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Do you remember that one person in school who could make a story come alive? When I was in Class 8, there was a boy in my class — I think his name was Anand Raj — who had a rather peculiar, but fascinating, habit. He would narrate movie stories. And not just tell you what happened. He would take you into the movie . He knew every scene, every character, every little detail. His narration was so patient and so vivid that, within a few minutes, you could almost see the movie playing in front of your eyes. So, whenever there was a free period — a teacher hadn't turned up, or we had nothing else to do — there was a predictable routine. We would gather around him.  "Which movie are you going to tell us today?" One of the movies he narrated was The Guns of Navarone . I still remember how completely absorbed I was in that story. Years passed. I finished school, went to college, started working. And somewhere along the way, I bought a CD of The Guns of Navarone and finally wat...

Thekkady: The Boat, the Bisons, and a Sky That Couldn't Pick a Color Looking back at at 2009 trip! I reached Thekkady around 1 PM, fresh off a genuinely gorgeous drive down from Munnar, and checked into the Ranger Woods hotel. The whole way there I'd been mildly panicking about running out of space on my camera's 1 GB memory card — yes, 1 GB, this was 2009, and photographers of that era rationed pixels like they were gold — so I made an emergency detour to buy a backup card. The hotel turned out to be a notch nicer than my stay in Munnar, with one glaring omission: no A/C in the room. When I asked the manager about it, he assured me, with the calm confidence of a man who has never personally experienced Kerala in September, that I wouldn't need one. I'd kept the A/C running both days in Munnar, where it was actually pleasant. Thekkady, by contrast, was HOT — the weather, I mean, obviously. After an hour spent recovering from the drive, I was back on the road. Josh...

  Reflections of the Munnar Trip — The Life Lesson A companion to “Munnar Trip — Visiting Top Station” If you read the Top Station post ( link ), you already know how the day went: I drove up to Munnar to see 40,000 hectares of tea and a valley on the Kerala–Tamil Nadu border, and the monsoon handed me a wall of mist instead. What I didn’t tell you in that post — because it would have turned a travelogue into a sermon — is that the whole soggy episode quietly taught me a few things. So here is the sermon. Consider yourself warned. I’ve come to believe that the small, low-stakes moments in life reveal our real wiring far better than the big, dramatic ones. Nobody was watching me at Top Station. There was no prize, no audience, no deadline beyond a free-trip voucher. And yet the way I behaved that afternoon is, more or less, the way I behave when the stakes are high and the mist is a stalled project or a career that isn’t landing on my timeline. Five traits showed up that day....

  At a recent club meeting, we ran a debate on a deceptively simple question: What is more valuable in today's workspace — adaptability to new changes, or decades of experience? If you've never sat through a Toastmasters-style debate, the format is half the fun: two sides, structured arguments, and a room full of people who genuinely enjoy poking holes in each other's logic. I was on Team Adaptability, and the counter-arguments from the Experience side were sharp enough that I want to share a few before I make my actual case. The debate floor One speaker argued that in rough seas, you want an experienced sailor, not a novice. Fair point — until you remember that today's sailor survives by adapting to modern marine technology, not just by reading the stars. Decades of experience without adaptability is just a history lesson. Another reached for an old fable: a king who disguised himself as a commoner to understand his citizens' problems. My take? A modern leader ...

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope - Martin Luther King Jr. I can’t claim I knew Dr. King said this decades ago — I didn’t. But the moment I looked it up, it fit like a glove, because it applies to just about every second of our lives. And it certainly applied to this trip. My first taste of disappointment came the instant I reached Munnar, and it looked like this… No, that is not the famous foggy Indian winter. That is the last leg of the monsoon in Munnar, photographed at two in the afternoon — yes, afternoon — after a long, laborious drive up from Alwaye. It was a wet blanket thrown over every ounce of enthusiasm I had packed. Somewhere behind that curtain of mist sit 40,000 hectares of tea plantations, all of them playing a world-class game of hide-and-seek. I spent a good few minutes cursing my choice of the Misty Mountain resort. Had I known it would honour its name quite so literally, I’d have gone hunting for a “No-Mist Mountain” resort instead....

Part 2 : The Miracle Makers, By Bharat Sundaresan Yes, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25 concluded on a disheartening note for Indian cricket fans. For those of us who closely followed the series, it was a bitter pill to swallow. Personally, I was deeply disappointed—not merely because we lost the series, but because, at some point, it felt as though our batsmen lost their edge, their spark, and the intent that often defines champions. Through this post, I share my personal reflections on the series—ones that may resonate with some and diverge from others. It was truly heartbreaking to witness Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma struggle so consistently in such a crucial series. Their lack of form drew inevitable comparisons to Sachin Tendulkar’s slump during the 2004 series—until that iconic 241 at Sydney, where he showcased extraordinary discipline in curbing his off-side instincts. Many of us hoped Virat would channel a similar resolve, refining his technique and regaining his rhythm. A...