Thoughts To Words

The Beginning of Another Revolution

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The earth has completed yet another revolution around the sun. And it has started on yet another one (how could I not use a pun on this one!).

It’s time to put up that brand new 2024 calendar. Every year, a new calendar would come home. It would end up on the side of the fridge or one of the wardrobes in the bedroom. Like the newspaper, this has been replaced by digital calendars now which are available at our fingertips. At best, we have some desk calendars now which actually have the primary purpose of being a photo album!

Malayalam calendar
A typical Malayalam calendar

The unique thing about this calendar was that it also had the Malayalam calendar and important dates marked along-side the Gregorian one. Strangely enough, the Malayalam year starts on the first day of the Chingam month, which comes around August 15th. But wait a minute, isn’t Vishu the Malayalam new year? Vishu, the first day of the Medam month which falls around April 14th, used to be the traditional start of the new year before the current Malayalam calendar (the one with Aug 15th as the new year) was started in the year 825 CE.

Different cultures had developed their own ways of tracking the seasons and revolutions around the sun. The most interesting one we’ve seen on our travels has been the one in Egypt – a calendar that was designed around the Nile river’s water levels.

hieroglyphs at Kom Ombo Aswan and the ancient Egyptian calendar
The Egyptian calendar at Kom Ombo

Wherever you are in the world and whichever calendar you follow, there are some things which are common. The start of a calendar year is seen as an opportunity to start afresh and set goals for the new year. It is a time for new year resolutions and manifesting what you have always wanted. Some people are successful in meeting their own expectations, a majority fall short as life gets in the way.

I’ve never really been big on resolutions. I’ve tried them in the past but never really made it past February or March. So, I changed the approach about 4 years back. In the new mental model, the end of the year acts as a milestone for introspection. This presents an excellent opportunity to take a pause and look at various aspects of life in detail. 

Being a big-time productivity nerd, I’ve tried out different models to create the perfect “Annual Review” format. In this blog, I’ll cover some of the TOOLS that have really helped me over the years.

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Thoughts To Words

Conquering the Fear of Weights

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December 1st 2022. I woke up at 5 am, freshened up, packed my bag, picked up the car keys and stepped outside. It was pitch black and I drove my red Swift guided by its lights. Seven minutes later, I stopped in front of the Titan showroom and took the lift to the fourth floor – the lift was a little rickety which is usually the case in such buildings. I took my first tentative step inside the gym. The first feeling was that of intimidation.

The definition of gym – in my head

I was never a fan of gyms – they made me very uncomfortable. Right from childhood, I had been thin with skinny arms. And in my head, gyms were a place for bodybuilders with huge muscles on every part of their body – I could not relate to it at all. And once you started gym, you had to take protein powders (which would make you abnormally disproportionate) and before you knew it, you would be having supplements and steroids of all kinds. Everyone knows that, right? Going to the gym for “fitness” was not something I had encountered growing up. 

The definition of fitness – in my head

Fitness had a few definitions. One of them was running and cardiovascular exercises. All you had to do was get 20-30 minutes of walking or jogging and that would take care of the entire body. It’s ok if you aren’t able to do it regularly when you’re young – once you are older and have more time, you could always walk a little extra and catch up. If you wanted to go a step further and improve your flexibility, you could get into Yoga. That should tick all the boxes for overall fitness, right? Wrong!

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Thoughts To Words

Bridging Time and Connecting Generations through Podcast

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This is a story of two wishes.

I always loved going back to Kerala for my vacations. Since we always lived outside Kerala, it was a long journey that had to be made – but we still went at least once in a year. One of the things that I really looked forward to was spending time with both sets of grandparents – especially my maternal grandmother. She would tell the best of stories and it was a daily ritual of sorts. There used to be a power cut every day in the evening and we would all go and sit outside the home, looking up into the clear sky with every star visible – almost the entire town was pitch dark during this time. This was also the time when she would tell a story. It would usually be from one of the epics – Ramayana, Mahabharata or one of the Puranas. Sometimes, the story would go into such detail that we would have episodes stretching across days! I wish I could keep hearing her stories every day.

a lady telling stories to kids during an electricity blackout
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Thoughts To Words

Getting Into the Flow of Writing

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This is part two of my story on “How I Overcame the Resistance to Writing”. If you directly landed here, you might need some more context – go check out Part 1 here. 

Done with Part 1? Let’s move on and see what was the thing that made me overcome the resistance to write.

I spoke earlier about arriving at an “identity” which is reinforced by the habits we inculcate. When I did this exercise, I was a bit too ambitious and took up way more than I could handle. Each habit was given a 2-min version which had to be done everyday that was eventually meant to make it a regular habit.

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Thoughts To Words

How I Overcame the Resistance to Writing

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Remember how the world was supposed to end in 2012? The year when every culture in the world had at least one reasoning as to why the world would end or “transform” in that year. Seems like a long time ago, right? I was graduating from my engineering college that year. It was also the year when I started my blog. And this piece is about that blog. You were expecting to hear about the end of the world? Sorry, no conspiracy theories here!

I have always been fond of writing – I remember writing poems in my school days and entering competitions. I also used to write short stories with imaginary characters. It gave me a sense of strength – creating something on my own. Social media was not big at the time – Facebook was just catching on in India, Orkut was big but not at all like the platforms of today. The best way to write was to start a blog and that’s the route I decided to take. I wrote mostly about different thoughts I had – my experience of joining B-School, joining a club, the different trips I went on etc. It was not a regular habit and more of a journal. An outlet to ensure that I don’t lose the writing habit.

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Asia, Europe, Travel Blog

Fairy Chimneys, Windy Days and Atatürk

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Contrary to what many think, Cappadocia (Kapadokya in Turkish) is not a city or town. In fact, it is the name given to a region in central Turkey spanning across five major provinces. If you are planning to visits, some of the towns where you will visit and probably end up staying are Mustafapaşa, Ürgüp and Uçhisar. Larger cities in the region are Aksaray, Kayseri and Nevşehir. As you might already know, Cappadocia brings to mind the images of “Fairy chimneys” and hot air balloons. What are these chimneys exactly? Read on to find out!

Map of Turkey showing Ankara Tuz Golu and Goreme
Our route for this blog
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Asia, Europe, Travel Blog

Cotton Castles and Whirling Dervishes

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Last time, we covered the ancient city of Ephesus and had started on our journey to Pamukkale and then Konya. If you haven’t read it yet, no worries – I’ve provided all the links at the bottom of this post.

Our drive to Pamukkale took almost three hours. Our guide, Abdul told us that there were many thermal springs found in this area and the steam was used to generate electricity – we even saw some of these plants on the way. This region was also famous for its cotton – the cotton grown here is considered among the best in the world, only second to the famous Egyptian cotton. In fact, the name Pamukkale itself means “cotton castle” – but that is mainly attributed to the sight that we were about to see.  

Here is a map-view of the journey that we will be covering in today’s post

Map showing Turkey with the cities of Ephesus Pamukkale Konya and Sultanhani Caravanserai highlighted
Our route for the day
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Asia, Europe, Travel Blog

Troy, a giant horse and forgotten Greek cities in Turkey

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(Image credits: most pics on this blog of Troy and the other Turkey ones were taken by my dad 🙂)

After almost 2 days of exploring Istanbul on our own, we joined our group – we had opted for a group tour for the rest of Turkey. My parents were also part of the group – a big reason why we went for this trip – it gave us more confidence to take Parth on his first international trip. As soon as we reached the airport and saw them, Parth jumped into his Appuppa’s (grandfather) arms and stayed there for a good part of the next 4-5 hours! We would be back in Istanbul for the last day of the trip. You can read about it here.

Our first stop in the trip was the western city of Çanakkale. It was a long drive – took almost 4 hours and Parth slept throughout the drive on Appuppa’s lap. On the way, we saw the Marmara sea, a sea contained entirely within Turkey and the one which connects the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. On the Aegean end of the Marmara is the Dardenelles strait (Çanakkale is at the narrowest part of this) and on the Black Sea end is the Bosphorus strait which we had crossed in Istanbul. The Marmara Sea and the straits split Turkey into its Asian and European sides. The Marmara is named so because of the marble islands in it (the origin of the hindi word “sangmarmar”).

A map of Turkey showing the city of Canakkale and the route from Istanbul
The route we took to reach Çanakkale
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Creating memories – One Fridge Magnet at a time!