Part of my 30 day November blogathon challenge.

I recently took a train journey up to Manchester. An early morning train through the just waking British countryside, the sun bathing the carriage in a golden light. I spent the 2 hours immersed in a book, occasionally pausing to stare out of the window.

When I reached Manchester, I was in a sort of reverie, a state of heightened attention, and so sat for a while amidst all of the passengers rushing to get off the train.

In that moment, I saw a pigeon, amongst the blur of feet, gently hopping around and pausing to take a sip of water that was inbetween a set of cracked tiles.

And I burst out in a huge grin, and took my time getting off the train.

Going to try write a blog post everyday in the month of November to get back into creative writing. This will include (hopefully) fiction, poetry and non-fiction.

As a list to myself, here are the non-fiction topics I want to explore

1. How to balance ambition/career/‘hedonic’ treadmill with a present and playful life
2. What is play and how can we incorporate more of it into life
3. What is love (recently read ‘The Art of Loving by Eric Fromm)
4. The role of art in our lives (recently read ‘What Art Does’ by Brian Eno)
5. Writing and LLM’s (Why we probably shouldn’t outsource thinking to them)
6. Predictive processing/active inference and how this links in with neuroscience and meditation (influenced by a series of lectures I attended with Shamil Chanderia)
7. Why we need to make things beautiful (a quote by Tolkien : “Lothlórien is beautiful because there the trees were loved.”)
8. On loving-kindness meditation (reading and listening to Sylvia Boorstein, what a lovely lady!)
9. What women don’t understand about men
10. Conversation and how to do it well ( three levels of conversation (informational, personal, relational). dignity-humility map
11. The importance of dressing well (I know, but this is for me. I read a great article in the FP about this)
12. Attention and love (they are the same thing)
13. Theories of consciousness
14. The process of writing being about becoming (becoming the kind of person who would think those thoughts or put down those sentences)
15. On what we learn from dancing
16. Obsession vs competitiveness (scientists tend to obsessive, businessmen tend to be competitive)
17. What we get from poetry
18. How to learn, how to pursue mastery
19. Book summaries of things I’ve read (Henry Shukman)
20. On walking (“The world reveals itself to those who travel by foot” Werner Herzog)
21. On integrity, nobility, poise (words and ways of being that I like)

Expect the posts to be bad. They will be first drafts, often written during time strapped working weeks.

I hope to post a few on substack (more than 1000-2000+ word articles).

November 2025 Posts

It’s a cold sunny autumn day, the biting wind announcing winter’s first signs. I roam through variegated leaves—burnt orange, mocha, yellow—shades enough to put Joseph’s technicolour coat to shame. The air smells of earth and ending things.

A quote by Eden Philpotts comes to mind :

“The universe is full of magical things waiting for our wits to grow sharper”

I reflect back on the passage of time ; autumn lending itself naturally to this - the season of impermanence and change.

Last week I celebrated Diwali with my family. My father cooked a few simple dishes, set up the altar and recited a couple of the main poojas. We ate together. We put on some traditional clothing and a few lights. It was spartan if you compare it to anything in India. But the intention was there ; a festival of light, a celebration of the conquering of light over darkness. Diwali is meant to be a 5 day festival with many rituals and routines within it (as it is with so many Hindu festivals).

When my mother was around, she would do everything to make as it was in India, although I never appreciated it growing up. The house would be alight with divas, flowers, patterned rangoli. The house would have been deep cleaned and ready for the festivities. She would spend hours preparing food for us.

I recently went out for a walk with a friend and he asked me “What did your parents do to raise you guys so well” (talking about me and my sister). I had never really thought about the question. But as I walk through the autumn leaves, thinking about the passage of time, the answer that comes to be is care.

Not grand gestures, but the steady accumulation of small devotions.

Attention - and that is of course synonymous with love. As children, we don’t know the alternative lives we could have lived. But knowing how others grew up now, I can’t help but be grateful for the incredibly safety net and sense of security afforded by having a stable family environment. It is invaluable.

I suppose this is what seasons, rituals, festivities offer us ; a way to pause and make sense of the narrative structure of our lives. To make sense of the flowing river of time. Who are we today, how have we changed, and what are we grateful for? Otherwise the unstructured passage of time can seem daunting.

I recently read a beautiful article titled : ‘Seasoning a kid : a search for a practice of place’ An idea that resonated with me was treating time like a space.

Seasonal practices allow you to enter time as if it were space. By providing structure and consistency, practices create moments. We were here at this time last year, do you remember? See the buds? They’re almost here again.

They’re what give flavour to life – semi-colons in the flowing river of time, reminders of the ever-evolving nature of existence.

Spring whispers of potentiality, summer of love and freedom from the clock. Winter teaches silence and stillness. And autumn — the most poignant season — teaches the passage of time itself. 

The leaves know something about letting go.

I think back to a walk in the park. Bundles of leaves surround us as we climb up Greenwich hill. A little boy rides his scooter through a collection of leaves, scattering them in the wind. The sun sparkles off the glasses of a man smoking a pipe on the bench opposite us. I fall into open arms and laughter as transience and change surround us; attention rapt, enraptured, captured, alive.

We ascend up the hill to the observatory and stand as London, evolving shifting timeless marvellous London, plays out in front of us.

Anytime I’m asked what ‘happiness’ means to me (surprisingly common for some reason) : I always say absorption. When attention is so deeply captured, that the self disappears and in its place is just the world. I get this through writing, through dancing ,through spending time with loved ones, through good conversation, through walking in nature, through joking around, having fun, and luckily in my vocation too. I can’t help but be absorbed.

Ending with one of my favourite quotes by John O Donahue :

I long to live like a river flows, in constant surprise at its own unfolding

LISTENING : SUNSET ROLLERCOASTER

I want you to breath in, the wind will be gone tomorrow

EXPLORING :

• Lindy hop dance
• Writing as a daily practice (Writing Down the Bones)

THINKING ABOUT :

• The importance of play.

• The necessity of having a philosophical framework for life. Religions provide this, but with added mythology

• David Chapman describing the textures of life : feelings and ways of seeing that emerge from our interaction with the world. These include :

  • Wonder - a sense of awe and openness to mystery
  • Joy - delight and happiness
  • Curiosity - interest and desire to explore
  • Playfulness - lightness and experimentation
  • Seriousness - gravity and importance
  • Confusion - disorientation and uncertainty
  • Clarity - understanding and coherence
  • Connection - intimacy and relationship
  • Purpose - direction and meaning

They are not there to be optimised or eliminated, but just ways of relating. He says that meta rationality involves navigating those textures skilfully e.g. knowing when to be serious vs playful, curious vs decisive. The context shapes it.

This is perhaps what ‘poise’ and ‘grace’ is. The ability to navigate the textures of life skilfully.