Ranjit Kulkarni's Blog, page 22

Notes from ‘Atomic Habits’ – Set 3

A few months back I read a book titled “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. It was a very well-written book and I found a lot of snippets useful that spoke to me. I compiled them into a bunch of notes. The first and second sets are here and here.

Here is the third set:

The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time. It completes the habit loop.

Our preference for instant gratification reveals an important truth about success: because of how we are wired, most people will spend all day chasing quick hits of satisfaction. The road less traveled is the road of delayed gratification. If you’re willing to wait for the rewards, you’ll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff.

Thankfully, it’s possible to train yourself to delay gratification—but you need to work with the grain of human nature, not against it. The best way to do this is to add a little bit of immediate pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long-run and a little bit of immediate pain to ones that don’t.

The vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful—even if it’s in a small way. The feeling of success is a signal that your habit paid off and that the work was worth the effort.

In a perfect world, the reward for a good habit is the habit itself. In the real world, good habits tend to feel worthwhile only after they have provided you with something.

The more a habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.

Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures—like moving paper clips or hairpins or marbles—provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.

The most effective form of motivation is progress. When we get a signal that we are moving forward, we become more motivated to continue down that path. In this way, habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation. Each small win feeds your desire.

Our genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on. Once we realize our strengths, we know where to spend our time and energy. We know which types of opportunities to look for and which types of challenges to avoid. The better we understand our nature, the better our strategy can be.

Work hard on the things that come easy.

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.

The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.

It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop.

***

Novel Test: Short Story

Pardy and Siddy stepped out of their classroom giving each other a thumbs up and a high five. The smiles on their faces were brighter than the warm afternoon sun. The spring in their step was proof of the glowing confidence that radiated that they had got all the answers right.

This was their English Novel class test.

Q1. Montmorency was J’s

(a) Cat

(b) Dog

(c) Pig

Q2. The Three Men in a boat had a holiday on River

(a) Thames

(b) Ganges

(c) Seine

Q3. J thought he had

(a) Liver disease

(b) Stomach upset

(c) Almost everything

Q4. Describe what happens when one of the three men jump in the river.

Q5. What was the reality of the trout and how was it exposed?

“The first one is, I am sure, the cat,” Siddy said, pointing at the question paper.

“What? Nooo..,” Pardy exclaimed with eyebrows raised. “It’s the pig, Siddy,” he yelled.

“Pig? Go and read the book again, Pardy. Montmorency is Jerome’s cat,” Siddy claimed with conviction.

“No Siddy. There’s a cat called Tom that Montmorency gets into a fight with. But he is a pig,” Pardy countered Siddy, urging him to realise that he was wrong. Siddy had to be blind to mistake a pig for a cat, Pardy thought with a chuckle.

“Guys.. guys.. guys,” Dev pushed himself and barged into Siddy and Pardy, both of whom shuffled their feet in an awkward movement. “The river was Thames, right?” Dev asked.

“No, it was Seine,” Pardy replied with a quiet confident smile, and turned his attention to the next question. 

“What?? Seine? That’s in France. They went to India and sailed on the Ganges,” Siddy looked at Pardy and howled at the top of his voice. Then he turned his gaze to Dev and said in a soft voice, “Dev, don’t listen to Pardy today. He hasn’t read the book well; he says Montmorency is a pig.” And Siddy broke into a loud guffaw.

Dev had a confused expression which subsided in a few moments. He wiped the sweat on his brow.

“Well, I asked because I wasn’t sure that the river was Thames. But I am certain it’s not the Ganges, Siddy. They definitely didn’t go to India,” Dev said with a distinct swagger. Then, he looked at Pardy and jabbed him with his elbow. “By the way, Montmorency is a dog, not a pig,” he said, before joining the other group.

As they walked past the other gang of boys, Pardy and Siddy heard sounds of laughter.

“Both Pardy and Siddy have gone mad. One of them says the three men sailed on the Ganges with a cat. And the other says they sailed on the Seine with a pig,” they overheard Dev say over a loud cackle to someone.

Pardy and Siddy gave each other a blank look as they munched a snack on the way to their school bus. The radiance on their face was swept away by the dark clouds of doubt. As the afternoon started giving way to the evening, their faces became as long as their shadows. Confused and dejected, they walked with their heads down.

***

That was because, today morning as the clock had struck 6 AM, Pardy had got a panicked call from his buddy Siddy.

“The English Novel test is at 3 PM,” he had yelled into the phone, even before Pardy had fully opened his eyes from slumber. It was dark and cold as most mornings were for Pardy and this news could not have made it any brighter and warmer.

“And we haven’t yet read even a single page of it,” Siddy added to the bad news. “In fact, we don’t even have a copy of the novel,” he continued. Pardy sat up rubbing his eyes realising the gravity of the situation. “At the Library by 8 AM,” he ordered Siddy and rushed to the bathroom.

“No copies available, all issued,” the librarian informed them.

Pardy checked for it online in a desperate bid, but all deliveries were two days later. Siddy called their friends and asked them to send across scanned copies. But nobody had the time to scan so many pages at the last moment. Everyone was busy doing their last reading. In a final act of desperation, they decided that it was time to call their English teacher in a state of mad panic.

“Good morning Madam, this is Siddharth. Me and Parth need a copy of the novel for today’s test,” Siddy pleaded to Mallika Madam. “There are no copies in the library, and our friends aren’t sending us their copies. Can you please give us a copy?” he beseeched her in a fervent appeal. With his fingers crossed and lips quivering, Pardy watched Siddy.

Mallika Madam had a sense of calm around her as she heard Siddy out. She cleared her throat momentarily.

Then she replied, “Ok Dear. I will send you a link to an app. Download it from there and read the novel in the app,” she said. “And tell Parth too,” she added.

“Ok Madam, thank you so much,” Siddy said, heaving a sigh of relief before hanging up.

Pardy and Siddy got into action after Mallika Madam sent them the link. They downloaded the app and got the digital version of the novel there. For the next five hours, they speed read the novel “Three Men in a Boat” in that app on their respective phones. Rushing through all the chapters, both of them had finished reading the novel by the time it was 2 PM. There was no time to discuss anything. After a quick lunch, they had rushed back to their class to be on their seats on time for the 3 PM test.

With this kind of last-ditch attempt made in preparing for the test, it was no wonder that they had long faces as they walked to their bus in the evening after the test. It was disappointing for them to realize that both of them had got the first two answers wrong. But both Pardy and Siddy were still confident that they were right. Or on second thoughts, they weren’t. Doubts started creeping into both their heads.

When the others were away, Siddy asked Pardy with a sense of hesitant trepidation, “The third one, Pardy? By the way, what did…umm.. you ..err… answer?” A drop of sweat fell from his forehead as he spoke, even as the afternoon sun had gone down.

“Well, I thought…hmm.. it was.. wasn’t it.. almost everything?” Pardy stuttered when he asked a counter question with a similar serving of doubt.

“Yeah. I .. well.. marked that. But what if both of us are wrong?” Siddy raised what seemed like a legitimate query.

Pardy shrugged his shoulders in resignation. “I suspect we are…hmm.. wrong…err.. in all the rush, we have messed it up.. I am sure…err.. we are ..umm.. confused,” he said.

“What about.. umm.. the fourth one? No, err.. let’s talk about.. umm.. the last one first…I wrote…, ” Pardy asked dithering.

“Oh that should be simple, isn’t it? I remember that scene to a T,” Siddy cut him off and jumped in excitement.

“The trout turned out to be a glass fish tank. It crashed when they tried to get it off the hook. Then they all got blisters on their feet as they danced on the glass amidst the fish gathering them. I wrote a nice couple of pages about that scene,” Siddy explained with a wide grin.

His voice was full of delight remembering the comic scene, till he saw the expression on Pardy’s face. His eyes twitched as he had never seen more wrinkles and frowns on Pardy’s face.

“What happened?” Siddy asked. “Didn’t you write about the fish tank?”

“I don’t know, well, what.. fish tank.. err.. you are.. umm.. talking about,” Pardy muttered.

“Why?” Siddy asked.

“I thought the trout was a bowl in which they found some tasty, cooked pasta. And they got it down together with a ladder, and shared a nice, hot meal,” Pardy explained.

“A bowl of pasta?” Siddy scratched his head. “Where did you read about that? You had pasta for lunch, Pardy. Why did you write about that in the test paper?” Siddy howled at his friend.

Pardy didn’t know what was wrong. Was he too tense about this test? he asked himself. Had he read everything in such a hurry that everything got mixed up? Looks like it, he convinced himself.

“I am going to fail. None of the answers are right,” Pardy murmured and shook his head, tears welling up in his eyes.

“Me too, Pardy. Unless you want to discuss the fourth question and check?” Siddy replied, still hopeful.

“No, forget it. What difference would one correct answer make?” Pardy remarked in stark melancholy. With hands hanging loose, and neck tilted sideways, he stared into blank space. Something didn’t seem right.

Siddy opened the app on his phone and asked Pardy, “Do you want to recheck the answers from the book? For our satisfaction?” Siddy felt that if they check once, they may realise that they could scrape through. There might be some hope against hope for them, after all. Only a faint chance, he thought, holding on to the last straw.

“Forget it, Siddy. Let’s see when Madam declares the scores tomorrow. Anyway, we are getting a D,” Pardy replied, forlorn.

***

The next morning when Pardy and Siddy went to school, it might have been their worst morning in a long time. They waited for Mallika Madam to declare the scores.

Pardy and Siddy got the shock of their lives that morning. Mallika Madam declared that both of them had got an A+ in the test yesterday.

“How is that possible?” Pardy pondered aloud to Siddy, during the recess over lunch. “How did we get A+? We know what we answered. Besides, if one of us got an A+, the other should have flunked, right? How can we both be right, when we had different answers for almost all the questions?” he asked with a finger to his chin and eyebrows uniting in a frown.

“I have no idea what’s going on. I know everyone calls us teacher’s pets, but isn’t this a bit too much? Why is Madam making it so obvious? We don’t need such blatant favours,” Siddy revolted. He sounded almost embarrassed with the unexpected A+.

“We should go and tell Mallika Madam to give us what we deserve. There is no need to gift us this A+ only because she likes us,” Siddy continued. Then he bent forward towards Parth and whispered, “What will we tell Dev and gang?”

Pardy agreed. “This is too much. How can we get A+ when we expected to fail? Whatever we discuss after a paper in the future, everyone will think we are pretending,” he asserted.

“This is not done. Let’s meet Mallika Madam today after school,” Pardy decided, and Siddy nodded in agreement.

At about 4 PM, Pardy and Siddy walked fast to the teacher’s staff room, and accosted Mallika Madam. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry. It seemed like she was waiting for them.

“Hello, I was expecting you both,” she said with a broad, welcoming smile. “Surprised?” she asked. They noticed a distinct, mischievous smirk on her face.

“Yes Madam,” Siddy spoke in all seriousness, neglecting her smile. “Why did you give us an A+, though we didn’t deserve it?” he asked in all honesty, straight to the point.

“Madam, please give us the grade we deserve. You know we started reading only this morning. Next time, we promise we will read the novel in advance, so we don’t mess up,” Pardy backed up Siddy. Mallika Madam paused for a while.

“But I have given you what you deserve,” Mallika Madam then replied, shrugging her shoulders, to their utter surprise. “Do you think that I will give you A+ when you haven’t earned it?”

“How have we earned it, Madam? All our answers were wrong, isn’t it?” Pardy asked.

He glanced at Siddy and waved at him to speak.

“Yes Madam, we checked with.. umm.. each other, and with Dev too. All our answers were.. err.. wrong,” Siddy said.

“No, all your answers were right,” Mallika Madam reaffirmed, with an enigmatic smile. She twitched her eyebrows twice as if to ask them, ‘how was that’.

Pardy and Siddy glared at each other, scratching their heads. Either they had lost it, or Mallika Madam had lost it, each of them got this creepy feeling within. 

“How is that possible, Madam?” Siddy asked.

“Because you answered all the questions right. They were based on what you read in the novel,” Mallika Madam replied.

“But Madam, we gave different answers. How can both of us be right on the same novel?,” Pardy pointed out.

“That’s because you read different novels,” she said.

“Different novels? No Madam, we read the same one – Three Men in a Boat,” Both Siddy and Pardy yelped in unison.

“Well, same novel, different stories,” she clarified, and laughed out aloud. She gave an eyeful to the huge number of question marks on the curious, blank faces of her favourite students.

“Sit down dears. You were part of an experiment, let me explain,” Mallika Madam said. “And the experiment has succeeded,” she added.

“What experiment, Madam?” Pardy asked, and Siddy looked on shellshocked.

“Well, of an app,” Mallika Madam explained.

“An app?” Siddy asked.

“Yes, do you remember where you read the novel?” Mallika Madam probed.

“Yes, Madam.. On that app you sent. Ohh – So that app?” Pardy howled, slapping his hand on to his forehead. It seemed like a tube light had, out of the blue, switched on in his head.

“Yes – that app,” Mallika Madam said with a grin.

“What about it?” Siddy asked, trying to keep pace.

“Madam – do you mean….?” Pardy had a huge grin on his face as it dawned on him.

“Yes – you got it,” Mallika Madam confirmed.

“So that app showed us what we….?” Pardy started.

“SShhhh.. Yes, it’s a secret,” Mallika Madam replied, with a finger on her lips.

There was a stunned silence from Pardy on the other side of the desk for a few moments.

“Oh, that’s why….,” Pardy gathered, and stared at Siddy, who was still wondering what was going on.

“Yes that’s why Siddy went to the Ganges and saw a fish tank, and Pardy went on the Seine and had pasta!” Mallika Madam said with a broad smile. And then, she added, “And that’s why there were no wrong answers.”

“This is awesome,” Pardy said, jumping six inches in the air. “Astounding but,…it is bizarre,” he said, his smile giving way to a frown. Siddy starred at him blankly.

“What happened Madam? What happened Pardy? What’s going on? What about the app?” Siddy asked.

As she walked away, Mallika Madam warned Pardy.

“This is a secret project. Don’t tell anyone else. Otherwise, you know what will happen to your A+ grades.” She winked, walking away, adding, “Explain it to Siddy.”

Pardy had started thinking of spilling the beans of this awesome reading app to all their friends. How excited would it be to tell them about this awesome app? But if it was a secret experiment, now he didn’t know how they were going to justify getting the A+ grades.

“Let them think we are teacher’s pets,” Pardy said, after giving it some thought, and explaining everything to Siddy.

“Yes, Pardy. We have no choice,” Siddy agreed, jumping with joy when he understood the app experiment.

“And for heaven’s sake Siddy, after the next test, will you stop discussing the answers with others?” Pardy implored, as they walked towards their school bus with arms on each other’s shoulders.

As he boarded the bus, Pardy secretly wished that, someday after this experiment was over, every subject has books that changed based on who the reader was, and what the reader liked. So that there were never any wrong answers.

***

This story was first published in The Scarlet Leaf Review in their December 2021 issue.

Notes from ‘Deep Work’ – Set 2

A few months back I read a book titled “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. I found that a number of points raised and solutions offered in the book resonated with me. It was a very well-written book and I compiled some useful snippets from it into a bunch of notes. The first set of these snippets are here.

Here is the second set of those notes:

He imagines a process in which you spend ninety minutes inside, take a ninety-minute break, and repeat two or three times—at which point your brain will have achieved its limit of concentration for the day.

The five most common desires these subjects fought include, not surprisingly, eating, sleeping, and sex. But the top five list also included desires for “taking a break from [hard] work … checking e-mail and social networking sites, surfing the web, listening to music, or watching television.”

The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.

Jung’s approach is what I call the bimodal philosophy of deep work. This philosophy asks that you divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. During the deep time, the bimodal worker will act monastically—seeking intense and uninterrupted concentration. During the shallow time, such focus is not prioritized.

The rhythmic philosophy provides an interesting contrast to the bimodal philosophy. It perhaps fails to achieve the most intense levels of deep thinking sought in the day-long concentration sessions favored by the bimodalist. The trade-off, however, is that this approach works better with the reality of human nature.

There is a popular notion that artists work from inspiration—that there is some strike or bolt or bubbling up of creative mojo from who knows where … but I hope [my work] makes clear that waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan. In fact, perhaps the single best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.

To work deeply is a big deal and should not be an activity undertaken lightly. Surrounding such efforts with a complicated (and perhaps, to the outside world, quite strange) ritual accepts this reality—providing your mind with the structure and commitment it needs to slip into the state of focus where you can begin to create things that matter.

For an individual focused on deep work, the implication is that you should identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours.

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets … it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you’ll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom.

Once you’re wired for distraction, you crave it.

If you eat healthy just one day a week, you’re unlikely to lose weight, as the majority of your time is still spent gorging. Similarly, if you spend just one day a week resisting distraction, you’re unlikely to diminish your brain’s craving for these stimuli, as most of your time is still spent giving in to it.

Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction so you can focus, you should instead schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction.

Schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet, and then avoid it altogether outside these times. The total number or duration of your Internet blocks doesn’t matter nearly as much as making sure that the integrity of your offline blocks remains intact.

To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.

To summarize, to succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. This doesn’t mean that you have to eliminate distracting behaviors; it’s sufficient that you instead eliminate the ability of such behaviors to hijack your attention.

***

The Coach: Short Story

All I ever wanted was one student who would win a medal at the highest level. I got three that day.

What more could a coach ask for, you would wonder! All the training days and years I had spent with my talented trio flashed in front of my eyes. The three of them had always been my best medal prospects.

I was certain it was my day. Less than thirty meters to the finish line of the world cross country championship final. From the side-lines, I saw that Viv was in the lead. Rob was behind him. Ben was about five meters behind them at number three.

The crowd cheered all my wards to go for the final push. It didn’t matter to me. All three were mine. I cheered for all three.

I remembered what I had always told Viv. He was my most gifted and talented runner of all time. Viv was a natural who ran for running’s sake. He didn’t bother about winning or losing. I had to tell him to pay attention to the competition. Even in training. All he ever wanted was to run. Most of the time though, he won.

I remembered what I had always told Rob. He was the gentlest of my runners with a heart of gold. Rob improved in every race. He ran because he made friends that way. I had to tell him to bother less about the people around him. Even in training. All he ever wanted was to be a good friend. He was Viv’s best friend and pacer.

I remembered what I had always told Ben. He was my most competitive runner. Ben was a born competitor and ran for winning. I had to tell him to be careful about his methods. I had to tell him to pay attention to the rules and to his own attitude. All he ever wanted was to win. Most of the times, he lost. To Viv.

I chiselled all three of them and gave them all that I had. I gave them all the skills needed to navigate the treacherous track. I gave them all the methods to use the strengths of their bodies. I gave them all the techniques to build the endurance in their minds to become champions.

But a coach can only give that much. After all, people deep within remain the same. A simple man becomes a simple champion. A man with guile becomes a champion with guile.

I often wondered whether a coach can truly change an athlete’s core motivations. When push comes to shove, the athlete in the man gets out of the way. The man in the athlete comes to the fore. He pushes the athlete in the direction he wants.

That day, it became clear to me. A coach can’t, and I hadn’t, changed the people in my athletes, despite hours, days, and years of training.

Because what happened that day thirty meters before the finish line was this.

Viv slowed down because he thought he had reached the finish line. One of the signboards before the finish line was much bigger than the one at the finish. Viv thought that bigger signboard was the finish line. With everyone around cheering him, Viv thought he had crossed the line. Ever chilled out and lost in his steps, Viv slowed down.

Rob passed Viv by and saw that he was smiling despite slowing down. He realised that Viv didn’t know that the race was still not over. He slowed his steps and pointed Viv to the finish ahead. The smaller board ahead was the actual finish line, he seemed to suggest.

“We aren’t finished, yet” he shouted. Viv flashed his eyebrows when he realised it. He took off and sprinted hard for the last thirty meters as if it were the first thirty meters.

But before that, Ben, from only a few meters behind, saw that both Viv and Rob had slowed down.

He realised that it was due to the confusion about the finish line that Viv had slowed down. And he saw that with Viv, his best friend Rob too had reduced his pace. Ben smelled the opportunity to win. He jumped at it. He raced ahead, pushing Rob aside, determined to reach the finish.

In less than five seconds after that, the race was over.

Ben got the gold. Viv who sprinted after Rob gave him the signal got the silver. Rob who waited for Viv to catch up got the bronze.

I had three medals as a coach that day. Everyone congratulated me. They went gaga over a coach who produced athletes who got the gold, silver, and bronze. I was at the receiving end of endless felicitation that day.

My athletes had, for the outside world, made me proud. But deep within, I was not sure. I didn’t know who to congratulate. I didn’t know who to reprimand.

The world only sees the medals. The coach sees his athletes. And the people in them.

On the podium that day, I found my three wards. A bronze medallist with a smile, happy for his friends. A silver medallist looking blank who could only care less. And a gold medallist with a sneer.

I cheered for them, albeit on the surface. But I decided that it was going to be my last day as a coach. I had done enough. Or, on second thoughts, I hadn’t done enough.

***

This story was first published in the February 2022 issue of Potato Soup Journal. You can read it here.

Notes from ‘The Practice’ – Set 2

A few months back I read a book titled ‘The Practice’ by Seth Godin. I loved it a lot and made some notes from it. They are some profound lines from the book which spoke to me. The first set of these lines are here.

Here is second set:

Your contribution—the one that you want to make, the one you were born to make—that’s what we’re waiting for, that’s what we need.

Selling can feel selfish. We want to avoid hustling people, and so it’s easy to hold back in fear of manipulating someone. Here’s an easy test for manipulation: if the people you’re interacting with discover what you already know, will they be glad that they did what you asked them to?

When we mimic talking points or work hard to echo what the others have said, we’re hiding.

Artists actively work to create a sense of discomfort in their audience. Discomfort engages people, keeps them on their toes, makes them curious. Discomfort is the feeling we all get just before change happens

First, you can embrace the fact that you can, in fact, trust the process and repeat the practice often enough to get unstuck. Second, you can focus on the few, not everyone. And third, you can bring intention to your work, making every step along the way count.

In order to say no with consistency and generosity, we need to have something to say “yes” to. Our commitment to the practice is the source of that yes.

We focus on the fish, not the casting.

Reassurance is helpful for people who seek out certainty, but successful artists realize that certainty isn’t required

The practice is a choice. With discipline, it’s something we can always choose. The practice is there for us, whether or not we feel confident. Especially when we don’t feel confident.

Generosity is the most direct way to find the practice. Generosity subverts resistance by focusing the work on someone else. Generosity means that we don’t have to seek reassurance for the self, but can instead concentrate on serving others. It activates a different part of our brain and gives us a more meaningful way forward.

Our work exists to change the recipient for the better. That’s at the core of the practice.

When you’re doing the work for someone else, to make things better, suddenly, the work isn’t about you. Jump in the water, save that kid.

You can produce more than you know if you are intent on doing it for someone else

We have to be able to say “it’s not for you” and mean it.

It’s not helpful to only make things for yourself, unless you’re fortunate enough that what you want is precisely what your audience wants.

And so, there’s the challenge of embracing the gulf between what you see or want or believe and what those you’re serving see, want, or believe. Because they’re never the same. And the only way to engage with this gap is to go where they are, because those you serve are unlikely to care enough to come to you.

“It’s not for you” is the unspoken possible companion to “Here, I made this.”

It’s worth pausing for a moment to see the fork in the road again. It’s honorable for your art to be just for you. For you to choose to create for an audience of one. But that’s not professional work, because you’re not on the hook. There’s no one to serve but you and the idea in your head.

Pursuing either is fine. Pursuing both is a recipe for unhappiness, because what you’re actually doing is insisting that other people want what you want and see what you see.

We must sell ourselves on it first, before we can sell it to anyone else.

Our desire to please the masses interferes with our need to make something that matters.

When we get really attached to how others will react to our work, we stop focusing on our work and begin to focus on controlling the outcome instead.

When we do the work for the audience, we open the door to giving up our attachment to how the audience will receive the work.

Believing that we’re owed something is a form of attachment.

That’s because working in anticipation of what we’ll get in return takes us out of the world of self-trust and back into the never-ending search for reassurance and the perfect outcome. We believe that we need a guarantee, and that the only way to get that guarantee is with external feedback and results. It draws our eye to the mirror instead of the work.

We can begin with this: If we failed, would it be worth the journey? Do you trust yourself enough to commit to engaging with a project regardless of the chances of success?

The practice requires you to seek out this experience of uncertainty, to place yourself in the room where you will create discomfort.
***

Interview with Reader’s House

Recently, Reader’s House UK, a print and digital pop-culture magazine based in London that works with multiple artists, requested my interview and published it in their April issue. I am reprinting it here for your reading. Thanks!

Tale Crafter! Ranjit Kulkarni

Ranjit Kulkarni’s work specializes realized characters in a limited space, making his readers feel emphatic. The stories are often surprising, but always deeply satisfying.

LONDON – 27 March 2023

Ranjit Kulkarni is an author with a penchant for portraying characters from the real world and weaving stories around their apparently mundane lives. Born and brought up in Mumbai, Kulkarni spent his childhood in the environs of urban, middle-class India. As an adult, he’s travelled the world, exploring the cityscapes of America, getting lost in the natural beauty of Europe, and absorbing the tastes and sounds of Asia. With his constant knack for observation and a deep seated fondness of reflection, he loves crafting tales that entertain and provoke thought.

When not writing, Kulkarni loves reading and going on trips with his wife. He is an avid traveler, a passionate investor and a devoted student of spirituality. He loves ice-cream and chocolate too. He lives in Bangalore India.

His stories have been published in many national and international literary journals and magazines, and released in anthologies.

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?

Asaa Mi Asami by PL Deshpande. It has left me rolling in laughter whenever I think about it

You’re organizing a party. Which two authors, dead or alive, do you invite?

Without doubt, P G Wodehouse and Ruskin Bond

What genres do you especially enjoy reading? 

I enjoy reading Short Character-driven Literary or Realist fiction the  most, followed by humorous fiction of all kinds.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? 

Bertie Wooster or Jeeves – tough to pick one among them, isn’t it?

What books and authors have impacted your writing career?

I would like to think that reading a lot of stories by Anton Chekhov, Ruskin Bond and R K Narayan drew me to writing short fiction that is based on unique characters, their motivations and circumstances, and had an impact on my writing career

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

Lots of them. I haven’t read many of the classics like The Tale of Two Cities, nor have I read any of the recent bestsellers in the Fantasy Genre like the Game of Thrones. I hide when someone discusses them, and hope no one asks me anything about them.

What books do you find yourself returning to again and again?

I read and re-read a lot of Indian philosophy and mythology again and again – The Bhagavad Gita, The Mahabharata, and their various interpretations. I find myself engrossed in their complex meanings, intricate plots and subplots, as well as timeless characters which enthral readers centuries later.

What do you plan to read next?

The Practice by Seth Godin, The Tattooist of Auschwitz and A Man called Ove are on my reading list.

Testimonials: (excerpted from reviewers of recent books)

One of the things that set Kulkarni’s work apart is his ability to create fully realized characters in a limited space. In each of these stories, the reader is drawn into the world of the protagonist, feeling their joys and miseries, hopes and fears. The stories are often surprising, but always deeply satisfying. (Reviewer On ‘Potpourri’)

He has a quest of seeking deep human vibes in varied modes and depict them with so much ease. (Book Critic)

What makes this book truly special is how the author weaves together reality and imagination to create thought-provoking tales that are both amusing and surprising. The stories are inspired by experiences on a road trip, which adds an extra layer of depth and authenticity to the narrative. (Reader On ‘A Bend in the Road’)

***

You may also read the interview at their website here: https://thereadershouse.co.uk/pages/ranjit-kulkarni

The Young Man: Short Story

“Papa. Is killing someone bad?” my son asked when I was cleaning my revolver.

I pretended as if I hadn’t heard him. My thoughts went back to that young man. He should not have tried to run away. That was the mistake he made. It wasn’t my mistake. If he didn’t have anything to hide, why did he try to run? That too, with his back towards me. No, he.. umm they can’t blame me.

“Papa. Did you hear me?” my son raised his head from his book and looked at me.

“Yes, I did,” I said, trying to brush him aside.

My information was correct. My informer never goes wrong. He had never gone wrong till that day. The portrait artist had given me the sketch. I knew I was on the right track. Till I was not? But then, can anyone expect a cool decision in the heat of the moment? I had orders. Get him, dead or alive. By hook or by crook. I had full authority from my seniors. To pull the trigger.

“So, tell me then,” my son said. “Is killing someone ok?” he persisted. I blew into the empty holes of my revolver. I peered through them to see they were clean. I loaded them with the new bullets.

“No, it is not ok. Not ok at all,” I replied, but I didn’t look at him.

That young man deserved to die. Not that young man, exactly. But the other young man like him. The one who looked like him, was like him, but was not him. Even if killing someone wasn’t good, killing him was. Look at what he had done. Extortion. Murder. Molestation. Rape. Drugs. There was nothing left. He was planning to get into infiltration, terrorism. A menace to civil society.

“But what about the army?” my son continued asking his questions. “Don’t they kill the enemy?”

I looked up at him in surprise. I don’t know what books he was reading. He had started reading all kinds of things after he turned thirteen a year back.

“Yes, they do, but that’s because it is the enemy,” I replied. “In a war, they don’t kill civilians.”

This was no lesser than a war. The police also fight a war with crime. Everyday. The criminals are the enemy. That young man was a criminal, a hardened one. An intelligent one. A foxy one. He had given us the miss many times before. This time I was not going to let him go. But it was not him. But in a war, how does one know? Is it the enemy or the civilian? What business does a civilian have to be in a war zone? In the middle of the dark night? Policing wasn’t any easier than the army.

“You are right, Papa. But tell me, what about people like the police?” he continued.

The revolver slipped out of my hand and fell on the floor. I picked it up and stole a glance at my son. My heart pumped with anxiety. What was he going to ask me next? I felt some sweat on my palm.

“What about them?” I retorted.

Why should the rules be any different for the police? Were they not fighting the enemy? Very often, it was the internal enemy. More lethal. Tougher to find. Arduous to track. Difficult to face. Most of all, impossible to nab in the heat of the moment. There is no time for verification. Mistakes happen. Is the warrior to blame if the enemy was not the enemy, but a civilian?

“Is it ok for the police to kill someone?” my son was relentless. I felt a lump in my throat. I gulped it.

“Why are you asking me so many questions today?” I posed a counter question. 

I put on my uniform, tightened the belt, loaded the revolver. I sat on my chair to wear my shoes. “I need to go to the police station now,” I said. I turned my gaze to the shoe polish in the shelf.

It is ok, isn’t it? For the police to kill someone? I didn’t know. I didn’t have an answer. Black or white. Everything was perfect last night. The information was right. The location was right. The description was right. The timing was right. My shot was right. I was right. Only the young man wasn’t right.

Pity, he was the wrong one.

I stood up after wearing my shoes and asked my son to get my patrol stick. He rushed to my wardrobe and got it. I took it from him and got ready to leave.

“Papa. You are looking good,” he said, looking at me all dressed up and set to go.

I smiled at him. Good that he had changed the topic, I thought in relief. But I was wrong.

“But tell me Papa. Have you killed any enemy?” he asked me, placing his palm on my revolver.

“Don’t touch it,” I shouted at him. “It is loaded.” My lips quivered.

“Sorry, Papa,” the boy whimpered and backed off. “Have you killed anyone?” he ploughed on.

I stopped in my steps, looked him in his eyes. With a tone of self-assurance, I said, “No.”

I could see his lips curl into a smile as I stepped out. “Bye, Papa,” he said, and I waved back.

The memory of the dying young man lying in a pool of blood last night didn’t go out of my mind. I sat in my jeep waiting downstairs. I asked the orderly to drive me to the funeral.

***

This story was first published by Ariel Chart International Literary Journal in their February 2022 issue. You can read it here.

Notes from ‘Atomic Habits’ – Set 2

A few months back I read a book titled “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. It was a very well-written book and I found a lot of snippets useful that spoke to me. I compiled them into a bunch of notes. The first set is here.

Here is the second set:

Motivation is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More

I know a writer who uses his computer only for writing, his tablet only for reading, and his phone only for social media and texting. Every habit should have a home.

Whenever a habit successfully addresses a motive, you develop a craving to do it again. In time, you learn to predict that checking social media will help you feel loved or that watching YouTube will allow you to forget your fears. Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings, and we can use this insight to our advantage rather than to our detriment.

The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them. It’s not easy, but if you can reprogram your predictions, you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one.

It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”

If I outline twenty ideas for articles I want to write, that’s motion. If I actually sit down and write an article, that’s action.

If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.

Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. The more you repeat an activity, the more the structure of your brain changes to become efficient at that activity.

You don’t actually want the habit itself. What you really want is the outcome the habit delivers. The greater the obstacle—that is, the more difficult the habit—the more friction there is between you and your desired end state. This is why it is crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it.

The idea behind make it easy is not to only do easy things. The idea is to make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that payoff in the long run.

Habits are the entry point, not the end point. They are the cab, not the gym.

The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.

The secret is to always stay below the point where it feels like work.

It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.

When you automate as much of your life as possible, you can spend your effort on the tasks machines cannot do yet.

When working in your favor, automation can make your good habits inevitable and your bad habits impossible. It is the ultimate way to lock in future behavior rather than relying on willpower in the moment. By utilizing commitment devices, strategic onetime decisions, and technology, you can create an environment of inevitability—a space where good habits are not just an outcome you hope for but an outcome that is virtually guaranteed.

***

Feather in the Balcony: Flash Fiction

A few minutes earlier I saw the two of them on the branch of the tree. Right there in front of my balcony. Murmurs. Cooing. One of them nuzzling the other. Some silence. Some song. Singing in the soft drizzle? A swishing of the neckless head to clear the waters after it stopped. More murmurs. More cooing. Birds have a life. So I thought.

Then I went inside to get my cup. Hot coffee for the nice weather. Got back to my balcony.

A silent drink in the balcony. Interrupted by an intruder. A fight. A ferocious one. Some desperate twitches. Screeching squeals. Clashing of beaks. Fluttering of legs and wings. Noise in the silence. 

It took only two minutes. Or three. My coffee cup was only half empty. Or was it half full? Silence again among the flutters.

Then a fall from the branch. There was a soft thud on the ground. It was the colourful one. The male, I thought. I had no way to be sure. The sobbing female left alone, I thought. But only for a moment.

After that moment, there were no more murmurs. No more cooing. No sobbing. Only an uncomfortable silence. And the pitter patter of a soft drizzle on my balcony window sill.

I could not finish my half full cup. A feather floated from the branch of the tree. It made a soft landing in my balcony. Proof that the intruder, a falcon, or a hawk, was flying high. I looked up. Saw the mourning female lovebird in its firm clasp. 

An afternoon rendezvous gone wrong.

***

This story was first published in Academy of the Heart and Mind on April 22, 2022. You may also read it here.

Torment: Short Story

The morning sun reached the centre of the sky. Even in full brightness, Lakhinath Kaman looked like a ghost. He sat with a straight back on his second-hand two-wheeler. No beeps on his phone. Not a single phone call. No one thought of calling him. The only calls he received in the past week were of customers or employers. That too few and far between. That too when they wanted something.

He had no one of his own who called him now. He sat gazing in the blank space in front of him, at nowhere in particular. Sweat dropped from his forehead on his shirt till his shirt was wet, but he didn’t notice. When a rare breeze blew, dust on the road covered his face. He sat as motionless as a live man could. What he looked like or smelt like didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

The concrete jungle in front of him went about life unchanged. Tall buildings. Cars zooming around. People walking in a hurry, always. Trains and stations always overflowing. Buses filled to the brim.

He had no choice but to go with that flow. A living had to be made. The city made it possible. If not for anything else, then for the food to keep him alive and breathing, he had to work. He wondered in the past one week though, whether even his own breathing mattered anymore.

There had been no orders since morning. His phone beeped and he knew what it was. It was just past noon. Time for the lunch orders to start coming in.

He opened the app on his phone as if by habit. “Just Delicious” was the name of the pickup. An order of parathas and dal with some rice. He moved his tongue over his dry lips and then over the sides of his cheeks inside, and he gulped the saliva when his mouth watered. Lunch orders did this to him. He never had breakfast. Now he didn’t care for breakfast anymore, especially since the past week.

The pickup point was two kilometres away. Ten minutes in this traffic. He kicked his two-wheeler to life. There was no other option. The city was the source of his livelihood. There was nothing to go back to his far-off, remote village to. There was no one to go back to.

He had to reach the pickup point on time. It affected his ratings and his pay.

“Just Delicious” was a small place. Three or four tables. Ten chairs. All empty. Couple of people in the kitchen. No one came there for lunch. It was all delivery nowadays. One man at the counter.

He was, by now, a familiar face. Lakhinath came there every other day for some pickup order.

“Order #2210,” Lakhinath said, without any expression, and showed him the order from his app.

“Paratha Dal order ready?” the man at the counter with a familiar smile shouted at his kitchen.

“Five minutes,” a voice from the kitchen howled. The man signalled Lakhinath to wait. He moved on to the next order he had received. A couple of other delivery boys were waiting for pickup. They were busy on their mobile phones. No one noticed Lakhinath.

After a couple of minutes, Lakhinath looked at the man at the counter. “Sir.. my.. umm.. younger.. .”

“What happened to the Paneer Butter Masala and Naan order? #2207?” the man howled.

“Yes, what.. happened?” he then turned to Lakhinath.

He hesitatingly continued. “Sir, my.. “

“Yes, your younger brother?”

“Sir, my younger brother died last week.”

The man at the counter turned his face towards Lakhinath, but only slightly. “Add one Lassi to #2209,” he yelled. “Oh.. Sorry to hear. How?”

“Sir.. I don’t know. He had fever for three or four days. They took him to hospital. He died there.”

“I see… Well, nowadays one can’t say anything about life.”

“Yes, Sir. God’s will.”

“Right. You should take care of yourself.”

Lakhinath stared at the man in silence. A waiter barged in and said, “Ok, here is Order #2210.”

The man handed over the parcel to Lakhinath, who picked it up and waited to see if the man asked him anything else. He didn’t. Lakhinath walked out of “Just Delicious” with drooping shoulders. His gait was listless. Small steps followed by long steps.

He checked his phone for the delivery point of the parcel. He sat on his bike and rode away.

The address was familiar. He knew the apartment. He had been there many times for food delivery. He knew the blocks inside the apartment too. This one was at the far-right corner from the main gate. The security would stop him and enter his name and mobile on their app and let him in.

Everything has to have a record, nowadays. He knew everything, the works.

But he still called the customer from his bike.

“Sir, I am bringing your parcel,” he said to the man who picked up the phone. “Parathas, Dal, Rice.”

“Yes, I can see that in the app. Do you know the address?”

“No Sir, where is it?”

“Take right after Raghavendra Swami Temple and the apartment is in the lane on the third left after that. B block, 3rd floor, 304. Follow Maps. Come fast.”

“Ok Sir.. I will.. I am..,“ Lakhinath started but the man at the other end had hung up.

Lakhinath desperately wanted to talk to someone. For three days, he had tried.

He wanted to tell someone what happened to his younger brother.

How his brother suddenly took ill last week. How his fever did not subside. How Lakhinath had no one else in the world to call his own now.

How his villagers took his brother to the closest doctor six km away. How his younger brother could not be saved. How his younger brother was the only one Lakhinath had in this world after their parents died ten years back.

How he could not even go for his brother’s funeral. How he saw his cremation done by his village friend on video call. How God had made a mistake by leaving the elder brother alive and taking the wrong, younger brother.

He wanted to talk about all of it. But no one asked. Or listened. No one noticed.

Lakhinath slowed down his bike. He could have easily passed the signal, but he halted even when it was still amber. Another biker zoomed past him and abused him turning back on the way for stopping even when the signal wasn’t red.

A car came from behind and stopped next to him. Lakhinath peeped inside the window. The man at the wheel gave him an awkward smile. The woman next to him rolled up the window. Lakhinath heard the couple say out some abuses, addressed to him.

Lakhinath looked at the traffic constable and turned to him to tell him how his younger brother died. But the signal turned green, and the constable waved to him to move ahead fast.

When he reached the flat for delivery, a woman opened the door and a man followed her.

“Must be the food delivery guy,” he shouted.

“Yes, Sir… Madam, your parcel,” Lakhinath said and waited for a few uneasy seconds.

The woman went inside but didn’t close the door.

“He is waiting for a tip,” Lakhinath heard her whisper to the man. The man came to the door.

“Thank you,” he said and pushed his hand forward to give Lakhinath a crisp note.

“Thank you Sir. But Sir, my younger brother…umm.. he died last week.”

The man’s expression changed from a smile to that of disbelief.

“Oh.. is it? So sorry to know,” the man said, standing at the door.

“Yes, Sir, he was four years younger to me.”

“I see. Everyone has to go from this world. But this is so sad.”

“Yes, Sir. God’s will.”

“Are you married?”

“No Sir.”

The man went inside and got some food in a paper plate.

“You can have this.”

“Ok Sir. Thank you.”

“I have to run into a meeting now. Take care.”

The man closed the door and Lakhinath took the stairs to climb down the three floors listlessly carrying the food plate. He gazed at the people walking in and out of the gate.

Every time he saw someone walk past him, he thought he will talk. But no one talked.

Can I not find a single person among the thousands here who will hear my tale of torment? The unnamed crowd flitted by, busy in their own world or maybe not that busy, but still paying no heed to him and his sorrow. If his sorrow were to break out of his heart, it would drown the entire city. But still he had no choice but to keep it locked inside his tiny heart.

He finally gave up on people. It was no use talking to anyone. They may take me for a madman. He shook his head in disdain. But the torment in his heart did not subside.

He stepped out with the plate of food. He walked outside the apartment gate.

A stray dog saw him come out with the food. The dog followed Lakhinath while he walked towards his parked two-wheeler. Lakhinath showed him the plate and the dog licked his hand.

“Are you hungry?” he asked the dog. The dog wagged his tail. “Come with me,” Lakhinath said.

Lakhinath walked away from his parked vehicle with the dog following him.

“My younger brother.. err.. you know.. the only one of my own I had in this world.. umm.. you know.. err.. he suddenly died last week,” Lakhinath said. “Take this, eat this,” he said and held his hand in front of the dog. The dog looked up to Lakhinath, licked his hand again, wagged his tail even more, and munched into the food plate.

Lakhinath put his hand on the dog’s head and sat on the ground next to him.

“He had fever for three days and .. umm.. died suddenly in the hospital. It was all very sudden. I couldn’t even go for his funeral…My friend in the village – he.. umm.. cremated him,” Lakhinath said and broke down. The tears that he had held back within broke the dam and flowed like a river.

“If you had a dog brother in your village, how would you feel if he left you all of a sudden? What if you had no chance to say goodbye? Wouldn’t you be sad? Wouldn’t you want to talk about him?” Lakhinath whimpered, with a choked voice.

The dog kept listening while munching the food and occasionally nodded and licked and breathed on Lakhinath’s hand. Lakhinath spoke his heart out. He told him everything about his younger brother.

***

This story was first published in the October 2021 issue of Misery Tourism. You can read it .