This Tuesday evening, I was at the same place that I have been at every Tuesday evening in 2026.

I have a 20 minute slot where I get to perform at Sin é. I’ve mentioned this pub before1.

Getting a chance to do this each week is like being promoted in a job. Seriously.

At first, I used to go to open mics because I wanted to establish myself as an artist. I thought it was step 1. I was wrong. It turned out to be step 9.

There were many other steps - things I thought were obvious and easy, but weren’t. Learning how to hold a mic, breath control, managing mood and energy, reading the room, building rapport with people so they’d care, learning to get out of my head when I was performing. Stuff like that.

I have so much more respect and admiration for every person who chooses to get up on stage and do what they do.

That confidence, the je ne sais quoi that I see artists demonstrate on stage isn’t something that emerged overnight in them. They showed up relentlessly. Practiced relentlessly. Effortlessness takes a lot of effort. That is inspiring AF.

I thought I had good stage presence because of all the speaking and lecturing and workshop running from my former jobs.

That notion was shattered when I stepped up to perform for the first time. I look back at videos of me from over a year ago and I feel a touch of cringe (and a whole lot of love).

Until recently, I was clad in layers of identity that helped me see myself a certain way.

A good corporate job. Health insurance. A chance to pat myself on my back because of the a couple of well known names on my CV.

Those layers helped me feel less naked as I moved through the world.

Those layers are gone.

There were times when I’d wake up in the middle of the night, terrified at the thought of losing my coveted job due to a misstep.

Due to poor performance ratings. Due to not fitting in well. I had intense imposter syndrome from 2014 to 2016, and then again from 2018 to 2021 because I kept pushing myself and trying to work hard to get the approval of people who got paid more than I did.

I look back at that paranoid, needy version of me and feel a touch of cringe (and a whole lot of love).

Today, I feel liberated at being gifted a chance to strip away those layers.

Layers began emerging again. Ones I stitched myself. Sometimes on a whim. Like my artist name. Sometimes with intention. Like the songs that I get to perform.

I’ve found that sustaining identity requires me to consistently behave in a way that embodies that notion of self. I found that an important part of building that discipline and being happy is to learn how to draw boundaries.

I wish someone would’ve taught younger Hari how to set boundaries. Even more importantly, how to identify signals from others as they were setting boundaries, even if those signals were feeble or indirect.

Today, I feel at my most authentic self when I am able to preserve my boundaries and do things that benefit people around me.

Low Stakes Boundary Setting

L performs at the Tuesday open mics. We’re friends.

Sometimes, L and I walked back after we are done. It takes fifteen minutes from Sin é to the Stoneybatter bus stop, from where I take the 39A to head home.

Today, L’s friend M also joined us.

M wasn’t there to perform. He was at Sin é to chill and watch live music. It is people like M whose experience matters to me when I’m on stage. I’d like new folks to engage with my music and if they can connect with the stories I’m sharing, it gives me some semblance of validation.

L and M were sitting at the bar, and I asked L if he was ready to leave.

M: Before we go, let me buy you guys one last round!
L: Works for me!
Self: No thank you, I’m good man.

M: Do you want zero alcohol beer?
Self: No thank you, I’m good man.

M: Do you want water?
Self:No thank you, I’m good man. Really appreciate it though.

M: Bro what’s your problem?

I had hydrated enough all through the evening. I drink three pints of water for every low alcohol beer (<4%) I consume.

This is not a bug. It is a feature of life in my 40s on immunosuppressants.

I wasn’t in the mood to explain all this to M, so I told him drinking anything after 12 AM was against my religion. I hoped that would end the conversation.

It didn’t.

M asked me which religion I follow. I told him I’d made one up for myself that forbade me from drinking anything after midnight.

M still picked up three Heineken Zero bottles, drank one along the way, gave one to L and carried the third bottle in his pocked in case I were to change my mind.

I get where M’s unwillingness to exclude me from the drinking ritual comes from. I recognise the good intention behind his actions.

I have been in his place when I wore a younger man’s clothes.

I have convinced friends and former colleagues to have “one for the road” or said “naah don’t leave early, fun is just begun”, while not being mindful of the lines they drew.

I apologise to all of them on behalf of past Hari.

M still felt a little salty, but then he became chill. He was down a few beers and my refusal wasn’t going to bring ants to his picnic.

On the walk towards the bus stop, M and I had another conversation.

M: Bro what’s your name?
Self: Thought Brownie. You can call me Brownie.

M: Wait! What’s your REAL name?
Self: Call me Brownie. Works for me.

M: Are you serious bro?
Self: Yes.

M: Is that written on your passport?
Self: When you told me your name was “M”, I didn’t ask you if it was your real name. I did not ask if you had “M” on your passport. I took your word for it. Same way, call me Brownie.

M: But you see why it is awkward if I say it.
Self:Why is it awkward if you say it?

M: Imagine we’re on a holiday and at passport control, the officer asks me who I am traveling with. I can’t point at you and say “I’m with Brownie here”.

One time, I was in Spain in a pub and five guys walked in, they introduced themselves and bought me a beer. They were the guys from One Direction before they were famous.

Liam Payne, the one who died, he got me the beer.

Imagine if we were in that pub in Spain and I had to introduce you to One Direction. I couldn’t say “I’m with Brownie” to the folks in One Direction.

(At this point, I had doubled down in laughter. I was imagining going on holiday with M, meeting the lads from One Direction in a pub before they got famous, and being introduced as Brownie. I had to suspend many layers of disbelief to get to this image, and it was so worth it).

Self: M, I won’t go on holiday with you. Call me Brownie. If we end up in a situation where I need to give you my passport name, I will. Until then, we chill.

In both instances, I could’ve acted swiftly to pacify M. Picked up something to drink despite not wanting to. Shared my passport name instead of my street name.

I didn’t feel like it and I stood my ground politely. It wasn’t easy, even in such a trivial, inconsequential, low stakes situation.

Stuff like this just heightens my awareness towards how everyone sets their boundaries and has them tested.

As always, it makes me reflect on times when I’ve asked someone their real name or where they’re really from, rather than take what they said about themselves at face value.

The average person experiences such stuff in different ways as they move through the world.

Someone who looks different from the majority population of a place gets asked, “So where are you REALLY from?”

Someone who wants to be called a name of their choice that which might not align with their features (like a person with masculine features choosing a feminine name or vice versa) might get asked, “But what’s your ACTUAL name?”

I can imagine how it can be tough for a woman who wants to set boundaries in conversation with a man.

When someone asks me what I do, and when I say I am a writer, I get asked “But what is your REAL job?”

My standard response often ends up being - Why would I lie to you?2

What complete openness looks like

A few months ago, I ran a poetry + rap + storytelling workshop for school kids. They were in classes 3, 4, 5, and 6. With each class, for 90 minutes, I ran through how to tell a story in verse.

How simple it is to rhyme. How it is okay for the first few trials to sound messy, and how it gets better with every next step you try.

Some of the best conversations I’ve had with new people was with the 3rd grade kids from this school in Loughshinny.

I walked into their class 10 minutes early.

Charlie and Ruby came and said hello the minute I walked in. Their teacher had told them I am a rapper. They were thrilled to see me. I don’t think anyone in recent times has been as thrilled to see me.

They told me their names.

Charlie: I heard you’re a rapper. What’s your name?
Self: My street name is Thought Brownie
Ruby: Thought Brownie, call me Rapper Ruby!

I was offered fist bumps.

Charlie: You know I love salted caramel brownies! And I also have a street name.
Self: What’s your street name?
Rapper Ruby: Yeah! Go on now, tell Thought Brownie your street name.
Charlie: Call me GalaxyBlaster9000!

When the workshop began, all the kids began picking their own street names unprompted. They alternated between calling me Brownie or Hari. I answered to both.

For them all, including Rapper Ruby and GalaxyBlaster9000, it might have been just another Tuesday. It was among the best days of my life.

These kids were chill. They were open. We were all playing.

They didn’t care about passport names. Didn’t care about what my real job was. Didn’t get rubbed the wrong way when I declined candy that one of them offered me.

Shouldn’t we all be more chill as we spend more time moving through the world?

Return to Innocence by Enigma3 has started to make more sense.

Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

I step out every day with a racing mind,
When I step up on stage, leave the world behind.1
At last my soul is fully unchained.
That’s it. Sin é.2 Now you know me by name.

I’m a sensible edible, I’m chill and tame.
Call me Thought Brownie3, I quite like the name.
Chose it all by myself, when I took a bite of a coffee shop brownie.

Amsterdam?

Right.

A light switched on and blinded my mind,
Out came a thought that transformed my life.
The thought came from HER.
Yup, that’s what SHE said.

Suspend disbelief. Let’s go straight ahead.

Some words that flow, that feel just right?
That’s not just me. No, no. Not quite.
The lines that sound the most profound,
those bars emerge when she is around.

She is my Muse4, She guides my hand.
You might be amused, might not understand5.
She whispers her words straight into my soul.
My heart, my mind, my body made whole.

Remember that Brownie?
When I took a bite, my Muse appeared.
She said - “Go write.”

I said, “Why not go left?”

“Ha ha”, she smirked.

She gave me a pen and she said, “Get to work!”

I said, “Writing is pain, writing is strife, it feels inane.”

My Muse replied and said,
“Writing is pain, writing is strife,
yet whenever you write, you change your life.”

Whenever you write, dear reader, you change your life.

“Write a page.
Write a poem.
Write a chapter.
Write a tome.
You’ll feel less alone, wherever you roam.
Words light up the way, and someday guide you home.

Tell it like a story.
Or set it to a beat.
Words numb your pain in the jaws of defeat.
Make every tribulation seem ever so sweet.
You and your words are enough. You’re complete.

Show up everyday.
Rinse and repeat.

Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.”

My Muse kissed my forehead, and vanished in the mist.
Words have power. They are Her gift.

I hope you’re convinced that the Muse exists.

Do you think my thoughts alone came up with this shit?

I’m lost in thought, with a pen, looking for my next line.

At the same time, my phone began to chime.

I dropped my quest. I just had to see this notification calling out to me.

Each time my phone vibrates, or makes a sound, it is a call to my arms.

Phone unlocked.

I am bound.

I can’t be found. I’m down the rabbit hole.

My attention is stolen. I am no longer in control.

Life gets boxed by the sheen of this routine.

It passes me by in between hits of dopamine.

The world is unseen, for I am glued to my screen.

It says - “Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.”

On each unlock, something new to do.

No wonder my phone is far more appealing than you.

What did you say? Get lost. Let me be.

You see this phone I own? Now it owns me.

If Eric Cartman was a Professor

I spent four years from 2000 to 2004 studying for my engineering degree. I majored in Electronics and Communication.

For the most part, I tried understanding what was being taught. There were times I couldn’t. Some teachers didn’t design their methods in a manner that made it easy for me. No blame. I don’t think I applied myself equally in all classes.

For instance, we had a professor who showed up and ONLY dictated notes for the entire duration of the class. He just read stuff out, expected us to write and when the class ended, we put our pens down.

I encountered him across different semesters.

In the first semester when he taught us, I had stood up and protested after three classes of dictation. I said that if he keeps dictating, we won’t understand concepts or have the space to ask questions.

He felt personally attacked.

So he chose to attack me.

“What is your name you insolent young man? What nonsense are you saying? Who do you think you are some European fellow? Shut up and sit down.”

It was as if Eric Cartman had grown 5ft tall, gotten a dark chocolate coloured tan and was an electronics engineering teacher in Mysore.

I checked out of his classes after that. Self-study was the way to go.

I showed up merely for the sake of attendance. Eventually, I began to write down everything he said. I did it diligently by sitting in the front bench.

I’d smile and nod and bow to him with mild deference. I took to heart the words of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The ones where he said - “Know your role, and shut your damn mouth.”

I began playing a game.

The game was to write as much as possible in as little space as possible. I needed to get a good pen so the ink wouldn’t smudge. I’d sometimes slow him down intentionally by asking him to repeat after every fifth sentence or so to see if he’d get annoyed.

He did, but not as much as if I would’ve questioned his authority or shown irreverence.

I no longer have those notes with me, but if I remember correctly, I finished an entire semester of his classes by filling up only six pages of an A4 sized notebook.

Mad props to this Prof, I say.

He might not have taught me anything about Capacitance or Microwaves, though in his defence he did teach me how delightful handwritten journaling can be.

Microprocessor Architecture

If I had good teachers and I could grasp what they taught, the stuff I learnt got cemented in my mind for life.

Microprocessor architecture is one such.

Fret not gentle reader, for this essay isn’t about microprocessors.

As fascinating as they might be to me, I am aware that bringing you along on the journey to appreciate this chip that has altered the course of humanity requires taking you through so much specific knowledge that I will end up writing an explainer that seems like a chapter in a textbook.

That’s not my intention here.

By default, Microprocessors are expected to run programs. These programs are written in a language called Assembly language. Writing programs in Assembly is fun now that I don’t have to do it for grades.

Assembly language is the opposite of an LLM interaction. In case of an LLM, you interact with a device in your own natural language.

In case of Assembly, you had to write hexadecimal code in the computer’s language.

The 8085 chip is so cool that it has been used in printers, scanners, disk drives, washing machines, fridges and microwave ovens.

Each chip has forty pins, twenty on each side.

Five of those pins are called Interrupt pins. If you look at a diagram explaining what each pin does you will see that these interrupt pins are named TRAP, RST 7.5, RST 6.5, RST 5.5 and INTR.

TRAP is a non-maskable interrupt, while the others are maskable interrupts.

A non-maskable interrupt refers to the idea that a signal that comes to the TRAP pin can’t be ignored. Cannot be masked. It needs to be listened to and the signal needs to be processed by interrupting regular programming.

The other four Interrupt pins - RST 7.5, RST 6.5, RST 5.5 and INTR can be masked or ignored by the Microprocessor if that’s what the programmer wants.

40 pins in a Microprocessor designed in the 1970s. Only one pin powerful enough to override regular programming. To stop the default state of the Microprocessor.

What are your interrupts?

I hope you see where I’m going with Microprocessor design and interrupt pins.

For the last three years, my phone has been in greyscale mode. I switch it to colour only when looking at photos, or if I am using maps to go from one place to another, because route options are shown in different colours.

All notifications have been disabled by default.

There are exceptions:

• Regular phone calls

• Whatsapp audio and video calls

• SMS

• Whatsapp messages from a curated group of people not in archive (most messages sit in the archive section)

• Calendar (for reminders)

• Notifications from banking apps / online wallets

Despite intensely regulating my phone usage, and nagging friends when we hang out if I see them on their phones instead of being present, I find it challenging to stop myself from doomscrolling.

Prior to this, I treated every notification as a non-maskable interrupt.

Work emails showed up 24/7. I paid attention to them and responded as soon as I could. Even if I didn’t, my brain would allocate space to compose replies, and a part of me would have an open browser tab in my mind, reminding myself on a Saturday afternoon walk in the park of things that I needed to put in bullet points so that my boss could read them on Monday.

It felt good to stay on top of things. So much so that I’d start scrolling through my inbox as soon as I woke up, even on the weekends.

I feel bad for past Hari for that reason (one of many), and recognise that he had to go through all of that so that I can understand why I don’t like notifications that much.

My lock screen no longer shows any notifications.

When I see strangers around me on their phones, I can’t help but take a peek at the huge volume of notifications that they scroll through even before they’ve unlocked their device.

Attention is stolen. We’re no longer in control.

Gravity and Grace

French Philosopher Simone Weil was born in 1909 and died in 1943. She lived for 34 years.

In that short life, she became a teacher. Devoted her life to political activism. She even worked for a year as a labourer in car manufacturing factories to understand the working class way of life.

She worked with the Free French government in exile in Britain just before she died. She had tried convincing Charles de Gaulle to have a contingent of nurses, (herself included) parachute into Nazi-occupied France not just to save lives and provide medical attention, but also to serve as a moral opposition to the Nazis.

When she was alive, she was known among a small circle of people who were involved in academics, politics and activism.

It is only after she passed away that the ideas from her notebooks and diaries were studied and published.

She left her notes and diaries with her friend, Gustave Thibon who curated her ideas in a book, Gravity and Grace.1

If you are curious about Simone Weil, check out one of my favourite essays2 by Maria Popova of The Marginalian, where she writes about Attention and Grace. (The short essay contains multiple links that might lead you down delightful rabbitholes.)

Some of Weil’s ideas seemed radical at first glance, but with enough attention and scrutiny, they started to feel right (to me).

On Love

Love is pure when joy and suffering inspire an EQUAL degree of gratitude.

If someone is happy, love is when they wish to share the suffering of their beloved who is unhappy.

If someone is unhappy, love is when they are filled with joy by the mere knowledge that their beloved is happy, without sharing in this happiness or even willing to do so.

Among human beings, only the existence of those we love is fully recognised.

On Attention

Extreme attention unlocks the creative faculty in humans, and the amount of creative genius in any period is strictly in proportion to the amount of attention paid at that period.

Attention alone, so full, that the “I” disappears is required of me.

Attention, taken to its highest degree is the same thing as prayer.

In Sum

This essay started off with imagining if Cartman was a teacher, went onto Microprocessor architecture and ended with a few pearls of insight from Simone Weil.

I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to, though I hope this essay has prompted you to rethink your relationship with your devices, and to tune into the beauty that our world has to offer when you engage with it by being fully present.

By being fully attentive.

Gentle Reader, thank you for paying attention. I don’t take it for granted.

I know I call it a single. However, it is that and more.

Every person who attaches their name to something they’ve worked on (even if it is a name they came up with after getting baked AF from eating a brownie in Amsterdam) is putting pieces of their heart and soul out into the world in the form of art.

A chance to get to do this is a privilege. You choosing to give this song 2 minutes and 48 seconds of your time isn’t something I take for granted. I am sincerely grateful.

The story so far

Before this single, I dropped an album in December 2023.

The album is called Man of Substance. Mostly because calling it “Man of Substances” felt a bit on the nose back then. My gut said go goofy, but I went grandiose. ‘Man of Substances” would’ve made me giggle today and so I should’ve probably leaned into that a bit more.

Future Hari, please take note.

Following that album, I released three singles.

Best Reasons Ever (October 2025) - this track is about how, on the worst days ever, I needed the best reasons ever to keep showing up every day and keep going.

Burnout (November 2025) - I got burnt out at my corporate job. Faced health challenges. When I prioritised getting better, I was managed out. I was made to feel like I don’t belong, and the voice inside sang a different song - Burnout.

Writer’s Block (December 2025) - I got blocked writing. So I wrote a song about it, to remind myself how to unblock and keep going when I hit a wall. I still get blocked. But this song reminds me how to make that fun too.

Writer’s Block is meta AF. I enjoyed making the process of sitting at a desk and staring at a blank page sound equal parts tense, dramatic and hopefully, a tad inspiring.

Permission, Ego, Purpose

I like doing things without the need to ask for permission. Especially when I have clarity on my values, my mission and my vision.

I know it sounds corporate. Corporate is derived from “Corporatus” which means to form into a body.

Sometimes, what can help the hive get its act together can help the bee get its shit together too.

Once I do them, I try not to let my ego get in the way of making it the best possible version it can be. Friends have given me notes on how to do things better, and sometimes I’ve received tough love with respect to my craft.

My ego shouldn’t get in the way of any help that can refine that which I’ve decided to work on.

My purpose for making art is simple. If it can help me leave people and places better than I found them, even if ever so slightly, I’d consider it enough.

Once upon a time, I tuned all my energy into getting a high performance rating at my job and strongly exceeding others’ expectations.

Now, I tune all of it into consistently meeting my own expectations.

Footnotes

Substack has added a new feature through which I can place footnotes. I find that pretty cool. I’ve used footnotes liberally in the next section which contains the lyrics for Party in My Head along with a few annotations.

There are two books with the word “Footnotes” in their title that I recommend strongly.

The first book is a non-fiction graphic novel by Joe Sacco.

I picked up Footnotes in Gaza more than a decade ago.

In 2010, I’d travelled to Israel on a solo vacation.

I had read Exodus by Leon Uris umpteen times and had been wholly brought into Israel’s contemporary creation myth.

A beautiful story that told of how the Jewish people struggled valiantly and established a place to call their own after being subject to a genocide, and then having to endure oppression from all Arab nations around them.

As exciting as it was for me to read the book as an impressionable teenager, it didn’t do a good job of humanising the Arab perspective in the conflict that led to Israel’s establishment.

I’d been to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve 2010. Bethlehem is in the West Bank.

Leaving Israel to go into the West Bank was easy. I walked to Damascus Gate in the old city in East Jerusalem, hopped on a bus and was dropped off a couple of kilometers away from the Church of Nativity where it all allegedly began.

On the way back into Israel, it took a long time to pass through the border crossing. I had to walk through a maze of narrow pedestrian lanes, designed to let people move in single file only. I suppose it was designed to deter large groups from rushing en masse towards the crossing to overpower it.

I felt relief when our bus got onto the wide northbound highway that took me to Jaffa Gate from where I walked to my room in West Jerusalem as dawn broke on Christmas day.

The stark contrast in living conditions and infrastructure and the dismal sight of the wall separating Israel from West Bank was enough to make me realise who was the actual bully and who was being oppressed.

Only fools are reluctant to change their minds.

Joe Sacco is a Maltese journalist and artist. He is known for his non-fiction graphic novels. He tries to recreate events as described by eye witness accounts through beautifully detailed illustrations. Every panel in his books is a labour of love. Two books by Sacco, Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza tell us stories of people in a way no documentary could.

Footnotes in Gaza is about Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli army in 1956 - 275 in Khan Yunis and 111 in Rafah. Sacco writes of how he doesn’t want these deaths to be reduced to numbers, to mere footnotes in the pages of history.

Such stories matter. Team Humanity needs to learn to do better.

Seventy years after those incidents took place, Khan Yunis and Rafah have borne witness to thousands of deaths. Thousands of children.

How can we ensure their lives are not reduced to mere footnotes in the pages of history?

Such stories matter. We need to learn to do better.

The second book is Terry Pratchett’s official biography.

I am fascinated by the inner workings of a renowned writer’s world. The stuff that goes beyond the output they create and the stories they share in interviews.

After all, writing is a boon for those of us who need solitude for at least a few hours each day.

The book is peppered with plenty of footnotes and explainers to help us navigate Terry Pratchett’s rich life.

How a kid in a small town in England loved going to libraries, started writing books and found his calling. Wrote wonderful books, got people thinking, had fun conventions where he hung out with good people and led a life that was, at worst semi-charmed.

Until he hit his mid 50s. Then things got challenging. The part that will stay with me was learning how Terry dealt with his Alzheimer’s diagnosis - with courage and with equanimity.

His biographer Rob Wilkins, who was his former secretary, includes multiple footnotes all through the book to add more colour and depth to Terry’s life.

Such stories matter. Team Humanity needs the right kind of inspiration.

Treat your life like a book. Treat each day like a page.

What was written in it yesterday? Who wrote it?

Which are your favourite pages? Which ones would you not mind going back and reading over and again? Which ones do you wish you could pull out and tear to pieces?

What will you write in it today? What might go in tomorrow?

Write your stories down. Put them out there. Our world needs good stories, they’re not secrets to be kept.

I hope you will let my newest song be a footnote to today’s page.

Please and thank you.

Party in my head - Annotated

Modern day philosopher Tyler Durden said - “It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”

To which I say, “Yes, AND let’s party!”

Feeling low, I’m at a crossroad.

Where to go, now that my flow has slowed?

I’m feeling pressure, trying to measure

Self worth, when it has plateaued

I’m frozen, I’m tied up

I’m handcuffed by caution

I’m afraid of what will happen

Cause failure is an option1

Though I found out that I’m winning

If I show up, if I’m willing

Make tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow2

A new beginning

I’ll keep doing all that I do

Though invisible I’ll stay true

Not to do this, that’s torture3

Just one life, no take two.

No one’s listening to my rendition? (So?)

Will I stop if there’s no recognition? (No!)

I know, I know there’s no respite

Despite which I’ve chosen my mission.

Through my endless sentences

I will will4 things into existence

Stay consistent and persistent

I’m not afraid of remaining irrelevant

I’m not guarded, doubts discarded

I’m so grateful that I started

Now I’ll flourish till I’m finished

And you’ll say that I’m dearly departed

My muse gives her blessings

Gives me focus, keeps me centered

I surrender, as I venture

and I go with my flow on adventures

If I’m shipwrecked, I’ll keep trying5

My eternal flame keeps shining

I’ll spend a lifetime, clutching this lifeline6

From here and now till the end of my timeline

I’m racing the sun, so I’ll stay ahead

Instead of tossing and turning in bed

The only way I can banish the dread

Is by walking on paths I was too scared to treat7

I won’t muffle the pain, won’t muzzle the struggle

I’m subtle, bold, relentless, I’ll hustle

I’ll pick up a shovel, find gold under rubble

Shuffle my verbs to double my muscle

It was once a whisper, it’s now a crescendo

My words found their voices ascending in tempo

I’m building, I’m strengthening

Thunderous, deafening

Rhyme reinvented8, my calling is beckoning

Patiently waiting, authentically stating

I’ll face disappointment, disgrace, ridiculing

Reframing profound make it sound entertaining

This is my purpose, this feels amazing

I’m an artist, I’m a rapper

I’m free to imagine

To follow, to fashion while challenging patterns

I gather my thoughts from all over they’re scattered

Illusions are shattered, my purpose now matters

I saunter with swagger, I sprint then I stumble

Encumbered, entangled welcome to the jungle

Through rumbling thunder where cookies have crumbled9

My flow always steady and lucid, no mumble.

My words become actions

I’m all in, no fractions

Keep rolling for traction

That’s it, no retractions

My factions united

My passions ignited

There’s a party in my head

Welcome! You’re invited.

Listen on Apple Music Or Spotify Or Youtube Music

Thankfully he had the good sense to do it while standing on a mattress.

His Mum used to leave out all the bedding on the terrace. All their mattresses were the kinds you could roll up and keep aside in a corner, to be spread open on the floor when it was time to sleep.

During his summer vacations, he’d be out on this terrace playing in the morning sun. Watching ants pass by, forming long lines and marching single file across the wall, and then down all the way to the road, from where he lost sight of the caravan. It was one of many such roads in Gokulam, Mysore.

His Mum told him that black ants were never to be harmed. They didn’t bite. They were chill. They brought good luck.

The red ants were to be avoided. They’d bite.

He didn’t just take her word for it. He found out for himself.

The big red ants bit painfully. Sometimes he’d notice at the very last moment when one of them would climb on him, open up its pincers (legal passport name - mandibles) and bite him sharply on his arm or his leg.

His retaliation was of Biblical proportions. The ant bit him, and he’d brush it off violently and stomp on it.

To all of those ants and their families, I’m sorry. I didn’t know any better back then.

What keeps you up at night?

At my former workplace, I’d sometimes hear highly paid people addressing gatherings as large or larger than the Dunbar1 number say things like - “What keeps me up at night is…”, followed by a dramatic pause.

Some pauses are good. They draw the listener in. You know you will be rewarded for paying attention when the pause finally ends. Case in point - Barack Obama.

Not this dramatic pause.

My distracted brain was spinning yarns, and drifting away, filling up the space with my own answers.

What keeps me up at night is…

“…acid reflux from eating chocolate before bed.”

OR

What keeps me up at night is…

“…unresolved fights with the monsters in my head.”

OR

What keeps me up at night is…

“…the idea that simply by existing as long as I have, I have been continuously responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of plants and animals and other forms of life.

Not just those red ants that I squashed or sometimes burnt to a crisp from the concentrated heat of a magnifying glass, despite being aware how painful it was from testing on my own left forearm.

It is more than that. It is existential.

Each meal that nourishes me is derived from another form of life (or part thereof) ceasing to exist by the time I start to chew on it.

So effectively, for my life to continue, some other life has to end.

Therefore, the privilege of being alive is a gift. A gift like no other.

I’m afraid of squandering this gift. I’m afraid of being a waste of space. I’m afraid of being useless to other forms of life. I’m afraid I won’t have the time to do all that I’d like to do to be useful.

We’re all running out of time. I’m afraid of running out of time.

I know you didn’t ask but THAT’s what keeps me up at night.

Mercifully, melatonin gummies for the win!“

Snap back to reality. In this meeting, the person would say:

“What keeps me up at night (repeated for emphasis after unnecessarily drawn out dramatic pause) is the fact that we’re at 100% revenue run rate, BUT our customers and partners aren’t getting enough time with us, and therefore we need you to increase the number of meetings you have with them. We will track these numbers.

Low meeting numbers and durations will need to be explained.”

Even assuming good intention, they were oblivious to Goodhart’s law - When something that is measured becomes a target, it stops being a good thing to measure.

That which nourishes the relentless march of machines in today’s techno-feudal world is squeezed tightly from precious bits of our hearts, minds, bodies and souls - from our time.

When others reduce us to lines on excel sheets at work, we start to think of ourselves that way too.

It feels normal to distill the essence of our lives into that which can be measured. Or maybe I was the only one that got caught up in the need to have an optimised, productive life.

I can see why I did it. I wanted to do things that felt good, but when I began measuring those things, they stopped feeling good.

Some years, I’d take up the Goodreads annual challenges and promise myself I’d read twenty books.

By October I’d have four books done. Then I’d try to read sixteen books in two months to hit my target, only to arrive at the conclusion that reading was too much effort and it didn’t feel like the good kinda effort.

It took a few gentle nudges, some swift kicks on my butt, and a few well timed and well executed sucker punches from life to make me start thinking and feeling differently.

Beyond step counts. Beyond the number of species of birds I’d count when I went to a new place, and some of my regular friends - the Jackdaws, Wrens, Blackbirds, Magpies, Wood Pigeons, Hooded Crows, Seagulls, Robins, Mallard Ducks, Swans and Eurasian Blue Tits weren’t around.

Beyond streaks. Beyond keeping score. Beyond the need for reciprocity.

I still sign up for the Goodreads challenge. My target is one book per year. I’m quite likely the first person on the platform who meets their reading challenge goals each year. Every book I’ve read after the first one that year feels like a bonus read.

Reading feels good again. It is immersive. Sentences and paragraphs and pages and chapters stitch together into beautifully woven multicoloured tapestries that adorn the walls of my mind. I get to flow through my mind palace and ponder as I move and spin and sway in the best possible way.

Whirling Dervishes

Sufi Islam is different from the traditional way of practicing Islam. Sufis turn inward. They practice prayer, meditation, discipline and celebrate the pursuit of the divine through art.

Almost like if mainstream followers were to say - “Yo, God is love”, Sufis would respond and say - “Naah bro, Love is God.”

They demonstrate their love for God through different forms of artistic expression.

For up to an hour, practitioners of the Mevlevi tradition within Sufi Islam whirl in circles when they stand in the same place. They’re a renowned tourist attraction in Türkiye.

These artists, known as Whirling Dervishes are so practiced that they do not experience vertigo when they stop. They don’t tumble down to the ground, and the possible feelings of nausea and dizziness don’t hold them back.

You might get dizzy when you sit and watch them. I haven’t seen them in person, though the videos I’ve seen keep me enraptured.

The Whirlind Dervishes move and spin and sway in the best possible way.

Tu Jhoom Jhoom Jhoom Jhoom

Naseebo Lal is one of the most well-known Pakistani folk singers of our time.

Abida Parveen, also from Pakistan is one of the greatest Sufi singers ever.

Together, they’ve sung a song - Tu Jhoom (Youtube Link) that unfailingly stirs the deepest emotions within me each time I listen to it.

The comments on the video are wholesome AF, mostly from people in India, appreciating these two legends and showing yet again that the purest form of artistic expression can unite human beings and negate all that demagogues do to tear us apart.

This song holds special significance for me.

I’ve used this song as a lullaby, playing it on a low volume as I’ve cradled my child and put her to sleep while holding her in my arms. Lulling her to sleep, I got to move and spin and sway in the best possible way.

I can’t translate “Jhoom” into English precisely.

Though I can translate some of the lyrics to make benefit those that don’t know Urdu / Hindi / Punjabi.

Embracing the pain in my heart, I keep smiling.

Though the sunlight scorches me, I find the shade I need within.

All I know is that both my joys and sorrows are my own.

I’m crazy. I know nothing. I am ecstatic. I sing and I dance. Joyfully.

I know I won’t find peace even if I try to satisfy everyone else.

Why shouldn’t one take pride in one’s good fortune?
(Reminiscent of the stoic saying “Amor Fati” - have love for your fate)

Try to make your heart understand, that there’s nothing in your control.

What’s meant for you, will come to you.

I often listen to this song on repeat. Without realising it, I find myself going round and round, slowly, in the same place. Like a budget version of a Whirling Dervish.

My Kopfkino2 gives me glimpses of eight year old Hari getting dizzy and tumbling down on the mattress, laughing from exhaustion as he falls asleep and is woken up by the heat of the sun bearing overhead.

My Kopfkino flashes images of me playing this song as a lullaby and whispering along to the lyrics softly.

I come to realise through this song that I am crazy. That I know nothing. I feel ecstatic.

I learn to flow. To dance, no matter how awkwardly.

To move and spin and sway, whatever comes my way.

Life is a gift.

Tu jhoom, jhoom, jhoom, jhoom.

They enforce that rule strictly.

On a recent visit to Bangalore in September 2025, I’ve seen coffee shops robbed of all their chill when overrun by tech bros.

“Everywhere you go, you always take your office with you”.

I confess that when I worked in an F&B start-up in 2011-12, I parked myself at coffee shops too. My thoughts on how I’d like to operate in public spaces and how I’d like to spend my precious time has changed since.

The Books Upstairs cafe is a place where I’ve lost myself in a good book for hours on end. I’ve written verse after entering flow state. I know that each time I go there, no matter what, I will leave the place feeling better than I did before I stepped in.

This particular time was no different. The cafe was full. The barista, Gráinne, told me I could share tables with someone else if they were open to it.

So I made my way towards a corner table where a man was sitting with a book.

As I adjusted my chair, I bumped the back of my head against a shelf protruding from the wall. It hurt badly. I could tell because the sound of my head making impact caused a few people around to pause and give me concerned looks.

The man at the table set his book down and inquired if I was okay.

It took me a minute to reorient myself and establish that there was no bleeding, much to my relief.

Hip-Hopera and Time Travel

I wrote a musical, a hip-hopera and brought it to stage in February.

Run time - 25 minutes. I’m thrilled I got to do it, and I enjoyed it so much that I will do more of it.

I am writing an expanded version which I pitched to Dublin Fringe for their 2026 program. No dice. I got rejected.

There’s no stopping me.

Making art is about not letting my ego get in the way of rejection, not asking anyone for permission to create what I’d like to and to ensure that what I do what aligns with my purpose - which is to leave people and places better than I found them as best as I can.

I wanted the expanded version of the story to have some elements of time travel. Why not?

I tried a few ways of making that happen through the plot line.

Three approaches stood out at first pass.

One - the protagonist WANTS to travel back in time and somehow manages to make it happen. Kinda like in Back to the Future.

Two - the protagonist is FORCED to travel back in time. Somewhat like It’s a Wonderful Life, but not exactly so.

Three - the protagonist lands in the past due to a CLERICAL ERROR. Very Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy like.

None of these seemed to line up and make the “click” sound that I’ve previously heard in my head when something feels just right when I wrote.

I began scouting my mind for stories that did interesting things with time, and that’s how I arrived at “Arrival” once again.

Story of Your Life

I re-read “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang.

The novella is about a mother who writes to her daughter. The narrative moves between what is going on in their intimate shared life, and what is unfolding in the world around them.

Little stories blend with big stories.

The novella was made into a movie.

Arrival is one of my favourite science fiction movies.

While I love Independence Day and the jingoism that it inspired within teenage Hari, my present self gets more thrills from understanding the actual mechanics of first contact with an alien species.

What language(s) do they speak? How similar to us are they? How can we learn from our differences?

It helps that the protagonist in the story, Dr Banks is a linguist and that she helps humanity decode the language of the aliens. I don’t think I’ve crushed as hard on a fictional character in recent times as I have on Dr. Louise Banks.

There’s something about people with linguistics PhDs, I suppose.

The novella and the movie are both unbelievable, and I recommend them strongly if you haven’t read / watched them yet.

I chose to revisit the book because it is the story of a parent writing to their child. It is also a story of how humanity is changed forever. I can’t decide which of the two felt more powerful to me. In some ways I feel they’re both the same.

Arrival showed me how our perception of time and the language we speak are interlinked.

Thanks to the story, there’s stuff about the Hermeneutic Circle and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that I got to geek out on. (I’ve tried explaining it as I understood it in my own words at the end).

However, I want to credit the wonderful Logos Made Flesh, (who dropped a video called “Arrival Explained) for giving me more layers to peel, and thus fall even more in love with the story than I did before.

In that video I linked, there is the mention of a quote by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein - “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”

In scripting the hip-hopera, I have been trying to expand the limits of my storytelling language, and thus expand the limits of my storytelling world.

Dr. Niklas Toivakainen

That is the name of the man at the table who inquired if I was okay after bumping my head.

He was reading a book about Ludwig Wittgenstein on the same day that I began re-reading “Story of Your Life” and watched the video I linked earlier.

Dear Universe, you have my attention.

I asked Niklas if he had anything to do with philosophy, because of the book he was reading. He told me that he’s a philosophy researcher. My brain got a boner, and we ended up having a conversation that I found extremely memorable.

Weaving through discussions about language, money as a human invention, the role of AI and art, we eventually ended up with his definition of utopia.

Niklas said something that shifted my perspective, and I felt strongly enough about it to want to share it here.

Anarchy is Utopia

Conversation meandered to utopia.

That’s where I like going to in my head when talk zooms in on all that’s doomy and gloomy about our world today. There’s been plenty of that all around.

I used to be a world champion complainer once upon a time. That changed when I heard others complain and tried avoiding them, only to realise that I was also being avoided by some people I wanted to hang out with, perhaps for this very same reason.

Niklas and I didn’t complain when we spoke, so much as wonder what the future held.

I don’t mind capping my own life at 65.

As the Spice Girls once sang, “Too much of something is bad enough.”

I doubt I’ll see any version of utopia by then, in any space besides the one that exists between my ears and behind my eyes, and even that, if I am extremely lucky, and can withstand the vagrant breezes of fortune that blow from every possible direction.

Niklas said that he hopes humanity will achieve utopia in half a million years. He also said that anarchy is utopia.

The half a million years in the future statement caused my brain to melt. I can’t think beyond 2050 AD. Even the science fiction stories I have read don’t explore that far into the future. (Such books might exist, I haven’t read them. Mea culpa.)

The “anarchy is utopia” statement did too.

My first brush with the concept of anarchy was when I read about how World War I was instigated when Gavrilo Princip assassinated Franz Ferdinand (not the band) in 1914.

Princip was referred to as an anarchist. Since then, my understanding of anarchy was that it was the philosophy ofa group of individuals who challenged existing political establishments, usually by means of violence.

Far from utopia, ja?

The fundamental definition of anarchy is that it is a society with rulers. No hierarchies.

Now that is something I wholeheartedly subscribe to.

I am leaning towards horizontal relationships with other human beings, and choosing to distance myself from hierarchies as best as I can.

I hope to cultivate connections where every individual is on par and deserving of my curiosity and respect for who they are, and not for their power or possessions or designations.

For a whole society to live in a state of anarchy, everyone’s thoughts and actions should be aligned in their self-interest and the interests of all others, harmoniously.

Perhaps that can only happen if we’re all so truly and deeply connected that all of us, (not just the practitioners of the Advaita philosophy worldwide) feel that we are all truly one.

Hermeneutic Circle - The parts define the whole and the whole defines the parts. I’ve been trying to mull over this in terms of how I see my life today.

Specifically for language, we can understand a word because of where it is used in a sentence. The sentence is understood because of all the words in it.

Therefore, the sentence helps us arrive at the definition of each word, and all the words put together define the purpose of that sentence.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - The language you speak determines how you think. How you think, defines who you are.

As my buddy René (Descartes) once said - “I think, therefore I am.”

Ideas that we have cannot exist until they can be expressed.
Either to ourselves with language or to someone else, also through language.

I still haven’t figured out the time-travel element of the story I am scripting. There’s a part of me that feels angsty at not having made progress. There’s another part of me that wants to flow and trust the process. Future Hari, this one’s on you. Please and thank you.

Here’s something I learnt though.

When you change the whole, the constituent parts change.

When a single constituent part changes, the whole changes.

Little stories blend into big stories.

I’ve mentioned him before. He’s a total Renaissance man. He has his fingers in many pies, on multiple musical instruments and on plenty of sports equipment. (He’s played for India and represented us in Ultimate Frisbee).

300 not out

The latest fun thing he’s gotten up to along with Manish, (another polymath friend of ours) is the 300th edition of the India Wants to Know newsletter.

The 300th edition of anything is an insane achievement.

Sohan and Manish have shown dedication, persistence and love to bring goodness to our screens, week after week for six years in a row. Please go check it out.

Go on, pick an issue at random. You are in for a treat if you haven’t encountered a newsletter like this before.

It combines entertainment and education. If you get high on feeding your curiosity, each edition is like a line on a table. A free line.

(PS - If you sign up for the newsletter, the “Welcome” email that you will receive was written by me).

Joymaxxing and Purposemaxxing

I’ve learnt from 20+ years of corporate life that unless what I do brings me joy and provides purpose, I am unable to sustain any kind of activity for long periods of time.

Now I’m all for Joymaxxing and Purposemaxxing.

When I have ignored joy and purpose to push through, I have felt intense stress, and that has played a major part in the onset of my autoimmune health issues and burnout.

For a while, I amplified these challenges by choosing to beat myself up for having beaten myself up.

0/10 - won’t recommend.

Back to Joymaxxing and Purposemaxxing.

Having shared experiences with people I love brings me joy. When our energy is directed towards building something together, that contributes to purpose.

Sometimes, working with friends can turn into a clusterfuck. Being passionate about bringing something to life can cause conflict. Collaboration isn’t easy.

Getting along isn’t easy. If it was, John Lennon wouldn’t have had to write “Imagine”.

On the other hand, sometimes, working with friends can turn into something absolutely delightful.

A great example of friends getting together to do something special is a podcast called Leftover Lasagne, run by Nitin Sundar and Tony Sebastian (Linktree link for episodes on Youtube / Spotify / Apple podcasts).

Their bromantic love for each other is, from my perspective, a great example of healthy male friendship that is the polar opposite of bullshit machismo / toxic masculinity based discourse that can sometimes show up when us men have a platform with an audience.

They don’t hesitate to display vulnerability and show deep emotion.

Nitin and Tony are all about joymaxxing.

What is your Why

My buddy Viktor Frankl once said - “Those who have a WHY to live can bear almost any HOW.”

Purpose is a heavy word. Until it can be reduced to something simple enough to be axiomatic.

My purpose evolved through approaching things logically.

There have been 130 billion human beings who have lived and died on earth before us. 8 billion of us call earth home today.

On average, most of the 130 billion humans had options to do bad things, to fuck everything up, and from the mid 1940s, annihilate all of humanity with nukes if they chose to do so.

Despite that, we’ve survived and thrived so far. Collectively, we’re not perfect. We’re perfectly fucked up.

But, on average, we’ve made good choices when bad ones can be made more easily.

Bar so so low.

In the worst case, my purpose is not to fuck things up, not to burn things down to the ground when I can.

However, I demand the best for myself. (Only from myself).
So worst case is for worst days only.

In the best case scenario, my purpose is to leave people and places better than they were before. It need not, and it cannot be something as grand as achieving world peace.

Let’s delegate that to the Board of Peace, which has the US and Israel as part of it. War is Peace. 2026 is 1984.

Instead, it can be something as simple as returning the shopping cart from where another customer can pick it up, rather than leaving it unattended in the parking lot. Choosing to tip extra if you can afford it. Giving your employee an unexpected day off. Applauding a little louder to encourage a new artist. Reaching out to someone going through a difficult time with a kind text.

Doing it consistently, rather than as a once-off. With love. With intention.

Leaving people and places ever so slightly better than before is easy AF.

However, one person all by themselves can’t do much.

Collaboration is existential

Every awesome thing on the planet, you included, was created through collaboration. Yes kids, that’s what your parents call it.

The “self-made” label I once assigned to myself was a case of me getting high on the smell of my own farts.

Collaboration is also the backbone of every single bit of life-changing art that I’ve encountered.

“But bro Michaelangelo single-handedly painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling.”

“Sure, but who made the ceiling? Who made the paint? Who commissioned Michaelangelo so that he had to haul his ass up that high to paint the damn thing?”

“What about Ed Sheeran? He plays solo.”

“Someone else made his loop station pedal and manufactured his guitar. A bunch of people manage the sound and light and visual effects at his show to make it grander than it can be if it were one person standing and busking on a street corner.”

Collaboration is magic.

However, like I mentioned, getting along with others is difficult.

One of my biggest fears is that others might not find me easy or fun to work with. My luck (as well as the lack thereof) with relationships is ample proof that I’m not for everyone.

This can affect me negatively in two ways.

One - I want to be good to work with.

Two - I want to have a good time and for those around me to have a good time.
(Leave people and places better than they were before, remember?)

Previously, the most amount of time I spent with people was in my professional life. We were in teams. We needed to get shit done together. I had some degree of freedom with limited autonomy.

Someone who got paid more than me, and was above me in the hierarchy could override any of my decisions and actions.

The goal of that professional quest of mine was Shareholder Valuemaxxing.

Now with Joymaxxing and Purposemaxxing, my most recent collaboration was with Paul and Mara. The three of us put together and staged a musical, a hip-hopera which ran two sold out shows on 17th and 18th Feb this year.

The original name of the show was “Healing Through Hip-Hop”.
I am calling the expanded version “Present Me, Future You”.

Paul is the music director for the show. Mara, who is an awesome actor plays all the characters in the show except Brownie, the protagonist who I play.

This is one of my favourite memories from when we worked together.

The three of us are goofing off in the green room to calm our nerves and have some fun before we stepped on stage.

Bouncy Castles and Sports Practice

To put this show together, we moved in between one of two states - Bouncy Castle or Sports Practice.

When you’re bouncing around in a bouncy castle (or a trampoline), you’re just playing. There is no agenda. No specific path to take. No start or end time that is decided in advance.

You are in a state of play. There is no need to perform.

While making art collaboratively, there is a time to fuck around and find out. To be open to possibility. All options are on the table. For the work to be in a fluid state. One of transition.

Things slowly start to emerge and take shape.

The same thing happened when Paul, Mara and I spent time when we began. I had some idea for the show. I had a structure, a flow and I had written a few songs. Paul and Mara stepped in, added their thoughts. We changed things around. We dropped a few bits.

Paul suggested that some songs can have different musical time signatures, and I rewrote the verse. We made the Boss character in the show sound more like Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter books.

Mara came up with the suggestion that in the scene where the protagonist is put on a performance improvement plan to manage him out of his job, the Boss rejoices and shouts “PIP PIP Hurray”, and then we took it up a notch during the show by getting the audience to chant it too.

All the steps we took and the ideas we threw at the wall had one thing in common. We were all leaning in fully. We laughed and played. Literally.

This went on until it was time to stop making changes because we had a show to put up in two weeks.

From then on, we got into sports practice mode.

Athletes practice over and over. Performers practice over and over. Hindustani classical musicians swear by the practice of Riyaz, Carnatic classical musicians refer to it as Sadhana.

There’s a certain beauty and brilliance to losing oneself in flow state during practice. It is hard work. Yet, it doesn’t feel that way.

The time spent in creating - whether it be bouncy castle mode or sports practice mode has never felt wasteful. Not for one moment.

Art stops me from thinking of how life may be all about tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeping in this petty pace from day to day.

The next challenge I am trying to tackle is to treat performance on stage like I’m in bouncy castle mode. To loosen up a lot more. I’ve gotten so much better than this time last year. I know I can do better. It is a good journey to go on.

For now, I still get into my head. Less and less so each time I show up. The hardest battles one fights, and the best victories one achieves are inside jobs.

I will leave you with something that jazz musician Charlie Parker once said -

“First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music, then you forget all that s**t and just play.“

Thanks for reading.

Play on.

If you are in Dublin, or will pop by, do visit the place. I’m a big fan.

Every person who wants to perform and get better at their craft knows how precious time on stage is.

Other open mics in Dublin offer five minute slots on the night, ten minute slots once a month if booked in advance, and a feature slot once a year where one is given a chance to perform for 25 minutes.

At Sin É I get twenty minutes each week. That’s GOLD!

The crowd can be indifferent. People talk (loudly) when we perform. Which is why, it feels good when someone pays attention. I know I’ve worked hard to earn it and that it wasn’t given for free.

In four months in 2026, I’ve been on stage 40 times. I’ve counted because I track it on a spreadsheet. Helps me pick myself up on off-days, and keeps me grounded when I’ve done well.

Yesterday went well. There were some new folks who got on stage for the first time, and it was fun to cheer them on. I am grateful each time I have an attentive audience, and it is as fun to be that attentive audience member for those trying their hand at being on the stage.

There was an Italian couple on a first date who enjoyed my set. I could see both of them moving and clapping along to the beat. That lifted up my spirits. They spoke to me after I was done and then left hand in hand soon after. I’m so happy for the two of them.

I left Sin É to cross the Liffey and go from the north to the south to get my bus home.

As I stepped out of the pub, I heard a man shouting loudly. Clad in an off white t-shirt and matching pants, he was unleashing rage. Red-faced. Frothing at the mouth. Teeth clenched. If a baby were to do what this guy was doing, I’d call it petulance.

This wasn’t a baby, it was a grown-ass man in his 30s. I called it aggression. I wondered who he was shouting at. I walked past him briskly, avoiding eye contact because I didn’t want to engage with him.

A few metres ahead, I saw a woman sitting by the side of the road. She had the same matching off-white coloured clothing. She was sobbing. I stopped and asked her if she was okay and if she needed help.

I kept my distance from her when I spoke to her. She waved me away as she kept crying.

I’m hesitant to involve myself in a lovers’ spat. However, there was this voice at the back of my sober head telling me to be around a little distance away, just in case.

I crossed the road to Grattan Bridge. I was observing things from the corner of my eye. The man walked towards her. He was still loud, but not as loud as before.

They exchanged words. The temperature between them went down a notch.

I’m not proud of saying this but I will anyway.

I confess there have been times in the past where I’ve displayed my indignation and rage by raising my volume. I had been a version of that grown-ass man displaying aggressive behaviour after having drank a little more than I should have.

Today I know that behaviour of mine was rooted in deep insecurities, and it came from a place of not loving myself enough. That hurt the people I loved. I regret that.

It’s easy to be angry at someone else when the same feeling of anger is often directed inwards with greater intensity through negative and harmful self-talk.

My inner critic is a bigger asshole than yours.

A couple of minutes passed. Things between the couple seemed less contentious.

He held her hand as they walked towards the bus stop.

She had tears streaming down her eyes.

I got to the Civic Offices bus stop. The bus stop is right in front of Smock Alley Theater.

In February this year, one of my dreams came true when I got to stage my debut musical, a hip-hopera, at the Boys’ School venue in Smock Alley. Two shows. Both sold out.

Creating something and convincing someone that it is worth their time and energy isn’t easy.

However, if the multiverse theory holds good, I guarantee that Hari in other parallel universes is living his best life if he gets a chance to write and stage at least one show.

The words I wrote brought in €634. Expenses were higher. I spent more than I made.

If a dream can come true, how much is it worth?

My bus was due in seven minutes. I looked across the river. The couple wearing off-white outfits were nowhere to be seen.

Next to me stood a young couple, who looked like they had been slow dancing but someone had pressed the pause button. Both in their early 20s. Clad in black leather jackets. She had shorter hair than him. Both looked beautiful. Their foreheads pressed against each other. Eyes closed.

It was almost like I was in a Wim Wenders romance movie. And that Inconsist (Spotify link) by Olafur Arnalds was about to start playing in the background.

I gave them a little distance. Took out my Kindle. The Picture of Dorian Gray has beautiful prose. However, I was a little distracted.

It felt warm and fuzzy to see those two people so deeply into each other.

In a span of twenty minutes I’d seen three couples. One was happy on their first date. Another couple’s evening - it wasn’t so great. These two were restoring order, and restoring my faith.

I couldn’t help glance at them from the corner of my eye. She held his face in her hands. Ran her hands through his hair as they kissed fervently.

If the bus wouldn’t have arrived, they wouldn’t have stopped. I’m sure they were hoping for time to slow down as much as it possibly could.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have eternities turn into moments.

I’ve said hellos and goodbyes at airports and train stations. Our foreheads pressed against each other, tears streaming down my face (I’m the crier) as I cracked jokes referencing my favourite XKCD strip (Angular Momentum) about how I was going to start spinning counterclockwise like a Whirling Dervish to slow time down.

The space between those hellos and goodbyes are the reason I wish time machines existed.

The leather jacketed couple kissed one last time before they let go of each others’ hands. He left for the airport.

She walked away, tears streaming down her eyes.

If at all someone has to cry because of me in the future, I know which kind of tears I'd prefer.

Now I write once a month or so, if I am feeling up to it. I stopped enjoying writing this and I want to start again.

When my friend Sohan visited Dublin the second time, we had a wonderful discussion.

We were riding the bus into town on Thursday afternoon. Down jackets + sunglasses weather. Like Delhi winters with better AQI.

I was telling him how I was feeling trapped by the identity I had created for myself. I pride myself on my consistency and regular habits for a few things that matter to me. I have written for at least an hour each day since 1st January 2022. That’s a 1500+ day streak and counting.

There are some days when I feel lazy and I goad myself to write. I don’t regret any moment I’ve spent writing, but I feel afraid of taking a break.

Once upon a time, my identity was attached to who I was as seen by other people. Partner. Son. Friend.

My identity was attached to my profession. Sales Manager. (Sometimes to get high on the smell of my own farts, I call myself a “Sales Leader”).

My identity was attached to my interests. Even if I dabbled in them occasionally. Quizzer. Music journalist. Guitarist.

Now my identity is attached to my actions, and I call myself a writer only after I’ve finished my writing for the day.

Sohan has represented India in Ultimate (a.k.a Ultimate Frisbee). He’s been to London in 2016 and played in the World Championships. Now he coaches people in the Netherlands.

He spoke to me about the idea of overtraining.

Forcing myself to do something meaningful so much that it stops being fun.

The same thing happened with this newsletter. I began treating it as a way of playing to the gallery. The more I did that, the more performative I found my posts to be.

Once upon a time ago, I used to have a blog. I posted on it consistently. With no fucks given except for choosing to be in a state of play.

I stopped when I started to think of myself as someone who needed to project a certain image after graduating from B-school. I was afraid that prospective employers who looked me up by name might find me silly or irreverent.

Same situation today. With one exception. I am not sure who I am trying to impress with what I do here.

I have a draft graveyard of multiple posts that I began writing and then abandoned because “it didn’t read well enough for others to read it”, or so I said to myself.

So now I want to approach this newsletter with curiosity. Forget about outcomes. Hone in on the output. Completely detach from any sort of numbers (not that I cared much anyway, but I did look at it once in a while, but I’ll stop doing that entirely).

I will show up with discipline and write whatever might’ve been useful for a past version of me, or might help a future version of me look back with gratitude at having stuck around to do this.

Through that process, if reading what I write leaves you better than I found you, I wil consider it a job well done.

Let’s get back to being weekly, shall we?

Thanks for reading. I’m grateful to you. I know better. I’ll do better.

Your mind in a twist?

Are you looking for purpose?

Wonder why you exist?

Think of frogs you never kissed?

Opportunities missed?

Are you waiting for a sign?

You’re in luck. This is it.

See, nothing has meaning. These words don’t matter.

I’m shouting into a void where ideas get scattered.

So why should I care? Put myself out there?

Bare my heart and my soul, so I can make you aware?

I play a different game. I don’t do this for fame.

I’m in a league of my own. Win or lose? All the same.

The only thing I claim, with my purpose and my aim is that my words will move you and make you exclaim.

They’ll help you reclaim a part of you that’s sleeping.

Something you’ve suppressed. From all of us you’ve been keeping.

Let it out. Express. Make a plan. I say please.

If I can, so can you. You can do it with ease.

A job pays the bills, insures our health and our teeth.

It’s all pretty neat, so we stifle what’s beneath.

We’ll soon get to double, maybe treble our wage.

A comfortable bubble, will soon turn into a cage.

You have a nine-to-six to get your daily bread.

Do you feel trapped? In a fix? Does it feel tough?

Then instead of waiting in vain to find the right time, remember this - you’re a STAR. Shine bright from six-to-nine.

Your journey won’t be easy. It’s not a straight line.

You’ll stumble. Falter. Fumble. Feel disinclined.

Yet, this will pay off. I promise.

In fact, I’ll be right up front when you’re the opening act.

This is my message in a bottle.

It is a port in the storm.

Open up. Don’t throttle. Drink up. Feel warm.

You’re capable of so much more, you see?

Get going. Move your ass to where your heart wants to be.

You are worthy of love. Worthy of praise.

Your talents are unique. You astonish. You amaze.

Go on. Say YES! See your magic unfold.

Take a shot. Be brave. Be bold. Strike gold.

If something you do or say, can make someone else’s day, then they might do more than they did before for us in other ways.

A little thing you do can be so big, you might be surprised.

It starts as one ripple. It can make the ocean rise.

Turn your setbacks into strengths. Script your own pages.

Tell your stories at length. Leave your trace in many spaces.

Let your voice reverberate in hard to reach places.

Your presence felt by many, though you’ve not seen their faces.

I thank you in advance, for taking these steps.

Our world needs your stories. Please. They’re not secrets to be kept.

Remember this for when you’re striving hard, day and night.

Your name will light me up, before it’s up in lights.

Your name will light me up, before it’s up in lights.

Keep going. You’ve got this. I love you.

The first time I went to an open mic, I choked.

I remember this vividly. This was in August 2022.

I was at first floor of the International Bar in Dublin at the Circle Sessions. The Circle Sessions is an open stage event that takes place every Monday, and attracts a wide range of artists.

Singer-songwriters, comics, slam poets, bands, and on occasion, the odd folks that just stand on stage and talk to people without any prep.

They got guts. That’s the kind of bravery that still eludes me.

Although, I’ve gotten braver since the first ever time I went to an open mic.

The event is called an open stage, rather than an open mic because there is no mic and no sound system. It is a room where the audience sits and truly locks-in and pays attention.

Someone paying attention can be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, as a performer on stage, the audience’s attention is helpful validation of the quality of work.

On the other hand, when someone is paying attention and is fully locked-in, they can notice every fumble, every unenunciated word, every mis-step.

There’s no hiding. Being on that stage is a different kind of nudity.

Remember the name

I walked up to the host on my first evening ever and said my name.

Thought Brownie.

I didn’t own the name enough to say it with confidence like I do now.

Now, I have a website and songs released on streaming services, and have plenty folks across Dublin call me Brownie, and the name feels a lot more like me.

I do get the occasional follow-up question from good natured folks - “What is your REAL name?” and in those instances, I’ve been figuring out how to respond.

Sometimes, it feels the same way as being asked “Where are you REALLY from?”

I suppose the people who ask are trying to be nice and PC. I understand why they might feel a sense of discomfort calling a person with a majestic tan like mine Brownie, but that’s not really my problem to manage.

Especially since I enthusiastically consent to being called Thought Brownie / Brownie. A few friends call me Thought.

That’s a clever workaround and makes me giggle each time I hear it, and that’s made me call people with two artist names by their first name.

For instance, I have a friend / fellow rapper whose artist name is Average Joe.

I call him Average (even though he’s got a PhD in math)

Back to Choking at the Open Mic

I watched all the performers at that first open mic, as they went through a bunch of stories and songs.

A person cracked racist jokes about Chinese people and Indian people. He got booed.

Someone else in his 60s with fully tattooed sleeves told a few tales.

A spoken word poet shared a few of her words, despite forgetting her lines, trailing off and then starting from the beginning. The audience was kind and encouraging, allowing her the opportunity to recover and resume.

Almost at the very end, my name was called out.

The room was dark because only the stage is lit up. So when the host said “Thought Brownie” a couple of times, and nobody responded, he shrugged, kept the piece of paper with my name aside and moved on.

I didn’t know what came over me in that moment.

I felt paralysed.

I felt surprised. I tried to rationalise.

Was my sense of confidence a clever disguise?

Did I still care about what strangers thought?

Afraid of being judged seemed to matter quite a lot.

On the bus ride back home, I wrote a song that features in my debut album. It’s appropriately called “Nervous” (listen on the streaming platform of your choice).

It ends with the words:

I spent most of my time, in this day and age.
With my thoughts locked-in. My mind was my cage.
I wrote my way out, page after page.
I’ll step up, engage. Grab the mic. Take the stage.

Today, I write this after having attended 16 open mics in 2026.

And yes, I track what I do, where I perform, and give myself notes to get better - all on a spreadsheet.

I’m chill on the streets and a freak in them spreadsheets.

Each time I step up, I am still nervous. I’ve got a few more pre-show rituals (including drinking a lot of water before I get on stage).

The nerves don’t go. They remain.

However, that feeling at the pit of my stomach is replaced with a feeling of warmth in my heart a few seconds after I begin rapping.

That state of flow, of letting go is one that I now crave as much as possible.

I waited for two years after that initial choking incident before I went back to an open mic, and I haven’t stopped.

This post is a reminder for me (and you) that we all stumble, we all fumble, we all fall, we all falter.

Try again, fail again, and learn to fail better.

Keep getting better, till our days run their course.

Me? I’ll be my best ever, the day I’m a corpse.

And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow I shall play.

Thank you Universe, for gifting me this day.

Once upon a time ago in 1965, Bob Dylan took to the stage at the Newport folk festival. The crowd had been waiting for him. They couldn’t contain their excitement. He had brought the house down when he performed there in 1963 and 1964.

Dylan had been named the “Spokesman of a generation”.

He had released his fifth studio album. He was a fan favourite. He had already written songs like Blowing in the Wind, Mr. Tambourine Man and With God on Our Side.

His “resume” was extensive. He was only 24.

When he performed in 1965, he was booed off stage by the same crowd that had been rooting to see him all evening.

Electric Dylan

The Newport festival was for folk music. Folk music, at its core, is about stories put to music. It has been seen as music that belongs to everyone (folk comes from the German “Volk” - meaning all the people).

Folk music was based on traditions and customs. Imagine wandering minstrels, regardless of where in the world, traveling with their instruments from place to place, telling stories and regaling audiences so they can get a warm meal and a place to rest their weary heads.

The Newport festival was seen as a contemporary revival of this art form. All those who stepped on stage performed with acoustic guitars and other traditional instruments like banjos and harmonicas.

In the midst of all this, Dylan stepped on stage with an electric guitar and with a band. He played a bunch of songs, including “Like a Rolling Stone”.

According to some people, “half the audience was electrified, and the other half was electrocuted.”

Check out the live records if you can. You can hear the audience cheer and boo Dylan.

In the party that goes on in my head, I imagine the conversation between Dylan and the audience go something like this:

Audience: “Give us pure folk music. Play us songs on the acoustic guitar! Electric instruments are not traditional!”

Dylan: “K.”

A Liminal Life

There comes a time, in every person’s life when they are faced with daunting choices.

Okay, okay, not just “a time”. I was just being dramatic. Facing daunting choices is something that can happen more than just once.

There come plenty of times, in every person’s life when they are faced with daunting choices.

Invariably, some paths are easy, well known and well worn.

Others are challenging, not as easily visible and uncertain.

Here’s what I’ve figured out through my own wonderful journey, one where I intuit that I’m way past the mid-way point. I have spent more time doing life than I have left, and there’s a yearning to turn everything up to 11, and not fade away gently into the dying light of the darkest night.

Certainty is a myth. Comfort is a myth. We default to speeding through liminal spaces because the in-between can feel disorienting. I should know. I treated the in-between spaces like commute. Something to get through to get to the other side.

Until I realised life itself is a liminal space. In some sense, we are constantly in motion from the time we take our first breath until we’re finally done.

There’s no glory in resting on one’s laurels, or choosing comfort and certainty when you can instead treat life like Stardew Valley [PS - Edition 17 of this newsletter has more on that].

S-Curves

I have a business degree and enough time spent in the corporate world to spout a few concepts and ideas in businessy jargon to prevent you from zoning out and doomscrolling Linkedin.

Stay with me. I’ll make it worth your while.

The S-curve (a.k.a the Sigmoid curve if you want to sound cool) shows the evolution of industries. It stresses the need for constant reflection and innovation to grow and evolve.

When companies don’t course correct and evolve, once successful industries and businesses invariably tend to decline.

Simply put, when things starts to get smooth and easy, organisations are faced with two choices.

Continue along the well known and well worn paths. Or shake things up to embrace uncertainty.

Industries and companies that choose comfort and certainty eventually end up in decline. Those that embrace voluntary discomfort and take risks on the back of a strong existing foundation tend to grow and evolve, to scale new heights.

S-curves for Individuals

What is seen in the business world can also apply to individuals who choose to play and take calculated risks.

Think about this - how long can a person keep growing in the same profession without feeling like a fossil?

I know there are rare exceptions like Jiro Ono, who recently turned 100, and still dreams of Sushi.

In the professional world, where companies want to make as much money as possible while spending as little as possible, individuals that stay for a long time on the well-worn path tend to get expensive for the firm.

Let there be no illusions about the fact that from the lens of a corporation, and especially those who hold power, everyone is a resource. Just another line on an excel sheet.

Some individuals who stay long might face an internal crisis of faith, because greener pastures can be seen outside their window, and yet they hesitate to take the leap. I’ve been there a few times in my 20s when I lacked clarity, confidence and courage.

Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to be managed out from my job post-burnout to embrace uncertainty and YOLO the shit out of life.

I recognise how when I try taking risks, I might land flat on my face and be a laughing stock, but I’m done caring what other people think.

I’d rather play in the arena and fail spectacularly doing what makes me feel alive, instead of being who I once was - a comfortable spectator smirking in the sidelines watching others play and live their dreams out.

Before Dylan could slip down the “dying” section of the S-curve on his journey as a acoustic-folk artist, he went electric and started scaling new heights. Regardless of what his fans said or did.

If you’ve read this far, thank you.

Take a shot. Be brave. Be bold. You might strike gold. And if not, you’ll still have great stories to tell.

After all, we’re all just stardust and stories.

Epilogue

32 years later, Bob Dylan returned to play at the Newport Folk Festival in 2002.

He sported a wig and a fake beard.

Labels and awards are best taken with a grain of salt. They are opinions and judgements. Art is beyond labels and opinions and judgements. Art is sacred. (Most of it anyway. I still have reservations about mumble rap. The grumpy old man within needs to surface ever so often.)

“Like a Rolling Stone”, the same song that got Dylan booed off stage in 1965 is now considered one of the greatest songs of all time.

Silver linings in post-apocalyptic hellscapes

Once upon a time, I lived and worked in a post-apocalyptic hellscape known to us as Gurgaon / Gurugram.

Yes, grapes are sour. I didn’t enjoy living there and as a result, I choose to rant.

In hindsight, it wasn’t all bad.

One massive silver lining was that I had friends from B-school who were kind enough to invite me to their parties and social gatherings. I had colleagues whose company I enjoyed, though the work itself was boring.

Boring beyond words.

Work that was packaged in a series of abstract terms that those in senior positions used to confound customers and employees alike. Nobody dared say that the emperor has no clothes.

I kept my mouth shut for the most part. I was an analyst with an education loan, and while I had no massive hopes and dreams from that job or my time there, I did feel left behind when friends were finding partners, settling down, making progress in their jobs and on the surface, having a lot of fun.

On the other hand, there was yours truly. I was mostly alone. I often felt lonely.

There were other silver linings too.

On some evenings, when people were allocated to cabs on our commute back home, I’d ask to sit with Vinay, my favourite cab driver, and have him drop me off last even though I lived the closest to the office.

That’s because after driving around for 90 minutes, he and I would go to the alcohol shop near my home and have a beer each with peanut masala and garlic chicken. My treat. After which he drove home. Vinay used to tell me all the fun and naughty things his three children were up to. I got to listen to stories of his life and got good company.

As an analyst, I had to spend most of my time wading through docs, PDFs and spreadsheets, I had to make reports and create surveys.

What’s in a name?

I used to work for a firm named Corporate Executive Board. It has since been acquired by Gartner.

I was hired in my role when I received a job offer at B-school. It was late 2009 / early 2010. The financial crisis was in full bloom. Jobs that paid well enough to afford a reasonable quality of life while paying off my education loan were hard to come by.

I hadn’t heard of the company name until they showed up on campus. I applied because I just wanted a job. Plenty of us were whoring ourselves out because we had to make bank.

If 2010 Hari knew how 2025 Hari was ostensibly going be chill as fuck and take a pre-retirement break to figure his shit out, he would’ve popped a vein because of extreme stress.

When I finally got a job offer and signed out of the placement process, I was overjoyed.

I called my Mum to tell her that I had a job. This is that place in my life when I felt compelled to challenge my buddy, Billy who wrote a play in which his character Juliet said “Yo what’s in a name?”

Me: Ma, I’ve accepted a job offer and now I get to chill!

Mother: Congrats, where will you work?

Me: In a company called Corporate Executive Board.

(prolonged silence)

Mother: Listen, the job market is tough. It is okay if you don’t get a job soon. Wait it out. Don’t make things up to make us feel at peace.

Another friend of mine referred to the firm I worked at as “GNC” (Generically Named Company).

ConfirmIT sucked in 2010

One of the tasks I was entrusted to do was prepare a lengthy survey for respondents to take. Respondents were part of the Fortune 500. The survey hoped to find out how respondents were looking at tech infrastructure spends over the next five years.

What that means in simple terms is - how much money were they hoping to spend on technology? What were they going to spend it on?

Fifteen years ago, words like cloud computing, public, private and hybrid cloud, telepresence, bring your own devices, multifactor authentication etc were being thrown around the way people now talk about all things AI.

Humans and their fascination for obfuscating buzzwords will never change.

The survey had to be done on a software called ConfirmIT. The firm I was working for had got a license.

I had been struggling with the software, because the 2010 version wasn’t designed keeping in mind the needs of a hapless analyst who was good at finding faults outside of him and was eager to get the fuck out of the office as soon as possible.

After many hours of designing something, it all somehow got erased and I had to start from scratch.

Way late in the evening, hunched over my desk, tearing my well-groomed cut-once-a-month hair out, I hit peak exasperation.

I wrote a tweet which said - “ConfirmIT sucks so bad, it should be named Surveydonkey.”

The ugly side of Online Reputation Management

I went back home, ready to re-do the survey the next day.

When I got to the office the next day, I was asked to go meet the head of HR.

I was not looking forward to that conversation.

Within my first month of joining the firm, she had said to me - “You are jumping around a lot, mind it.” or something to that effect. It translates better in Hindi. It sounded like a threat, but also wasn’t, implying that she had serious issue with me being cheerful.

I then began to dress sober AF, keep my head down and avoid eye contact with most folks.

(You may have experienced it too. Have someone with more power in a firm you worked in choose to exercise their authority over minions in places and spaces they didn’t really need to.

I hope you’ve not turned into one such person yourself. If you have, there’s still time to turn the tide.)

My boss was also in the HR head’s cabin with her. On the audio conference call (yeah 2010 didn’t have video calls), my boss’ boss and another higher-up. This was me in the room with highly paid people in Gurgaon, London and DC.

I walked in not knowing what I did but with an “I didn’t do it please don’t fire me” look on my face.

HR: “Did you write a tweet saying ConfirmIT should be called Surveydonkey?”

Me: “Yes I did.”

HR: “Why did you do it?”

I explained the struggle I had with the software, not knowing where the conversation was going.

Guy in London: “Someone from the ConfirmIT team saw your tweet. They took a screenshot and sent it to [some other highly paid important person at the firm I worked in]. The ConfirmIT team is not happy. They want you to delete the tweet and send them an apology note.”

I deleted the tweet.

I sent them an apology note. I didn’t mean a word I said in that.

I stand by 2010 Hari. ConfirmIT sucks. They should’ve named it Surveydonkey.

That’s the only label that I can pick for myself that feels right.

I’ve had multiple labels attached to me.

All about them labels

Some of them based on relationships that I’ve had with fellow human beings. Son. Partner. Parent. Student. Mentor. Friend. Enemy. Boyfriend. Lover.

Some of it based on professional identities I’ve donned at different points in my life. Programmer analyst. Software engineer. Operations lead. Artist manager. Music journalist. Sales manager. Resource.

The thing with labels, especially those that emerged based on the things that I do with me time have eventually felt limiting. Almost like I’ve been boxed in.

Once upon a time in 2017 when I lived in Hyderabad, I used to work in a sales operations role.

I can see how that sounds abstract. Please allow me to make it concrete.

I was responsible for ensuring that my team setup and ran online advertising campaigns for our customers. The sales team asked the customers for money. Once customers agreed, my team took over the work and found the best way to allocate money across different online advertising products to deliver the results that customers expected.

There were a few numbers that mattered. To the firm I worked for - we had to hit revenue targets. We had to keep an eye on the total number of dollars spent on advertising by our customers. Underneath that, there was another number that mattered - one referred to as CPRD (cost per revenue dollar - how many cents are being spent to make each dollar).

For our customers, it was RoI (return on investment) or RoAS (return on advertising spend).

I had been in my role for 3.5 years. I had been promoted within the first two years of joining the firm. I felt like the cat’s whiskers. It felt good to be ahead of the curve for once, after having spend over 30 years feeling like I was playing catch-up with my illustrious, smart, talented and accomplished peers.

(I didn’t yet know that comparison is the thief of joy. Thankfully, I know now. It is highly likely that me telling you this won’t make a difference unless you’ve got lived experience to help you understand how racing is fun only when you’ve learnt to be still.)

I was constantly told how everyone advances and moves on to find new opportunities, and that’s the way to build a good career. Which way was I to run?

From sales operations, I wanted to move to the marketing team.

I was in awe of the folks that worked to tell great stories that touched hundreds of millions of lives, and convinced consumers and businesses alike that the technology products my firm made were life-changing.

For what it is worth, they are and I continue to be blown away till this date. Gotta give props and love, even to those we call ex. Game recognises game, after all.

I applied for jobs in Singapore. In the US. Heck, I even applied for jobs in Gurgaon because I wanted to be in the team so bad. I offered to do a double role - one where I was open to doing my job and stretching to do a second role to prove how I was worthy.

Like I said, I was a ho for the marketing team.

My interviews went well. I had good conversations with folks in those various teams. However, I always fell short. Every time, just before the conversation closed, the common refrain I heard was - “Yo you are awesome, we only wish you had a little more marketing experience.”

I couldn’t tell if they merely were being polite, or being genuine about what they said.

Reminds me of a conversation among the Diamond Dogs in Ted Lasso:

“How can you tell if a woman likes you or if she’s being nice to you?”

“You can’t.”

I gave up on applying for those roles after almost a year’s worth of trying. In that year, I kept telling myself stories.

Stories that I wasn’t good enough for that team. Which then turned into stories that I wasn’t good enough in general.

This is raw and real shit that I hope none of you have had to go through as part of your self-talk. And if you have, hugs to you. You are not alone.

I kept beating myself up for falling short. For decisions I took previously that prevented me from having more marketing experience.

Thankfully, better sense prevailed eventually.

However, I needed a place where I could channel the energy that emanated from a part of me that was innately obsessive.

Obsession is a many splendoured thing

Actually, it is not.

However, this is my way of making peace with who I am, and trying to turn those parts of my personality that are considered manufacturing defects into something that can be of service to me, and perhaps to those around me.

I have been obsessed, to the point of near-religious fervour on multiple occasions in my life. As a teenager, it was about reading and re-reading books.

There was a point in time when I read Exodus by Leon Uris at least twenty times because of it being such a beautiful story. My love for an underdog story through that book filled my head with a narrative that obfuscated the harsh realities of life experienced by people caught in the Israel - Palestine conflict.

That bubble eventually burst when I made a trip to the West Bank in Christmas 2010 and I found out that reality was different from the fairytale that Leon Uris had written.

I was obsessed with work at my last job for eight years, devoting most of my life force towards excelling and chasing ratings and milestones.

I’ve loved in a manner that I now recognise, in hindsight, might’ve felt intense, excessive and possibly stifling for someone not used to me.

I’ve been obsessed with Hamilton, the musical. Enough to know all the words, and then to pick up a pen and write my way out and drop my own album because all that energy needed some place to go, if not for which I’d have been clawing the insides of my mind with increasingly sharp nails.

1430 days and counting

Now I’ve landed on my latest obsession, and this might last a while. It has actually lasted 47 months so far.

I know it has been 1431 days since 1st January 2022 because I have written every day since then. This is not a flex.

I did feel like flexing when I wrote 750 words every day for a month in 2022. Then, at the 100 day milestone. Perhaps when I got to 500. I no longer remember. Or care.

Now, I get zero dopamine hits from speaking about this to anyone. I do get my jollies from writing 750 words each day.

My buddy Aristotle was on the money.

We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence is not an isolated act. It is a habit.

I do not claim to be an excellent writer. That shit is subjective. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

However, I claim to be excellent at just sitting my ass down to crank out words consistently in increasingly coherent sentences, for my own sake.

Sometimes, I end up getting blocked. My brain sometimes doesn’t brain well enough to match the increasing expectations I have of it.

The only way I know how to solve writer’s block is, no prizes for guessing, to write about it.

And I did.

Writer’s Block

My latest single, Writer’s Block, is now out on all streaming platforms. Please listen when you can. While it is about being blocked while writing, it is also intended to help you feel less alone when you’re stuck with something that matters to you.

I see you. I love you. I am cheering you on. Keep going!

Props and credits to the following beautiful people who helped bring this track to life:

Cover art - Sangeetha Alwar (Instagram)
Music - Vlad Tavaniuk
Recording, mixing and mastering - McJordan Amartey (Instagram)

Song Lyrics

If you’re listening to the track on Spotify, lyrics take a while to sync. Here they are.

Dropped a whole album
Then I got to this track
Got struck by writer’s block (writer’s block)
Sneak attack
Rack my brain for ideas
I’m never laid back
Pour concrete in
This hole abstract

On days I feel stuck
I take stock
Down on my luck
My flow has stopped
This feeling sucks
Still I show up
I put in the work
And my thoughts unblock

Been hitting a wall
My fingers glued
Progress stalled
Delight subdued
I begin to recall
How my words accrued
I started small
When I debuted

I will never ever fall
I refuse
To feel appalled
Cause I have viewed
That by default
The verse I brewed
Had me enthralled
My mood renewed

Gravity pulls me down
makes me stop, give up
I’ll wait, be surprised
Goodbye self-doubt
Start leaning in
And all throughout
These bars they rain
The rid the drought

These words pour out
Show me the way
Dispel my doubt
Drive them away
I won’t perform
I’m in a state of play
These seeds they sprout
Four lines each day

They blossom, they bloom
Form the garden of my soul
Give me shade, give me air
Give me self control
Give me space to stroll
In these moments that I stole
I’m no longer jailed
Through my bars I made parole

I’m the master of my fate
Of my soul I’m the captain
In the walls of my mind
Lies the room where it happens
Get to slow down time
So my thoughts are captured
Every word
Every line
Every chapter
Rapture

The dry droll drama
drudgery and dread
Driven away down the drain
Replaced by dreams instead
Drawing strength from love
I won’t be daunted
On the darkest of my days
Love is all I ever wanted

I unlock the key
To set myself free
These words keep pouring
Straight out of me
I no longer hesitate
Though I don’t have a clue
I don’t know what I’m writing
Till I get to see it through

If I don’t get to write
I’m guaranteed to sink
I’m the Thought Brownie
It’s in my name, so I think
I’m present
Not tense
Locked in
Won’t blink
Won’t flinch
In sync
Distilled
Distinct

I refuse to stop
My excuses depleting
I’m outside my muse’s door
And I listen to her breathing
I explore the unknown
With the light that she shone
And through that I find the words
To make you feel less alone

I’m not a one and done
Won’t succumb to the slump
Sophomoric no more
My discontent undone
With a pen, with a paper
Found my place in the sun
Though this song maybe over
My work has just begun

Thank you for reading. I am grateful. You complete me.

Catch Daniel Fernandes live on the last two shows of UK / EU tour. He’s a fucking legend!

If you are not open to reading a lengthy review of a stand-up show, do check him out when he performs in Reading (UK) on Saturday 29th November (ticket link) and in Amsterdam on Sunday, 30th November (ticket link) or tell your friends.

Long version:

Imagine this.

You sit for almost 100 minutes, riveted to your chair, occasionally awwing, mostly guffawing as a person shares raw and real stories of their life.

You laugh at the most unexpected moments.

Moments when he makes you see things as neither good nor bad, but just as they are. And then gives these moments a sharp comedic spin. Like the perfect amount of salt to make a dish taste just right.

You laugh loudly when he singles you out and gently mocks you for saying “Yeah” with unbridled enthusiasm, because like he once did, you also contemplated ending things in one fell swoop while standing on a balcony.

(Actually, it was on a terrace at a friend’s home in Indiranagar in September this year, but why let facts get in the way of a good story?)

It helps that you lack the courage to deal with the pain of an unsuccessful jump. It helps that you have the courage to say “fuck it, let’s roll the dice a little more and see what happens.”

It helps that when that terrace balcony moment passes, you feel grateful for being simultaneously cowardly and courageous.

Let everything happen,
Beauty and terror.
Just keep going,
No feeling is final.

- Rainer Maria Rilke (a gangsta Austrian poet born in 1875)

You get life lessons from an incredibly fit, young and good-looking 40+ year old. This guy:

You get life lessons about feeling grateful to be alive, about giving folks in the previous generations a pass for all the ways in which they fucked us up without intending to, and about how the time that we have left, means much more than we might give it credit for.

Most of Danny’s comedy that I had seen on Youtube was based on edgy, smart AF takes on politics, religion and sex. However, this time, though he did have a few jokes about politicians, the stories he told us were far more personal and philosophical.

Fathers and Sons and Daughters

I have had a difficult relationship with my father.

He had to grow up, while helping me grow up. He made mistakes. I learnt from a few of those. I repeated a few of those (but have mostly been making new ones). The relationship between us suffered. Some of our relationships likely suffered too.

Life quakes that made me aware of my own mortality helped me find more love within, and made me stop looking for love from the outside.

I eventually managed to let go of the need for parental approval for who I had become.

Now it is all about giving my father more love and a lot more leeway for who he is.

I learnt that if you say “I love you” to an Indian father from the previous generation 76 times, they will say one back. The ratio then improves from 1:76.

It has become 1:3 now. There seems to be less reluctance to say the L-word.

My biggest apprehension at becoming a parent, once upon a time, was that I was afraid I’d treat my child like my father treated me at his worst moments. That fear passed. So did the need to hold onto past grudges that I once had for how he showed up towards me during his lowest moments.

Now, my biggest apprehension is that while the love in my heart keeps increasing day by day, time keeps running out, both as a son to my parents and as a father to my daughter.

Life, after all, is the leading cause of death.

Danny reminded us of the fact that real life is happening as we speak, in the space between orgasm and death.

Just between you and me, immortality is overrated.

Better missed and celebrated than persist and be hated.

Comics and Rappers

Danny mentioned how he’s trying, like many other comics, to eviscerate his trauma for money. He said he’s doing this rather than going to a therapist’s office paying them.

When I step back to look at Danny’s set, he deals with a bunch of difficult life shit. The kind of things most people fail to process by burying things deep within, or share through low-effort reposting of reels, or pay others to listen to.

Danny turned every one of these into comedic gold.

Rappers are the only ones who have it worse than comics, he said.

My eyes lit up. (For those who came in late, my trauma response is to write and perform hip-hop.)

Danny seemed into rap and hip-hop. So I hoped his take was nuanced. After all, he began his set with a track from Biggie (Hypnotize) as he walked on stage and ended with a track from Black Thought (Strangers featuring A$AP Rocky and Run the Jewels).

I was curious what our man was going to say.

(I edited this bit out because I don’t want to spoil things for you and I’d rather you watch it.)

He did say that most rappers must’ve been through really hard times.

On the one hand, I was giggling and on the other hand, I was wondering if there were actually any rappers that chose to do their thing after enduring normal childhoods or halcyon adult lives.

I must clarify how I’m grateful to have had mugging lessons and marks cards and slides and spreadsheets as part of my life’s evolution, rather than to have developed a penchant for guns and gangs and gold.

It is true that I process all my physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and existential challenges through verse. I started to write and chase writing-adjacent pursuits because of a health shock, that made me painfully aware (literally) of impending mortality.

It was a moment that changed all moments that came after.

It was a time when mortality stopped being something that happens to someone else, and was something was coming for me too.

That feeling of the clock counting down with each beat of my heart occasionally makes me afraid of staying still for too long.

Eventually, the total perspective that I’m one of eight billion people on this pale blue dot trapped in a sunbeam, and that I am utterly insignificant on the cosmic scale helps my low-level panic attacks dissipate into nothingness. Temporarily at least.

I couldn’t help resist thanking him while shaking his hand after the show and telling him I’m a rapper.

Familiar, Intimate, and Novel

I confess that I half expected Danny to dwell on politics, current affairs and the state of things in India. His wit and observations were what drew me to his stand-up.

At the same time, I am grateful that he’s written material that touched me deeply, and helped me re-examine my core values.

My experience of great art is based on it being familiar, intimate and novel.

Danny spoke of his parents. We all have (or had) parents. We’re familiar with them.

He dwelt on a time when his family had gone to dinner. Family dinners and the things that take place while we’re breaking bread with our loved ones are an intimate experience.

The twists and turns that Danny took us through were a novel take on things familiar and intimate to us.

He wrapped it all up in stories that ended up being so deeply personal, that we could all relate to a similar experience in our own lives.

There were two favourite moments of mine during his show.

The first was when he said that there are two types of people in the audience.

Those that get his jokes because they’re deeply relatable. Some of us in our late 30s / early 40s having navigated similar challenges.

And those for whom all these life events are yet to happen, as a result of which this show of his was ahead of their time. And that they should watch it again in the future when it is relevant.

The other thing he said that I loved was - “I write and perform the jokes. I am on the stage. I am on this side of the line. You are on that side of the line.”

I thought he was going to launch into characteristic self-aware flexing that he often does in his sets.

Instead he said - “You are on the other side. And you dear audience, you complete me.”

So let me take this moment to tell you all, dear readers, that if you’ve read all the way till here, I am grateful to you.

You complete me. I love you all.

I got badly burnt out at my big tech job.

While I was suffering from chronic health challenges, I did not get the kindness and grace I would’ve provided to someone in a similar situation. Instead I was managed out of my job by constantly being told I was not doing enough.

I wrote a song called “Burnout” to turn this experience into the best thing that happened to me.

To understand how I got here, let’s start at the very beginning.

It’s a very good place to start.

I began my professional journey in Bangalore, India on 1st September 2004.

I was a freshly minted engineering graduate who had been offered a job in an IT services firm. I was part of project teams that delivered software solutions to requirements that were outsourced from different parts of the world to India.

Since then, I have worked in a variety of jobs - as an analyst, a consultant, in client servicing at an agency, in a food and beverages firm, and most recently in operations and sales for internet advertising.

For more than twenty years, until 17th May 2025 when I wrapped up my decade long stint in big tech, I’ve felt deep dissonance with how much work governs the lives of people around me.

Most social interactions opened with people sizing each other up by asking what they did and which firm they worked for.

I used to judge others and to weigh them by external markers, because I experienced the same treatment and thought that this is the way the world is supposed to work.

My life was once designed around work.

I’d plan everything else around the margins of my day, ensuring that my professional side got the biggest and best parts of me.

I didn’t know better.

And yet, as I did this, I was trying not to be so deeply embedded in the Matrix.

Since I wore a younger man’s clothes, I have felt the need to compartmentalise my professional life. To not let it seep into the rest of me.

I dreamt of greener pastures while saying to myself that what I was doing was temporary.

Something that was necessary for me to do until I figured out what I’d finally do with my life.

In the meantime, I took upon myself to engage in a variety of side-hustles.

I played for bands. Managed a band. Wrote for a music magazine. Blogged. Had my own website. I tinkered around with tech that wasn’t job-related. I did it for fun. I co-produced and co-wrote a quiz show.

In the last few years, I began writing, performing, recording and releasing hip-hop tracks inspired by literature and philosophy under the nom de plume Thought Brownie.

I was inspired to pick the name thanks to a brownie I had in Amsterdam.

The brownie gave me the most profound thought I’ve had. It made me aware of how every time I have written, good things have happened in my life.

I’ve been BFFs with a chronic health challenge since 2021. While not ideal, the fact that this happened FOR me helped me start writing and performing hip-hop.

A second chronic health challenge emerged in 2024. I was unable to breathe properly, speak properly and I lost my sense of smell. That further led to headaches, to nausea and lack of sleep, all of which made me less energetic.

I was burning out because of overexertion with a heavy workload, depletion due to lack of time to rest, and misalignment between my core values and the nature of my job.

I was thinking and feeling in decades while my job needed me to act in quarters and by annual business and revenue milestones.

I was told by my employers that I wasn’t doing enough and put on a performance plan while I was ON sick leave, clearly designed to manage me out of my job.

Simultaneously, my health deteriorated to a point where I had to get sinus surgery in December 2024.

Every other option had been exhausted.

All through, I had been squirrelling away lines that represented my experiences.

“I’m so scared to fail,
My ego’s so frail.
I’ve thrown away my shots.
My time is for sale.

A future version of me
Has decades of tales,
Where I’m a legend
At drafting slides and mails.”

“It’s safer with the tribe,
In the flesh, or on Zoom.
I’m still on this island,
I’m safely marooned.

Fine dine on free fare
On most afternoons.
It is not a free lunch
And there is no spoon.”

“I’m not muting my colours
To be stuck in the swarm.
I’m not born to conform to
Your notions and your norms.

Thanks for making me feel
Like I don’t belong.
Now the voice inside
Sings a different song.”

“I’m told on repeat,
That I must feel elite.
But I’m seen as
Just a line on an excel sheet.”

Writing all this made me realise that even if my health had gotten better, my feeling of emotional exhaustion and burnout wouldn’t go away unless I took drastic actions, the kinds I hadn’t taken in my life before.

I decided to quit with no job lined up, which a younger version of me would’ve been petrified to do.

I’m trying to design a life better aligned to my core values. To show up with curiosity and lift myself and others up.

Choosing this path became obvious as the lines I had written expanded into a full story.

One of how I felt at the start of burning out, and how I can move towards more autonomy, roll the dice, and start believing in me.

Burnout was out on all streaming services on 1st November 2025.

I’d love for you to listen and share this song with someone who might relate.

Share one on one, on a whatsapp group, on Linkedin, Insta stories - whichever feels easiest for you.

Here’s the link to Burnout on ALL streaming services - https://lynkify.in/song/burnout/LsPnE2eC

(Linkify takes you to a page from which you can choose your preferred streaming service - Apple Music, Youtube, Spotify, Tidal, Deezer etc)

My songs are stories. So they start with the lyrics. My words draw inspiration from multiple sources - Leonard Cohen, Boston, Incubus, Sia, Robert Frost, Shakespeare’s MacBeth and so on.

I annotated the lyrics to make benefit someone similarly nerdy about song writing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yJnJ1ji5d9aTgnnsj-4Huhw-qTQqB6kZ95hnw37BZxY/edit?tab=t.0

If you no longer feel positive about a professional life you were once passionate about, chances are that you’re experiencing stress or burnout. I hope you feel less alone when you listen to my way of coping with this situation.

May all your days be filled with more autonomy, so today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow you’ll be free.

This is what it feels like to be lucky.

I love making music. I love listening to music. I love writing.

When these three immersive, therapeutic and life-affirming activities blend into each other, all the anguish and pain fade away into the background, and the need to beam my 52 hertz signal into the void quietens down for a while.

Parts of my existence start to feel like a Sony Bravia ad with colourful balls bouncing all over, accompanied by the soundtrack of Hoppipola by Sigur Ros.

Read my experience of seeing Hanumankind and Jason Mraz live in past editions.

Σtella 101

Trying to tell someone what it is like to experience a performance by Σtella is a tall order.

Not because I have a limited vocabulary. Quite the contrary.

I face the same challenge that most of her fans might have felt when trying to bring others into the fold.

If you ask them to explain to someone new what Σtella is all about, each person will likely have a different answer. Appropriately so.

Σtella performed to a sold out audience at The Sugar Club on Friday, 17th October 2025. This was her first time in Ireland, and when she said she loved it and that she wanted to be back, it did not feel like a platitude. It felt warm. It felt authentic.

That’s also the vibe that Σtella gave from the minute she stepped on stage with her band. She projected warmth and her energy on stage had an infectious sense of joie de vivre.

It is tough for me to classify Σtella’s music and art into a particular genre. That’s a great thing from my perspective. Boxing someone into a few labels is helpful for us humans as we try to bring order, and classify the information that we get through our senses. However, not being able to attach Σtella’s music to a particular genre or style compelled me to tune in further into what she was hoping to convey.

While Greek by birth, most of Σtella’s songs are in English and touch upon universal themes of love, loss, and longing.

Her audience at the Sugar Club was an eclectic one. We all started the concert sitting in our seats, or standing along the aisles on either side of the seating area. Within fifteen minutes of her set, the whole place had transformed into a party. People had chosen to step down near the stage, and from then on for the next hour it was a delightful celebration.

Here are five songs to get you started. I recommend these tracks knowing that I will listen to each of them intently, with delight, at least ten times.

Titanic - a smooth melodic whistle sound book-ended the track while the clean guitars and a funky bass groove got me swaying.

I am a lyrics person, and while I admit to being confounded by a string of names that Σtella mentions in the lyrics, three syllables at a time - “Caroline Margaret Laure Mae Susan J John Borie Julius Frederick Mrs Kate”, that doesn’t deter me from letting this track be a much welcome ear worm.

Is It Over - a song that held me in sway, with a story of how something ended much sooner than one would’ve hoped or imagined.

It is the opposite of a song of yearning, one of longing. “Fell out of love so fast, like a stone you throw.”

Sometimes such ends can be a good thing. Especially if good songs emerge from it. I’m glad it was over. For the sake of art, of course.

80 Days - an acoustic-ish ballad-ish track with nylon string sounds, slowed things down for me. “Pretty faces that knock on your door, you send them away like you sent them before” - an encouragement to let go of the rules, and to live a little, to crash and burn, past the point of no return.

An invite 2025 Hari will gladly sign up for.

Charmed - “Now you’re gone far away, far away. If you could, would you stay, would you stay with me?”

This song speaks of a certain longing, and has a certain sense of pathos to it. And yet, when it was being played by Σtella and her band, I was enjoying myself, because of how slick it all sounded when put together.

Charmed is probably the first track you will hear if you chance upon her profile on a streaming site.

Omorfo Mou - this one was all Greek to me. No prizes for guessing why.

And yet it turned out to be the song that I’d recommend the most. It is a song about suffering for love, of love taking an emotional toll and yet leaving you feeling like it is worth it.

To me, this track reinforces how humans can potentially have eight billion plus unique definitions for what love is and for all that they’d do in the name of love.

On the darkest of my days, love is all I ever wanted.

The melody, the instrumental arrangements and the bass groove will draw you in even more, now that you know this song was written at a heavy price. This was also Σtella’s second ever song written in Greek.

As someone who speaks a few languages with native proficiency, I can vouch for how certain concepts and ideas with strong cultural ties can only be felt and expressed lyrically with gravitas in their native language.

Σtella mentions this in an interview she gave, about how writing and singing in English feels lighter, because her connection to the words is less personal than it is in Greek.

If you’re a fan already, I hope you’ll share this review with others to help them discover a new genre-fluid artist that is so delightful to engage with.

And like me, if you’re new, welcome.

Σtella’s music will keep you charmed long after it is over.

When someone looks back at something they have experienced, they don’t judge it by its entirety. Instead, an experience is evaluated from its important moments.

We remember snapshots or photographs. We do not remember the full movie.

Researchers and psychologists who study this for a living say so. They call it the peak-end rule. You judge an experience by how it felt for you at its most intense point, and how it felt for you at the end.

A Breathtaking Concert

Speaking of endings, Jason Mraz ended his spellbinding solo acoustic show on a warm, wholesome and mellow note.

He made us all smile. He made us relax. He told us to breathe in deeply. To soak in all the goodness and joy the universe had to offer. To breathe out deeply. To let go of our worries, our stresses, the chatter in our brain that kept telling us all those stories that took us to places, in the past or in the future.

The present is a present, he said. Or maybe it was me. The entire show felt like a present from Mraz to a packed audience at the 3Olympia.

“Breathe in. Smile. Breathe out. Smile” he said, many times over. All of us obliged. Who doesn’t want to smile? Who doesn’t want to breathe? Who doesn’t want to forget about life for a while?

Mraz wrapped the post-encore part of his show up by saying - “If someone asks you how the Jason Mraz show was, you can answer in all honesty and say it was…..breathtaking.”

Watching and listening to music by Mraz has always lent a spring to my step. He’s that kind of artist and human being.

In my early 20s, I shared time with someone I once loved as we listened to ‘Clockwatching’ and ‘I’m yours’ on a loop.

She and I sang together in harmony, both of us smiling in unison as we stretched out the syllables “yours” in the chorus of Mraz’s most popular song, for a loooooooong time until we ran out of breath. The silence in the aftermath filled us with a warm and contented sigh.

And I was left with a goofy golden retriever grin on my face.

Many moons later, Mraz showed up on my TV thanks to Sesame Street. His song, “Let’s go outdoors” kept playing on loop along with “1,2,3,4” by Feist and “Don’t give up” by Bruno Mars, ensuring that when my child and I lived together, I did a good job of introducing her to wonderful artists in her early years.

I showed up at the concert with no expectations, other than to experience the kind of warm hug I felt each time I listened to ‘93 Million Miles’, ‘Curbside Prophet’, ‘Song for a Friend’ or ‘I Feel Like Dancing’.

Apposite, as my friend Tony Sebastian would say, considering I am going through a time in my life where I can do with every warm hug I can get.

Mraz had a simple setup for his show.

A single mic on a stand. A kick-drum effects pedal. Four on-stage monitors. A static backdrop that reminded me of stained glass windows painted by Mark Chagall.

From the minute he walked on stage, smiled at an appreciative audience and began playing, he had us move through a range of emotions.

Not that you need more evidence of the goodness and delight Mraz brings to people around him besides paying attention to his lyrics, though I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you the story of Ben and Ellie.

Ellie was sitting next to me, and while waiting for Mraz we got talking. She had an all access pass.

I asked her what her favourite thing about Jason was.

“You know, he’s a really good person.”

“Tell me more?”

“My husband Ben is part of his crew. They have all been together for more than ten years. They all work hard, enjoy the time they spend together. They’re like a tightly knit family and Jason holds them together like glue.”

Mraz showed us the importance of being earnest. Of being earnest with who we choose to be, how we choose to live and move through the world.

I walked in expecting a memorable concert from an artist and a showman who’s been in the business for three decades. I didn’t expect to be so moved by the part philosophy, part guided meditation and part life lesson session that came on top of the wonderful music that Jason had in store for us.

I went through the full range of emotions - I was grooving and moving to keep pace all through ‘You Fckn Did It’, laughing my ass off when he sang ‘Don’t Get A Tattoo On Your Face’, ugly crying when he performed ‘Song For A Friend’ and I snapped back to reality when he performed ‘The Remedy (I Won’t Worry)’.

Don’t get a tattoo on your face

‘Don’t get a tattoo on your face’, a song I hope every human hears before they take impulsive decisions, had lyrics that had me nearly fall off my seat.

“You can call the shots,
it’s easy if you’re hot.
You can grow your pubic hair,

run naked in the wild.
Please don’t compromise
that pretty smile.

A tattoo is a past you,
that is hard to erase.
Don’t get a tattoo on your face.

This song was cowritten by your Mom,
And sponsored by your in-laws,
and every future boss.”

“My second favourite thing about Jason, and I just realised it”, said Ellie, as soon as the applause died down for this song, “is that he’s so funny!”

First there was the word

Everything starts with the written word. First there was the word, and all that.

Jason Mraz gets it.

He loves to write. He spoke of how we can process all our emotions - the agony, the ecstasy, our pride, our prejudice, our rise, our fall, and everything else - through the process of writing.

He said that even if you have nothing to write about - just write that down. Say - “I have nothing to say”. Then you’ve said something and gotten that out of your system.

Wait a bit longer.

Keep waiting.

If you still have nothing to say, keep writing that you have nothing to say. You will keep writing the same thing for a bit longer until the pipes unclog.

There is always goodness within you that’s willing to be let out with the right kind of situation and the right kind of stimulation. It is important to create those conditions.

Mraz said he didn’t remember the last time he was in Dublin. Someone in the crowd reminded him that it was in 2011. He said he remembered the first time he was in Dublin. That he got dumped that day, and that folks in Dublin helped him cheer up and get him through the turbulence that he experienced.

Musicians are like birds.

There’s incredible diversity in the manner in which they express themselves, even if the starting points are similar - words may be written, notes may be arranged, instruments picked to fit the work of art that the musician is responsible for birthing.

Once born, these pieces of their soul float out into the vast river of creativity within the universe.

As people eager to experience art, we get to take a dip and immerse ourselves in this river of creative output, and ride the waves of emotions to feel less alone in the trials and tribulations and trauma and triumphs that we navigate in our day to day.

From A to Z

My favourite parts of Jason Mraz’s show?

When you were born, you took your first breath. You cried. And you took a shit.

When you die, you will take your last breath. You might also end up shitting as one final act of bodily eviction as your life evicts itself from your body.

In the space between the first and last breaths, between A to Z, lies everything.

Mr A-Z had choices that he used wisely. Through who he is and how he moves through the world, he helped fill up what went into that evening at 3Olympia from A to Z with his art, to create a space where he lifted us up and took us where we belong.

It was truly breathtaking.

One of those things is the way he says “I love you” to the people in his life. He says it to fellow men, and does so unabashedly, including when he calls people up and hangs up the phone.

I was smiling gleefully when I heard him share this on a podcast, because I had begun to do this since 2023. I started expressing my love for people in my life tentatively, and over time, I embraced the action wholeheartedly.

It is highly likely it made many of my fellow men uncomfortable. Made their assholes clench unexpectedly.

That’s their problem to deal with.

Heck, it made my own father squirm when I gave him frequent hugs and said I love you many times when we met in 2023 and in 2024. When we spent time this year, he seems to have made peace with the fact I have chosen to love relentlessly.

Another thing I admire Simon Sinek for is the two books of his that I have read.

Leaders Eat Last helped me understand how leadership and authority are privileges that are granted to serve others, rather than to hoard power and wealth.

It reinforced the notion I used to have about choosing to put others ahead of me, so long as my boundaries weren’t crossed and my basic needs for safety, comfort, autonomy, agency and sustenance were met.

Start with Why was also important.

All through life, my WHY, my purpose was either never clear to me. It was copied from someone else that I considered a role model.

For a long time, my purpose was one-dimensional. I aspired to climb the ranks in my corporate job. Career conversations evolved into:

“I want to be a director”.

“But why?”

“Everyone else wants to. Also, you are a director. You seem to be loaded.”

I wanted to accumulate wealth to retire early and then, ensure that the grind paid off so that I could finally, eventually, truly live that fabled life that I had earned through decades of making slides, writing emails and attending spirit crushing meetings about meetings about meetings.

I discarded that purpose. It stopped fitting me. The size of my heart and soul had grown and I needed something more appropriate to wrap around it.

I no longer choose to defer happiness to move it to an unknown future date. I refuse to squander my present for an uncertain tomorrow.

I understand both intellectually and emotionally why it is important to think ahead. To anticipate and plan worst case scenarios. To save money for a rainy day. To build for the future.

The worst feelings I’ve had in recent times have emerged from me saying to myself - “I didn’t expect that something like this could happen.”

However, I continued to feel extreme dissonance at the idea that today must be filled with sham and drudgery to attain paradise in the future.

It almost feels like a compressed version of how certain practitioners of organised religion say - “Suffer in this life gleefully - for only those who get fucked over badly will get access to heaven.”

To which I say - K.

My purpose is different now.

I found it through writing. Every time I have written, good things have happened to me.

I express this purpose through my track, “Best Reasons Ever” which dropped today, on my Mum’s birthday.

My reasons for choosing to live another day are the best ones I can come up with.

To be part of nature, to respect all life, and to celebrate the fact that I am alive by being as grateful as possible.

To move through the world with kindness and love (while preserving my boundaries and choosing not to take shit from anyone that wilfully chooses to hurt or harm me).

To leave things and people better than I found them to the best extent possible.

For my child.

For every past, present and future child.

To love relentlessly for if I love you, I am loving myself. (As our buddy Adi Shankaracharya once said in far more archaic language.)

To let go of external measures of success, and instead measure my life in goodness and the words that I get to share.

For in my afterlife, I’d like to look back and say - “Yup, that’s why I was there.”

Best Reasons Ever

The best parts of this track are the beats and music created by Vlad Tavaniuk, the stunning artwork designed by Sangeetha Alwar and the recording, mixing and mastering done by McJordan Amartey.

If you’d like to work with these amazing folks, please reach out and I will make the introductions.

Climb a high mountain
Go to the depths of the sea
Stare at the sky
Swim in rivers running free
Witnessing infinity
In each leaf of each tree
Another butterfly flutters by
Fills me with glee

Nature in its glory
Its beauty past compare
Makes my lungs swell with joy
When I breathe in the air
Why should I care?
Why must I be aware?
For the best reasons ever
Because it is there

My ego tends to zero
Yet I am so complete
I feel well rested
Though I lost all my sleep
My pulse in overdrive
When time slows to a crawl
I shut my eyes tight
And I still see it all

It hurts
And simultaneously feels warm
Through you I glimpse divinity
In human form
My life is made worth it
Every day, every minute
For the best reasons ever
Because you are in it

I discard all the rules
To amuse my muse
Go for growth not for glory
With contrarian views
Triangulating purpose
I’m acutely right obtuse
I’ll never be alarmed
I choose not to snooze

I’m propelled with pen and paper
Every day I prepare
As my muse guides my hand
Makes my verse self-aware
Measuring life in goodness
And the words I get to share
When I’m in my afterlife I’ll say
That’s why I was there.

Upcoming Gigs and New Music

Live performances:

9th October 2025 - featured act at Smithfield Creatives Open Mic.
Location: Board Dublin - D08 E1X9. Follow on Smithfield Creatives on Instagram.

This is the open mic that gave me my first shot. I am grateful that I get to be the featured act and get the stage for 30 minutes.

29th October 2025 - Breaking Sound
Location: Generator Hostel - D07 F2VF. This is the ticket link

Breaking Sound is a global initiative to help up and coming artists get in front of new audiences.

If you are in Dublin and either gig is of interest to you, I’d love to see you there!

New music:

My next track, Burnout drops on 1st November 2025. Watch this space!

When I visualise his question on a sliding scale, and use terms that qualified professional therapists do, I see Narcissism and People-Pleasing behaviour on either end of this spectrum.

I began pondering where exactly my head is at when I am getting to perform in front of an audience.

If you don’t know why I am asking myself this question, let me bring you up to speed.

The Story So Far

My parents named me Hari.

When I decided to write, record and perform stories in the form of hip-hop, I gave myself the name Thought Brownie.

This is because, among other things, I consider myself as a reasonably smart brown man. Also, Brownies are made in the oven. Despite facing immense heat, they still stay sweet and appealing. It’s possible that the heat they experience actually makes them better.

I resigned from my big tech job in February 2025. This was due to a combination of multiple factors.

In 2021 I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. It was the best thing that happened to me that year. While I had to change the course of my life to deal with chronic pain, immunosuppressant medication, fatigue and all the other perks and benefits of being part of this club, I also was privileged enough to come face to face with my own mortality.

Let me reassure you - I don’t yet suffer from any terminal disease besides the one that we call life.

However, I moved from an intellectual awareness of mortality as it happens to people around me (they are dead and will not come back) to a visceral awareness of mortality as it will happen to me someday (I will die and I am not coming back).

Having a good relationship with my death, and treating it as if I were going to meet a good friend in the future brought me immense peace, clarity and freedom.

I began writing verse every day and now, I have a bunch of stuff out on streaming platforms.

In 2024, I lost my sense of smell. I had a chronic sinus infection that led to poor sleep, constant headaches, congestion. It also led to an inability to speak, breathe, eat, sing or rap in a way that I was once able to.

So much so that things only got better after I had sinus surgery on Christmas day in 2024 in Mysore.

As the general anaesthesia wore off, I realised that my health wasn’t being given the love and attention it deserved and I made up my mind to negotiate an exit from my job.

From March this year, I have been showing up for at least one open mic each week in Dublin. From July this year, I began busking on the streets.

Choosing to do this slowly swept away the demons of self-doubt. The ones that went - “Sure man, you’re good in a studio where you have the luxury of taking multiple takes to iron out the mistakes you make. Performing live is a different ball game.”

It is. No doubt.

The Price of Admission

I thought that getting on stage to rap will be easy. I remembered the words. I could hold onto the beat. I had some semblance of breath control.

I was a good public speaker when I was in my former job.

So much so, that when I was given a chance to speak in different places across Europe, I always opened with a sentence or two in the native language of the audience to show them that I am trying hard and that I want to do my best.

The first time I performed one of my songs was a cold shower moment for me.

I had an even bigger cold shower moment on the first day I went busking on the streets in Dublin.

I could play the guitar. I could sing. I remembered the lyrics. I remembered the chords. I had to write down the list of songs on a sheet of paper so I didn’t forget what I was going to perform. I thought I was ready.

In both instances, either with rapping or busking, the first time I put myself out there I became aware of the skills that I had were the price of admission. They only guaranteed me a foot in the door.

I needed to up my skills. I needed more deliberate practice.

I needed to simultaneously evaluate myself through a critical lens so I knew what I could work on. At the same time, I needed to be kind to myself so that I wouldn’t resign from this mission, despite knowing there was no respite.

Now, I have made peace with how I show up each time. I am clear on what success means to me.

So long as I am able to suck less than the last time that I performed, I am at peace. I explore. I experiment. I try new things.

I stumble. Falter. Fumble. Often I feel disinclined. However, I choose to get up and keep going because this version of my life is beautiful, and this is the best kind of wall that I get to bang my head against.

Performances in Mysore and Bangalore

I spent the first 21 years of my life in Mysore before I moved to Bangalore to start working in my first job.

I lived in Bangalore for eight years (2004 - 09) and (2011 - 14) before life took me to Hyderabad and then to Dublin.

My connections to Mysore and Bangalore will remain as long as I do, and it was wonderful to perform two shows on the 7th and 14th of September.

There are two reasons these shows happened.

I felt confident enough to ask for this after multiple open mics, and with plenty of practice at home.

The second reason - some wonderful people I know took a chance on me and gave me the space and time and the infrastructure to share what I have created.

It was during this part of my journey that my friend Prashant asked me the thought provoking question I began this essay with.

Practicing Philosophy

I consider myself a student of philosophy.

I find no value in accumulating books and texts that occupy prime bookshelf space. I find no value in quoting people and trying to think of what a certain person meant, or what they implied.

Philosophy is a tool, one that I wish to use and live my life by each day. Not a trophy or a certificate that can be used as a flex.

Practicing it requires me to understand and absorb different concepts and ideas that smarter, kinder, braver and wiser fellow human beings have chosen to share with the world, and to understand how, beyond the words, they chose to live their lives by the ideas that they held so dear to themselves.

One part of practicing philosophy is choosing to be BFFs with my death, like I wrote to you before.

Another aspect that helps me understand myself better and therefore, helps me show up to perform in the best way possible is the idea of Advaita / non-duality / unity that my buddy Adi (Shankaracharya) once came up with.

This is a way in which I choose to move through the world.

Philosophy helps me see the world in concentric circles. I am at the center because I inhabit this body and mind, and that allows me to have a starting point. In subsequent circles, I have family, friends, acquaintances and so forth. The outermost circle consists of strangers and of all life that ever exists.

My practice of philosophy encourages me each day to reduce the distance between myself and the outermost circle as much as possible.

It is not easy. I am not always treated with grace and kindness.

I am also prone to responding in ways that I am not proud of when my boundaries, especially pertaining to my health, well being and safety are not respected and adhered to.

However, I believe in the notion that success is to keep staying kind to myself. To keep sucking less with each instance where I can show up and apply what I have learnt every single day.

Advaita / Non-duality as an Artist / Performer

When you are hurt, I am hurt.

When I hurt you, I hurt myself.

When I am kind to you, I am kind to myself.

When I help you, I help myself.

I can’t control what others do. I cannot control how others think and behave.

I can control how I show up. A huge part of how I show up is based on the stories I tell myself and the perspective that I have.

This is helping me let go. I have zero grudges. I have infinite love and I practice cultivating compassion. I balance my life on a daily ledger to sleep as best as I can.

Which brings me to how I apply this to my performance as an artist.

When I see myself as one with my audience, I combine the idea of making it all about me with the idea of making it all about the audience. The sliding scale between Narcissism and People Pleasing bends in order to form a perfect circle.

We are one.

Be kind when you don’t have to be. When you have a chance to strike. When you can assert your power and authority.

Play infinite positive sum games with everyone around. Lift them up. Make them win.

When you do this, it might seem like your actions are benefitting others. That’s true. However, remember what our buddy Adi (Shankaracharya) said and know that you are doing it for yourself and you will win.

We are one.

Upcoming Gigs and New Music

Brief updates about my journey making and performing art.

1. New single alert - Best Reasons Ever drops on 1st October 2025.
   Pre-save on Spotify, please and thank you?
   
   The song is the answer to the question - “Why should I care?”
   
   For the best reasons ever.
   
   To be one with nature and life, to show up with love for everyone around me, especially my child and to keep writing, because in my afterlife, I want to measure my life in goodness and the words I got to share.
   

2. Live performances:
   9th October 2025 - featured act at Smithfield Creatives Open Mic.
   Location: Board Dublin - D08 E1X9. Follow on Smithfield Creatives on Instagram.
   
   This is the open mic that gave me my first shot. I am grateful that I get to be the featured act and get the stage for 30 minutes.
   
   29th October 2025 - Breaking Sound
   Location: Generator Hostel - D07 F2VF. This is the ticket link
   
   Breaking Sound is a global initiative to help up and coming artists get in front of new audiences.
   
   If you are in Dublin and either gig is of interest to you, I’d love to see you there!
   

3. I told a story. Check it out on my Youtube channel.
   I performed on 14th September 2025 at the Underline Center in Bangalore. I was given a chance to be on stage for over an hour. In addition to performing, I shared two sets of stories.
   
   One of them was about how literature and philosophy and poetry helps inspire my work. I gave examples of how Shakespeare, Marlowe, Rilke, Kipling, Thoreau, Huxley etc helped me find words to share my stories.
   
   The other was about the inciting incidents that led me to start performing. It is seven minutes long. Do give it a look if you can, please and thank you.