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...