was his ask. Every day. Every week. Until the time he died.
A man who had prayed in the royal court now prayed in a modest village temple. He seemed more at peace here. More himself. As though the grandeur had been a detour. Simplicity was always the destination.
I did not fully understand it then. I was unfamiliar with temple rituals and prayers. I went along with him. I sat. And something impacted me — that I would only recognise much later.
At night, back in the village, he would tell me stories, Panchatantra, Vikram Betal[2], tales of clever monkeys and wiser kings.
Munganda had that quality of being a place where age-old stories felt recent. You could almost believe the sages had only just left. The dust on the path still seemed to carry their footprints. My grandfather sat in that world completely naturally. He belonged to it. For those visits every six months, so did I. The visits were truly memorable.
He had a way of talking about God. It was always matter-of-fact, almost cheerful, delivered with that gentle giggle. As though the divine were simply an old friend he knew well. “Gods have bigger eyes all around us,” he told me once, on one of those evenings. “We cannot see them. They can see all our actions, like an eye in the sky. Perhaps those stars are our Gods.”
The words stuck me deeply.
One night, while lying on the verandah on the floor mat, I woke up suddenly. There were no street lights, due to a power cut. I looked up at the sky full of stars. They were extraordinary, scattered across the vast expanse of the sky. I looked around, and the stars shone. I could feel my grandfather’s words. The stars looked down upon me.
I wonder sometimes whether he looked at those same stars and saw something he recognised from another life, whether the eye in the sky watched him in the Wadiyar Court. Perhaps he made his quiet decision to leave and return to this village, this farm, and this temple, and said nothing because nothing needed to be said. Because he already knew the reason. Time went by. My grandfather passed away. The village remained. The temple remained. The farm remained. The voice which had explained the stars to me was gone. His secret went with him, buried well beneath the Munganda farmlands, below a sky full of watching stars, within God’s domain.
Then the drifting began, slowly at first, almost without my noticing.
I drifted far from Munganda into cities, apartments, deadlines, airports, and a world of satellites and search engines. The questions my grandfather answered with a giggle and a glance at the sky seemed to require more complicated responses.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped looking up.
I moved between belief and uncertainty, between the temple and the rational mind, not always knowing which direction I was heading. Sometimes I didn’t care.
Then one ordinary night, something happened.
It was two in the morning. Unable to sleep, I stood by a window and looked at the stars.
And suddenly, I felt watched. Not by a person. Not by anything I could name. Just a strange awareness that I was not alone beneath that sky. I wasn’t afraid. The way the sky spread across the horizon, it appeared very large, and I was too small.
Then there is this feeling of the unknown out there. In the darkness of the sky, I feel it sees you. It has always seen you. Like a satellite passing overhead, patient, all-encompassing, recording nothing, judging nothing, simply present.
“Like an eye in the sky.” My grandfather had said decades ago, pointing at stars.
I felt the words, standing in the modern world, thinking: this is what he meant. That was when I grasped what he really meant, without ever going in circles for years.
My grandfather’s secret wasn’t meant to be a secret at all. He had left the Royal court carrying a knowledge: that peace does not live in grand corridors.
What I found in my Munganda travels and time with my grandfather was that peace lives in smaller places: a village temple, folded hands, rice fields at dusk, stories told to grandchildren below a sky full of stars, relationships within the family.
He just didn’t say the reason. He knew his reasons.
My relationship with God has changed. I am no longer superstitious. I do not bargain with the divine. What I have instead is a trust that things will work out. Not magically. Not without effort or pain. If you are honest, if you have not harmed others, if you have moved through the world with some decency, the cycle turns in your favour. Paths are formed for your navigation. The destination appears closer. Life becomes what you expected.
I think of it now as wind. You cannot see wind. You cannot hold it or command it. But if you are willing to flow with it, it will carry you, and share your destination with you, as though it always knew where you were going.
My grandfather knew this. He left a royal court and carried the reason with him. He grew rice, told stories, pointed at the stars, and giggled gently, mouth wide open, completely sincere.
Perhaps the stars knew why he came back all along. They kept their silence.
[2] Stories about a king (Vikram) and a demon(Betal) penned in the 11th-century by Somdev Bhatta
Subramaniam Cheemalapati is a writer based in Mysore. His work explores memory, family, faith, caregiving, and place. He is working on a memoir, a literary novel, and personal essays.
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A few years ago, upon the insistence of an old friend, my wife and I decided to visit her new home. She and her husband had designed and built a house on a vacant piece of land that they had bought.
They showed us around their labour of love. We were later taken aback when we were told that their live-in helper was occupying the master bedroom while they occupied her quarters. This strange arrangement came about when my friend had called in another friend, a vastu[1] specialist, for a casual visit. The visitor went beyond his call of duty to give his two cents’ worth of opinion. He asserted that the location of the master bedroom is wrong in a vashtu sense and would lead to marital disharmony. So, there went the hundred man-hours of planning to reward their marital union.
Just about that time, too, I was waiting for Malaysia’s number Uno feng shui master, who was about to share his outlook[2] for the year 2020, the year of the Metal Rat in the Chinese zodiac. It was an unremarkable report with the usual plus points in some areas and caution in others. Nowhere in his or other masters’ reports was there a tiny inkling of what Malaysians were heading into. It was the years when citizens were barbed-wired, quarantined, QR-coded, children missing the funerals of their parents who were afflicted with the Covid-19 virus and had their people flying white flags pleading for food and mercy.
That is the thing that has integrated humans from time immemorial. The desire to be in charge of their destiny and to understand this rudderless journey of life has got people believing all kinds of snake oil salesmen and fake gurus while losing their life savings doing that. And we are still struggling through this, clutching at straws.
It is intriguing that after major events, be it the 2001 tsunami, 2011 9/11 or Covid-19, some smart Alec would tell us that we had everything written in the past. They would refer to the Book of Prophecies and Nostradamus’s predictions, published in 1555. Again, all these become clear after the fact, as these predictions are in cryptic poems, subject to interpretation. Why is it that no experts decipher and decode all that is written there for the betterment of mankind?
So do the Vastu practitioners and Feng Shui sifu[3] who would tell us the obvious, like one should not buy a house at a T-junction. Of course not. The owners would risk being hit by stray cars driven by incompetent drivers or having difficulty exiting their compound. After a landslide, the know-it-all will state the obvious that it is bad Feng Shui to have a house facing a very steep hill.
Another thing that caught my mind recently is the animated TV series, The Simpsons, which has aired 37 seasons and over 800 episodes since 1989. In its half-hour cartoon, it managed to cover innumerable topics that affect the average middle-class American family: politics, pop culture and science. The interesting thing is that many of its outlandish stories appear to have ‘materialised’ from real life. Conspiracy theorists insist that those who witnessed the 2021 US Capitol Riot experienced a sense of deja vu, swearing they had seen a similar[4] situation in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons. Then the iconic photograph of President Trump, Saudi King Salman and President El-Sisi of Egypt holding a glowing orb in Riyadh in 2017. Again, this was a mirror image[5] of another 2002 episode of The Simpsons.
Do the scriptwriters have some kind of crystal ball that they can foresee future events? Of course not. Some researchers (whom others call conspiracy theorists) assert that it is part of predictive planning[6]. This psychological tool is to soften the societal changes in a pre-programmed future as decided by the powers-that-be. This psychological blueprint is also seen in movies like The Truman Show, The Matrix, Black Mirror and Westworld, which all depict dystopian futures.
Devices used by characters in the famous sci-fi TV series of the late 60s, Star Trek, have slowly been making their presence in the real world since the late 20th century. Handheld communicators (Video conferencing) and translation devices (Google Translate) are no longer alien tools. Next in line would be a teleportation kit. Were the storytellers here visionary, or did this series merely spur the younger generation to work toward this end?
Jules Verne, the French ‘prophet’ of science fiction, is credited for making many valid scientific predictions. He has been credited for being the second most translated writer in the world, after Agatha Christie. At a time when submarines were dangerous contraptions, he imagined Nautilus, an electric-powered submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869), which resembles present-day diesel- or nuclear-powered ones. Not to forget Captain Nemo’s underwater breathing suit, which was the nidus[7] for SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus).
In TheMoon-Voyage (1858), Verne correctly predicted Florida as the best launchpad for a Moon Mission, a conical space capsule and even the usage of a solar sail.
Maybe it is not all hocus pocus. Even 14 years before the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, in 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote about a British liner named ‘Titan’ which went down after hitting an iceberg in his book Futility. Did the shipowners mastermind the disaster and copy the storyline to seek financial gain, as conspiracy theorists claim? Is this what they mean when they say that truth is stranger than fiction?
Other authors predicted the future [8] too. George Orwell in 1984 (1949) wrote about a world under constant government surveillance. Aldous Huxley, in the Brave New World (1931), showcased a time when antidepressants were widespread. John Brunner predicted school shootings, electric cars and hookup culture in his book, Stand on Zanzibar (1969).
These people were not magicians. They merely paid attention to their surroundings, read widely and believed in valid scientific evolution.
In the meantime, the rest of the population is stuck in their comfort zone. Still struggling with their bearings, running around like headless chickens, most stare in awe of all the things around them, confused. Like an ant perched on a leaf that is floating along a river aimlessly to the whims of the wind, these futuristic writers are trying to understand the head and tails of things.
Meanwhile, the simple man finds solace in knowing what lies ahead through palmistry, numerology, and reading olai palm leaves (Olai Chuvadi), believing that his path into the future will be smooth.
[1]Vastu shastra or feng shui is the science of making the best of the home by placing objects in the right place.
Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Persistent rain soaks my senses, the lively past’s good fortune knocking on memory’s door, or is that just the beating of my heart? Does being surrounded all night by an alluvial tattoo promote this hearkening back? Beckoned as if by a distant porch light when lost in a storm, I embraced rites from times swept by in the long steady dying since Gloucestershire when, open-eyed, I took it all in. An exhilarating melancholy floods me recalling standing inside a Norman chapel in the Cotswolds’ slanting light. I breathed ancient mortar’s microbial odour, imagining a careful congregation in the Middle Ages, rough-sculpted, their murmuring voices long gone into the cold earth, willowherb and meadowsweet dormant. That winter of my naïve yearning, fields of frost under a murderous owl’s moon, I shucked the duvet to fill pages rearranging words. Trying to make sense of life’s stampede instead of slouching off early to work as I had in Australia since I was thirteen, was life changing?
If possible before final darkness, I still want to picture our quaint haven with the snugly warm smoky pub where I bumped my head in the low doorway, and we won a Christmas raffle. I yearn for embedded images of that ilk to which I cling. Yet to discover Edward Thomas’s poem about Adlestrop station written after his friendship with Robert Frost began — I didn’t know that — bereft of trains and poems, it slept nearby. The poem was published days after his death in action. With an adventurous partner, wind and rain rattling our sanctuary, ruffling rooks perched high above the tennis courts, horses sheltering in Larkin’s ‘cold shade’, my blood quickened. Our first bus trip for shopping, the route wending through golden villages of stone between hedgerows hemming narrow roads, was studded with stops. Women wearing hats, carrying baskets, and elderly couples sticking together, filled the bus with their soft, cidery accent. Spotting travellers’ colourful caravans before reaching Moreton-in-Marsh, we messaged with our eyes to attract each other’s discreet attention.
Part-time servants, our Upstairs, Downstairs situation inverted, we hauled backpacks up flights of stairs. In our bower we scrubbed greasy gunk from the stove and bathed in several inches of costly hot water in an antiquated iron bathtub. I blue-tacked maps of our travels to damp walls under the roof where, on hushed evenings, dark so early, we read by lamplight. Borrowing a gas heater on castors, I decorated it with an Olympic pattern of coffee mug rings, starting my blind attempts at a writing apprenticeship. Each lunchtime, my bedmate, younger than me, living her antipodean dream, glowing after exercising hunters across frosted terrain listening to Ted Hughes’ ‘quake of hooves’, listened to me read what I, laughing at my own jokes, had written. She astonished her workmates once, choosing not to hang around after work to see a future king of England ride one of their horses, coming home to my self-congratulatory words instead. At other times she crossed her fingers for Reynard whenever we heard the hunting horn.
Born in England, an early boyhood memory was the story of my missing aunt. My father’s last sighting of his runaway sister was from the bus he was driving. For years I pictured this as a cinematic scene in monochrome with a grainy film-noir quality. A brave woman pushing a pram flees along a street, wet, like the beginning of this piece. Dim lighting casts shadows as she glances over her shoulder (a close-up). She has no-one to defend her, to help. Saddled with this unfinished business of finding her, Births, Marriages, and Deaths became my gripping reading. We bought a cheap, used car with a good heater. London’s records led to Liverpool, a city recently battered by riots. By simply driving there from the Cotswolds we transitioned from poor to posh. Absorbed, I accrued and sorted all this marvellous new material. Gold.
Neither of us adequately masked our scorn of protocol’s scripture, smirking at our employers’ gross snobbery undercut by their practical helplessness. Exacerbating this was my partner’s rising popularity among the local casual workforce, and our now interesting missing person sleuthing. Irked by supercilious nonsense early, ad-libbing po-faced about the difficulty of finding decent racing saddles for kangaroos, my ludicrous irony had been taken as authentic. I believed my Aussie bullshit humour leading the snobs from attempted humiliation to pathos was forever unforgiven. Perhaps it was my multiple errant triggering of their burglar alarms. That magical Christmas Eve, my birthday, befriended villagers invited us for carol-singing by flickering lantern lights from mansion to mansion for charity. The ethereal beginning of We Three Kings was a goosebumps highlight, my missing aunt never far from my thoughts. We also attended a pantomime at Chipping Norton, Jack and the Beanstalk, where I wondered what the Hooray Henrys might have made of this bewitchment.
For a joke when she who still dogs my dreams visits, I squeeze into my naval pea-jacket worn everywhere those years ago. Finger-fiddling a never used spare button in its silken pocket solicits past voices. I could display other memorabilia from then though she sternly advises just sticking to writing in the past tense. My lightweight phone speedily locates those places we slowly discovered, their wonderful names – Bourton-on-the-Water – biro-circled in a bottom drawer heavy with old maps I sometimes sniff to transport me. From there we journeyed all the way across another ocean, and prairies, the sky storybook-sized, hitchhiking to Alaska, sometimes at the edge of danger. And there was more, much more, but it is to that soft privileged borough, despite the more dramatic, risk-laden zones of our sojourns, that my mind constantly returns.
My phone can also conjure up the television programme episode we researched, resulting in a moving family reunion watched from the Green Room. It can’t locate the snappy words my partner exchanged with the famous ex-pop star presenter who complained about people fuddled with age after the show when she entered our descending lift in the studio. I want to grasp the smells, sights, and sounds of where this all began that lure me like a secret love. Time-travelling, from our attic window, transposed unscathed by age’s scourge – that raw cold would fell me now – breath fogging like the future we cannot see, I would gaze lingeringly once more on what shall be lost, therefore precious.
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Ian C Smith’s work has been published in BBC Radio 4 Sounds, Cable Street, Griffith Review, North of Oxford, Rundelania, The Spadina Literary Review, Stand, & Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.
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It begins before the city wakes up. At 4:47 AM, and I’m already lacing my shoes in the dark corner of the room. From here, the kettles glow is the only warmth. The streets outside are in the colour of old photographs — amber and grey. When I push open the door, the hush silence greets me with the way truth always does, without ceremony, without apology.
The streets around the beach are empty except for stray dogs, and the occasional tea vendor preparing his first mix of tea for the day. The air carries a sense of salt, and the sky above the ocean looks like an extremely carefully unfinished painting.
I begin my run the way I always do, slowly.
To run at these hours every day has become more of a private ritual. The world has not yet started asking for anything. Messages have not arrived, notifications are empty, and no one expects you to be anyone yet.
It is on these runs that the strange things happen, not strange as in unusual, but strange as in true.
For a brief stretch of time, you are simply a human body moving through space in a physical form. On mornings like this, I often look up to the sky and sometimes, something stranger happens. The stars appear closer than usual. Not physically closer, but perpetually, like distant observers leaning slightly forward, curious about what a single human like me might be doing running along a shoreline of a small rotating planet.
I imagine them watching me, not judging but just observing. The way we observe ants building a colony on the edge of a pavement.
There are roughly eight billion humans alive on Earth today. Each of us, convinced secretly that our lives matter in ways the universe must somehow acknowledge. Yet our species is only one among roughly ten million species to exist on Earth. From the view of a galaxy, we can assume that our home is just a small planet orbiting an ordinary star inside the Milky Way, which could contain around a hundred billion planets. Our galaxy is only one among approximately two trillion galaxies scattered across the observable universe.
Sometimes while running, I try to hold all of this in my mind at once, and when I do something peculiar happens. My problems shrink so quickly that they almost disappear.
Deadlines lose their urgency, career anxieties dissolve into footprints on the wet sand. Even ambition, the most powerful and core engine of the growing human life, suddenly feels like a small flame flickering in an unimaginably large room. Through my own eyes, I am the protagonist of a vast and sophisticated story. When I run, it feels as though the city recreates itself around my movement. My life as I experience it from inside is the whole universe.
From the perspective of nature, the calculation is clear — we are insignificant. Each of our lifetimes is roughly eighty years, which is barely one-thousandth of the time humanity has existed. Humanity itself occupies only about one-twenty thousandth of Earth’s history. The universe did not design itself around our arrival. And despite all of this, we wake up each morning with the strongest conviction that we must do something extraordinary with our lives.
Perhaps, human significance works the same way, one life alone may barely record the size of a rich cosmic history. One person writes a poem, another discovers a mathematical principle, and another teaches a child how to ask better questions. And yet another simply shows the value of kindness in a moment when cruelty would have been easier.
Each act is small, yet individually they look like waves dissolving into the sand one after the other. Because, across generations these small acts compounded into something larger. Our very civilisation itself is nothing more than a tiny speck in the ocean of time.
From kings to democracies, cars, airplanes, bulb, technology, computer, mobile, and now, AI — none of these appeared suddenly. They emerged slowly, through billions of lives adding to their tiny additions to our human existence. When viewed from far away, our universe doesn’t seem indifferent to this process. It almost appears curious about it as we are.
Halfway through my runs the horizon on my right begins to glow, the sun starts to rise slowly. The thing about sunrise is that it doesn’t appear all at once. To me, I see the sun negotiating with the darkness. At first, the sun didn’t brighten all at once. It’s ages into light like a slow burning ember. Then, the ocean begins to reflect the light like a sheet of moving glass. The universe rarely moves in spectacle. It is built in the dark silence while the particles lean into one another, matter learning structures, atoms organising into life, life learning to think, and thoughts becoming curiosity.
And curiosity, quietly yet stubbornly, pushes the boundaries of what existence understands of itself.
By the time my run ends, the city begins to wake up. Motorbikes hum along the road. Fishermen return to the docks with their captures. Old men on the corner of the road sit on benches while turning the pages of their newspaper and sipping their morning coffee. It feels like the universe has resumed its rhythm. By the end of my run, I realise that no star has acknowledged, or no galaxy shift has taken place because of anything I did this morning. And yet oddly enough, this realisation felt comforting rather than depressing. Because if no single life is of cosmic importance, then the weight of greatness fades.
What remains is truly simpler: to remain your tiny self ; to write a thought that might travel further than our existence; to raise a child who will see the world more clearly than we do, and to ask questions that makes the universe slightly more aware of itself.
In the eyes of nature, we may be unimaginably small. But perhaps, evolution has always worked this way — not through grand singular gestures, but through the billions of tiny lives, each briefly conscious, adding to their quiet momentum to the long unfolding story of our universe. And somewhere far beyond today’s morning sky, the stars might still be watching us.
Not because any of us matters individually, but because all of us together just might.
Sai Abhinay Penna is a professional cricketeer, investment banker and writer based out of Chennai.
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Another of my favourite pastimes is immersing myself in true-crime dramas. After listening to case after case, I noticed a particular pattern. The spouse or a close family member would invariably[1] be the guilty party whenever there is a murder. It’s only in fiction that the butler does it!
Then I start wondering: why is there so much evil? I thought the crux of any relationship was the need to protect one’s own kind. How could a loved one have the heart to look into the eyes and see the living daylights just disappear like that? Is that all the human bond is about, protecting and nurturing?
Some talk about the suppressed reptilian mind having to act in accordance with what is deemed normal in civilised life. There is a demand that society act in a particular way. If all our actions are merely acts, and we are just actors playing our roles, then what happened to the ‘humanity’ that humans are so proud of?
In 1961, the world was curious to find out what a man who sent people to the gas chambers looked like! What they saw at the Nuremberg trials was an unremarkable civil servant who made killing a banal act. His aim in life was to be a good worker and to complete the tasks he was assigned. He did not see beyond his duty. As long as his i’s were dotted and his t’s were crossed, he had a good night’s sleep.
Following that observation, Stanley Milgram[2], a psychologist at Yale University, devised a series of experiments to show that ordinary people are willing to inflict severe harm on others when instructed by a figure in authority. In these experiments, participants were asked to administer electric shocks to subjects taking part in a memory test under the experimenter’s scrutiny. The recipients of the shocks were actors who were heard but not seen. The voltage was progressively increased as more mistakes were made. It was shown that 65% of the participants were willing to inflict fatal shocks when prodded. This overrode personal conscience.
That study suggested that ordinary people are surprisingly willing to inflict severe harm on others if instructed to do so by who they consider a legitimate authority. Authorisation may be expressed through words or through inanimate objects that signify power, such as uniforms or white coats. When people view themselves as instruments of something bigger than themselves, they shift their moral responsibility to the authorised persona. Obedience also increases when participants do not see their subject and the environment is imposing, such as when the task is conducted in a university or government institution.
So, where does it leave us? Are humans mere automatons with no agency, easily moulded, moving in herds according to the whims and fancies of the dominant group? As thinking beings who consider ourselves superior to animals and capable of compassion and empathy, we should be able to do better.
Are the events depicted in William Golding’s 1954 classic Lord of the Flies[3] not merely fiction but inevitable consequences of a society descending into violence, savagery and mob mentality?
Despair not. The Milgram experiment has been re-evaluated[4] with particular attention to the 35% who stood their ground and did not bow to the pressure of authority. The original experiments were also conducted with a series of setting variations. When the experimenter was not wearing a white coat, obedience decreased to 20%. When there were two experimenters, and they started arguing with each other, obedience fell to zero. There is also a possibility that conscience overrode authority in these people. Some empathised with the ‘victims’ and felt personally responsible for causing pain.
In 2002, Reicher and Haslam, through their BBC Prison Study, reported findings that were quite contrary to those of Milgram’s. In a simulated prison setting, in an oppressive environment, the prisoners formed a cohesive bond to fight the injustice in the system. They do not conform to the oppressive authority and challenge inequality. The outcome is quite different from Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment[5].
All is not lost. There is hope in humans to think, evaluate, and make a mindful decision about what is best for their kind and humanity at large. We are not automatons or psychopathic maniacs who can be programmed to be a wrecking ball. We have the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, moving from blindly following orders to making informed decisions based on lessons learned from life and our past.
Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Grace refers to unmerited favour, a universal concept associated with both psychology and philosophy. It signifies the ability to function and thrive amid vulnerabilities and denotes unconditional love, serving as a guiding and healing influence that connects humanity, irrespective of merit or effort. Individuals and even places can act as conduits of grace. There is no such thing as a gracious coincidence; many individuals are often unaware of their own experiences of grace. Reflection is integral to developing this sensitivity.
I was barely out of my teens when my father lay comatose for more than a month in the hospital where I was born. He eventually passed away at 62, leaving my younger siblings and me as minors, and my mother widowed at a young age.
My father wanted my eldest brother to become a certified public accountant, as he was a bookkeeper himself. This dream was realised when my brother passed the exam on his first attempt. I vividly recall the celebration at a Chinese restaurant in the city, where my mother’s co-teachers and supervisors were also present. My father beamed with pride as he engaged in conversation with my mother’s colleagues about my brother’s success. The food was exceptionally delicious, and everyone enjoyed it. In time, my brother secured a position at an established accounting firm, which my father, unfortunately, did not live to see.
On the other hand, my mother lived a full life but passed away two months shy of her 80th birthday due to undocumented dementia. I am uncertain if this condition is genetic. Our family’s request focused on ensuring that my mother would not suffer significantly before her departure. She peacefully passed away almost two decades ago. It was also a most trying time for our family, as my youngest sibling underwent surgery for a benign brain tumour in North America around the time of our mother’s passing. Two months ago, this brother celebrated his 60th birthday.
During the onslaught of Typhoon Ondoy (Typhoon Ketsana), I was away from my coastal suburban home on a weekend while teaching my weekly Academic Writing class at a seminary. It was understandable that my cousin’s family, who were temporarily staying with me, chose to leave our residence as the water level rose to chest height. Regrettably, my clothes, desktop computer, photographs, and both personal and work documents were completely swept away by the flood, and nothing was salvaged in the aftermath.
Impact of Typhoon Ondoy(Ketsana) which occured in 2009 From Public Domain
Two seminary students supported me after this ordeal, without informing them of this tragic episode. One organised clothes from their family closet, providing me with quality clothing and some cash to help me. The other invited me for coffee and pastries at a mall shop, where she also gave me some good clothes and cash in an envelope. We exchanged stories about the ordeal, which made the loss somewhat more bearable.
Years prior to my seminary teaching, I was accepted into an advanced leadership training program at an international institute based in Singapore. However, I needed to raise US $300 as part of my counterpart fee for the month-long training. As a freelance teacher and writer, my funds were limited; however, after corresponding with an elderly lady whom I have never met in person, based in the U.S. and headed a mission-related NGO, kindly sent me a check to cover my training expenses. This experience was particularly memorable, as it marked my first overseas trip.
As part of my routine, I often schedule a massage with a blind masseur at a mall near my residence. After a recent seated massage, I fainted, likely due to the air conditioning’s inability to counteract the heat. The masseur and manager fanned me and provided water once I regained consciousness a few minutes later. These episodes are rare; however, as always, there is someone looking after me.
In terms of my freelance writing, every time I felt discouraged and considered giving it up entirely, opportunities for publication would appear. More importantly, feedback from readers indicates they were able to relate to my stories, as they resonated with their personal experiences. My experiences attest to the enduring quality of grace in various seasons of life, which I continually rediscover, relearn, and rewrite. While the operation of grace is always invisible, its manifestations become clear when an individual recognises that its timeline is not necessarily linear. Last year, an essay on diminishing memory was included in an anthology. While grace is difficult to define, one’s openness is key to understanding how it relates to our everyday encounters. Grace always matters as it continues to abound in all aspects of our lives.
Manuel A. Alindogan, Jr. or Jun A. Alindogan is the Academic Director of the Expanded Alternative Learning Program of Empowered East, a Rizal-province based NGO in the Philippines and is also the founder of Speechsmart Online that specializes in English test preparation courses. He is a freelance writer and a member of the Freelance Writers’ Guild of the Philippines (FWGP).
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There are places in this world that do not seek attention. They exist quietly and hold something essential. In such spaces, differences soften. What remains is a simple sense of connection.
Sunday Book Bazaar. From Public Domain
The Sunday Book Bazaar of Daryaganj, now at Mahila Haat near Delhi Gate, is one such place. Every Sunday this space fills slowly. The city moves in its usual rhythm, yet here time seems to settle into something gentler. People begin to arrive from many walks of life. Students come with curiosity. Collectors arrive with patience shaped over years. Families walk through the narrow lanes with children who pause at almost every stack. Some come with purpose. Others arrive without any clear intention. Yet all seem drawn by something they cannot fully explain.
A bookseller looks up and smiles at a passerby. “What are you looking for, sir?” he asks.
The question lingers for a moment. The answer does not come easily. Perhaps that is how most people arrive here. Not searching for something specific, but open to possibilities.
Within this space, differences begin to evaporate. People stand side by side, turning pages, asking questions, sharing small discoveries. Conversations form and dissolve with ease. What remains is a shared interest in stories and knowledge. In that quiet exchange something simple takes shape. People come closer without effort.
For more than six decades this bazaar has existed as a home for books and readers. What began in 1964 has grown into a living space that continues to gather voices across time. Books lie in uneven stacks that rise and fall like small landscapes. Some are worn with age, their pages softened by many hands. Others remain untouched, waiting for their first reader.
A reader pauses at a stack and picks up a worn paperback. The cover is slightly faded. The pages carry the faint scent of time. A nearby voice observes gently, “Old edition. Hard to find now.”
There is quiet assurance in such words. Years spent among books leave their own kind of memory. Titles are not just remembered. They become familiar, almost like people one has known for a long time.
Books move through this space with a quiet freedom. A thought written years ago finds meaning in the present. A story that began in a distant place settles into a new life. Each exchange is simple, yet it carries something lasting. In these movements books connect people without effort.
There is comfort in that continuity.
The booksellers who sustain this space form its quiet centre. Many have spent years, even decades, among these pages. Their knowledge is shaped through experience and repetition. They know where a book might be found. They sense what a reader may need. Often, they understand before a question is fully spoken.At another stall a name is mentioned in passing. The response comes without hesitation. “If it is not here today, it will be found.”
There is no urgency in the voice. Only certainty. It is a certainty built not on systems, but on familiarity and care. Their interactions remain simple and unforced. A suggestion is offered. A brief conversation begins. A moment of connection follows. During these exchanges, the act of selling becomes something more. It becomes a quiet way of keeping stories alive.
In their own way, they create bridges between people who might otherwise have continued remain strangers.
As one moves through the bazaar, small moments begin to gather meaning. A child sits on the ground, absorbed in a book that seems to hold engross. A student moves from one stack to another, choosing carefully, balancing interest with affordability. An older reader pauses with a book in hand, holding it for a little longer, as if revisiting something once known.
Nearby a young voice carries a quiet excitement. “This one was only fifty[1].”
The reply comes with an easy smile. “That is a good find.”
The exchange is brief, yet it holds a sense of completeness. At such moments, the value of something is not measured by price alone, but by the joy of discovery.
These are not merely transactions. They are connections between people and ideas. Each book that changes hands leaves behind something unseen, yet quietly lasting.
Around the books other objects carry fragments of time. Old coins rest in small boxes. Stamps lie arranged with care. Postcards show places that may no longer look the same. Each object holds a story that extends beyond itself.
A gentle question arises. Do people still come for these?
The answer is simple. “They do. Some have been coming for years.”
Memory does not disappear easily. It finds ways to remain present, often in the simplest forms.
In a world that moves quickly such spaces feel rare. Here there is no rush to finish. One can pause without purpose. One can browse without intention. One can sit with a book and allow time to move at its own pace.
There is also a quiet sense of trust that shapes this place. A book may be handed over without hesitation. A familiar face is recognised without effort. A price may soften in a moment of understanding.
“Take it,” a voice says gently. “You can pay next time.”
Such gestures do not draw attention to themselves. Yet they remain long after the moment has passed.
The bazaar continues despite its challenges. Facilities are limited. Weather often interrupts the day. At times the space must adjust and adapt. Yet it endures — not through ease, but through persistence and care.
Perhaps that is what gives it its meaning.
Because this space is not only about books. It’s about access. It’s about memory. It’s about people sharing something simple and real. It allows stories to continue moving. It allows connections to form without effort.
It offers a quiet reminder. When people come together with openness something meaningful begins to take shape.
As the day moves towards its close the space begins to thin out. The stacks remain. The voices grow softer. Yet something lingers in the air, something that cannot be easily named.
A small gesture remains. A bookmark is handed over, light and unassuming.
“For your reading,” comes the gentle voice.
On it a single line rests.
Some stories find you.
The words feel simple, yet they stay.
As one leaves the bazaar there is a quiet awareness that follows. Not every visit is planned. Not every discovery is expected. Some moments arrive without effort and remain without intention.
Sometimes stories find us.
They arrive at the turning of a page. In a passing conversation. In something remembered long after the day has ended. They remind us of what we share, even when we do not speak of it.
In a fast-paced world, such spaces offer something steady. They remind us that connection still exists in simple forms, that stories continue to travel without barriers, that meaning does not always need to be sought. Sometimes it appears quietly, in places we might overlook.
Gowher Bhat is a columnist, freelance journalist, beta reader, book reviewer, avid reader, and educator from Kashmir, and a published author of both fiction and nonfiction. He serves as a senior columnist for several local newspapers across the Kashmir Valley.
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