MN Express

Yong Chuan Tan on Unsplash Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Words uttered by a character in Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel War and Peace. Maybe Tolstoy was talking around the untapped human potential which gets lost between basic needs as home and work i.e. food and sex.   When I am in my zone my senses climb up to a higher band. Every morning I smell Desi ghee parathas when I am about to close my 10-kilometre cycling loop. This is all but human. We need the space of our comforts. A space to wake up our senses. Modern lifestyle has boxed our sense of space between work and home. This is the reason everyone needs a third space-a place between home and work. A third space to unwind the mental muscles and become a social animal. For somebody the...

Photo by  Michael Held  on  Unsplash It is said that all the best literature comes out in times of despair. Tragedy breeds ideas and reflections form human nature. For humans, the sense of meaning takes precedence over the sense of being. Like, everybody, I was at home initially quarantined for about 14 days.  A time which gave me respite from my ever busy yet predictable schedule of juggling between office, home, family, jogging, cycling and book reading. A pause that gave me insight into what is important and what matter most in one’s life. I thought to start the ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy-the thickest book in my collection. I always dreaded this book for its weight, like a heavyweight wrestler inviting me to the ring. So, lockdown was the best time to do a ‘one on one’. I realized one thing that lockdown does; it messes your schedule. Except for my work, I tried to keep it on, but it slipped by pushing my morning runs with mid-day cycling. In about one w...