The 2025 calendar year is exhaling its final days, yet I find myself anchored in an unusual stillness and blankness. This December lacks the traditional cartography of years past; there are no travel plans to North India, no pilgrimages to Chintpurni Jee, and, to my own quiet surprise, no longing for the bite of winter of Distt Kangra (On a side note, I am convinced I lived in that area in some life near Palampur).
Instead, I have opted for a different kind of travel—an inward migration.
While the world outside vibrates with the high-decibel urgency of the season—a brutal onslaught of curated social media lives and the relentless pressure to congregate—I have retreated to the solace of a single room. Here, flanked by the glow of a wide monitor and the steady whisper of Bose speakers, with Farhat Shahzad written Tanha Tanha Mat Socha Kar playing at 10% volume in the high-fidelity mode, I have built a fortress of solitude. I rarely step out and meet anyone.
I have come to realize that my hunger has changed. I no longer have the palate for the superficial or the fleeting. I find myself craving a "high-calorie" mental diet: content that carries an edgy depth, laced with philosophical grit and thought-provoking complexity. It is a heavy consumption, perhaps, but it is the only thing that sustains me in my last years, where the noise of the crowd feels increasingly like static.
Within these four walls, work has plateaued, but the mind has quickened. This space is not a prison, but a laboratory of reflection.
As the year exhales its last, I am not looking for the grand narrative or the sweeping resolution. Instead, I am sifting through the remains of 2025 to find the small, glinting things. What follows is not a summary, but a collection of fragments—the myriad subtleties of a year lived mostly in the quiet, observed from the sanctuary of the solitary walk.
Pruning the Social Tree: The Art of the Shift-Delete
One of the most vital, yet least discussed, human skillsets is the capacity to forget. Not merely to let a memory grow hazy, but to "Shift-Delete" it—to purge a relationship, a friend, a lingering taste, or the emotional trigger of a specific poem from the internal hard drive. Historically, I was atrocious at this; on a scale of one to ten, I would have rated myself a zero. I held onto everything.
This year, however, I began the work of mental defragmentation. I started writing down everything I needed to forget, systematically clearing the sectors of my mind.
I am reminded of a scene from my childhood. I would watch PapaJee make chai; our palates were identical—we favored a strong, bitter brew, with just enough milk to change the complexion, always served in a glass. He had a ritual: he would light his cigarette on the gas stove and then hold the steel tea strainer over the naked flame. The mesh would catch fire, emitting a thin plume of smoke. When I asked him why, he explained that while we rinse the sieve, some particles—a stubborn sludge—stay trapped in the fine weave. To truly clean it, that sludge must be burnt away.
I find myself performing this ritual subconsciously at my own stove today, but the lesson has finally migrated to my soul.
This year, three of the five people I held closest departed from my life. It forced me to realize that "Goodbye" is perhaps the most essential art form—the ultimate exit strategy. You must trim the branches to protect the sphere. For years, I treasured old phone numbers like relics, but now, I delete more contacts every month than I add. There is a newfound clarity in the approach: those who truly need you will find you.
I have traveled thousands of miles for people who wouldn’t cross a bridge for me. It isn’t a matter of "Good" versus "Bad." We are all the heroes of our own stories and the villains in someone else’s. The realization is simpler: the tree needed pruning. Sometimes these relationships hurt, but I often recollect a verse from Gurbani bu Guru Nanak Dev Jee
राम गयो रावण गयो, ताको बहु परिवार...कह नानक थिर कछु नहीं, सपना जेहो संसार !
Recently, I returned to Coffee Home on Baba Kharak Singh Marg after ages. The architecture was unchanged, and the arrogance of the crowd had only amplified, but I walked through those doors a different man. I realized then that the secret to the "Solitary Walk" is the ability to fragment that hard drive and keep the slate clean for whatever comes next.
Practice the pruning. Hold your heart to the fire like that old tea strainer. Watch the smoke of the unseen sludge rise and vanish, and finally, breathe the clearer air. This is a Ghazal by an unknown poet.
तमाशा देख रहे थे जो डूबने का मेरे , मेरी तलाश में निकले हैं कश्तियाँ लेकर
जो रात दिन मेरे मरने की कर रहे थे दुआ , वो रो रहें हैं जनाज़े पे हिचकियां लेकर
कफ़न ना मेरा हटाओ ज़माना देख ना ले , मैं सो रहा हूँ तुम्हारी निशानियां लेकर
चमन से कौन चला ये खामोशियाँ लेकर , कली कली तड़प उठी है सिसकिया लेकर
The Grey Vantage: A Post-Vanity Truth
This year, I stood at Tirupati and surrendered my hair. Since that tonsure, I have allowed the regrowth to exist in its rawest state—a 95% silver landscape. It is a profound relief. I began to grey at twenty-seven, but only now, at fifty-five, have I found the courage to stop "coloring" what is natural.
In a society where even those in their eighties chase the ghosts of youth with bottles of dye, my choice is viewed as a quiet stupid. We live in an era where aging is treated as a flaw to be corrected rather than a vantage to be earned. I have always been something of an anomaly; I suspect I was born middle-aged. Between my twenties and my fifties, time felt static—until four years ago, when a shift in my career and a knee surgery forced me to finally acknowledge the weight of my years. Paradoxically, I did not want to be younger; I wanted to be older. I wanted my exterior to finally match the internal architecture of my soul.
The world reacts to the "Grey Vantage" in fascinating ways. Last Saturday, driving home after dinner at Sodabottleopenerwala, I was pulled over for a routine breathalyzer check. The officer looked at my silvered head, lowered his guard, and dismissed me with a casual, "Uncle, hogi, hogi" (it’s fine, move along). In that moment, I realized that grey hair is not just a color; it is a social currency, a shield, and a statement.
Age is a sensation felt within, yet we are obsessed with the external theater of vanity. This November, at the weddings I attended, I stood as a solitary observer to the "coated life." From the meticulous makeup of the guests to the filtered perfection of Instagram Reels, everyone is encased in a veneer of social acceptance. We spend our lives maintaining these shells, terrified of what might happen if the paint chips off.
It takes a great deal of effort to see through that veneer. In 1995, Jagjit Singh released Face to Face, an album that has resonated with me for thirty years. One line in particular feels like a mantra for my current state:
Aariz-o-lab saada rehne do, Taj Mahal pe rang na daalo!
My own philosophy remains simple: Authenticity beats chemistry, always. To sport one’s natural grey is to burn the tea strainer of vanity. It is the smoke of the "unseen sludge" of social expectation finally drifting away, leaving behind a face that—for the first time—is truly my own.
Natural Stupidity vs. Artificial Intelligence
This year, I have found myself immersed in the staggering capabilities of Artificial Intelligence. I often tell myself: What a time to be alive. My vantage point is unique; I have seen the full spectrum of the technological revolution—moving from the frustration of rotary dial phones and the flickering uncertainty of twenty-hour power outages to an era where the sum of human knowledge is distilled into a chat interface.
In the early nineties, I would make a pilgrimage to the American Centre Library just to glimpse newspapers and magazines published in the West. Today, the friction of seeking information has vanished. But in this era of "Knowledge at your Fingertips," I have realized that information is not wisdom. While AI has solved the problem of accessibility, it has highlighted a more dangerous deficit: the decline of Metacognition.
Metacognition is often dismissed as "thinking about thinking," but it is more accurately the management system of the mind. If our cognitive processes—calculating, memorizing, or reading—are the workers on a factory floor, metacognition is the floor manager. It is the silent observer that monitors efficiency, corrects errors, and decides which tool is right for the task.
As we lean more heavily on the crutches of Artificial Intelligence, our "floor managers" are retiring. AI can mend our grammar, but it cannot imagine a story, an experience; it can process data, but it cannot simulate the weight of a lived experience.
The danger of 2025 is the proliferation of Natural Stupidity fueled by the digital echo chamber. We have become fixated on the "Reel" rather than the reality. Travel has been reduced to a backdrop for content, rather than an opportunity to observe the myriad subtleties of a stranger’s journey. When we stop managing our own thoughts, we stop being the architects of our own lives.
The final lesson of this year is clear: AI may be the most efficient worker we have ever known, but creativity and metacognition remain the only true superpowers. We must be careful not to outsource the soul along with the labor.
A new promising poet Vishnu Virat wrote on changing times .
जुगनुओं ने शराब पी ली है, अब ये सूरज को गालियाँ देंगे
आ गई 'इश्क़ पे वो नौबत अब, डाकिये तेरी चिट्ठियाँ देंगे
दर्द देंगे वो सिसकियाँ देंगे, हम हैं काग़ज़ वो क़ैंचियाँ देंगे
Inheriting Demons: The Architecture of the Unspoken
Every time I return to the plains of North India—to the high-decibel pulse of Delhi and beyond—I am struck by a recurring tragedy: a profound lack of critical thinking and intellectual ingenuity that is quietly breeding a new generation of trauma-carriers. We are witnessing the assembly line of inherited shadows.
In my youth, I was branded a "rebel" of a particular genre. My non-conformity wasn't found in loud protest, but in quiet, deliberate deviations. While my peers succumbed to the tribalism of cricket, I was seeking the dark satire of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. While they chased the fleeting adrenaline of the "fan," I was anchored in the ghazals of Jagjit. I found myself in the strange, fertile middle ground between the radical provocations of Osho and the traditional morality of Geeta Press. I wasn't just being difficult; I was trying to breathe in a space that felt suffocatingly "coated."
I realize now that I was reacting to the ghosts in the room. My parents were the second-generation carriers of Partition—a trauma that arrived with the dust of social and economic displacement. Because they did not have the tools or the silence to "burn the sludge" of their own bitterness, those wounds became the blueprints for their parenting.
They carried the Demon of Fear, a lingering insecurity that transformed the world into a predatory landscape. Along with it came the Demon of Silence, where emotions were viewed as liabilities and vulnerability was a weakness to be buried deep beneath the floorboards. Most visible was the Demon of Vanity, that obsession with social veneers that teaches a child their only worth is the mask they present to the neighbors.
There is a quote I have carried with me that feels like the ultimate indictment of this cycle: "If you don’t deal with your demons, they will raise your children."
In the modern middle class, this is an absolute truth. We see it in the frantic pursuit of social status and the desperate need for external validation. When parents fail to confront their internal shadows, those shadows become the silent nannies, the unseen architects of their children’s personalities.
My solitude in this room, my "shift-deleting" of old numbers, and my refusal to color my grey hair are more than just personal preferences. They are my way of standing at the gas stove, holding the tea strainer to the fire. I am ensuring that the demons of my lineage—the fear, the silence, and the vanity—do not get the chance to raise anyone but me. I am breaking the inheritance, one myriad subtlety at a time.
Looking forward to a refreshed 2026.
Today's Ghazal is another rare one, the lyrics aren't anywhere online and poet "Naqi Kazmi" is also not searchable . One more asset created :)
फिर निगाहें मिला के देखेंगे , चोट इक और खा के देखेंगे
अपने दामन पे तेरी तस्वीर , आसुओं से बना के देखेंगे
तू नहीं तो तेरे तस्सुवर से , दिल की दुनिया बसा के देखेंगे
दिल अगर दर्द बन नहीं सकता , दर्द को दिल बना के देखेंगे !
हम ही जब बज़्म में ना होंगे "नक़ी" , वो किसे मुस्करा के देखेंगे !
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