Anuradha Sridharan

    I'm still trying to come to terms with the demise of SPB. His voice has been with me since childhood and I'm sure it will continue for the rest of my life. His songs evoke so many memories from childhood and growing up years, the long drives in the late 2000s when the first song from my iPod would always be Sangeetha Megam.  RIP, Sir. Your music lives with all of us born in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Over the past two days, I have been thinking to make a list of my top 10 favorite SPB songs but top 10 is just too hard to pick from his vast repertoire of work. Even the top 50 that I managed to compile below (in no particular order) only scratches the surface of his brilliance and I'm sure I would add more to this list in the days to come. Pennalla pennalla from Uzhavan Kangalil enna eeramo from Uzhavan Minnale nee vandhadhenadi from May Maadham July maadham vandhal from Pudhiya Mugam En kaadhale from Duet Thoda thoda from Indira Kaadhal rojave from Roja Kaadhalikkum pennin ...

  Over the past few months, we keep hearing this phrase " dealing with new normal " in various contexts - life as we deal with the ongoing pandemic and post that. As I was ruminating over this phrase, I had an epiphany. The new normal isn't something new to us. We have been facing "new normal"s since the beginning of mankind, with every little change we embrace.  A decade ago, I didn't have a smartphone, but once I embraced it, it became the new normal. Until around three months back, I was using a knife with a 3" long blade for chopping vegetables, but then I shifted to a new one with a 4" long blade . The new knife has become the new normal for me and I find it difficult to use my old knife. Mind you, I had been using the old knife for 5+ years. Every little change we imbibe in our lives sets a new normal. Whether this new normal makes our lives better off or worse off is dependent on multiple factors - some that are under our control, while some...

  A few days back, I had posted a question on Insta Stories - " What are the challenges/obstacles you face in achieving your health goals? " I received many responses to this question and one of the common challenges that many respondents mentioned is  laziness .  Laziness is triggered by a  lack of enthusiasm or energy  to get things done in a day. The word "energy" here implies both physical as well as mental energy. It might be hard to pinpoint whether we are lacking physical energy or mental energy while we introspect, as both feeds off each other. A year ago, I had written this post -  10 factors that impact our energy levels . Do take a look if you haven't seen it. Given the current pandemic situation, many of us have our "off" days. Let's not beat ourselves too much and push harder to be productive every single waking hour. At the same time, keeping ourselves busy with productive and enjoyable activities take our minds off the uncertain situ...

  Dr. Sivaraman's writings have had a profound influence on my life these past few years. Ever since I read his Aaraam thinai back in 2014, my approach towards food and health has undergone a positive change. I look forward to reading his books every time they get released. The latest one added to my collection is " Inna naarpadhu iniyavai naarpadhu ". As the title suggests, the focus of this book is towards health in our 40s. He looks at health from a much broader, holistic perspective as always - food, physical activity, relationships, mental wellness, acceptance, love and more. He starts off with this warning - naarpadhu kannasandhaal noyaLiaakum vayadhu . He goes onto elaborate on the struggles and challenges faced by those who are in their 40s presently and how their struggles are far different from the previous generations' 40s. What I admire about his writing are his language skills that make a strong impact and an easy connect with the reader. Anecdotes, popu...

 In my previous post on The Seeker's journey , I had made this statement - Never take any idea you hear at plain face value. I wanted to explain this statement with an example. I recently completed this course on Coursera - " The Science of well-being ". Brilliant course with a lot of takeaways. One of the points the instructor mentions in the context of happiness at work is that we feel happy when we experience the state of "flow" more often.  "Flow" is this state where we are completely immersed in an activity, we lose track of time and we find the activity itself to be rewarding. Though I'm yet to read the original book - "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I have come across this concept in multiple books and courses in the past few years. I have experienced this state of "Flow" multiple times while I'm putting together a software product plan, reading a good book, writing a blog post...

  This post is inspired by a conversation I had with a good friend this morning. In our childhood and our 20s, we search for the "WHAT" to understand how the world works. The education we receive in schools and colleges and the skills we build during this phase satiate our appetite for information to some extent. This knowledge we gather from various sources (school, parents, family, friends, society at large, etc) creates certain perceptions, judgments, and prejudices, that eventually form our beliefs. As we enter our 30s/40s, this search shifts from "WHAT" to "WHY". We start asking many deep questions about life, our choices, and our behaviors. What we seek gets shifted from Information/knowledge to Wisdom. In this journey of seeking, I have learned four key lessons that I wanted to share here. (1) As we embark upon this journey, we would come across people who are wisdomous (borrowing this word from Joey's vocabulary). Their ideas and thoughts would...

  Someone had recently posted this very interesting question in a Whatsapp group that I'm part of "How can one slow down?" I responded with this answer - "Becoming clear about my priorities, questioning my ambitions - these have helped me slow down" Priorities and ambitions influence many of our life choices. Let's dive a little deeper into each of these. Priorities : Gaining clarity on this one aspect makes most of our decisions and life choices easier.  Often, I have come across this phrase of juggling multiple balls, in the context of managing multiple aspects of our life - family, health, career, personal growth, spiritual growth etc. When multiple balls are juggled, there will always be a few in the air and chances of them falling are quite high, unless and until you are an expert juggler. Multitasking / wearing the super-woman hat / super productive / doing it all => these are multiple manifestations that highlight our juggling capability. I had suc...

   In the book "Hooked", Nir Eyal talks about the "Hook" framework for building habit-forming products. One of the components of the Hook framework is Variable rewards. When a person gets engaged with a product, variable rewards keep him/her hooked onto the experience, like that of a slot machine. You never know what you might expect. So you continue to engage and get different rewards - new content, new images, new gossip etc. All our news feeds and social media feeds are classic drivers of this behavior, with the promise of variable rewards. These variable rewards are enabled by what is called an "infinite scroll" feature, a powerful one that can keep you hooked onto a product/app for more time than you can imagine. In my journey of mindful content consumption, I have become extremely wary of products that have this infinite scroll feature. Email - no infinite scroll but there is a variable reward. You never know what email you are gonna get but still re...

    We have heard of the popular saying - "An idle mind is devil's workshop". Many of us believe in this statement so strongly that we keep ourselves busy every single moment of our waking lives. Whenever we catch a break, we tend to reach out for our distractions, just so that we don't hear our voice inside. The few seconds of idleness, the few minutes of boredom, the few moments of uncomfortable feelings after being triggered by something/someone - we immediately grab our devices to distract our minds.  The problem is not with the idle mind but with the numerous thoughts that come and go inside it. Thoughts cannot be controlled, but how we feel can be. Our minds can never be completely idle. It is always busy processing some thought or another. When we haven't brought a thought to closure, it keeps chewing on it even further. Especially those thoughts that triggered powerful emotional responses from us. That could be the reason why we believe in the saying and g...

Because of a few changes happening, I spent some time yesterday and reallocated my time budget and my time-boxed weekday calendar. I prefer to time-box my day in 15-min slots from 6 AM to 10 PM. But I don't rigidly plan for every 15-min slot. I intentionally leave a few slots open here and there to have more flexibility and do-nothing moments. I don't want to pack in so tight that I end up feeling suffocated. The word I LOVE is balance - balance in every little thing. When it comes to time management, I work better when there is a fixed schedule with a planned list of tasks. As I was revising my time budget, I made sure that my time for learning isn't compromised in any way. Continuous learning is one of my core strengths and I just enjoy the process. I believe that as we grow older, the joy of learning should never be lost. I allocate an hour per day for learning and reflection. Thanks to the Information age, there are plenty of resources easily accessible for most of us ...

 I think I was around 8-9 years old when this incident happened. I never used to like cabbage until then. My paati (grandma) used to be the one who cooks food at home. My mom was working. I don't remember the details but for some reason, I didn't like the way cabbage was prepared at home. Then one Sat morning, my mom cooked food at home for a change and she had pressure cooked cabbage. Paati was scared to use a pressure cooker, so it was only used by mom on rare occasions. I loved the taste of cabbage that day and was asking for more. I even called it "panju gos" (cabbage that was as soft as cotton). My mom was so delighted with my reaction as her cooking was rare at home and people hardly appreciated when she did. Anyway, that's a topic for a different day. From that day, cabbage has become one of my top favorite vegetables. D loves to eat potatoes but she prefers only the version where potatoes are finely chopped along with the skin and sauteed (vadakkal kari i...

  Since "immunity" is the buzz word these days, multiple products are cropping up that leverage this word big time in their marketing promotions. One such drink that is being promoted by many influencers is this Mix-me drink.  These celebrities stress on the "12 vitamins and 5 minerals" and they even go onto claim that this is a healthier option than packaged fruit juices.    Let's look at the ingredients list. The very first ingredient is Sugar. One serving sachet of 20 gms contains 19.4 gms of sugar ( nearly 5 tsp of sugar ). The brand promise is increasing immunity but a drink with 5 tsp of sugar will deplete whatever immunity we already have.  Synthetic orange flavor is used, along with artificial color (INS 110 - Sunset yellow). A study by researchers at the University of Southampton has shown evidence of increased hyperactivity in young children who are given foods rich in certain artificial colors and INS 110 is one such color. Let's loo...

  A few weeks back, I had tried a new recipe for lunch using black eyed peas - Goan Alsande Tondak. As usual, my daughter D came to the kitchen and asked what's for lunch. Me: I'm making a new recipe today. It's a dish made by people living in Goa D : Oh okay For the next 30 minutes, she kept asking me now and then whether lunch is ready. She was happy to try the gravy along with a few chapathis.  Kids are curious and they love novelty. Not only that - Give a twist to an existing dish, give a new name and they would get all excited. That's how jaggery wheat dosa become pancakes, savory wheat dosa become crepes, veg oothappams become pizza oothappams 😉 The amazing thing about India is that every 200 kms, the cuisine varies, the taste differs, the ingredients change. The sheer variety offered by the various states within India is just mind-boggling. One lifetime isn't enough to try out all the dishes within the various cuisines of India.  The irony is that though the...