Nikhil's Blog

When you are a responsible man, you are not allowed to falter. Once your role is established, you are expected to fulfil it. Every day. Every damn time. Regardless of how you are feeling. Regardless of what you are feeling. Depression then becomes a luxury. You only get empathy insofar as it keeps you functional. If your functioning is impaired, you don't get any. That's why there are men out there who are suffering but cannot speak of it. Because who would listen. They silently endure their…

Expectations are the root cause of suffering, they said. Desire for outcome also brings suffering. Everything you want brings suffering. You talk to someone you want to keep talking to. But if they don't feel that way, or don't feel that strongly, you are finished. You suffer endlessly. Through no fault of your own. Except perhaps the need to connect. Why do we expect, though? Why is there a need for anything? The simple answer is because we are human. Humans have needs. But that's not quite…

You hear someone's problems. Your first reaction is to help. So you offer solutions, complete with logical steps for implementation, and even volunteer to assist them through the process. Figuratively, you spoon-feed them. And yet they keep talking as if you never spoke. They keep circling back to their problems. As if no solution exists. As if you said nothing at all. As if you don't even exist. This happens because people aren't looking for solutions. They are looking for a space to vent.…

The tolerance for physical pain can tell you a lot about a person. How he handles a broken arm. A bruised body. The sheer discomfort of simply holding up. Because your body revolts when it is in pain. When something is broken, it constantly reminds you that it is broken. And so you have to process all of those signals, endlessly. The mechanism of pain is primitive. When something hurts, it reminds you that it does. It wants you to attend to it. It doesn't understand whether you are already at…

Patience is a virtue. When things are falling apart, holding yourself together requires immense courage. Immense strength. Immense fortitude. And your patience is tested. You want to lash out. At the injustice. At the unfairness. At the moral depravity. For making you helpless. You want to settle the score. You want to restore the order where you are on top. And when you do none of those things and hold your patience, it feels like a superpower. People who can hold themselves when holding…

Accepting a mistake takes balls. Not everybody has it. Not everybody has the courage to say they are sorry. That they made a mistake. Because accepting it means accepting the consequences of those mistakes too. Then they cannot claim that the world is unfair to them. They cannot hide their failures behind excuses. And so people get defensive. They conjure all sorts of excuses to prove it was never their fault. Even if you catch them red-handed, it is still not entirely their fault. They have to…

The Maurya Empire was the largest empire in Indian history by territory. The land it controlled and influenced directly was never consolidated again until the British Empire, two thousand years later. Ashoka was the most powerful ruler of the Mauryan dynasty. But his obsession with non-violence hollowed the empire from within. The army had no territory to conquer. So it grew weak. When Ashoka died, the cracks surfaced. One after another, Mauryan rulers assumed the throne. But each failed to…

We no longer look at anything with wonder. With awe. The kind that baffles the mind. Leaves us confused. Clueless. Eternally curious. We are not pursuing anything that quickens our heartbeat. That makes us lose track of time. That sends us down the rabbit hole. We know nothing that makes us talk endlessly. Pursuing wonder matters. You have to surprise yourself once in a while. You tend toward hubris otherwise. You start believing that the longer you live, the wiser you become. That is the…

Writing essays is easier than posting them. I learned that the hard way. Social media is a tough game to crack. Tougher because it demands consistency. Which, if you lack, you are done. The algorithm is fickle. The people who succeeded have no idea how they managed it. So they parrot consistency. Because that is the only thing that makes sense. Showing up every day is not the issue. I show up every day to a blank page anyway. That does not bother me. Because the expectations are aligned. I know…

I have been writing for years. Blogs, stories, history. Across all categories. Fiction, personal essays, self-help, life advice, financial newsletters. I have done it all. And it gets to me sometimes. The whole charade of producing content. Thinking through everything. I like thinking. It comes naturally to me. But there is always a cost. The cost is solitude. It sounds novel. Until you see the other side of it. Until you calculate what it actually demands. When you prefer solitude, you reject…

You meet someone at a university, at an event, at your office. You start talking to them. You hit it off instantly. The chemistry is undeniable. So good that you feel grateful to have found them. You start planning conversations with them. Wondering why you couldn't have such chemistry with others. You believe in God's miracles. Gradually you begin to realise that they don't feel the same inclination towards you. The urgency for conversation that you feel is absent in them. You still have the…

Loneliness makes you do stupid things. Like tolerating the wrong person. Like fawning over someone you should have avoided. Thinking about someone you have no business thinking about. The pain of being with yourself feels unbearable sometimes. No amount of meditation helps. Meditation too brings you closer to yourself. But what if you are tired of yourself. The need for warmth is real. You need someone closer to you. Someone to touch you. Someone to hold you when you want to break down. Someone…

Silence is not peaceful. It is confrontational. The moment you go quiet, you are flooded with thoughts. The same thoughts you have been running from. The same thoughts you formed. The same thoughts that took shape because you kept opening your mouth. Silence only feels unbearable because you have no working relationship with yourself. You don't know what to do with yourself. You don't know the cause behind the thoughts. The thoughts exist in a vacuum. Without a name. Without a shape. Without…

When in Rome, act like the Romans, they said. The advice is sound. It has merit. Because it primarily teaches you to blend. Camouflage yourself. Conceal your intentions. Hide your incentives. Prioritise survival above everything else. It turns you into a chameleon. So you can advance faster than the rest. So people do not treat you like a stranger. The antithesis of this is a strange detachment. You feel no urge to blend in. You feel out of place. As if you could see through the matrix. As if…

One of the reasons everyone should watch and participate in sports is that it demonstrates why one must always cultivate hope. Why one should never give up. If you keep your willpower intact and keep pushing beyond your limits, further than you believe you are capable of, you can make history. You can reach a point you never thought possible. This is what sports does to the mind. It reprograms it into believing in the impossible. When you are taking a leap of faith, you need immense belief, to…

You cannot be happy if you have only one dimension to your life, one personality and one source of validation. People who dedicate their entire existence to their business or job are worse off than people who have stumbled upon many things in life. The definition of success then becomes subjective. When you are young and full of energy you want to make a lot of money. Nothing wrong with that. But as you grow older you start to realise that money is important, and so are other things. We fall…

A joke can make the world feel lighter. But most people worry too much to lighten the moment. They are too caught up in everything. Their own thoughts. What others think of them. What impression they would leave if they said something. Nothing is plain and simple. The mind is always on the defensive. Cracking a simple joke requires your mind to be free. From all inhibitions. From all worries. From all the what-ifs. The only requirement is decency. Read the room. Read the person. Read the…

We have destroyed all the beautiful things in the world by turning them into a performance for social media. Every ritual, every piece of memory, every moment we once held sacred has been converted into a spectacle to be showcased online so we could prove to the world that we were truly alive. Weddings used to be the most important day in two people's lives. The camera used to capture the moments as they actually felt. When you looked back at those photographs, they brought smiles to your faces…

There comes a time in everybody's life when you have to deal with hate. The intense loathing that someone has reserved exclusively for you. You can intuitively sense it because it reflects in every fibre of their being and every one of their mannerisms towards you. The way they speak to you, the way they direct their jokes at you, the sheer bitterness that permeates everything they do in relation to you. It manifests in bullying, the subtle jibes, the feigned camaraderie that masks a deep…

One of the simpler ways to judge people is observing how they value your time. How much they value your time reveals how much they value you. People rarely show up late on dates with women they have fallen for. Even when they do, they apologise profusely and vow never to repeat it. The same courtesy rarely extends to their wives or friends. Punctuality is not a tool for bragging. It offers a precise window into how someone manages their entire life, including their routine. The more organised a…

It's always better to be hated than pitied. If there is one feeling I absolutely abhor, it is pity. Pity is the most useless of all emotions. It neither helps nor offers any real comfort to the person in grief. Nor does it even have the decency to emerge from empathy. Pity implies hierarchy. When you pity someone, you are indirectly asserting that they are beneath you — all your help then flows from benevolence, not empathy. It differs from empathy because there you are stepping inside the…

There is a certain relief in being unprepared and yet arriving at your destination with grace. It feels rebellious — as if you have defied the very fabric of nature, as if you have vaulted over your mental barriers rather than inching around them. The best stories, after all, involve a bit of unplanned shenanigans. There is nothing wrong or inappropriate about being organised. Certain things reward planning — investments, insurance, your career, your overall wellbeing. But you shouldn't place…

Forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter because it carries no regulations that could make it bitter or spoil its flavour. It remains tempting precisely as long as it stays out of reach. The moment it becomes attainable, the spell breaks. Human psychology is a strange cocktail of wonder and absurdity. We want what we cannot have. And once we have it, we don't know how to treasure it. This has been true since antiquity. Religious texts and human history are littered with examples of it. And yet,…

There is a delicate balance between being there for people and being there just long enough to add value — without losing yours in the process. As you grow closer to someone, a point of comfort arrives where you want to express more of yourself. You reach a certain ease with them that strips away your inhibitions. And if that inner side turns out to be too much, the risk of being left alone becomes very real. So no matter how close you get, the prudent approach is always to open up in measured…

The reason people acquire knowledge is to outsmart others. Or win political and historical debates online. They collect facts like trophies, ready to brandish in an argument. But that is the antithesis of why you should acquire knowledge. It appears the more facts a person accumulates, the more insufferable they become to everyone around them. If you have no inclination to gain the upper hand over others, there seems to be no reason to acquire knowledge at all. I say this because every time I…

We all love to travel, especially after the advent of social media, where drone shots make us believe we could stand in that exact frame ourselves. Travel has surged tremendously post-Covid — salaries have exploded for some, and for others, the influencer economy has erupted into a viable livelihood. But amidst all this fanfare, we have forgotten the essence of travelling. When we move from our home to a different place, we forget that for the people living there, that place is their home. We…

One of the most beautiful feelings in the world is when you are dreading something — truly dreading it — and then it turns out perfectly, and you emerge from it victorious. This includes everything: that awkward conversation you were dreading, that presentation, that journey, that difficult task. Underlying all of this is a common anxiety. But it's not simply about anticipating the worst possible outcome — this is a different kind of anxiety. One where you are dreading the task more than the…

We live in the age of alliances. Everybody is part of one group or another, and everyone classifies the others as belonging to some camp. You are seen as either with them or against them — never the neutral. The centrist, the uncommitted one, gets punished brutally, labelled by both sides as wicked. At the broadest level as well as the most intimate, humans are tribal by nature. They find their tribe everywhere. They adopt the same views, hold the same opinions, and despise the same kind of…

What makes some relationships go from casual to deeply personal? We all have them — people we met by chance, started talking to, and somewhere along the way realised had quietly become a part of our lives. Now we can't imagine not speaking to them. These are the friendships that are both beautiful and enduring. Not everyone has them. But there is a discernible pattern to how they take root and flourish. All friendships require a shared environment — somewhere you can engage with many people at…

When you observe people at their peak physical fitness versus people who are struggling with theirs, you will instantly see the impact of physical health on the mindset. A person at peak physical health complains less, focuses on opportunity, and is overall more disciplined in life. The struggle doesn't unsettle him because he has the capacity to overcome it. He doesn't hesitate to make long-term plans because he trusts that he will see them through. He doesn't shy away from experiences that…