Analysis
Daily writing promptHow have your political views changed over time? View all responses When I first had any views at all, I think I was in the second year of my engineering studies, in 2007, and decided I was a right-winger. Of course I understood very little of what that
Life notes
Someone asked me recently to name the thing I've been most grateful for in 2025. After giving it some thought, I realised it had to be the heat capacity of water. And not just for 2025. Tea is my warm beverage of choice, and my favourite version is
Culture
Daily writing promptHave you ever performed on stage or given a speech? View all responses I performed several times on stage in school, up to when I was 11 years old. I studies for around four years at a school in Tumkur where drama was part of the curriculum. Every
Life notes
Daily writing promptIf you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? View all responses I had a dream once, that I was sitting, resting in a cosy alcove of walls empanelled with wood, with wooden chairs and tables with comfortable cushions, smoke from an incense stick hanging
Analysis
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced sweeping changes to the GST rates on September 3. However, I think the rate for software services (HSN 99831) will remain unchanged at 18%. This is a bummer because every time I renew my WordPress.com site or purchase software over the internet in
Analysis
On the subject of belief, I’m instinctively drawn to logical systems that demand consistency, closure, and introspection. And the KD45 system among them exerts a special pull. It consists of the following axioms: * K (closure): If you believe an implication and you believe the antecedent, then you believe the
Life notes
I hadn’t checked my notifications on X.com in a while. When I did yesterday, I found Pradx had tagged me in a blog post called “a challenge of blog questions” in March. The point is to answer a short list of questions about my blogging history, then tag
Analysis
Engineering as a methodology … contains a fundamentally materialist kernel, even if its present incarnation as a bourgeois science drives engineers to think and behave otherwise. — Nick Chavez, Engineers, Materialism, and the Communist Method After school, I studied mechanical engineering against my will. Most engineering students at the time did, and
Culture
I recently started reading a book entitled The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is historical fiction, immaculately detailed, with three excellent protagonists surrounded by a band of almost as admirable allies navigating a middle-era Spain in which three powerful politico-religious factions are vying for greater power. The
Life notes
The Hindu has an unusual ad in today’s paper (at least in the Chennai edition, which I get) on the occasion of Republic Day. At the middle is an ambigram that reads “journalism” one way and “democracy” upside down. Below the way that reads “journalism”, there’s a statement
Life notes
When I joined The Wire in 2015, the average length of my blog posts increased from around 700 words to around 850 words, and over time to 1,000 words. This wasn't forced so much as a natural reflection of the average length of pieces that worked on
Life notes
When I joined The Wire in 2015, the average length of my blog posts increased from around 700 words to around 850 words, and over time to 1,000 words. This wasn't forced so much as a natural reflection of the average length of pieces that worked on