Alok Chaturvedi

Tag: writing

  • My Newfound Thinking Cap

    I am often stuck on some problem in my work as a software developer, while other times I am unable to think of a topic to write about on my blog. In such moments, I feel the need for a thinking cap. Recently, I realized that I had the thinking cap all along and not just me: you, he, she, they; we all have it and let me tell you how you can effectively use it.

    I thought of an idea of satire in February this year, 2025; however, I was able to finish the blog just last week, in mid-July, in the same year. The period between conception and creation was about five months. Five months indeed might be a long time, but if you ask me, I still believe that I am happy to have finally finished it, because for a long time, I was not going anywhere with the story. By the way, if you are interested in the story in question, you can read: Don’t You See, I am Trying to Save You. Suddenly, I had an inspiration last week, and it was clearer to me how my story ends, and with the inspiration, I finished the story.

    When the inspiration came, I was wearing a thinking cap, and I didn’t even know about it. I have been using that cap, yet I was not deliberate, and hence, unable to utilize the full capacity of my thinking cap. It took me years to appreciate its powers, and yet it’s not an easy task to be able to reap maximum benefits. Let me break the suspense and introduce you to the thinking cap.

    My thinking cap is walking alone, driving, or riding a bicycle. Given that I am not talking to anyone either directly or via my phone, not listening to any music or podcast. In essence, my higher mind is completely free while some other parts of my brain are busy with routine tasks such as ensuring I am not falling off the road or hitting a vehicle next to me or putting my body in any kind of danger. In this state, thoughts flow freely. It may appear simple, but it is anything but simple. My brain doesn’t want to work as a result; whenever I am opting for walking, I get a strong urge to listen to any music, podcast, or audiobook. I even get an urge to take all my pending calls, and believe me, I take most of my calls while walking. While driving, there is no option to entertain my brain, yet I do not get a lot of driving opportunities. Nevertheless, if I can tame my mind and not entertain it, I achieve the state where thoughts start inundating me. Our minds crave distraction, but it’s in those quiet, undistracted moments that genius whispers. Yet there is another difficulty other than the difficulty of will power.

    Whenever I am in a thinking-cap state by the act of walking, cycling, or driving, I don’t have conscious control over my thoughts. The only thing guaranteed is that there are a lot of them. I remember many times enduring depressing thoughts originating from some trivial incident of wrongdoings, such as a disagreement with a colleague, someone not following a traffic rule, some wrongdoings of the distant past, etc. Sadly, there is no solution to this predicament. The only solution I can think of is to maximize the thinking cap time. Let’s say that on average 25 percent of time, happy and creative times are flowing into my higher mind, then spending ten hours a week will give two and a half hours of creative time which I can translate into good work if I can follow up on the head start, and that is another challenge of the thinking-cap state, the thoughts are ephemeral.

    Willpower is essentially required to maximize the creative time, but following up with the creative time is even more important; otherwise, the two and a half hours I calculated earlier would amount to a big zero if I am unable to follow up on my thoughts. It so happens that the thoughts that flow in the thinking-cap state don’t last long and dissipate like a dream sequence. It is highly important to note down creative thoughts. When I had the inspiration last week for closing my satire, I straight away opened my laptop and finished writing; however, it was a coincidence that I was able to use my laptop to write, after walking. It may not be the case, always. To this, I have a solution: note apps. I have downloaded an app that is just there to note down inspirations like these so that I can work on; however, something tells me that even that won’t be sufficient. I have a feeling that if I write it down and don’t look at it again for months, I will lose interest in the inspiration, and it won’t be that appealing to me to drive me to write about it. Hence, a recommendation to self and all, begin the work on your inspiration within twelve hours of achieving it.

    Let me summarize the effective ways to use our thinking cap:
    1 – Give the thinking-cap state enough time, perform activities like cycling, driving, and walking without any music, podcasts, etc.
    2 – Once the inspiration comes, write it down as soon as possible, preferably before you forget all about it.
    3 – Start the work on your inspiration within twelve hours of the inception of the idea.

    Next time, if you are stuck with a work problem, looking for an idea to draw, write, or compose, or seeking a business idea, try this thinking cap, make effective use of it. Next time you feel stuck at work, in art, or in life; take a walk without your phone. Your best ideas might be waiting at the next corner.

  • Vicariously Unliving

    Man reading about mountain trekking from the couch
    They may enjoy the Feelings of Adventure yet it’s not their Adventure.

    These days I am doing a lot of rethinking, and I would credit it to Adam Grant, for his book ‘Think Again’ inspired me. A lot of this rethinking is directed towards the way I live my life. I have always loved and enjoyed a good story, either via books or via moving pictures. Now though, I am trying to analyse my pass-time. I asked one simple question to myself, “What is the one thing the characters in books never seem to do?”

    I am doing a lot of reading these days (a lot considering my line of work: Software Developer). The current book that I am reading is by my favorite author Gabriel Garcia Marquez; it’s called “Love in the time of Cholera”. I had listened to the audiobook of the same a long time ago, but I bought the paperback to enjoy more time with my characters. Factually a lot of the incidence in the book is inspired by the love story of the author’s parents. The story of young love who were destined to go separate way only to find their way back in their old age is a gripping plot and a true masterpiece. It’s all well and good, yet the rethinking question is, “What is the one thing the characters in this book never seem to do?” The answer is, they hardly read a book at least not in the foreground of the story. The same is true for any fiction you are reading or any film/tv-series you are watching. The characters are living their life in full while we are living their life, enjoying it vicariously. Can we do better?

    If someone reads our life story and, in that story, if we are spending most of our time on couch living vicariously then certainly to the reader of that story our life would appear boring. Reading books or watching movies do give us an escape from reality and it is fruitful against the pressure and torment of real life yet the sense of achievements we receive is not ours but the characters of the story. If a character is well liked by most and they win the day, it is their victory not ours hence in reality we gain no experience, no memory nothing worth sharing by just watching or reading a story. It is definitely not difficult to do most of the stuff that a character is doing. Take a romantic movie for example, we typically see a man and a woman fall in measureless love, the man tries his best to give the woman best of dating experience, either he cooks for her or take her to a restaurant with a nice ambience, he attends to all her needs, he listens to her and more importantly he is always ready to give his all for her sake, while woman is also deeply in love and she smiles which makes the man’s day (It all happen like this till things turns for the worst before returning finally to the best). Can we not do the same to our woman (or man), is it that hard. If you are still missing your significant half, surely you are not going to find them in your book or on your couch, get out, do something, meet people and when you happened to find them, treat them even better than what the best of romantic authors had imagined. What if I am not into romantic books, you say. What do you like the most then?

    If you are someone who likes adventure movies, then go for your own adventure. I like adventures, and ever since I have done rethinking, I am looking for my chance to go on trekking or running around one of the prettiest lakes, I have ever seen. I go out and be part of forums (well it’s Toastmaster in my case) where I meet interesting people. Most of the times in stories, the characters travel and rediscover themself. Traveling in these times is one of the easiest activities you can pick with the most rate of return. In the era of train/flight/road connectivity there are many cool destinations ranging from pristine beaches to snowcap mountains at on average ten hours away. If you are truly an indoor person, then there are many indoor activities for you, draw, cook, paint, make pottery etc., these are just suggestive options, sky is truly the limit if you decide to come out your vicarious unliving session. However, I have an easier solution, are you Interested?

    We all have a taste, we like certain kind of story, whether it’s romance or comedy or any other genre. There are certain aspects in the story which appeals to us. We can try to implement that aspect in real life wherever possible (try not to be Superman or Kickass). Do whatever you like your favorite character doing. It is that easy, trust me, and don’t forget to be creative.

    I love to cook, and I am always inspired by different foods I see in movies or even documentaries. My inspiration often leads me to supermarkets and then to kitchen. I had my first roasted mutton when I saw it on TV. This is really a simple trick to come out of the vicarious life yet the best idea would be to build your base from vicarious experiences and build skyscrapers on that base. I can give the example of science fiction to explain my metaphor. In a good science fiction book, there are many impossible gadgets, mentioned yet numerous kids take those unreal gadgets as challenge and make them real, when they grow old to be scientists. Kindle was built in this century however Star-Trek-The-Original-Series already had a digital book reader like that the last century; they even had cell phones before they were built in real life. There are many scientists and astronauts who are inspired by many books of Arthur C. Clarke. These inventor and scientist didn’t get lost in the vicarious world they entered rather draw inspiration from it. I implore you to do the same if you don’t want your life story to be a boring one liner (He spend most of his life on the couch reading or watching tv). Do we stop reading books and watching moving pictures all together?

    I think no, especially when I have made a point that vicarious adventure can be basis for true adventure. However, there must be a balance and definitely more weightages should be given to the real life. Make your own story ninety percent of time while enjoy only ten percent of the time someone else’s story, if this is too much then at least ensure that you are having more real adventure than vicarious one. Being able to listen to stories is a bliss, being able to tell stories is a gift and yet the true mastery of life is to make life better than the best of the stories. Vicarious unliving is when there is victory only in the stories we encounter. The real living is when stories are our own. Vicarious unliving is easy yet boring, real living is difficult yet interesting. My act of writing this article is also part of my rethinking to walk toward real living as I think, act, live and then write about it.

  • From my Nightmares, Welcome to my Dreams

    I am not the only one who has loved and has been disappointed, in fact I have been someone who has disappointed my lover/lovers, yet this I must claim to be anything but trivial. My failure of love story is a great tragedy which almost succeeded in breaking me, yet here I am blogging casually about it, I am a rock that has an organic heart.

    I loved this girl, let’s call her Sarah (not her real name) for what it felt like eternity, and I could swear that for most part of that eternity, she loved me too. We even got engaged and yet weeks before our marriage, things fell apart. It took me two years and two months to erase her ever-presence in my life.

    Our relationship was strained during the months leading up to the marriage, but I always thought that everything will be alright, once we were married, I hadn’t in my wildest dream imagined that there won’t be any marriage and I would be heartbroken, hence when it did happen, I was shocked and broken beyond repair. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep for at least two weeks. I lost a lot of weight, but the worst part were the nightmares. Every night I would dream of her, if I was lucky enough to fall asleep and I would wake up suddenly from my dreams, troubled as if I have been in a nightmare. Let me not be very modest and outright call them nightmares because even though they were about just normal stuff, her mare presence in them was enough to fill me with pain and despair. Slowly I recovered, on my own, I am too much of a man to go see a therapist. Even though I had recovered, I was still unwilling to let her go.

    Throughout our time together, Sarah and I had made tons of memories. We had pictures, she had given me gifts like shirts and a wallet which I was totally unwilling to part with. I even had a piece of cloth from her bridal dress which she gave me so that I can buy groom’s dress using it so that both our dresses are in sync with each other aesthetically. Thanks to google, I was remined of those memories almost every week via google photo’s notifications. I told myself that by keeping those pictures and items with me, I was proving to her that she doesn’t affect me, but honestly, I was just fooling myself. I was so enraged by our separation that I decided to never forgive her.

    It took a while, well more like 2 years to realize that what I was doing isn’t healthy. In order to be truly free from the pain of the past I needed to do two things, first I needed to forgive her and second, I had to let her go. Forgiveness doesn’t come naturally to me, but I managed maybe with 90 percent accuracy. I am 100 percent certain that I forgive her 90 percent. After forgiveness, it was time to let her go, forever. I had to treat her as if she were dead, I had to hold a funeral and so I did. 29th day of every month had always been special to us, because on 29th March in this life, I told her that I loved her, and she reciprocated. Hence, I decided that on 29, I will hold the symbolic funeral (which was yesterday: 29 April 2025).

    I had to erase all the memories, and it was no easy task, yet I did with utmost dedication. Prior to 29, I compiled all her pics from my various devices and google photos. I named the compilation goodbye_{her_name}. I brought a new wallet. On 29th morning, I finished the compilation, deleted all the pics from everywhere (it went to trash) and zipped the goodbye_{her_name} folder and buried into the drive of my secondary Gmail account (yeah it survives but somewhere where sun doesn’t shine). In Hinduism, when someone dies, we hold 12 days funeral for the dead, we deprive ourselves of good food and comfort and after 12th day there is ceremony in which the dead is let go followed by religious worshipping and then we eat the best of foods available. This symbolizes that while it’s important to show our respect to the dead, it is equally important to value the living. I replicated the same funeral for her, but instead of 12 days, it was for 12 hours. On 29th, I didn’t eat any food, I survived mainly on tea, coffee and water. In the evening, I went to a temple, and before going inside, I threw away the wallet which she had gifted me a long time ago, the wallet had the piece of her bridal dress. I deleted her number and her chats. I emptied the trash which had all her pics and just like that I had finally let her go. Post letting her go, I thanked gods, ordered tasty burgers from Macdonald and ended the full grieving cycle.

    It was the day before yesterday and I would be lying if I say that I feel lighter already, however there are a few visible changes, since her pictures are gone, I won’t be notified by google almost every other day. I have few reasons to think about her now. I can say for certain that I am no longer in her grip. I am in control of my life and it’s mine to steer in any direction I want. I am free.

    There will be more dreams, and she might pop in some of those dreams, but I strongly believe that when she returns, I would welcome her with all my hearts because her presence would no longer be a nightmare, but a pleasant dream, for the time spend together (minus last 3-4 months) are nothing sort of invaluable experiences that I will cherish forever. By giving her a symbolic funeral I have brought her from my nightmares and into my pleasant dream where she will live until I take my last breath.