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Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar

The New Value of Imperfection

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“Why am I like this?”

I used to ask myself this often. Was it OCD, I wondered, looking at my own struggle to make everything perfect. A piece of writing had to be compelling. A painting had to be flawless. A room had to stay dust free and precisely arranged, every single time. The comfort I felt after getting these things exactly right was unlike anything else. But that same need slowly turned into a hindrance, in my personal life and in my professional one. “It is not OCD, it is perfectionism,” someone told me once.

Not long after, quite by coincidence, I came across a short film that stayed with me. It was set in some near future, where a garden had been designed entirely by artificial intelligence, every leaf and stone placed with total precision, nothing out of order anywhere. The owner of that garden did something I did not expect. He called in a human being and asked him to make it imperfect. To let a branch grow crooked, to leave a stone slightly out of line, to bring in whatever a machine would never think to leave behind. Later, when guests walked through that garden, it was not the AI’s precision they noticed or spoke about. It was the human touch, the small, deliberate imperfections, that they kept returning to. Watching that story, something clicked that had nothing to do with gardens at all. If perfection could now be manufactured on command, then perfection was never really the achievement I had built my whole sense of worth around. It made me ask a much older, much more personal question. Why had I spent so many years treating my own imperfection as something to hide, apologise for, or fix, instead of simply something to live with.

I think most of us carry some version of this without ever naming it. A mother who cannot let a birthday be anything less than exactly planned. A man who redoes a piece of work three times because the first two were good but not good enough. A student who would rather submit nothing than submit something imperfect. We tell ourselves this is discipline, or high standards, or care. Sometimes it is. But often it is fear wearing the costume of excellence, the fear that anything less than flawless will finally reveal that we were never quite enough to begin with.

I have watched this need cost people things that mattered more than the outcome they were protecting. A relationship strained because one partner could not let a disagreement stay unresolved and untidy for even a night. A parent’s evening lost to redoing a child’s school project until it looked adult rather than nine years old. My own years spent polishing a sentence past the point where the polishing was serving anyone but my own unease. None of it made the writing better. It only made the waiting longer, and the person doing the waiting more tired.

There is an old Japanese idea, wabi-sabi, that has stayed with me since I first came across it. It holds that beauty lives precisely in what is incomplete, impermanent, imperfect. A bowl with a visible crack, mended in gold instead of hidden, becomes worth more than the bowl that was never broken, because the crack tells a true story the unbroken bowl cannot. For a long time this felt like a nice idea about pottery and little else. I understand it differently now. The crack was never the failure of the bowl. It was evidence that the bowl had lived, been used, been dropped, survived, and was still standing.

I think of my own life this way now, more often than I used to. The years I could not manage to finish something I had started. The plans that fell apart despite every careful step I had taken to protect them. The moments I said the wrong thing to someone I loved and could not take it back cleanly. For a long time I treated each of these as evidence against myself, proof that I had failed to be careful enough, disciplined enough, whole enough. I am slowly learning to read them differently. Not as failures I need to explain away, but as the actual texture of a life that was lived rather than merely managed.

This matters most, I think, in what we pass on to our children. A child raised to believe that anything short of flawless has no value will learn to hide the parts of themselves that are still becoming, instead of letting anyone witness the becoming at all. A child’s early attempts at writing, at drawing, at speaking in front of a room, have always been clumsy. That clumsiness was never a flaw waiting to be corrected out of them. It was proof of a mind actually growing, and growth was never supposed to look finished.

None of this is an argument for carelessness, or for giving up on trying to do things well. There is a real difference between a mistake that carries meaning and simply not trying. The point was never to abandon effort. The point is to stop confusing effort with the total absence of error, and to stop mistaking our own unfinished edges for something shameful that needs to be corrected before we can be loved, respected, or at peace.

We are not, and were never meant to be, perfect. We forgot, somewhere in our long rush to smooth every rough edge, that the roughness was often the only part of us that was truly ours. Maybe the task now is not to keep correcting ourselves into some flawless version we were never going to reach anyway, but to let our own unevenness stand, unhidden, and to finally stop apologising for it. To embrace imperfection, not as defeat, but as proof that a person actually lived here.

Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar

In short: This is a personal reckoning with perfectionism, the compulsive need to make every piece of writing, every room, every effort flawless, and the toll that took over the years. A short film about an AI-designed garden, made imperfect again by a human hand and appreciated most for that very imperfection, becomes the moment that reveals something deeper: chasing perfection was never really the point, and our unevenness, the mistake, the crooked branch, the imperfect edge, is often the most honest and human part of us. Drawing on the Japanese idea of wabi-sabi, the piece makes the case for accepting imperfection in our own lives rather than treating it as something to constantly correct.

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Yash portrays Ravana in Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana film trailer

Ramayana Trailer: Is Ravana the Real Hero?

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A few days ago, the trailer of Ramayana was released. Like millions of others, I watched it with fascination. Magnificent visuals, familiar characters, and a story that has shaped the moral imagination of this land for centuries. Yet, what caught my attention was something else. Ravana was portrayed by Yash, one of Karnataka’s most celebrated actors, a man who has carried Kannada cinema onto a national and now global stage. Watching him command the screen as the demon king, I found myself thinking less about the special effects and more about a question that has followed me for years, one I do not raise as a historian, because I am not one, but as someone who has travelled this country enough to notice things that do not sit easily together.

In India, there is a pattern I have watched repeat itself across regions and centuries. A mighty personality, a king who conquers, a reformer who challenges an old order, a ruler remembered for his justice or his cruelty, eventually stops being remembered as a man at all. Over generations, he becomes something closer to god, folded into the language of incarnation, until asking whether he was once simply a powerful human being starts to sound almost disrespectful. I have wondered, more than once, whether Lord Ram belongs to this pattern. I do not ask this to diminish him. I ask it because I want to understand him. Was he a king whose reign was so significant, whose sense of duty so total, that the memory of him slowly rose beyond the reach of ordinary history and into the register of the divine?

If you allow yourself to read the epic that way, even briefly, other parts of the story begin to look different too. Rama, after a dispute within his own household, leaves his kingdom and travels south, into unfamiliar territory. There he encounters a people the text calls Rakshasas, described in many retellings as dark skinned, as meat eating, as fundamentally other. I have found myself asking, quietly, whether these Rakshasas were not demons in any literal sense at all, but a description, filtered through many centuries of retelling, of the Dravidian peoples native to the southern part of this subcontinent. And Ravana himself is not drawn, even in the original text, as a simple villain. He is described as deeply learned, a Brahmin by birth, a scholar of the Vedas, a ruler whose kingdom by several accounts was prosperous and orderly. Some regional and folk traditions, particularly across the south, have long portrayed him with genuine sympathy, even reverence.

That reverence is not just a matter of old folk memory either. It is still practiced today, in temples that stand as living evidence of it. Close to my home in Kerala, there is a place called Ravaneshwaram, in Kanhangad, in the north of the state, where a temple stands that is believed to have been established by Ravana himself. Local legend holds that he stopped there on his way back to Lanka, installed a Shiva Linga, and spent time in deep penance. There is even a cave nearby where he is believed to have meditated, and a pond he is said to have bathed in daily. This is not an isolated curiosity either. Ravana is worshipped in a temple in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, the only place in that state where he receives such reverence. In Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, there is an entire village called Ravangram built around his memory, tied to the belief that his wife Mandodari came from that region. In Mandsaur and in Mandore near Jodhpur, he is remembered as a son in law rather than a demon, since both places claim ties to Mandodari’s family, and in Kanpur, thousands gather every Dussehra at the Dashanan temple to honour him even as effigies of him burn elsewhere in the same country on the same night. A man remembered by most of India as pure evil is, in these places, remembered as a scholar, a devotee of Shiva, and a king worth invoking rather than burning.

Read a certain way, the epic starts to resemble something other than a story of good defeating evil. It starts to resemble the story of a northern power moving into southern land already governed by a sophisticated, settled civilisation, and a victory that later generations were taught to understand only as the triumph of dharma over darkness.

I want to be honest about where this idea comes from, because it did not begin with me. This reading has a real history in Indian political thought, most visibly in the Dravidian movement of the twentieth century, where thinkers like Periyar E. V. Ramasamy argued openly that Ravana was a wronged southern king and that the Ramayana, as popularly told, was a story written by the victors. That argument shaped decades of politics in Tamil Nadu and continues to surface, in one form or another, whenever the north south question resurfaces in this country.

And that question does resurface, often in small, ordinary moments rather than grand political ones. Travelling across India, speaking with people from different regions, I have often felt as though I were moving between two countries that happen to share a passport. The food is different, the languages are unrelated to one another in ways that Hindi and Bengali, say, are not, the rhythms of daily life feel differently paced, and yes, even something as simple as the average complexion of the people around me shifts as I move from north to south. None of this is imagined. It is felt, repeatedly, by anyone who travels this country with open eyes. Whether that felt difference has anything to do with an ancient migration of Sanskrit speaking peoples into a subcontinent already inhabited by others is a much harder question, and one that historians, linguists, and geneticists continue to argue about without full agreement even today. The idea of a full scale Aryan invasion, in the dramatic sense the term once suggested, has been substantially revised by scholars in recent decades toward a slower, more layered picture of migration and mixing rather than conquest. I raise this not to settle the question, because I cannot, but to be honest that it remains genuinely unsettled, and that for the vast majority of Indians, north and south alike, Rama is not primarily a historical puzzle at all. He is a living figure of devotion, and Diwali itself, the festival timed deliberately to this film’s release, exists because of what his return home has meant to people for a very long time.

I do not write any of this to unsettle anyone’s faith, and I suspect it will unsettle some regardless, which is a risk I accept in asking the question honestly rather than not asking it at all. What I find genuinely moving is that a film built with such scale and reverence, casting a son of Karnataka as the story’s most towering antagonist, has landed at exactly the moment when this old, unresolved argument about who this land’s true heroes and villains were is quietly alive again, in comment sections and family dinner conversations and, now, in a trailer millions of people have already watched more than once. Yash plays Ravana with a magnetism that, by every account so far, threatens to outshine the hero of the story itself. Perhaps that is simply excellent casting. Perhaps it is also, without either the actor or the makers quite intending it, the story finding its way back to an audience that has never fully stopped asking whether the man in the golden crown was really the villain, or simply the king who lost.

I do not have an answer to give you at the end of this, and I am not sure one exists that would satisfy everyone who has ever asked the question. What I have is what I started with. A trailer, a familiar story told at extraordinary scale, and a country that is still, after all these centuries, trying to decide what to make of the distance between its north and its south, and between the histories each side of that distance chooses to remember.

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The Rope We Do Not See

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“Take a picture of this with your inner eyes,” I told my daughters, standing at the edge of the open ground where the nomads had pitched their tents for the past few weeks, a handful of canvas shelters leaning against the wind, smoke rising thin and grey from a fire someone had lit for the morning tea. “Frame it and keep it somewhere inside your mind, and whenever you feel like postponing your studies or wasting your time, look at it again.” They looked at the donkey I was pointing to, then at me, and burst into laughter, the easy laughter of children who assume their father has said something funny rather than something he means.

The women of the camp were already at their morning’s work, gathering dry twigs for the fire, cooking over it in blackened pots, tending to children who ran between the tents with the particular fearlessness of a childhood spent outdoors, and milking the donkeys that stood tethered along the length of the clearing. The milk goes quickly in the localities nearby, carried away each morning by buyers who have convinced themselves, on the strength of rumour more than evidence, that it holds something close to a miracle inside it, a promise of skin that will not age and a body that will not fail. I have never had the heart to ask whether the belief is true. It hardly matters to the donkeys, tied as they are to their small allotted patch of earth regardless of what their milk is imagined to cure.

It was one particular donkey that held my eyes longer than the rest that morning, one of its legs bound by a rope to a wooden stump driven into the ground, so that its whole world had shrunk to the exact radius that length of rope permitted, no further, no matter how far the good grass might have grown just beyond its reach. Every so often it lowered its head and searched, with a patience that had long ago stopped looking like suffering and started looking like habit, for another blade within the circle it was allowed. It did not strain against the rope. It did not seem, any longer, to notice that the rope was there at all, and that, more than anything else that morning, was what I could not stop looking at.

I turned back to my daughters, who were still laughing, still waiting for the joke they assumed was coming. “Do you know why I asked you to remember this?” I asked them, and before they could answer I told them myself, because some lessons are better given than discovered. “It is not because this is a donkey. It is because freedom is life’s greatest blessing, and it is also the easiest thing to lose without ever noticing the losing.” I watched their faces settle slowly into something more serious than the morning had asked of them yet. “If you do not study, if you do not work hard, if you do not build your own identity, one day someone else will decide the boundaries of your life for you, where you work, how you live, what choices remain open to you and which have quietly closed. The rope may not be visible. It will still be there, and you will still learn its length the same way that donkey has, by reaching for something and finding, again and again, exactly how far you are permitted to go.”

I think often, watching my own daughters grow, of how many ropes we accept in a lifetime without ever calling them by that name, a job taken not from ambition but from fear of the gap in the resume, a marriage entered not from love but from the exhaustion of resisting what a family has already decided, a silence kept in rooms where speaking might have cost something. None of these arrive wearing the shape of a rope. They arrive dressed as practicality, as duty, as the reasonable thing a reasonable person does, and by the time a person notices the radius of their own life, the noticing itself has often become too costly to act on. The donkey does not strain because straining has taught it, over years, that the rope always wins. I wonder sometimes how many of us have simply had the same lesson taught to us more gently, and for that reason, learned it even more completely.

“The purpose of education is not merely to earn a degree,” I told them, and I meant it as the truest thing I could offer them that morning, more than any warning about marks or careers. “It is to ensure that you remain free, that the boundaries of your life are drawn by your own hand and not measured out by someone else’s convenience. Work hard while you have the opportunity in front of you, because the opportunity itself does not wait, and build a life in which your decisions, even the difficult ones, even the ones that cost you something, remain entirely your own to make.”

My daughters had stopped laughing by then, and something in their silence told me the picture had been taken, whether they knew it yet or not, filed away somewhere behind their eyes to be returned to on some later morning when the studying felt harder than the sleeping in. From a distance came the horn of the school bus, ordinary and insistent, pulling the morning back into its usual shape, and I kissed them goodbye as they climbed aboard, watching them find their seats and press their faces to the window to wave until the bus rounded the bend and the trees took it from view.

Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar

Summary: A father watches a tethered donkey outside a nomadic camp and uses the image to teach his daughters about the invisible ropes that limit a life without financial independence, education, or self built identity. The article explores how freedom, though rarely named directly, is shaped early through discipline, hard work, and the courage to make one’s own decisions, drawing a parallel between the donkey’s rope and the quiet constraints many adults accept without ever recognising them as such.

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The Houses We Build For Others

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As I was returning home after all the tests, the sound of the instruments in the hospital was still echoing in my ears, faint but persistent, the way a struck bell keeps ringing long after the hand has left it. A strange sense of silence had begun conquering me, settling somewhere beneath the noise of the traffic and the ordinary business of the evening. This was not the first time, it was the second, and the doctor’s words had followed me out of that room and into the car and now into this quiet, the plain clinical sentence that my heart had begun to fail, that years of unwatched hypertension had gone on to leave something structural, something changed in the architecture of the thing that had kept me alive without complaint for so long.

I was not afraid of dying. I want to say that plainly, because it surprised me too, how calm that thought sat inside me, almost as though some part of me had already made its peace with the idea long before the tests confirmed anything. What frightened me, in the silence of that drive home and in the weeks that followed, was a much smaller and much larger question at once. What happens to my three little girls if I am not here to stand between them and the world. Their mother will be there for them, I have no doubt of that. But a father is a father, and what he gives a daughter cannot be replaced by anyone else, however capable they are.

Life, until then, had been a long negotiation with struggle. I had built things, dismantled things, moved cities, started again more times than I could count without a certain tiredness entering the counting itself. And through all of it, one thing had remained undone. I had never managed to build a home, a shelter on the earth that my daughters could call theirs regardless of where I was or was not.

So I began, with far less money saved than the work would ever need, carried mostly by the kind of urgency that makes a man pour a foundation before he has finished the arithmetic. Kerala, close to where I had grown up, seemed the obvious place, and for a while the walls of that house rose the way walls do, slowly, stone by stone, each one a kind of promise. Then, one by one, difficulties arrived that I will not recount here in detail, only to say that they were persistent enough, and strange enough in their timing, that I eventually stopped. I left that foundation standing half formed in the earth like a sentence I had begun and could not finish. When I moved from Kerala to Mysore to begin again from nothing, I asked my mother to have even that foundation removed. I did not want a half built thing marking the place where an idea of home had failed. I wanted, if I was starting from zero, to start from an honest zero. With what my uncle gave me, I started my journey holding tight my little girls with some strange faith in the universe.

But the question that had sent me looking in the first place had not gone anywhere. My daughters still needed a home, wherever life eventually settled me, and so on my next visit to Kerala I began again, this time looking to buy rather than build, since building had already cost me more than money once. A house with land attached, I thought, would save both time and heartbreak. What I found instead was an education in something I had not expected to learn.

The first house belonged to a woman now living in Mangalore. Her father had built it for her, brick by careful brick, with the patience of a man who wanted his daughter’s whole future held safe inside walls he had raised himself, imagining perhaps her children playing in its rooms one day. He had died of a sudden cardiac arrest, and his daughter, settled elsewhere, wanted now only to be rid of the place. The house stood there, complete and empty, waiting for a buyer to give it a use its own family no longer wanted.

The second house belonged to a man who had worked at a college nearby. He had spent his entire life’s savings building it, and only a few years after its completion, he too had passed away. His family had returned to the southern part of Kerala, and now, years later, they were trying, without much urgency or hope, to sell a house none of them had any wish to return to.

The third house carried a story heavier than the first two combined. A man from a little further away had bought the land the moment his marriage was fixed, and by the time the wedding took place, the house stood ready with every comfort he could give his bride. Those were, by every account, happy days, the kind that make a whole village quietly envious of a young couple’s fortune. He had gone to work in the Gulf, taken his wife with him, and then, for the ordinary bureaucratic reason of a visa process, sent her home ahead of him. Within a week of her return, she had left with another man. He remarried eventually, but the house he had built with such hope stood closed, and he now lived far away, in the place of his work, a man visibly diminished by a betrayal he had never fully set down.

Three houses. Three men who had built, or bought, or dreamed toward the same purpose I was reaching for, and three houses that had ended up empty, unwanted, or shut against the very lives they were meant to hold. I remember sitting with that for days, feeling something close to despair. If this was where the effort led, again and again, then what exactly was I building toward. Whom was I building the house for, if a house could stand perfect and still be abandoned by the very love it was built from. I let the dream go quiet inside me. I stopped looking.

It was one of my relatives who would not let the matter rest. He called one day, almost apologetically, to say there was another place I should see before I gave up entirely. I went, mostly so as not to disappoint him, without any real expectation.

The road there left the main highway and its familiar dryness behind, and turned instead onto a narrower path that seemed to lead into a different climate altogether. The land opened into a valley, cool and green in a way that felt almost private, arecanut and coconut groves stretching in every direction, a slender tributary moving quietly through it, and a lake holding the sky’s colour without complaint. There was almost no one there. Only three old houses stood in that entire stretch of green, and something about their stillness made me ask.

The agent told me their story as though it were an old, familiar sadness he had grown used to repeating. A father had built all three houses, one for each of his three daughters, imagining them settled and returning, imagining grandchildren perhaps, imagining a valley full of the sound of a family he had raised with everything he had. All three daughters had married and moved away, each into a life of her own, none of them ever wishing to return to this valley, however beautiful it was. The father and mother had eventually passed away, and the houses had simply stood there since, going slowly to ruin, waiting for daughters who were not coming back, offered now for sale at whatever price a buyer would give.

I noticed, some distance from the houses, a small concrete structure I did not recognise, and when I asked, the agent said, simply, that it was the tomb of the father and the mother, and I do not think I can describe fully what moved through me in that moment, a man who had built three houses with his own hands, each one an act of pure, exhausting love, arriving in the end at the one structure that still belonged entirely to him, the one built to hold his own remains, and I found myself asking where they were now, those daughters, and where those dreams had gone to wait.

I think of that valley often. The grief in it is real, a father’s years of labour standing empty under the sun, and yet somewhere underneath that grief a kind of clarity has settled into me as well. A house, however carefully built, however lovingly furnished, cannot by itself carry forward what a parent hopes to give a child. Walls do not teach a person how to meet loss without breaking. Land does not teach a daughter how to recognise a good marriage from a hollow one, or a son how to survive betrayal without disappearing into a life half lived. What I have to give my daughters, I understand now, is a mind and a heart capable of building a life anywhere, out of anything, water finding its own way through even the most stubborn ground, and that matters far more than four walls waiting somewhere for them to arrive.

An education that opens doors rather than closes them. Values that hold steady when the ground beneath them shifts. A way of seeing the world that lets them recognise, early enough to matter, the difference between what looks like love and what actually is. If I can give them that, then it will not matter whether the roof over their heads was built by my hands or found by their own, because they will already carry, inside themselves, the only home that no one can ever leave empty.

My home is still a dream, and I would not mind if it remains one, for I have made up my mind to leave this place leaving nothing behind. All I would need would be a place where I am burned to ash, and even that space, after the ritual is done, would no longer be mine. Why build walls when the world itself has none. There is a road that begins at every threshold and does not announce where it ends, and I have come to think that the only inheritance worth leaving my daughters is the courage to walk it without asking.

The poet says –

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar

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corporal punishment in schools India

Is Being Sensitive a Crime?

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A few weeks ago, my five year old daughter came home from school looking unusually quiet. When I asked what had happened, she hesitated for a long time before she finally told me that her teacher had hit her. It was not the first time, she said, and she was not the only child it had happened to. I filed a complaint with the head of school who has been a good friend of mine too, and I was told the teacher had been warned. A week later, the principal called to tell me something else entirely. My daughter, she said, was very sensitive, and perhaps we as parents should work on training her to be less so.

I am an educationist myself, and a writer who has spent years working on questions of teaching and child development, and I have spent most of my working life believing that gentleness is not a weakness to be corrected in a child but a strength to be protected. So I sat with that conversation for a long time afterward, turning it over. A complaint about a teacher hitting children had somehow become a conversation about my daughter’s temperament. Nobody had told me what action had actually been taken against the teacher. Nobody had asked how my daughter was doing. What I was offered instead was a suggestion that the problem lay in how easily she felt pain, not in the fact that pain had been inflicted on her in the first place.

I have thought hard about whether I am reading too much into a single remark. But taken together with what my daughter told me weeks later, in an unrelated conversation, about believing that being hit would make her stronger, it started to look less like a stray comment and more like a quietly held belief. Somewhere in that school, and in a great many schools across this country, there is a conviction that physical pain builds character, that a child who cries after being struck is failing some test of toughness that a harder child would pass. It is an old belief, and it survives because it is rarely said aloud in those words. It hides instead behind gentler language. Discipline. Training. Correction. Being made stronger.

I want to be careful here, because sensitivity has become something of a loaded word. It gets used almost as an accusation now, as though a child who notices when something is wrong and says so is somehow deficient compared to one who has learned not to. But a child who registers pain and names it is not broken. She is paying attention. She trusts her own perception enough to report it, even when the person she is reporting it to has power over her. That is not fragility. If anything, it is a kind of honesty that a great many adults lose along the way, precisely because somewhere in their own childhood, somebody taught them that noticing pain and naming it was the wrong response. What actually gets built through repeated physical punishment is not resilience but a rehearsed silence. Children learn to stop reporting, not to stop hurting.

This is not a private grievance from one family in one school. Karnataka has spent this year confronting one account after another of what happens inside classrooms that operate outside real oversight. In July, a twelve year old boy named Guru Kiran collapsed and died during morning drills at a residential school on the outskirts of Bengaluru, and his family has alleged that the school’s physical training teacher assaulted him just before he went down, part of a pattern the boy’s classmates say was routine rather than exceptional. Around the same time, a daycare centre in the city came under investigation after videos surfaced showing toddlers confined in bathrooms and subjected to treatment that shocked even people who thought they had grown numb to this kind of news. These are not isolated cruelties by isolated adults. They are what happens when a culture of corporal punishment goes unexamined long enough that it becomes procedure rather than aberration.

None of this is new, and that may be the most damning part of it. Corporal punishment in schools has been prohibited under Indian law for more than a decade, under both the Right to Education Act and the Juvenile Justice Act, and yet case after case surfaces from every part of the country, in city schools and village ones, in elite institutions charging substantial fees and in modest government schools alike. What connects them is not geography or income. It is a shared, half spoken assumption that a certain amount of violence against children is not really violence at all, provided it comes wrapped in the language of discipline and provided the child survives it without visible injury. A bruise gets investigated. A child’s fear does not.

What troubles me most is how this assumption survives even after it is named. A parent complains, and a warning is issued, and that is treated as resolution. Nobody circles back to ask whether the behaviour has actually stopped, whether other children are safe, whether the teacher understands what was done wrong or merely resents having been reported. And when a parent persists, as I did, the conversation can quietly shift away from the adult who caused harm and toward the child who felt it, as though the correct outcome of abuse is a more tolerant child rather than a more accountable adult.

I do not think most people working in schools set out to hurt children. I think a great many of them inherited these methods from their own upbringing and have simply never been asked to examine them. But inheritance is not justification, and a profession built around the care of children carries a responsibility to interrogate its own habits rather than pass them along unchanged. A teacher’s authority in a classroom should rest on trust, not on the threat of pain. A principal’s job, when a parent raises a serious complaint, is to protect the child who was harmed, not to manage the parent who noticed.

My daughter is sensitive. I hope she stays that way. I hope she keeps noticing when something is wrong and keeps saying so, even when the room does not want to hear it. If there is a lesson in this for the adults who run our schools, it is a simple one. A child’s fear is not a flaw to be corrected. It is information. The question worth asking is never why a child felt something so strongly, but why an adult in a position of trust gave her a reason to.

Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar

In short: When a kindergarten teacher was reported for hitting children, the school’s response was to call the complaining parent’s daughter “too sensitive” rather than hold the teacher accountable. This piece argues that a child’s sensitivity is not a defect to be trained out of her but a form of honesty, and connects one family’s experience to a wider, unresolved pattern of corporal punishment in Indian schools, including recent cases in Bengaluru, despite the practice being legally banned for over a decade.

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Not Broken Children, But Unprepared Ones: Rethinking Why We Are Losing Our Young

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There is a number that should stop every parent in this country mid sentence. Every year, thousands of Indian students take their own lives, a majority of them still in school or college, most of them under the weight of an exam, a rank, or a comparison they were never taught how to carry. We talk about this loss in hushed, careful language, as though naming it too plainly might make it worse. But the silence has not protected anyone. It has only allowed the same pattern to repeat, year after year, exam season after exam season.

I want to say something that will sound uncomfortable to many parents reading this, myself included. When a child is pushed to the point where death feels like the only exit from a difficult moment, the failure is rarely the child’s. It is ours. Not the failure of love, because most parents love their children fiercely, but the failure of preparation. We have raised a generation of children who are extraordinarily equipped to chase success and almost entirely unequipped to survive its absence.

Earlier this year, a Supreme Court appointed task force examining student suicides in India reached a conclusion that deserves far more attention than it received. It described the crisis not as a mental health problem in isolation, but as a structural and institutional one, rooted in how our schools, our households, and our systems are built. That framing matters, because it moves the conversation away from a lazy and frankly cruel narrative, the idea that children today are simply weaker, softer, less resilient than the generations before them. That narrative is not just false. It is a convenient way for the adults in the room to avoid looking at their own part in this.

Think about what we actually teach a child from the age of six or seven. We teach them to read, to calculate, to memorise, to compete. We measure them constantly, through report cards, through rank lists, through the silent comparison every parent makes at a family gathering when someone else’s child scores higher. What we very rarely teach, in any structured or intentional way, is how to fail. How to sit with disappointment without believing it defines you. How to ask for help without believing it makes you weak. How to separate a bad result from a bad self.

A child who has never been allowed to fail at anything small will not know what to do the first time they fail at something big. And for an enormous number of Indian students, the first real experience of failure arrives all at once, in the form of a board exam, an entrance test, or a rank list, at precisely the age when their sense of identity is most fragile and least separable from their achievements. We spend eighteen years building a child’s entire self worth around performance, and then act astonished when a single bad performance feels, to that child, like the end of the world.

Part of this comes from how we as parents were raised ourselves. Many of us grew up in households where emotional conversations were rare, where a child’s sadness was met with distraction rather than discussion, where the phrase beta sab theek ho jayega was offered as comfort but rarely followed by an actual conversation about what was wrong. We inherited a way of parenting built on discipline and provision, and it served its purpose in a different India, facing different scarcities. But that model was never built to help a child process anxiety, comparison, heartbreak, or the specific, crushing pressure of a hundred million students competing for a small number of seats. We are still using an old map to navigate a world that has changed completely underneath our children’s feet.

None of this is said to assign blame to any individual parent who has lost a child. No parent sends their son or daughter to school in the morning imagining they will not see them again. Grief of that kind does not need an outside voice adding guilt to it, and I want to be careful not to do that here. What I am asking is something different, aimed not backward at individual tragedies but forward at the millions of households still raising children today. We have the chance, right now, to change how we prepare our children for a difficult life, before difficulty arrives.

That preparation has to start early, and it has to be deliberate. Children need to hear, repeatedly and without irony, that their worth is not contained in a mark sheet. They need parents who ask about their day before they ask about their score. They need to watch adults in their own home fail at something and recover from it, openly, so that failure stops looking like a catastrophe and starts looking like a normal Tuesday. They need permission to say I am struggling without immediately being handed a solution, a lecture, or a comparison to a cousin who is doing better.

Schools carry a share of this responsibility too, and to their credit, some have begun introducing counsellors and wellness periods. But a counsellor’s office that a child is too afraid to walk into, for fear of being seen as weak or unstable, does very little good. What actually helps is a culture, inside the classroom and inside the home, where struggling is treated as information rather than failure, where a teacher or a parent notices a withdrawn child not as an inconvenience but as a signal worth paying attention to.

There are also very real warning signs that parents can learn to watch for, and this knowledge should be as common as knowing basic first aid. A child pulling away from friends and activities they once enjoyed. Sudden changes in sleep or appetite. A drop in performance that comes with silence rather than the usual complaints. Talk, even indirect or joking talk, about being a burden or about things getting better after they are gone. These are not moments for lectures. They are moments to sit down, put away every device, and simply ask, gently and without judgement, how someone is actually doing.

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts like these, please reach out. Tele-MANAS, the government’s free 24 hour mental health helpline, can be reached at 14416, and the KIRAN helpline is available toll free at 1800-599-0019. These lines exist precisely for moments that feel unbearable, and reaching out to them is not a small or shameful thing. It can be the thing that buys a family more time.

I believe deeply in the strength of India’s children. I do not think for a moment that this generation is fragile. I think it is a generation carrying more comparison, more visibility, and more pressure per square inch than any generation before it, largely without the tools to metabolise any of it. That is not a flaw in them. It is a gap in what we, as parents, as schools, and as a society, have chosen to prioritise.

We can close that gap. It starts with something as simple as a parent choosing, tonight, to ask their child how they are feeling instead of how they scored, and actually waiting, in silence if needed, for the real answer.

Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar

In short: India is losing thousands of students to suicide every year, and a 2026 Supreme Court-appointed task force has concluded the crisis is structural, not simply psychological. This piece argues the problem is not that today’s children are weaker, but that most have never been taught how to fail, how to sit with disappointment, or how to separate their self worth from their marks. Parents, many raised in households where emotional conversations were rare, often pass on the same silence. Real change starts small: asking a child how they feel before asking how they scored, normalising failure at home, watching for early warning signs, and knowing that help is a phone call away through Tele-MANAS (14416) and KIRAN (1800-599-0019).

If this piece has raised anything difficult for you personally, please know that support is available. Tele-MANAS: 14416 (24/7, free) | KIRAN: 1800-599-0019 (24/7, free)

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Beyond the Stethoscope: Why India’s Youth Deserve a Bigger Dream

1 Comment / Education /

I want to begin with something I do not say lightly. I have my reservations about several decisions taken by the BJP led government, and I have not hesitated to voice them where I felt they were warranted. But when it comes to the question in front of us today, the nation comes first. That is the lens through which I write this piece, and it is the lens I ask every reader to bring to it as well.

India today is not the India of a decade ago. Under the leadership of Narendra Modi, we have watched a government run increasingly like a team of professionals rather than a coterie of court favourites, and that shift matters more than most people give it credit for. Yet governance is not built overnight, and the bureaucratic machinery that carries out policy on the ground still carries the residue of decades of neglect and mismanagement under Congress rule. That inherited mindset does not vanish with a change of government. It has to be reformed, person by person, office by office, and I believe that reform is possible and already under way.

It is against this backdrop that we must look at the protests currently unfolding over the NEET examination. Students have real grievances. A paper leak is a paper leak, and the anger of a young person who spent two years preparing for an exam only to watch its integrity collapse is anger that deserves to be heard, not dismissed. But somewhere along the way, a genuine student grievance has been absorbed into a larger political theatre. The opposition, having found little traction in Parliament, has seized on this moment as a stick to beat the government with, and in doing so it risks turning a fixable administrative failure into a manufactured crisis of instability at a time when India can least afford one. I say this not to excuse any lapse on the government’s part, because lapses must be owned and corrected, but to draw a line between the students who are hurting and the political actors who are using that hurt for their own ends. India has faced bigger storms than this and come through them. I trust that the government’s course correction, and the good sense of the Indian public, will eventually make clear who was fighting for students and who was simply fighting for headlines.

But I want to move past that argument, because I think it distracts from a deeper and more uncomfortable question, one that no political party on any side has been honest enough to ask. Why does an exam like NEET carry so much emotional weight in the first place? Why does a single test, on a single day, feel to millions of Indian families like the difference between a life worth living and a life wasted?

The answer has very little to do with paper leaks and everything to do with how narrowly we have taught our children to dream.

Walk into almost any middle class Indian home and ask a ten year old what they want to become. The answer, in the overwhelming majority of cases, will be doctor or engineer. Not because the child has weighed a dozen possibilities and settled on medicine after genuine reflection, but because those are the only two words the child has been allowed to hear as answers to the question of a worthwhile life. I would go further and suggest a simple experiment. Survey the students sitting for NEET this year, not about their marks, but about whose dream they are actually pursuing. Ask them plainly whether this is what they want, or what their parents decided for them somewhere around the age of twelve. I suspect the results would embarrass an entire generation of well meaning parents far more than any paper leak ever could.

There was a time when this reverence made sense. Decades ago, when India had a fraction of its current medical infrastructure, a doctor in a small town genuinely stood between a community and its worst outcomes. The profession earned its near divine status because the alternative to a doctor’s presence was often death. That context has changed enormously, even if our collective imagination has not caught up with it. India now trains a very large number of medical graduates every year, and while the country still needs more doctors in its rural and underserved regions, the shortage is one of distribution and incentive, not of raw output. We do not lack doctors because too few children dream of medicine. We lack doctors in the places that need them because we have never solved the harder problem of making rural service attractive, dignified, and secure.

Meanwhile, we rarely tell children the full cost of the dream we are selling them. A medical education in India is long, expensive, and does not end with the degree that gets printed on the certificate. A basic MBBS is only the entry ticket. Real specialisation, the kind that commands respect and income, requires postgraduate study that is fiercely competitive and often financially out of reach for the very families who sacrificed the most to get their child into medical college in the first place. We celebrate the admission and stay silent about the decade that follows it, the loans, the entrance exams within entrance exams, the years spent as a resident earning very little while working impossible hours. Nobody tells the twelve year old any of this. They are only shown the white coat and the stethoscope, never the small print underneath.

Engineering tells an even more sobering story, and one that is easier to verify because it has already played out. A generation of parents pushed their children toward engineering with the same blind faith once reserved for medicine, and today India produces engineering graduates by the millions, a significant number of whom cannot find work in their own field and end up in jobs paying ten thousand rupees a month, doing work that has nothing to do with the four years and the debt behind their degree. This is not a controversial opinion anymore. It is a well documented outcome, and it should have been the loudest warning sign this country has seen in a generation about the danger of chasing a label instead of a genuine aptitude.

So what do we do with this. Not with anger, and not with despair, but with an honest correction that starts inside the home.

Parents have to be willing to let go of prestige as the only measure of a good life for their child. A career is not a family trophy. It is the daily texture of a person’s existence for forty years, and it should be chosen with that reality in mind, not with an eye on what will impress relatives at a wedding. Schools and colleges need to introduce serious, well resourced career counselling far earlier than they currently do, ideally by the time a child enters the ninth grade, so that aptitude and interest have a chance to shape ambition before ambition hardens into obsession with two overcrowded fields. I understand efforts are already being made in this direction, with career counsellors being introduced in various educational settings, and that is a welcome beginning. But a beginning is not enough. The government has a real role to play here, in funding large scale awareness campaigns aimed not only at students but at parents, because in most Indian households it is the parent, not the child, who needs to be persuaded first.

India’s opportunity landscape has expanded far beyond what most families are willing to imagine. There is enormous, underexplored scope in data and technology, in design, in the creative industries, in skilled trades, in agriculture reimagined through modern methods, in renewable energy, in public policy, in entrepreneurship of every conceivable size. None of these carry the instant social currency of the word doctor, but many of them offer more honest, more sustainable, and often more fulfilling paths than the ones we have taught our children to worship.

I will end where I think this conversation should always end, with faith in the children themselves rather than in the systems around them. The same students who are out on the streets today, demanding accountability and refusing to be silent about a broken examination process, are proof of exactly the kind of courage this country needs more of, not less. They are not fragile. They are not lost. They are simply the products of a narrow map that we, the adults, drew for them. Our task now is not to protect them from disappointment but to widen that map, to tell them clearly and repeatedly that there is more than one door to a meaningful life, and to trust them to walk through whichever one is truly theirs. Give them that trust, and I have no doubt they will build an India far wiser than the one we are leaving behind.

In short: The NEET protests have exposed two separate problems that keep getting mixed into one. The first is a genuine examination integrity crisis that deserves accountability, even as opposition parties try to convert it into political capital. The second, deeper problem is India’s long standing obsession with medicine and engineering as the only respectable career paths, a mindset largely inherited from parents rather than chosen by students. With rising costs of medical education, a saturated engineering job market, and thousands of graduates earning as little as ten thousand rupees a month, the case for widening career awareness among both children and parents has never been stronger. Early career counselling, honest conversations about the real cost and length of professions like medicine, and government backed awareness campaigns can help India’s youth choose careers based on aptitude rather than inherited prestige.

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Omotenashi_The Japanese Art of Thoughtful Care by Dr Jagadish B

Omotenashi: When Care Becomes a Way of Life

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Finally, my slipper is broken. It is not just about a footwear. Like many things in my life, I have some sentimental attachment with it. It has been carrying me, protecting my feet for the last five years. Why five years? I could have bought a new slipper anytime. Over the years, I have bought many slippers for my children and other family members, but I never felt the necessity of buying one for myself. The same is true with dresses. The simple T-shirts and trousers I wear have remained with me for years, though I have spent generously for others. The truth is simple. I care deeply for people and things around me. Maybe thoughtful care.

I never thought of this “thoughtful care” as a philosophy until I met Dr. Jagadish, an educator, author, and one of the most beautiful human beings I have encountered in my life, for a discussion on his new book. The conversation became the beginning of another publishing journey for our publishing house with Omotenashi: The Japanese Art of Thoughtful Care. As Dr. Jagadish spoke in detail about the idea behind the book, I realised that this was not merely a work on hospitality or Japanese culture. It was about something the modern world has slowly forgotten while becoming faster, louder, and more efficient. The ability to genuinely notice another human being.

Reading this book felt less like reading a theoretical work and more like walking through moments of quiet humanity. The beauty of the book lies in the fact that it does not romanticise kindness in abstract terms. Instead, it reveals Omotenashi through ordinary incidents that most people overlook. A mother preparing herbal drinks before dawn for her son, a neighbour rushing without hesitation to carry an unconscious elderly man downstairs, a government officer patiently helping a grieving widow complete pension formalities, a bus conductor offering the last vacant seat to a tired traveller, and healthcare workers navigating impossible situations during the pandemic with calm empathy. These are not extraordinary heroes in dramatic circumstances. They are ordinary people responding with sincerity to the needs of others. Dr. Jagadish gently demonstrates that Omotenashi begins precisely there. In the unnoticed corners of life.

What makes the work deeply meaningful is the way it connects this philosophy with both personal and professional life. Many books on leadership today speak about productivity, influence, strategy, or systems. Very few speak about human warmth with seriousness and intellectual clarity. Dr. Jagadish does exactly that. Drawing from his long association with Toyota and Lexus, he explains how anticipatory care and sincere attention become foundational not only in relationships but also in business excellence. The stories from Lexus dealerships, Japanese hospitality practices, airline services, hotels, and global organisations are not presented as management case studies alone. They become lessons in how institutions can remain human even within highly structured systems.

The chapters discussing the roots of Omotenashi in Zen philosophy, Bushidō, tea ceremonies, and Japanese cultural evolution are among the most insightful sections of the book. Yet Dr. Jagadish never allows the work to become academically distant. The language remains accessible, warm, and deeply reflective. One constantly feels that the author is not teaching from a pedestal but sharing something he himself has carefully lived and observed through years of experience.

One of the strongest aspects of the book is its relevance to contemporary life. We live in a time where interactions increasingly become transactional. People respond after being asked. Institutions care after complaints arise. Attention itself has become fragmented. In such a world, Omotenashi arrives almost like a quiet corrective. It reminds us that true care is proactive. It anticipates. It notices silence. It understands discomfort before words emerge. It restores dignity to everyday interaction.

There is another quality in the book that stayed with me long after reading it. The author never presents care as weakness or emotional excess. Instead, he presents it as discipline, awareness, refinement, and character. Omotenashi, in this sense, becomes not merely hospitality but a civilizational value. A way of living where relationships matter more than performance, where intention matters more than display, and where even the smallest gesture can carry immense emotional depth.

As someone associated with literature, publishing, and humanistic thought for many years, I rarely come across books that combine philosophy, lived experience, emotional sincerity, and practical relevance with such balance. Omotenashi: The Japanese Art of Thoughtful Care succeeds because it emerges from authenticity. Dr. Jagadish does not merely write about thoughtful care. One can feel that he has practiced it for decades in his interactions, leadership, and way of living.

What makes this journey even more meaningful for me is the fact that Dr. Jagadish’s Omotenashi is not merely a standalone book. It marks the beginning of the Life Series by Writers International Edition, a publishing initiative envisioned to bring meaningful, life-centred works to readers across the world. In many ways, I feel there could not have been a more appropriate beginning than a book that speaks about sincerity, empathy, mindfulness, and the forgotten beauty of caring for one another. What is even more heartening is that while Omotenashi continues its remarkable journey as one of our best-selling titles, Dr. Jagadish has already moved into his next work, which I believe is nearing completion. Having witnessed the depth of thought and humanity that shaped this book, I quietly feel the next one too will become a work that touches countless lives across the world.

Omotenashi: The Japanese Art of Thoughtful Care is not simply a book to be read and kept aside. It is a book that follows the reader into daily life. Into homes, workplaces, classrooms, hospitals, offices, friendships, and moments of silence. After reading it, one begins to observe life differently. One begins to notice the invisible labour of care surrounding us every day.

Perhaps that is the greatest success of this remarkable work. It does not ask us to become extraordinary people. It simply reminds us to become more human.

Buy ‘Omotenashi: The Japanese Art of Thoughtful Care’

Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar

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Harness the Power of Hope by S.S.A. Zaidi: The Eternal Elixir of Resilience

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S.S.A. Zaidi, a retired banker, award-winning author, and motivational speaker from a modest village background in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India, has produced a compelling sequel to his earlier work Failure is a Knock on the Door of Success. Published in 2025 by BookLeaf Publishing, Harness the Power of Hope: Hope Unleashed offers a thoughtful exploration of hope as an essential force for navigating life’s inevitable setbacks, stress, anxiety, and despair. Drawing from personal experiences, historical and mythological references, spiritual wisdom, and contemporary psychological insights, Zaidi presents hope not as mere optimism but as a deliberate, actionable mindset that transforms adversity into growth. The book addresses pressing concerns, particularly among younger generations facing intense competition, fear of failure, and mental health challenges, while remaining accessible to a broad readership.

The volume opens with front matter that establishes its tone and purpose. Expressions of gratitude, forewords from mental health professionals and educators, and an overview by Padma Shri Prof. Syed Ainul Hasan underscore the book’s collaborative spirit and scholarly grounding. Zaidi dedicates the work to his late mother and daughter, as well as to cancer patients, with royalties directed toward their treatment through the Sujata and Sesh Foundation. This personal dimension infuses the text with authenticity. The author explicitly notes his use of repetition as a pedagogical tool, revisiting core ideas from multiple angles to reinforce learning and retention. Each of the 27 chapters concludes with “Points to Ponder and Act On,” practical exercises that invite readers to apply concepts immediately.

Structurally, the book progresses logically from personal foundations to broader philosophical and practical applications. Early chapters establish the author’s credentials and core inspiration. Chapter 3, “My Father, My Hero: An Apostle of Hope and Determination,” recounts Zaidi’s upbringing and the disciplined yet hopeful guidance from his parents. Chapter 9, titled with his mother’s Urdu phrase “Beta Kabhin Maayoos Na Hona” (My Son, Never Lose Hope), weaves maternal wisdom with poetic couplets and reflections on betrayal, loyalty, and resilience. These sections ground the narrative in lived reality, showing how familial hope sustained Zaidi through professional hurdles, including unexpected retirement setbacks.

Subsequent chapters expand the theme. Chapter 10, “Hope Explained,” defines hope as a conscious choice that fosters resilience rather than merely alleviating fear. Zaidi draws on Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (Chapter 6) to illustrate how purpose and hope enabled survival amid Holocaust horrors. Chapter 15, within the broader introduction, and Chapter 14, “Treat Fear as an Instrument of Personal Growth,” advocate cultivating a growth mindset. Readers encounter Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If—” and stories of real-life figures such as Lilius Lionel, Satendra Singh Lohiya, and Nick Vujicic, who triumphed despite severe physical limitations. Chapter 16, “Stories of Hope, Faith, and Triumph,” compiles further inspiring accounts, while Chapter 17 examines the interplay of despair and hope.

Mid-book sections address practical applications. Chapter 18, “Hope as a Stress Buster,” links hope to reduced anxiety, stronger immunity, and emotional regulation, supported by research references and tips for daily practice. Chapter 19, “Hope is the Magic Elixir of Life,” focuses on serious illness, particularly cancer, emphasising hope’s role in sustaining quality of life and medical compliance. Chapter 20, “Be Like a Tree – Be Grounded,” uses arboreal metaphors to teach rootedness, patience, flexibility, and renewal; readers learn to release “dead leaves” (negative attachments) and draw sustenance from deep roots. Chapter 21, “It Shall Be Done – Pinnacle of Hope,” recounts the motivational tale from Peter B. Kyne’s The Go-Getter and Theodore Roosevelt’s self-imposed physical regimen, reinforcing absolute commitment. Chapter 22, “No Mud, No Lotus,” draws on Thich Nhat Hanh to affirm that suffering fertilises growth, much like the lotus emerging pristine from mud. Later chapters connect hope to spiritualism (Chapter 25) and entrepreneurship (Chapter 26), culminating in an epilogue that synthesises the message.

Throughout, Zaidi enriches the discussion with diverse sources: Quranic verses, the Bhagavad Gita, Biblical references, quotes from Barack Obama, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Rumi, Emily Dickinson, and Aristotle, plus modern voices such as Joel Osteen and Oneg Shapira. Mythological allusions, including Pandora’s Box, underscore hope’s enduring presence amid adversity. The text repeatedly cautions that it addresses general stress and anxiety, not clinical depression, and urges professional help when needed—a responsible stance that enhances credibility.

The content’s principal strength lies in its integration of personal narrative, scholarly references, and actionable guidance. Zaidi’s village-to-boardroom journey lends credibility, while the repetition of key phrases such as “Never lose hope” and “It shall be done” creates rhythmic reinforcement without redundancy. Each chapter’s reflective prompts transform passive reading into active self-development. The book speaks directly to contemporary issues: FOMO, VUCA environments, post-pandemic mental health strains, and youth suicide linked to academic pressure. By framing failure as feedback and stress as a potential energiser, Zaidi offers a balanced, culturally rooted antidote to despair.

Minor observations include occasional overlap between chapters, yet this aligns with the author’s stated intent to embed concepts deeply. The prose remains clear and conversational, avoiding jargon while maintaining dignity. Overall quality of the book (printing and designing) i could never believe such a precious book could be printed and published this way. The clean layout, elegant typography, and thoughtful placement of inspirational quotes and call-out boxes enhance readability and aesthetic appeal, reflecting care worthy of the message.

In conclusion, Harness the Power of Hope: Hope Unleashed succeeds as both inspirational literature and practical manual. Zaidi demonstrates that hope is not passive wishing but an active, resilient force sustained by determination, gratitude, and community. Readers emerge equipped with tools to reframe setbacks, nurture inner strength, and pursue purposeful lives. Educators, counsellors, young professionals, and anyone navigating uncertainty will find value here. The book stands as a worthy successor to its predecessor and a timely contribution to self-help literature. Highly recommended for its depth, accessibility, and enduring relevance.

Buy Harness the Power of Hope by S.S.A. Zaidi here: https://amzn.in/d/05GVOhHS

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The Infinitesimal Cage: Mythology, Power, and Escape in Sarath Babu’s Anima

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“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

~ Ingmar Bergman

Though I do not typically write movie reviews, preferring instead to engage with cinema on a personal level, I could not resist scribbling my thoughts on “Anima,” a short film by Sarath Babu that somehow appeared in front of me as I was scrolling on social media. This noir fantasy mystery drama, available on YouTube, demands more than passive viewing; it invites meditation, a deliberate unpacking of its layers. Clocking in at under 20 minutes, “Anima” packs a philosophical punch that lingers long after the credits roll. It is a work that blends psychological thriller elements with deep mythological symbolism, challenging audiences to reconsider notions of confinement, power, and escape. In this review, I aim to provide a detailed exploration that not only assesses the film’s merits but also aids viewers in grasping its intricate concepts, encouraging a reflective approach to its narrative and visuals.

Anima” unfolds on a remote island prison, a setting that immediately evokes isolation and inevitability. The story centers on a new prisoner, portrayed with quiet intensity by Libin Varghese, who arrives with a reputation as an escape artist. He has never remained incarcerated for more than a month, slipping free from every facility that has tried to hold him. His confidence is palpable in the opening scenes, where he surveys his surroundings with a smirk, already plotting his next breakout. However, the prison’s guards exhibit an unsettling certainty, insisting that no one ever escapes this place. Their demeanor is not aggressive but resigned, as if privy to a truth beyond the prisoner’s comprehension. Adding to the tension is a fellow inmate, played by Sarath Babu himself, who shares cryptic warnings about the prison and its enigmatic warden. As the narrative progresses, the protagonist’s assurance crumbles under the weight of anomalies: peculiar behaviors, whispered revelations, and an atmosphere that defies rational explanation. What begins as a tale of cunning evasion evolves into a metaphysical puzzle, revealing that this is no ordinary jail but a realm where the boundaries of reality bend.

Sarath Babu’s script and direction masterfully construct this shift, drawing viewers into a world where escape is not merely physical but existential. The film’s description labels it a “noir fantasy mystery drama,” and it lives up to this hybrid genre. Noir influences are evident in the shadowy cinematography by Sankardev K.H., with high-contrast lighting that casts long, ominous shadows across the prison walls. Fantasy elements emerge subtly, avoiding overt spectacle in favor of psychological unease. The mystery builds through implication rather than exposition, urging the audience to piece together clues. This approach aligns with the film’s call for meditation; it is not a story to be consumed quickly but one to be contemplated, revisited, and dissected. For instance, early dialogues hint at deeper undercurrents, but their full significance only crystallizes upon reflection or rewatching.

One of the film’s most compelling aspects is its rich symbolism, particularly its ties to Hindu mythology and the Ramayana. The title “Anima” itself is a gateway to this interpretive layer. In Hindu philosophy, Anima is the first of the Ashta Siddhis, the eight supernatural powers attained through spiritual discipline. It grants the ability to shrink oneself or objects to the size of an atom, symbolizing mastery over scale and perception. This concept permeates the narrative, transforming the prison from a mere backdrop into a metaphor for confinement at the atomic level. The protagonist’s attempts to escape are thwarted not by bars or guards but by a fundamental alteration of reality, where the very fabric of existence is compressed under an unseen force.

Central to this mythological framework is the warden, a character whose identity unfolds as a nod to Hanuman, the devoted monkey god from the Ramayana known for his unwavering loyalty and immense powers, including Anima Siddhi. Hanuman famously used this ability during his quests, shrinking to navigate impossible spaces. In “Anima,” the warden embodies this figure through subtle yet deliberate cues. His nameplate reads “K. Chiranjeevi,” where “Chiranjeevi” signifies immortality, a boon granted to Hanuman, and “K” alludes to Kesari, Hanuman’s father. This naming is no coincidence; it anchors the character in epic lore, suggesting an eternal guardian who oversees a domain beyond mortal escape.

Visual symbolism reinforces this connection. In the climax, as the warden drinks from a bottle, a crack in the wall behind him cleverly forms the outline of a tail, evoking Hanuman’s simian form. The composition mirrors iconic depictions of Hanuman atop a mountain, conch shell in hand, facing the rising sun. Here, the liquor bottle substitutes for the conch, a creative twist that blends the sacred with the profane, perhaps commenting on the erosion of divine ideals in a modern, dystopian context. Such imagery rewards attentive viewers, transforming a simple scene into a tableau of mythological resonance.

The prison’s location further deepens these references. Named Anjanadri Prison, it draws from Anjanadri Hills, traditionally considered Hanuman’s birthplace. Babu ingeniously reimagines this in a futuristic lens: rising sea levels have submerged the land, leaving only mountain peaks as isolated islands. This environmental detail adds a layer of ecological commentary, implying a world altered by human hubris, where ancient powers persist amid ruin. The island’s remoteness symbolizes not just physical separation but a liminal space between the mundane and the mythical, where siddhis like Anima hold sway.

Beyond mythology, “Anima” employs innovative visual techniques to immerse viewers in its conceptual world. The transition into the “World of Anima” is marked by a striking shift in aspect ratio. Initially presented in widescreen, the frame contracts to a box-like format upon the protagonist’s entry into his cell, visually “shrinking” the perspective. This change is more than stylistic; it embodies the theme of control and compression. Under the warden’s influence, the world narrows, confining not only the character but the audience’s gaze. It is a clever metaphor for Anima Siddhi, where one’s reality is reduced by a superior force.

Another pivotal visual cue is the opening shot inside the cell: floating dust particles illuminated by a beam of light. These specks, invisible to the naked eye in ordinary conditions, represent atoms, signaling entry into the infinitesimal realm. Without dialogue, Babu conveys a profound shift, inviting meditation on scale. What appears as mere ambiance is a declaration of the film’s philosophical intent: we are now in a domain where the microscopic governs the macro, where escape requires transcending perceptual limits.

The film’s sound design and score, crafted by Divyabharath Ravi, complement these visuals. Eerie sound effects amplify the prison’s otherworldliness, while the background music builds tension through minimalist motifs. Editing by Sivin Jose maintains a deliberate pace, allowing moments of silence for contemplation. The color grading by Ben Kachapilly employs desaturated tones, enhancing the noir aesthetic and evoking a sense of faded grandeur, perhaps alluding to forgotten myths in a contemporary setting.

Performances anchor the film’s intellectual ambitions in emotional reality. Libin Varghese’s portrayal of the prisoner captures the arc from arrogance to despair, his expressions conveying internal erosion without overstatement. Sarath Babu, doubling as director and actor, brings gravitas to the fellow inmate, his lines delivered with a haunted wisdom that hints at deeper knowledge. Supporting roles, including Naushad Varnam as a guard and Dr. Nidhin Narayan in a brief but impactful appearance, contribute to the ensemble’s cohesion. The production, under The Studio “B” Productions with co-producers Shine Jacob and Sreekanth S, and presented by Altered Perspective Films, demonstrates resourceful filmmaking on a modest scale. Contributions from the direction team (Vibin Jose and Giri Sarngadharan), art direction (also by Babu), and technical specialists like VFX artist Gogul Krish and CGI expert Amar Neerud ensure a polished execution.

Thematically, “Anima” explores the illusion of freedom and the inescapability of higher powers. The protagonist’s notoriety as an escapist parallels human endeavors to defy fate, yet the prison reveals such efforts as futile against cosmic or divine order. This resonates with Ramayana motifs, where devotion and surrender often triumph over individual will. Hanuman’s loyalty to Rama exemplifies this; similarly, the warden’s role suggests submission to a greater purpose. In a broader sense, the film critiques modern incarceration, both literal and metaphorical, questioning whether true escape lies in resistance or acceptance.

For viewers, understanding “Anima” requires active engagement and I personally wish it had a few sequels too. Upon first watch, one might appreciate its suspense and twists, but meditation reveals its depths. Rewatch the aspect ratio shift; ponder the dust particles; trace the Hanuman parallels. These elements transform the film from entertainment to a philosophical inquiry, prompting questions about perception, power, and the self. It is tough, as the user notes, not because it is inaccessible but because it demands intellectual investment.

With “Anima,” Sarath Babu reaffirms his stature as a storyteller of rare vision. Blending genres with mythological profundity, he crafts a short film that punches above its runtime, inviting endless interpretation. Though compact, it rivals feature-length works in ambition and execution. In Sarath Babu, I see a filmmaker, one of the most significant filmmakers emerging today, whose work promises to reshape how we engage with cinema. If you have not yet viewed it, I urge you to do so, and then return to meditate upon its enigmas.

The Infinitesimal Cage: Mythology, Power, and Escape in Sarath Babu’s Anima Read More »