I live by nine simple mantras, a personal version of The Commandments, to help me navigate the increasingly unpredictable world we live in.
Image: Image generated via Seedream 4.5
My nine mantras are as follows:
Speak not till you are spoken to; it might be interpreted as ‘hitting on’ the other person, particularly if they are of the opposite sex.
Shop not till you have money in your account; credit cards are fine but they also require you to pay at some point.
Drink not — I mean sweet tea, coffee, alcoholic drinks and sugary soft drinks — until you know their exact calorie count.
Express not your political opinions before strangers; that squirming but silent figure may well be a vicious, vindictive troll online.
Advise not until asked for advice; the reluctant recipient would be well within their rights to glower and grimace.
Question not lest you be questioned; questions about career or exes might provoke counter-questions of a snarky nature.
Believe not the mainstream media; they’re mostly a bunch of furtive clowns who’ve sold their souls to the devil (read the political-corporate nexus).
Vote not; it’s a waste of time because the ‘leaders’ are all cut from the same fading, threadbare cloth. (Unless you must vote to vote out someone particularly terrible.)
Write not until you have something sensible to articulate. (Unless you’re responding to the WordPress daily prompt, in which case you are free to write some gibberish.)
Follow your Lonely Planet guidebook, but also do your own thing.
Image credit: Photograph by Ram Pangeni from Pixabay
I travelled solo to Srinagar, a beautiful city fringed by the Zabarwan mountains and dappled with lakes, in the insurgency-torn Kashmir Valley, in the summer of 2019 and autumn of 2020. Here’s what I did to know the city better:
Explored on foot. Markets, tourist sites, restaurants — I walked whenever I could.
Tried local food. And I mean street food. If you’re squeamish and fuss about ‘hygiene’, you’ll sadly miss out on a significant slice of the local experience pie.
Spoke to the receptionist at my hotel. On my very first visit, I spoke to the manager and receptionist of my hotel. I engaged in small talk to break the ice. They recommended places and experiences most conventional tourists would never have known. They also introduced me to an auto rickshaw driver who took me to the caste ghettoes whose inhabitants I later wrote two stories about. (check out https://theflaneurdiaries.com/2026/09/13/fragile-floating-lives/)
Attended the Sunday service at both a well-known Catholic and Protestant Church. The regular worshippers were naturally curious to see a new person. I struck up a conversation with them and ended up discovering a different dimension of the city.
Played the flâneur (you’re reading The Flâneur Diaries! :))Sometimes, I’d just saunter to a coffee shop and observe and imbibe the sights, scents, and sounds, holding the city’s physical form in a tight embrace.
All in all, the independent exploration allowed me to shatter the mainland Indian assumption that the place was an unsafe, ‘terrorism-infested’, medieval, pan-Islamic monolith.
It was like approaching a person reputed to have a dreadful temper, only to end up forging a warm friendship with them.
I am glad WordPress finally asked me this question. Social media is teeming with ‘influencers’ who tell you what healthy eating habits to embrace, but no one ever bothers to ask what habits you actually follow.
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I am on a strict, self-regulated postpartum weight loss diet and hence stick to the usual:
Start my day with water stored inside a copper bottle
Almonds, walnuts, and bananas are the first solids to hit my tummy.
Eat a wholesome, protein-rich breakfast.
Indulge in a mid-day fruit meal.
Enjoy an ultra-light lunch consisting of lightly dressed salad; may or may not have tuna or chickpeas or yoghurt, but will almost always have cucumber, lettuce, sweet corn, and bell peppers dressed in lemon juice and olive oil. And no, I don’t add pricey, exotic stuff like quinoa and edamame, please.
A light evening meal shortly after my evening tea.
A glass of milk before I hit the sack.
Keep sipping plain water all through the day.
Then I religiously eschew the ‘thou shalt not‘ temptations:(basically, gastronomic equivalents of the Sirens)
No fried food (though it’s probably the greatest love of my life)
No soft drinks/sugary drinks
No packaged snacks
No chocolates/sweets/cookies
No cured meats (I, in fact, am a pescatarian which makes it easy to steer clear of all meat)
And that one weird habit that keeps me going? Scroll through food delivery apps (Zomato and Swiggy in my country), drool over tasty food, vicariously taste everything I want, and … NOT order anything!
It’s a bit like a nymphomaniac watching pornography. It’s the second-best thing for them, after all.
I think most of us heard of the term ‘karma’ later, having understood the concept much earlier. It’s been deeply entrenched in us since childhood. That’s been my case at least.
I grew up with a dominating older sister who drilled the concept into my consciousness: if you’re mean, you’ll get back meanness, don’t expect good things to happen to you if you don’t do good things, and so on and so forth.
And then there’s the influence of pop culture. I grew up watching movies in which ‘justice’ was served in the end — the ‘good’ were amply rewarded and the ‘bad’ were suitably punished. That poetic justice at the end of films usually filled one with a sense of satisfaction, an indescribable relief that doused the flames of distress much of the film might have provoked while showing ‘good people’ being wronged.
Then, reading stories like ‘The Black Cat’ by Edgar Allan Poe and ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens in my teenage years reinforced that belief. Even in ‘God Sees The Truth But Waits’ by Leo Tolstoy, the evil-doer is punished, albeit belatedly. This sad story by Tolstoy was a part of my syllabus in the tenth standard.
So, yes I did grow up believing strongly in the concept of Karma. But what I see around me today is seriously making me question it all.
For instance, what did those little children in Gaza do to deserve the fate they got? What did the young orphans or parents who lost their children do, to suffer as they are suffering in Lebanon? What about the men and women and children affected by hunger and disease in Somalia? What did they do to ‘deserve’ this? Whatever they might have done, could it be worse than what the wielders of power – people like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu – are doing? These avaricious, power-hungry men spent much of their lives lying, cheating, fornicating, and willfully harming other human beings. I am mentioning only them because they are the face of the neo-imperialist apparatus. But I am talking about every person ensconced in their camp of evil. The oligarchs, the tech magnates, the media barons, the political minions – everyone.
And whatever happened to this global elite, evil beyond belief, I ask you? Many like Trump and Netanyahu are now in their seventies and eighties. What punishment awaits them now? They are probably enjoying caviar and champagne as I write this.
Some of you might remind me of karma being served in the ‘next birth’, or on the Day of Judgment. But that doesn’t quite fit into the filmic, flamboyant, soul-soothing template of karma delivery movies and books have got us used to. And I daresay hooked on to.
Sigh. This feeling that there is no justice, no karma is debilitating. It makes me feel that this world is a jungle, or a place where ‘Matsya Nyaya‘ (Law of the Fish, as ancient Indian philosophy calls it) prevails — the big fish eat the small fish and that’s that.
Can you explain why evil people aren’t being punished the way they should be? No-one I know has been able to put forth a cogent argument so far.
Honestly, I have no idea what people like to read. Sometimes I wonder if people really want to read anything at all.
I write what I think I should write about, what others should know about because it’s funny, or serious, or simply interesting to find out. I write stuff that would have fascinated me, if I were the reader. Most of all, I write what appears as a seed in my head and asks to be watered and looked after. I nurture the seed and voilà, it has grown to be an article sometime later. So, it’s entirely instinct-based.
I hope I don’t sound cocky. I really do wish I knew more about what ‘people actually want to read’. I’d try to incorporate more of that into my writing!
