I helped a man climb a mountain and found that I too had reached the top

Infinite Monkey Theorem

"I did not have time to write you a short website, so I wrote you a long one."

— Mark Twain (if he were alive today and really into web development)

In that spirit, I am stuffing this page with an eclectic collection of my thoughts. Will this page ever be complete? Perhaps. Will it be comprehensible? About as likely as finding a coherent plot in a James Joyce novel. What do I intend to achieve with this page? I am not sure. But I hope you find something that resonates with you.

"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

— Douglas Adams

I have always been fascinated by the power of words. They can inspire, motivate, and even change the course of history. I have this weird habit of writing down lines that I like. I don’t know why. I don’t even know what I am going to do with them. But I like them.

"The brick walls are there for a reason. … The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something, because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want something badly enough."

— Professor Randy Pausch, "The Last Lecture," Carnegie Mellon University (2007)

(Chennai, 2019) I pressed play on Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” — unquestionably the finest video on the internet — and every brick wall in my mind began to crumble. Internet is a beautiful place. Watch here.

"Jab kahin pe kuch nahi bhi nahi tha…" (en: Then even nothingness was not)

— Rigveda, beautifully put together by Irshad Kamil in Rockstar (2011)

(Manipal, 2019) I first read these words scrolling the subtitles in my first watch of Rockstar, the screen glowing like stained glass in the dark. The world was not ready for this movie in 2011. Neither was I in 2019.

"Umar bhar Ghalib yahi bhool karta raha, dhool chehre pe thi aur aina saaf karta raha." (en: All his life, Ghalib kept repeating the same mistake: the dust was on his own face, yet he kept polishing the mirror)

— Mirza Ghalib

(Fort Kochi, 2018) The verse glimmered on a mural between spice-shops, I didn't know what it meant back then. I just liked it.

"Company>>>Journey"

— A friend

"Blood may be thicker than water, but loyalty is thicker than blood."

— Louis L'Amour, western novel The Sackett Brand (1965)

(Hyderabad, 2014) I read this book in a single sitting. It's a good one. Borrowed from my library at the Vivekananda House.

"There's always a choice."

— Stephen King, novel The Stand (1978)

I cannot recall the details.

"Do you believe our destinies are determined by the stars? Oh, I do. Life's a lot more fun when you're not responsible for your actions."

— Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, 9 Apr 1988

(Hyderabad, 2013) I was that kid who rifled past headlines in The Hindu straight to the comics, and this Calvin-and-Hobbes punch-line became my secret horoscope for the day.

"Whatever you do, do it with the confidence of a four-year-old in a Batman T-shirt."

— Unknown

(Chicago, 2022) I saw this on a t-shirt in a shop on Michigan Avenue. Wish I had clicked a picture.

"But how could you live and have no story to tell?"

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, short story "White Nights" (1848)

"Do you know what vegan chicken and rice is? RICE!"

— Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory

(Manipal, 2019) I was watching the season 12 teaser of The Big Bang Theory. I laughed. I laughed so hard. I laughed so hard that I cried. I cried so hard that I laughed again. TBBT is the best sitcom ever. I will die on this hill. At this point, I will die on a lot of hills. People tell me I am not normal. I am not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.

"As you'll find in multivariable calculus, there is always more than one solution to a given problem."

— John Nash, A Beautiful Mind (2001)

(Chennai, 2020) Locked down with lecture videos and endless Wi-Fi drops, I replayed A Beautiful Mind on my laptop.

"Things catch fire sometimes; that's why there's a fire brigade."

— Trevor Noah, memoir Born a Crime (2016)

(Atlantic Ocean, 2022) I was watching Trevor Noah's stand-up special on the flight to Chicago. Someone mentioned his book. I downloaded it on my way to Champaign from the airport. Oh boy, was I in for a treat.

"Har fikr ko dhuein mein udaata chala gaya."

— Sahir Ludhianvi, Hum Dono (1961)

(Chennai, 2020) I was scrolling through Google to find a caption for my instagram post. I came across this line in Hum Dono.

"Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees, he thought."

— Paulo Coelho, novel The Alchemist (1988)

(Chennai, 2015) The novel rode shotgun on my school bus, just a story to pass the time; half a decade later, sipping filter coffee in a dawn-quiet hostel room in Manipal, I reread the pages and understood that the desert was never scenery, it was the syllabus.

"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."

— Galadriel, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)

"All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you."

— Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)

(Dubai, 2016) Waiting for the desert-safari jeep outside a Karama hotel, I thumbed through my dog-eared paperback; the shifting dunes ahead suddenly looked less like scenery and more like an invitation to shape whatever future I dared imagine. J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth was a place I could escape to, and I was ready to go.

There is a lot more to this page. I am just too lazy to write it all down in one go. Maybe one day I will. In the end, people are everything.