Raghav Rao's Blog

The Dangerous Heuristic

I will try to keep this post short. Let me open with a quote from “The People’s Hospital” by Dr. Ricardo Nuila. It’s an excellent book — interweaving remarkable patient stories with Dr. Nuila’s own journey and with a thoughtful, considered analysis of the healthcare system. Published in 2023, I think it will be considered timeless like “The House of God” by Samuel Shem and other such books because the problems it describes aren’t just endemic to the healthcare system. Over time, those intractable problems have wormed their way into the soul of America.

Dr. Ricardo Nuila & John Boyd — two people who care about function and helping the end user.

Context for the quote: Dr. Nuila works at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston. It’s a public safety-net hospital in Harris County owned and operated by the Harris Health System and staffed by the faculty, residents, and students from Baylor College of Medicine. One of his colleagues who splits time between Ben Taub and a private hospital is explaining to him the difference in the practice.

“The private hospital is set up to be overused.” He explained. He could call a colleague in during a surgery when he didn’t really need an extra set of hands (and, likewise, expect to be called by that colleague.”

Here, Dr. Nuila’s colleague is explaining “over-treatment” — Medicine Inc. (Nuila’s neat formulation that sums up hospitals, doctors, administrators, and health insurance companies) are all incentivized, individually, to do more, spend more, and recoup more but the health outcome for the patient isn’t necessarilly improved. It’s spending more with no change to outcome.

This section reminded me of the excellent biography of John Boyd by Robert Coram. Boyd was a fighter pilot turned plane designer (among many other things) who advocated for simpler fighters that cost less with fewer bells and whistles. He found that, within the Pentagon, people WANTED to spend more and spending was an end in itself because it was more impressive to have a $25 million plane with radar-guided missiles than a lightweight, lower-cost fighter. A lot of the voices pushing for spending more, predictably, came from the weapons manufacturers but people in the military, too, saw opportunities for advancement by supporting expensive, shiny programs.

Dr. Nuila and Boyd noticed the same thing —- both in the military and in healthcare, there was TOO MUCH money already. The problem wasn’t funds. Rather, it was the excess of funds. There was no incentive to do things under budget.

I’ll throw a third thing into the mix even though I need to read more about it but the U.S. education costs per child in 2020–21 were $18,614 nationally, the fourth highest in the world and I’m pretty sure no one thinks we’re getting sufficient ROI. There, too, MORE spending isn’t the answer.

We live in a time when we are inundated with information. And, as consumers, of products, of information, of news stories, we have to come up with heuristics — cognitive shorthand — to get through the day. The idea that “more expensive is better” is a heuristic that many of us, myself included, can default to. But this heuristic is not necessarily true. We must be careful.

The Conclusion Here:

For decades to come, we are going to be arguing about policies like Medicare for All, and about Dept. of Education, and about military spending. I write this short post in the hope that my audience, working in various industries and with a wide range of political beliefs, remembers that — “who is going to pay for it?” and “how much?” are not the only salient questions.

Guiding philosophies. Processes. Simpler, better aligned incentives. These, too, are levers that we can manipulate. Money is not the only lever.

And, read, Dr. Ricardo’s book, please. You will be better for it. And if you have anyone in your family who likes military history, Body is a great birthday/Xmas gift.

Bookshop Link - The People’s Hospital

Bookshop Link - Boyd

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; but it helps. Missy will be available in America starting Spring 2026.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Here’s the India order link.

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Attention & The Focused Life

This a newsletter about information saturation and it is necessarily interested in “attention.” Specifically, in a culture of too-much information, how do we harness and deploy our attention? How do we conserve it? How do we expand it? How do we protect it from tech companies but still take advantage of the wonders of widely accessible information?

In today’s post, I will share my Takeaways from the book, “Rapt: Attention and The Focused Life” by Winifred Gallagher and I’m confident they can help improve your quality of life — a tall claim but I stand by it. Again, disclaimer, this is not a summary of the book. These are my thoughts on top of the scaffolding provided by Gallagher.

Rapt by Gallagher

Previously, writing about the dangers of computers, I said: People say ‘time’ is our most valuable resource. But attention, the ability of our brain to filter out certain stimuli, and only concentrate on stimuli relevant to the task at hand, dictates our use of time.

Top-Down & Bottom-Up Attention

According to the researchers Gallagher spoke with, attention can be divided broadly into these two categories. Let me illustrate with an example. Let’s say you go to an antiques shop and see a big stuffed Lion; it’s grotesque and fascinating and it captures your attention. This is bottom-up attention. Naturally, it’s a predator and it’s large and it commands our attention. But you return to that store with a friend who is a stamp collector. They are not distracted by the stuffed lion because they have entered the store with the intent to search for stamps and they are overjoyed to find a rare one. They are directing their attention — this is top-down attention.

The implication in an information-saturated culture is immense. If you wade into a new environment unprepared, your attention will be captured but what’s biggest and brightest. But if you prepare with the following: 1) a particular intention 2) relevant subject-matter knowledge — you can remain the master of your attention for longer. Also, this vocabulary can allow you to differentiate and stop yourself when you find yourself giving into bottom-up attention, clickbait headlines, thumbnails, captions, for example.

Duration or Quiet Eye

We massively underrate duration.

The composer John Cage said: "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

When we say — “pay attention” — we erroneously think that means “staying still.” But actually, it’s probing. Let’s say you are staring at the palm of your hand. You may be still but your mind is moving, seeing colors, textures, comparisons. If you look at any one thing, you begin to see more and more.

This actually dovetails with something I’ve noticed with writing; when fatigued or bored, instead of taking a break, it’s possible to get more energy simply by going deeper, ironically, by “boring” into something.

This could mean literally paying physical attention to each of my fingers as they strike the keys. It’s amazing how this going deeper can revitalize focus.

When I say “quiet eye”, I’m going off-script. Gallagher does not write about Quiet Eye but it’s a sports term that I have been investigating. It’s basically the duration of time spent on the target. When measured, the duration of Quiet Eye is a very good predictor of how good someone is at a particular skill, shooting a free throw for example. Critically, with practice, Quiet Eye can be trained for ludicrous gains. Which brings me to my next point.

Mind-Training Is Underutilized

I envision a world where the way we work out our bodies every day, we will also do daily ‘mind-training.’ I’ve been trying to incorporate them, too. I have a lot more to say on this subject. I will try and get it written down soon.

Remembering vs. Experiencing

According to Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, we often expend more attention i.e. have more thoughts “thinking about living” than living itself — this is because we have two selves, an experiencing self and remembering self. For example, in the seventh mile of a ten mile run, you may be hating how it feels but when you’re having a beer afterwards, you recall the entire experience differently.

Sometimes, the remembering self or the storytelling self is wonderful. It allows us to enjoy memories and also to anticipate future happiness. This is because, according to Kahneman, anticipation is actually a form of remembering something that hasn’t actually happened yet.

But, if you start thinking too much about your life, you enter the “remembering” self and this can lead to thoughts like “I would be much happier if….” or “if only X external event were to happen, then Y…” even though most of day-to-day life and happiness is lived by the experiencing self. It’s the cup of coffee in our hands, the quality of light through the windows, the quality and duration of our attention to our flow state, whether that’s during work or recreation. In such cases, cognition, like computers, can occasionally become the enemy, and as I’ve written about in my posts on Krishnamurti, over-cognition can hurt us.

I write this only half-facetiously: If you find yourself thinking about how your life could be better, how you could be happier, and what external events you need to bring into existence to make that future come true, don’t bother actioning all those plans. Instead, do yourself a favor, stop thinking and, instead look at what’s in front of you longer, harder, and it will reveal itself to you.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; but it helps. Missy will be available in America starting Spring 2026.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Here’s the India order link.

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Takeaways from The Extraordinary Life of a One-Legged American Spy

I recently finished A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purcell. This post is not a summary. These are my principal takeaways from the extraordinary life of Virginia Hall.

Image: Wikipedia

The book postulates that the secret life of a Resistance spy afforded Virginia Hall the opportunity to find her true self and cause. That true calling was fighting for the defense of her adopted home, France, for she was American, born-and-bred.

There’s something folded in this — one thing inside another thing.

There’s the idea that inside the secret (the false identity) is actually the truth. We could call this our ‘shadow’. We are one person, or we present one way to the world. But there is inside us another person — a shadow person — a person we could be, given the appropriate circumstances. Sometimes, those circumstances are awful — the mass-starvation, deprivation, and terror of Vichy France, for example. Virginia Hall lived a life of enormous meaning, supplying valuable intelligence to the war effort, contributing meaningfully to D-Day and more. But it came at tremendous personal cost, many close run-ins with death, losing many friends, knowing they were tortured and killed in heinous ways.

I’m moved by how much this woman sacrificed out of love for her adopted nation. There should be a word for this. Searching, I found a discussion on English Stack Exchange where someone coined the phrase — amor ceterae patriae — love of another country. They further condensed it to — ceterapatriotism; I certainly feel this way, not just about America, but many countries where I’ve spent any length of time. To me, it’s like romantic love vs. family love. There are things we are born into and there are the things we choose.

Back to Virginia Hall and this book: An excellent war biography

The book captured the highs and lows of an extraordinary life. Here are some of the bits that will stay with me:

Virginia lost her leg in her early twenties following an infection after a shooting accident. Much later on, evading the Nazis, she made the arduous climb over the Pyrenees. During the climb, she concealed the fact of her wooden leg from the guides because, if she was seen as a potential weak link, there was a chance they might abandon her.

She re-trained and re-infiltrated France as a radio operator despite knowing that radio operators had terrible odds of survival. She did so because she didn’t want to be dependent on other operators to communicate to headquarters. If you’re someone who always tries to draw lessons from biographies, there’s one — always be the one controlling the communications.

Back to my takeaways:Buzzwords: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:

On the one hand, Virginia would seem like an ideal candidate for the idea that diversity is strength. She was serially discriminated against for being a woman, first in the state department and later in the CIA. Interestingly, in the field, her competence silenced critics. But during peacetime, her identity was used against her. She also had a disability. Her leg had been amputated below the knee. And yet, the manner in which she lived her life suggests that she would be against tokenism, or diversity simply for diversity’s sake. Her story suggests a few things to me. Firstly, there are qualities much deeper than identity that mark people for their roles/callings. Secondly, smart leaders can see possibilities where others see barriers. For example, the SOE (who hired her) saw potential where the State Department lost an asset because of their bigotry.

Post-War Life:

After the war, though brilliant, she suffered. She’d seen many friends and colleagues die. Also, although the author wasn’t able to find anything to support this, I think it’s fair to say that Virginia must have been very disillusioned by the CIA’s protection of former Nazi and Abwehr intelligence officials. During the war, Virginia operated out of Lyon. Klaus Barbie had been her primary nemesis. That the CIA allowed the butcher of Lyon to escape to Bolivia must have rankled her immensely.

Promotion:

Virginia was adamantly uninterested in commendations, awards, etc, . She only sought promotion in order to advance her work, not for the title. Her extraordinary valor was inwardly motivated. She lived a dramatic, intense life, with a lot of pain in it, and a lot of loss, but she also was one of the few people, I imagine, who knew what they were capable of in extreme situations.

The Book:

And, like any good war biographer, Sonia Purcell does an excellent job reminding us how ghastly it is living in those circumstances — starvation, privation, tyranny, arbitrary violence. She shows us how swiftly France found itself in that predicament. All of us, for our own countries or, if we are ceterapatriots, our adopted countries, must make concerted efforts to live in peace, and yet confront tyranny when the time comes, otherwise, we, too, will have to endure horrors.

Sorry, it’s not a very upbeat post. But Virginia Hall’s story is remarkable and worth sharing. Non omnis moriar. (I shall not wholly die — Horace). Because you helped the Allies win the war. Well done to the limping lady from Baltimore.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; but it helps.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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Spring Wins - Celebrating The Work of Friends and Colleagues

Last year, I had my book come out and many people helped me. I want to put the spotlight on a few, new, valuable contributions to the culture from my people, people I know, my colleagues, and my friends. Each of these merits a full post but this will have to suffice for now. Three are Chicagoans and one (Rosie) is a former Chicagoan now in Grand Rapids, MI.

Jill Riddell's Podcast - Shape of the World - Season 6

Host Jill Riddell has been one of my greatest champions and her ongoing cultural contribution - Shape of the World, a podcast about cities and nature, has gotten off to a bang this season with its first episode featuring artist Laurie Palmer to talk about her book, The Lichen Museum.

We don't realize that lichen are everywhere and when you see them, you can't stop seeing them, and the world around you is sure to be reborn.

Take the summer to go through the episode back catalog, too. These are marvelous, important conversations. This amazing podcast on cities and nature featuring fascinating guests is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and directly on its site where it features great artwork, too.

Jill is also the founder of The Office of Modern Composition, a Chicago-based organization that helps writers and artists with coaching and hosts events.

Sophie Lucido Johnson's New Book - KIN - is available for Pre-Order

Bookshop LINK

Sophie is a tremendous force. She is the author of wonderful books, a New Yorker cartoonist, the mind behind the You Are Doing A Good Enough Job Substack and my friend. She has helped me many times and I can personally attest to her credibility on the subject of her new book-- a richly researched look, infused with her kind, funny voice, into how community support can relieve the seemingly unrelenting stress of modernity.

Bookshop LINK

Jim Stewart - Defiant Acts

Link to Purchase from Acre Books

Jim is a friend and an author and an organizer and I'm so proud (though I have nothing to do with it!) to see his debut novel in print! He was my classmate at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and right from the beginning I felt his commitment to a) his values -- labor, organizing, racial justice, a commitment to honoring the truth, even when it isn't easy and b) his craft. I heard him read recently from Defiant Acts and he's an outstanding performer, too, and I encourage you to mark at least one of his events on your calendar.

Link to Purchase from Acre Books

Rosie Accola - Supernormal Stimuli

Link to Purchase from Bullshit Lit

Another SAIC alum, Rosie Accola is a singular presence; upbeat, funny, always ready with a quip. Full disclosure: though my copy has arrived, I haven't yet gotten stuck in. But I know Rosie and on the strength of that alone, I'm excited. It's described as a 'gay guido lyric novel' -- you know it's going to be offbeat and bizarre in the best way!

Massive congratulations to my friends and colleagues. Hopefully one or more of these sparked your curiosity and you found yourself hitting the listen or purchase link.

Link to Purchase from Bullshit Lit

Wishing you well this warm, windy Spring.

Raghav

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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Enduring Spirit of Vietnam

Large numbers do not communicate lived experience.

Growing up, it always galled me that, in the popular imagination, so much more airtime was given to the 58,000 US service members that died than to the over 2 million Vietnamese, soldiers and civilians, who lost their lives in that long conflict.

Now, I understand that with devastation, like with love, it’s not a measurable quantity; it’s possible to make room in our hearts for the totality of the tragedy while also appreciating that some corners, some unknown stories, will never come to light. Many lives were lived and cut short in silent anguish.

I read Bao Ninh’s “The Sorrow of War” roughly seven or eight years ago and it was the first extended experience I had through the point-of-view of a North Vietnamese soldier. Soon after, I read William Duiker’s mammoth 800-page biography of Ho Chi Minh and I began to understand the intricacies of the multi-decade conflict.

Tomorrow, I will be moderating a conversation in Chicago with author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and photographer Peter Steinhauer. The event, titled “Enduring Spirit of Vietnam,” marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and explores how art and storytelling can help us heal, remember, and connect.

As the world contends with similar intractable conflicts, I think this is the right time to have this conversation and I hope, if you are free tomorrow, that you will be able to make it to The Haymarket at 6pm. Reserve your free spot here

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is the author of thirteen books in Vietnamese and English, most recently the global bestselling novels The Mountains Sing and Dust Child. I’ve heard her address an audience before and her dynamism and sincerity electrified hundreds of people at the Bangalore Lit Fest.

Peter Steinhauer is an artist photographer, and he lived and worked in Asia for twenty years, beginning in Vietnam in 1993.

No war is contained just as no man is an island. Conversations like the one we’ll be having tomorrow will hopefully ensure that we don’t endlessly repeat the mistakes of the past.

If you can’t make it that night, Quế Mai will also be speaking at on Thursday, May 8 — I encourage you to check that one out too.

Hope to see you there!

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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A tribute to Chicago's fixie boys

Springtime has arrived when you see the fixie boys. They ride recklessly. They descend onto streets like a surging wave.

Light bodies on lighter bike frames. Pointy elbows, skinny legs, shaggy hair. Their eyes remain fixed ahead towards a point only they know where.

They are near weightless. Tires barely skimming pavement.

They are kindred to budding blossoms and new birdsong. Life coming into fullness of form.

I wish to be them for a moment. To burst with unhindered vitality. To tirelessly pedal with unwavering purpose and intent.

They pedal standing up and I mimic them when I ride my own fixie bike.

I untether myself from the earth. I glide down verdant, tree-lined streets. My gaze towards what is unseen.

Check out: Chicago Fixed Gear | Mash Down the 606 Trail w/ Marcel

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DEAL announcement: MISSY’s US Rights Sold!

Earlier this week, the official announcement went out on Publisher’s Marketplace. MISSY is coming home to America! I’m so excited to see my book in print with Triquarterly Books, an imprint of Northwestern University Press, one of the nation’s most reputed university presses dedicated to publishing works of enduring scholarly and cultural value. That MISSY was deemed such a work and passed its Press Board meeting with unanimous approval is a great source of pride to me. For years, I wanted to enter the culture. When my India and UK rights sold with respected commercial publishers, I was elated. But I live and work in America and so much of the book takes place in America and is about this country. Naturally, I wanted it to reach readers here. I’m overjoyed that a Press close to my home city of Chicago has seen merit in it and chosen to bring it under its aegis.

Publisher’s Marketplace Announcement.

This would not have happened without the tireless efforts of my agent, Priya Doraswamy of Lotus Lane Literary. If you read these newsletters, you know how much I owe to her. I owe massive thanks also to Megan Stielstra, the acquiring editor for MISSY at Northwestern University Press. When we spoke, it was clear that she understood this book’s connection to America’s cultural palimpsest. Similarly, Marisa Siegel, NUP’s senior acquiring editor for trade shared our vision and guided this book through the Press Board.

Huge thanks also to my previous acquiring editors, Elizabeth Kuruvila (formerly of PRH India, now at Simon & Schuster) and Keshini Naidoo, at Hera Books, for bringing MISSY to readers in their markets.

I’m honored to join the list of great writers first published by Triquarterly Books, some of whom have gone on to win National Book Awards, Whiting Awards, and O. Henry Awards. But most importantly, I’m grateful that I will enter the culture of arts and letters of North America.

If you’re in America and would like your US Copy of Missy, you’ll have to wait one year. Publication is slated for Spring ‘26. I will certainly let everyone know when pre-orders are available. I’m looking forward to yet another cover for MISSY. If you’re eager to read it before then and willing to pay a premium, the UK and India editions will ship to America.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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In Memoriam: Dr. Jaylina Store

On February 3rd, my grandmother, Dr. Jaylina Store, passed away, in her home in the company of her daughters, leaving a cavernous void in our hearts. She led a full life, passing at the age of 94. A gentle and remarkable woman, I never once heard her raise her voice. I can hear, still, her tinkling laugh.

She became a doctor at a time when few Indian women could aspire to such ambitions, graduating from Grant Medical College in Bombay.

Earlier this week, on Feb 12th, we immersed her ashes in the Arabian Sea, taking a small boat out from the Gateway of India. Later, I realized that Mahatma Gandhi, too, had his ashes immersed in the Arabian Sea, on Feb 12th, exactly 77 years before. A sign to me that her soul is in exalted company. She actually met the man himself in her youth, an incident that she recalled to me with clarity though she would have been just a teenager at the time.

My grandmother lost her husband when he was in his forties, leaving her to raise four daughters. This period of her life, I think, came with many challenges.

For years, her home, Springfield was a light and airy sanctuary for many of us. I walked there — it was only five minutes away from our house — several times a week. I think back on it with a sense of gratitude. We watched movies together — Wait Until Dark and Roman Holiday and How to Steal A Million. We played Scrabble. She was even goalkeeper and let me fire the ball at her from close range, never complaining, always laughing.

She was interested, always, in spirituality and, at the time of her passing, I know she’d expended a great deal of thought on the subject of death. She was pre-deceased by several siblings and her grandson, my cousin, Krish. She left this world in a state of equilibrium with it. There was no unfinished task on her mind.

One of her brothers was an unfortunate passenger on TWA 903 and died when it crashed in Egypt in 1950. This was a regular flight route at the time, Bombay - Cairo - Rome - New York and her brother was on his way to college in America, to MIT, and was so young, only seventeen. I recall her telling me about the devastated reaction in the family home to the horrible news. It’s a great tragedy when a youthful energy, on the cusp of life, is snuffed out. Many families with untimely deaths must endure this pain. She endured it many times in a single life.

Though I miss her, I feel joy when I think of Ajji. She contended with the vagaries of life with a dignity that will be admired by all those who knew her. May she rest in peace.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly at a discounted rate. Here’s the India pre-order link.

Thanks for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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To live outside the frame of time

Interstellar

I came to know the movie Interstellar first through its beautiful soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. Its “Main Theme” I purchased as piano sheet music to play. I was living in New York when the movie came out. There were a lot of posters up at bus stops: a desolate and dark landscape of space with Anne Hathaway or Matthew McConaughey in a space suit. At the time I thought it was a funny casting.

This past weekend I watched it for the first time when it became available on Netflix, and it was stunning. The grand visuals accompanied by the rolling crescendos and dark resonating chords of the musical scores, the poignant human stories, and dialogue that hit home. As an aside, I am amazed at the depth of Matthew McConaughey’s acting skills. I associate him with rom-coms, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and The Wedding Planner, and the Lincoln car commercial. The two most recent works with him that I’ve seen have held a different tenor altogether, the other being True Detective.

A scene from the movie. The space ship Endurance, a blip of light as it flies by Saturn.The unstoppable force of time

At the center of the plot is the passage of time and the futility of trying to control this. Matthew McConaughey’s character “Coop” leaves his two children behind to be raised by his father-in-law, their only remaining living relative. He does so in the hopes of locating a new planet for humans to live on, specifically a place for his children. The Earth is literally dying, unable to sustain any crops except for corn, which will soon also become unsustainable.

I was drawn into the pain and regret that he experiences as his voyage into space inevitably extends further and further into the lives of his children while he remains youthful and unchanged. To hurtle through space and time is to be preserved in his youth relative to his children’s aging back on Earth. There is a moment in the movie, he is visibly anguished as an exploratory trip onto a planet ends in tragedy and not much else. One hour on the planet was equivalent to seven years on Earth. His children have aged 23 years in what was three hours for him. One of his companions, Dr. Brand played by Anne Hathaway retorts with frustration, “I screwed up, I’m sorry! But you knew about relativity.”

Life in measures of texture rather than time

This week I was sitting with a patient who shared feelings of grief and regret around the loss of time in a toxic relationship. They spoke of loss of time in a way akin to loss of life. It evoked for me Coop’s desperation for his mission to succeed so that he could return home and try to recoup the decades “lost” with his children. That slippery feeling of time indifferently passing by with no rewind or back button.

It stirred up wonderings about how to conceive of life outside the measure of time, what would that look like. I think about the many patients-clients I have seen with similar regrets of looking back and wishing they had done something different, a feeling of life lost. Yet if there is anything I have learned in my work, it is that a life “well-lived” or a “good life” is not how we may see it depicted in our culture through advertisements and media, through teachings in school, and through what is implicitly or explicitly communicated growing up in our family contexts. Life is often depicted as a kind of linear progression against time, of reaching milestones that are understood in terms of happiness, contentment, acquisition of material goods and comforts, and health and longevity.

I think about an alternate measure of life to be the richness and textures of life, rather than these milestones that hold an implicit judgment as markers of a good life.

In recent years I have come into a realization that my life is not a sacred thing to be protected from discomforts. Rather life is about discomfort, the inevitability of this and other greater experiences such as grief, loss, pain, anguish, disillusionment, and alienation. There are experiences that may not resolve in a lifetime and continue on as part of the fabric of one’s life. Such experiences do not impinge on what would otherwise be a “perfect” life, they are the richness that composes a life. There is not necessarily a reason for why they happen, they simply are.

I comment sometimes to Raghav of what it would have been like to have had an alternate life like that of Jimi Hendrix. A short life with intensity of experience and undoubtably with different textures that I will not experience in my own.

Life in the measure of love

I paraphrased a quote from Dr. Brand that moved me. The team must make a high stakes and very difficult choice. They have enough fuel only to visit one of two remaining planets that may be hospitable to life. Dr. Brand is in love with the scientist who initially voyaged 10 years ago to one of these planets in hopes of finding a life-sustaining environment. She still harbors the hope that they can be reunited against all odds and makes this heart-wrenching plea of why go to this planet over the other.

“Maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory. Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful. We love people who have died. Maybe it’s an artifact of higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”

At least for me, so much of what I wonder about of life comes back around to love and connection. That to be human is to be born for love (borrowing words from Dr. Bruce Perry here). I felt inspired by this idea of love as transcendent of time and space, and will continue to reflect on this and carry it forward with me.

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Reflections on India Tour + The Year 2024

In my hotel room after the first day at the Bangalore Literature Festival, I became filled with a sense of dread. The day had been a massive success, a career highpoint, moderating a panel featuring Booker Prize-winner Kiran Desai among other major authors, speaking to a full-house at a panel dedicated to MISSY, signing books and taking selfies with readers. I spent the day inhabiting the image of what I thought a writer at a Lit Fest looked like. Beyond that, I’d shared the day with loved ones and reconnected with old friends. I couldn’t ask for more. Still, I couldn’t shake this dread. The festival, big as it was, felt like a pageant that would shortly end, leaving dust and a clean-up crew recycling the guides and pamphlets. Ultimately, I feared it was all meaningless mutual back-patting. I was wrong, of course, but didn’t know it then.

The next day, I went to a lovely bookstore, Champaca, to do a signing but also, to attend a lecture on Krishnamurti delivered by my high school Economics teacher, Rajan Chandy. It was an excellent lecture, beginning first with what causes violence but extending outward to what causes inner conflict. In my last year at Rishi Valley, Rajan had been my dorm master (house parent, we call them) and I admired him greatly (and I continue to do so). In the light of this lecture, the dread from the previous day first became clarified and secondly dissipated.

The lovely Champaca book store.

Sometimes, I mistakenly think that getting what I want will satisfy me. But the chasing of accolades is an exercise of the self’s attempt to assert itself. If I can let go of that need, the fear dissipates and what’s usually left is the best part —- taking pleasure in the company of other people!

From then on, I was able to shed my personal concerns and actually enjoy the Lit Fest!

I connected with wonderful people supporting a culture of letters in Bangalore. These people represent the best qualities of the city — laidback, intelligent, funny. I’m thinking of the festival organizers — Mr. V. Ravichandar and Srikrishna as well as Subodh Sankar from Atta Galata and his team of volunteers. And, also, the delightful and witty Lavanya Lakshminarayan, author of Ten-Percent Thief and the new Interstellar Megachef. But there were many others, too.

Here are some of the highlights of the wider tour:

In addition to connecting with Rajan and his wife Anu, I also re-connected with several of my high school English teachers (Sid Menon, Usha Palat akka, Jyothi akka), all of whom cultivated my love of literature.

At the Bangalore Literature Festival, a number of current Rishivalley students attended my events and bought books and even took one for the school library, a place that means a lot to me.

At the marvelous Apparao Galleries run by the generous and classy Sharan Apparao in Chennai, we had a lovely event surrounded by art. After, over a glass of wine, I got to enjoy the company of the incredible George K whose life story and art are both awe-inspiring

My Bombay events were full-circle moments as I got to give public talks, meet readers and sign copies at two book stores that I frequented growing up, Kitab Khana and Crossword Kemps Corner. The latter, in particular, was my local bookstore and I can’t tell you how many hours I spent there.

Missy at Crossword Kemps Corner, my childhood bookstore.

Lastly, I got to spend a lot of quality time with my parents and brother and his fiancée. My family and friends and wider community filled every venue with their love and support. I sold out at several events because they sent initial whatsapps, then follow-up whatsapps, and then confirmation whatsapps. It really takes a team.

2024 has been a year where many of the things that I wanted so desperately and for so long finally materialized. I’m grateful to my publishers Hera in the UK and PRH in India as well as my agent Priya Doraswamy.

Also, stay tuned, because I anticipate being able to share good news re: my US rights in the not-too-distant future. Yes, America, Missy will soon be legally recognized on her adopted soil, too!

Pics from the Chennai event!

For help with the publicity for this India tour, I want to thank all the venues and their bookseller teams (Kitab Khana, Bangalore Lit Fest, Champaca, Apparao Galleries, Crossword, all the interlocutors and co-panelists, Anushka Jasraj, Kiran Desai, Amit Chaudhuri, Romesh Gunesekera, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Janani Kanan, Reema Gehi, Vibha Kamat). Also the DGH team and Rachna Kalra. Thank you also to the Penguin Team, Vineet and Prateek. And also a thank you to Manohari V. And to my family & friends who showed out in force).

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Here’s the India pre-order link.

Consider Supporting Climb Malawi Boulder Gym

While I was at the Bangalore Lit Fest, I had a wonderful conversation with my friends Siddharth K and Karishma Tiwari. They were telling me what an interesting place Lilongwe, Malawi is at the minute and how they’re enjoying living there. I hope I can visit soon. In the meantime, they have a fundraiser to improve the infrastructure at their climbing gym. Leisure and Recreation mean a lot to me. If so inclined, please join me in supporting their cause. Here’s a link to their gofundme.

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