Anuradha Sridharan

 During our recent trip to Chennai, we visited the historical town of Mahabalipuram. While googling for the places to visit, I stumbled upon "Apollo bookstore". It was around 11 AM when I walked down the road that has many cafes, gift shops, and boutique stores. An elderly man was cleaning the front side of the bookstore with the shutters closed. I asked him, "When will the shop open?". He requested me to wait for a couple of minutes as he opened and cleared a few items for me to enter. He also placed a small bench for me to sit and browse the pile of books stacked up on the floor. I spent the next 30 minutes, browsing through his collection of various books. While billing, I had a short conversation with him in Tamil. Here's how it went: Apollo Store Owner Mr Kumaresan (AK): "Sorry madam. there's so much dust. I haven't cleaned the shop in the last few days. I didn't even arrange the second-hand books neatly. I just stashed them in heaps" ...

  I was hesitant to bring up this topic, but I decided to go ahead with it, given the observations in the past few weeks. At home, we play a Board game named Pandemic. As the name suggests, it is a collaborative game where players take the roles of specialized professionals to cure the world of 4 different viruses and eradicate them. The cure for a virus is found through certain rules, but the eradication happens only when there are no more cities infected with the virus. The rulebook states, "If no cubes of this color (*color indicates the specific virus*) are on the board, this disease is now eradicated". If we want to protect an ideology/belief/faith and do not want it to be "eradicated", we can achieve the same ONLY through our individual actions. There is no point in raising outrage over the comments raised by politicians (who play the religion card as always to win votes), watching YouTube/FB videos and news channels that indulge in hate-spewing discussions, a...

 Work and physical activity were intertwined so closely in our previous generations. Work mostly involved physical labor. No one would have to go for a jog or rush to the gym after work. Even in our previous generation, there was adequate physical activity - be it commuting by bicycle, long walk to reach their workplace or shops, or traveling by public transport that involved walking, standing, or climbing stairs. There was a clear balance between physical and mental work. In today's times, for a larger population, especially those working for the knowledge economy, achieving the required balance between physical and mental work is a big challenge. Comfort, convenience, and the sedentary nature of work have tilted this scale, due to lack of time for any form of physical activity or lack of need for physical movement. We are now required to take additional time out of our work schedule to consciously incorporate physical movement in the form of walking, jogging, Yoga, gym routines, ...

  World Mental Health Day is observed every year on Oct 10th. Mental health awareness is increasing over the past few years. At the same time, things that destroy our mental health are also on the rise. Here are a few thoughts to ponder. (1) You don't have control over many things happening around the world, but what you can control are YOUR thoughts, feelings, and emotions. (2) Your state of mind at the end of the day is determined by all your responses to various events, people, and situations you encountered during the day. (3) Be extremely wary about the inputs you are feeding your mind. Most of the movies and OTT series these days are filled with gore, disturbing violence, and expletives. You might brush it aside, thinking that these are the norm or that such visuals are not affecting you, but these disturb your subconscious mind and increase your anxiety levels. (4) Discipline is the highest form of freedom. Prioritize activities that help improve your overall health - eating...

  "You are one insight away from changing your life" I heard this quote many years back and I strongly believe in it. Books are the main source of such life-changing insights for me. Off late, I have been seeing videos/courses where people proclaim that they can summarize a book in 5 minutes. It is a tall claim, quite unreasonable in my opinion. I find it challenging to summarize the key takeaways of a good book within an hour during my book club sessions. How can you get the essence of the whole book in 5 minutes, I wonder. Good books need time and commitment from readers, which many of us are unable to allocate amidst our busy schedules. Starting this new series called " One Insight " on YouTube, where I focus on one impactful insight that I learn from each book. Planning to keep the video length to 7-8 min max. The intention behind this series is the hope that one insight might resonate with the person watching the video, he/she then becomes curious about the boo...

 I read " Many Lives, Many Masters " by Dr Brian Weiss three years back. The author, a psychiatrist, summarizes his interactions with one of his patients that led him toward the concepts of past lives, reincarnation, and messages transmitted from divine masters. His book "Messages from the Masters" conveys his experiences and interactions with various people over the years, when he brought about healing through past life regression and hypnotherapy techniques. As each experience unfolds, he beautifully captures the essence of the soul's journey in crisp and impactful words. We are here on this physical plane as humans, to realize our true nature. He correlates our existence to that of a school, where we enroll in a curriculum, learn specific lessons, and move on to the next. The cycle of life keeps repeating until our soul has learned the required lessons and experienced the qualities of our true nature. The soul then moves onto subsequent planes, where it can c...