Mind of my Stroked Brain

There are many things defined in various country's constitutions as fundamental rights. I frankly don't know what the fundamental in them stand for. In my opinion, the 1 and only fundamental and birthright we are all born with is to die. It was a thought I was comfortable with for a long time. I felt denied my fundamental birthright after my stroke. In all honesty, I am being propped up to live in many many ways. * If nobody realised and my wife and friends did not act quickly, 6th feb 2019 early morning would have been the end. * If there was no MRI facilities in the hospital to identify the clot in my brain, it would have been the end. * If my wife's cousin - the neurosurgeon hadn't acted swiftly on his feet, probably 9am would have been the end. * If there were no life saving medicines and ability to intubate with tracheostomy, probably another day . * If there was no ability to put a tube into my stomach (ryles initially and PEG later) to put water and nutrients to

" EVERYDAY IN EVERY WAY I AM GETTING BETTER AND BETTER " those words are on a cardboard board in front of me in my room.  It's actually not even cardboard. It Was made using a stiff paper shopping bag with white paper stapled to it and the handle was used for hanging to the TV stand in the hospital in front of me. It was made by my good friend and my wife as a positive reinforcement to me very early in the hospital. After I came home, it has been hanging in front of me in the room ever since.  Except for 3-4 months inbetween when I have spent back at hospitals it is the first thing I see in the morning and last thing I see at night. I am quite surprised at its condition after 4+ years now . It has survived well inspite of the abuse it has been through across all weathers. I am a skeptic with such things. It takes a lot for my mind to give up its skeptical position and accept such things. Any such matters. So, when they put it up - I was like what difference can it possibl

Don't worry, I am not getting into whether one country or the other has democracy 🙂 My thinking of late is no country in the world has democracy belonging to this century. Folks may claim to have the world's oldest democracy, or largest, or most diverse or most modern etc., etc. The are all democratic maybe but democracies of past centuries. Dinosaur democracies in my view. In all the democracies and democratic processes I know, we elect a party or coalition of majority into power to rule the nation. All parties have a manifesto (a party or coalition mindset). It could be called Left or Right, conservative or liberal, green or some other colour, labour or something else , etc. But what if I am not alined with any single party's mind on every issue. I might be agreeable with one party's thinking on human rights, another party's religious beliefs, another's views on health, yet another's on minorities etc. I don't have a way for that thinking. I think the

When I started working, the first time I can remember having surplus money was sometime in early 1999. Most of the time earlier I didn't have money or barely lasted till month end. In late 1998, I was sent to another country on work for a few months. Since it was not a long term posting, we were not getting salary there but a daily allowance (referred to as per diem).  It was the first time I received money money in a stronger currency and better purchasing power and realised the potential of saving it.  So, I did not live there mostly. Everything was converted to my home currency and my eyes would bulge. At the same time, if the same amount was saved, it was a big deal of money to bring back to my home country and live with it later. Almost everything was seen through this lens and either not bought, not spent, not experienced. Everything including the food I allowed myself to eat, the condition of places we chose to live, the groceries I bought etc. Basically tightened the belt t

Disclaimer : I am not an economist, nor do I understand currency macroeconomics. I am sharing this thought anyway. So, if you feel it is stupid, maybe it is! I have been seeing news from many places for a while. Many of the financially oriented channels usually have a ticker running at the bottom which shows market performance of that region, some stock prices of that region and currencies of that region. There is only 1 number for the currencies, ex INR = 8x.xx, AUD = 1.xx, EUR = 1.xx, GBP = 0.xx, so on. One currency nobody publishes is USD. Very simply because it is always 1. Everything else has a rate published only against the US dollar, even though I can realistic convert anything to anything . It is a very accepted thing that USD is the default base currency - because it is in demand the world over. There probably are several reasons why it happened so, it is what it is . The majority of the world want to move away from this (according to various news). Russia is leveraging the s

I work with Google sheets a lot. There was a particular thing I wanted to do:  I wanted to read a sheet periodically , compare 2 values from cells and if a particular condition was met, to get an email notification that the condition was met.  I also wanted to change one of the values periodically . I didn't know if this was even possible. I asked Google if I can do something like this. I spent almost the whole of one evening even to get to that understanding if this was possible. After an evening, and seeing several websites that Google sent me to, I was kinda sure but not yet confident that it could be done. Today I asked the same question to chatGPT. In a matter of seconds, it told me yes it can be done with an ability called time triggers in app scripts in Google sheets. I didn't even know that something like app scripts existed. I asked it what was needed to work with app scripts and realised it is javascript based.  I have never coded in JavaScript and while I have manage

Sometime in 2015 (I think late 2015), I started saying a chant. I don't know if it is a chant/ sloka/ mantra/ prayer etc., I refer to it as a chant going forward. I started saying it. Once everyday definitely and sometimes more than once a day if I felt like it.  It was quite a long chant in Sanskrit with 185 stanzas if I remember correctly. I have heard many famous musicians recite it in many different ways. I had not liked any of them. There was one particular rendition I had liked a lot . It was very slow, very clear and he had a very good voice. That particular rendition took 42 minutes . At a regular pace and not loudly but a silent chant would take about 16-18 minutes for me. When I learnt it, i think it took me something like 2½ months to finally remember it and recite it in one go. When I started with it, it seemed like an impossible task. I think what helped was engaging as many senses as I could to make the impressions on my mind. I used to read it, play the chant on my p