जो दिया था सब लुटा दिया, फिर भी अधूरा राह में हूँ

नदियाँ चौड़ी होती रहीं, फिर भी अधूरा राह में हूँ

जिसे थामना था छोड़ दिया, जिसे जाने देना था थाम लिया,

अपनी ही ग़लतफ़हमी का बोझ उठाए, फिर भी अधूरा राह में हूँ

दर्द ने पूछा — क्या तू थका? मैंने कहा — नहीं,

पर क़दम उठते हैं बिना किसी यक़ीन के, फिर भी अधूरा राह में हूँ

वादियाँ गुज़रीं, ऊँचाइयाँ आईं, सफ़र ऊँचा हुआ,

पर भीतर का आदमी वहीं खड़ा रहा, फिर भी अधूरा राह में हूँ

यह घर था, यह ज़िंदगी थी, यह सब अपना था कभी,

अब आईने में अजनबी दिखता है, फिर भी अधूरा राह में हूँ

मनन, राह ने यह राज़ खोला — मंज़िल एक भ्रम है,

भटकना ही वजूद है, फिर भी अधूरा राह में हूँ

British Columbia

 There are places you travel to, places you admire, and then places that alter the very rhythm of your breath. After journeying across fifty-four countries — deserts that glow like embers, mountain passes that slice the sky, meadows that hum with life, cliffs that challenge gravity, coasts that run endlessly — I thought I had seen the full vocabulary of this planet’s beauty. And then I landed in British Columbia.

British Columbia doesn’t greet you; it just engulfs you. Like the clouds in Kodaikanal. Ever so gently. And, before you realize, it rises, swoops, crashes, whispers, and unfolds like a master artist showing you their private collection — a collection painted over millennia with colours so vivid they look almost unreal. There is a riot of natural hues across this land: greens that seem to have been invented here, blues sculpted by glaciers, and whites that sit like crowns upon the Coast Mountains, dignified and eternal. It is a place where beauty isn’t an adjective — it is an ecosystem.

Further inland, the slopes of Whistler rise like cathedrals sculpted from snow and stone. Whistler doesn’t simply exist; it performs. Every snowfall appears staged, every trail thoughtfully carved, every summer meadow blooming with a precision that seems almost divine. The village feels like a place time refuses to modernize, preserving its alpine charm with a stubborn tenderness. Even the silence here is different — deeper, heavier, more meaningful.

But to truly understand British Columbia, you must walk into its ancient forests. The old-growth groves are less forest and more time capsule. Trees thicker than Thirumalai Nayakar Palace pillars and older than empires rise toward the sky in quiet defiance. The forest floor is soft, damp, fragrant — a world padded with moss, filtered light, and an uncanny stillness that makes you slow your steps instinctively. These forests don’t just stretch across land; they stretch across centuries. You don’t walk through them — you trespass gently through time.

And then there is the wildlife. The odd grizzly bear wandering across a meadow with unhurried majesty, black bears turning over logs in search of breakfast, eagles carving circles into the sky — the kind of sightings that remind you that in this corner of the world, humans are merely visitors.

The coastlines of British Columbia deserve their own chapter, but the pen hesitates; how do you adequately describe the Rockies plunging directly into the Pacific? How do you explain fjords shaped by ancient ice, water that alternates between steel and sapphire, or villages that seem to exist purely to complete the landscape’s symmetry? The truth is simple: BC’s coastlines don’t need your words; they already have the ocean’s.

And in all of this magnificence lies something even more precious: the quiet. Not emptiness, not isolation — but a fullness of silence that feels earned. British Columbia breathes at its own pace, and you inevitably learn to match its rhythm. It is a silence that lingers long after you leave, the kind that appears unexpectedly years later when something reminds you of a distant mountain curve, or the sound of wind moving through cedar branches, or the glow of twilight settling over a lakeside village.

I’ve seen landscapes that startled, overwhelmed, even humbled me. But British Columbia has done something rarer — it has stayed with me. It lodges itself somewhere between memory and myth, a place I revisit every time life becomes too loud or too fast. 

SaaS vs AI

 There’s a lot of noise these days about how AI is ruling the tech universe and having SaaS companies for lunch… sometimes breakfast and dinner too.

Valuations of SaaS players? Let’s just say they’re on a crash diet.

Honestly, AI is behaving like that new intern who learns one shortcut in Excel and suddenly thinks they’re the CFO. A teeny bit arrogant. Mildly out of control.
Needs a reality check.

Maybe AI should sit down with SaaS and learn some humility. After all, SaaS also strutted around like it owned the place not too long ago. Started small, rose fast, became the queen of tech — and then promptly forgot the meaning of the word “grounded.” Ten years later… gravity won.

So dear AI, stay humble. History does repeat.

“Kyunki SaaS bhi kabhi bahu thi!” 🤣

Tariff-trums

I woke up to the US Supreme Court gutting the Trump tariffs. Frankly, the odds were always 50–50. Now that the hammer has dropped, here are my observations:

1.⁠ ⁠Three Trump-appointed judges just torpedoed Trump’s own signature move. Somewhere, Jerome Powell is probably exhaling in quiet satisfaction.

2.⁠ ⁠Let’s forget the individual for a moment. What’s astounding is that the world’s “second largest democracy” sleepwalked into handing quasi-autocratic powers to its President. Emergency-grade executive authority was being used like a casual policy screwdriver, and the institutional machinery mostly shrugged—until today. The system has belatedly remembered it has a spine.

3.⁠ ⁠Trump’s ego is Everest; his sense of injury is now Mariana-Trench deep. This episode is nowhere near its final act. A counter-strike—legal, political, or in some obscure regulatory alley—is almost guaranteed.

4.⁠ ⁠He is expected to visit China in April. Trade(read: tariff)  negotiations  are likely to be on the plate, alongside Peking ducks. The wounded mountain lion ( no, I am not calling him that based on the colour of his hair, trust me) is going into negotiations with its claws pulled out.

5.⁠ ⁠Like Neelambari in Padayappa, expect him to now turn even more aggressive than ever. I feel this SC ruling has dramatically increased the probability of a war with Iran. Cornered power is always the most dangerous.

6.⁠ ⁠American consumers—ironically, many who voted on nationalist fervor—are left holding the bag. Post-Covid inflation already doubled grocery bills. Tariffs made that worse. Now, even if tariffs roll back, retail prices won’t magically fall. Basic market behaviour: cost increases are passed on instantly; cost reductions trickle back slowly—if at all. Distributors and retailers will cite “higher operating costs” and pocket the spread. The “new normal” shelves are here to stay. And historically, taxes and tariffs have been inflation’s most reliable accelerants. This time won’t be an exception.

7.⁠ ⁠India, officially, should be unaffected. After all, we loudly insisted the tariff hikes were irrelevant. If we were so immune on the way up, logically we should be immune on the way down too. But if the Nifty wails “hypocrisy” on Monday morning, don’t blame Trump 

Always loyal… but for what, and why?

I am viewing this from the persepctive of an individual, beyond politics. 

In most countries, soldiers defend their own borders.
In some others though, you become a Marine — defending whichever border the dispensation wants you to. Not necessarily that of your own. 

You sign up for “motherland,” then learn the motherland has a habit of relocating itself to whichever foreign runway you land on. New culture, new climate, same blank explanation. Just smile, salute, and don’t ask why.

You risk your life, your limbs, and your sanity. If you’re lucky enough to return, you get medals no one remembers and nightmares everyone politely ignores. Your family adapts; you try to.

And then you’re labeled a “veteran” — heroic mascot of a cause you never picked and still can’t define.

A casualty of someone else’s decisions, stamped as duty.

==================

He signed up young, chasing a story he thought was his own,

A promise wrapped in colours he was taught to call home.

They trained him to stand firm, to obey, to never ask why,
But questions grow louder under a foreign sky.

He learned that “country” can shift with the map in a hand,
And conviction can tremble when you don’t understand.
He fought with honour — the kind that scars even the brave,
Leaving parts of himself in the dust no anthem can save.

He returned to applause that didn’t quiet the doubt —
Whose cause was it really he’d been marching about?
They called him faithful, unbroken, a symbol to glorify —
He only whispered : always loyal… but for what, and why?

Tapas

Different scriptures. Different languages. One shared human discovery: transformation requires disciplined intensity.

When I was reading the story of Vishwamitra, one episode struck me deeply. As a young tapasvi, he accumulated immense inner power through austerity. But maturity did not keep pace with intensity. In a moment of pride, legend says he tested his newly acquired force and burned a bird in the forest with his gaze.

Is this fantasy? Can human beings generate such heat?

As usual, the etymology first.

The Sanskrit word Tapas comes from the dhātu tap (तप्) — “to heat, to burn, to glow.” Before it meant spirituality, it meant temperature. Tapasya is not abstract piety. It is the deliberate generation of inner heat. Tamil preserves the same sense in “தவம்” and “தாபம்” — both suggesting intensity and burning.

This is not mystical poetry. It is physiological vocabulary.

Consider Tibetan Buddhist monks practicing Tummo — the “inner fire” meditation. In controlled scientific studies, monks seated in freezing Himalayan conditions, minimally clothed, were observed raising peripheral body temperature through breath control and visualization. Cold wet sheets placed over them dried as steam rose. Thermometers recorded measurable changes. Researchers documented activation of sympathetic pathways, stimulation of brown adipose tissue, and influence over the hypothalamus — the brain’s thermostat.

The Himalayas, in this sense, are not mythology. They become the laboratory.

What these monks demonstrate is not supernatural flame, but disciplined neural regulation. Through breath, posture, and focus, they convert attention into heat. In modern science, this is autonomic modulation. In Sanskrit, it is tapas.

Now return to Vishwamitra.

Perhaps the story is not about laser vision. Perhaps it encodes a warning: intensity without maturity becomes destructive. Tapas amplifies energy. Without humility and ethical grounding, that energy can burn indiscriminately. Ancient Hindu texts were clear — tapas must be governed by wisdom. The Bhagavad Gita classifies austerity into discipline of body, speech, and mind — a framework that maps neatly onto modern behavioral science: physical regulation, communicative restraint, cognitive control.

This principle is not uniquely Hindu.

In Christianity, Jesus retreats into the desert for forty days of fasting and confrontation with temptation. Christian monastic traditions practice silence, celibacy, vigil prayer, and disciplined restraint — not as punishment, but as purification. The desert becomes their Himalayas.

In Islam, Ramadan institutionalizes fasting from dawn to sunset — no food, no water, no indulgence — with the explicit purpose of cultivating taqwa, self-restraint and God-consciousness. The inner struggle against the lower self, known as jihad al-nafs, mirrors the discipline of mind emphasized in the Gita.

The metaphors differ. The nervous system does not.

Biology calls this hormesis — beneficial adaptation through controlled stress. Muscles strengthen under load. Cold exposure enhances mitochondrial efficiency. Fasting activates cellular repair. Deep, sustained focus rewires neural circuits. Structured stress upgrades systems; chaotic stress degrades them.

Hinduism and Buddhism framed this as heat. Christianity framed it as purification. Islam framed it as self-restraint before God. Even today, we practice tapasya without naming it. The athlete training before dawn. The founder sacrificing comfort to build something meaningful. The student locking away distractions for deep work. Even resisting the dopamine pull of endless scrolling is manasa tapas — austerity of the mind.

Watch your body the next time you enter deep concentration. Your temperature rises slightly. Your pulse sharpens. Awareness intensifies. That subtle warmth is tap(as) alive in your nervous system.

The monks in the snow are not anomalies. They are extreme demonstrations of a universal truth: the human organism can generate transformative heat when intention and discipline align.

Tapasya is not self-punishment. It is deliberate friction for refinement. Without it, comfort breeds stagnation. With it, intensity becomes evolution.

The ancients captured that insight in a single root word.

Tapas.

And across Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, the message quietly echoes the same: growth begins where comfort ends.

கம்பனும் சுந்தரரும் கொண்டாடிய அற்புதக் கிராமம்!

 தமிழகத்தின் வரலாற்றில் ஒரு சின்ன ஊர், இரண்டு மகத்தான மனிதர்களால் அமரத்துவம் பெற்றது. அது திரு வெண்ணை நல்லூர் - இன்று விழுப்புரம் மாவட்டத்தில் அமைதியாக அமைந்திருக்கும் ஒரு பேரூராட்சி.

சுந்தரரின் முதல் பாடல் பிறந்த பூமி

நால்வரில் ஒருவரான சுந்தரமூர்த்தி நாயனார் சிவபெருமானால் தடுத்தாட்கொள்ளப்பட்ட தலம் இது. இங்குதான் அவர் முதன்முதலாக தேவாரம் பாடினார்:

"ஊனாய் உயிரானாய் உடலானாய் உலகானாய்... ஆனாய் உனக்காளாய் இனி அல்லேன் எனலாமே"

பெண்ணையாற்றின் தென்கரையில் அமைந்த இந்த சிவத்தலம், சைவ சித்தாந்தத்தின் தொட்டிலாக விளங்கியது.

கம்பனின் காவிய பூமி

ஆனால் இந்த ஊரின் பெருமை இங்கேயே நிற்கவில்லை!

சடையப்ப வள்ளல் என்ற பெருந்தகை, கம்பனை சோழ நாட்டிலிருந்து அழைத்து வந்து, தன் செலவில் இங்கே தங்க வைத்தார். அந்த விருந்தோம்பலின் பலன்? கம்ப ராமாயணம் இங்கேயே படைக்கப்பட்டது!

நன்றியுள்ளம் கொண்ட கம்பன், காவியத்தில் ஒவ்வொரு 1000 வரிகளுக்கும் ஒரு முறை வள்ளலின் பெயரையும், திரு வெண்ணை நல்லூரையும் நினைவுபடுத்தினான்.

இன்றும் அந்த ஊரில் கம்பனுக்கென்று ஒரு கோவில் உள்ளது - ஒரு கவிஞனுக்கு கோவில் கட்டிய அபூர்வ மரியாதை!