Do you remember when it rained

 

Do You Remember When It Rained?

A memory of rain across places and time

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As a young child in Allahabad, rain was mostly something to worry about.

It usually began with the sky changing early in the morning—dark clouds gathering low and heavy, making the day feel uncertain before anything had actually happened. I used to go to school by rickshaw, watching the sky and trying to read it.

Because the concern was simple. If it rained, the rickshaw might not come back. If it didn’t, I might be stuck at school. And in childhood thinking, that wasn’t inconvenience—it was being left behind in a large, dark school with no food, no water, and the occasional imagined ghost moving through empty corridors.

Even before the rain came, the sky kept us busy. Clouds became animals, faces, shifting shapes that never stayed still for long. As children, we pointed, argued, corrected each other, watched them form and disappear within minutes. A daily argument with the sky.

Then the rain arrived.

In India, rain did not just fall—it changed the day. When it came heavily, people gathered under trees, bus stops, tin roofs, anywhere with cover. But what stood out was not shelter. It was waiting.

Nobody really left. Minutes stretched without noticing. And waiting became normal.

Even then, nothing really stopped. People kept looking up, reading the sky, offering predictions. Someone said it would pass. Someone disagreed. Someone else studied the clouds as if they knew better. Nobody was certain, but everyone spoke.

In that waiting, strangers became briefly familiar.

Tea and coffee appeared—small, strong cups passed around, heat cutting through the damp air. And then bhajiyas or pakoras.

Potatoes, onions, chillies in spiced gram flour, fried crisp at the edges. Nothing special otherwise. In rain, they felt necessary.

School days had their own rain stories. The “rainy day holiday” was never official—just something that spread faster than fact. You would be on your way when boys cycled back shouting, “It is a holiday!”

And the day split. Turn back and risk being wrong. Continue and risk being alone in school. The ones announcing it always looked pleased, as if they had found a shortcut in the system.

In boarding school in Pune, rain often arrived with returning students—trains, heavy trunks, tired faces—and then, almost immediately, the rain itself. Arriving soaked stays with you longer than the journey: clothes that never fully dry, socks that stay cold, a dampness that seems to settle into the place.

And yet rain was never the same everywhere.

In the UAE, it interrupts rather than disrupts. Children run into it shouting, as if something rare has arrived. Even adults pause longer than they expect to, looking up as rain briefly changes the rhythm of the day.

Of course, here too, rain can become serious. Heavy downpours once turned roads into channels and underpasses into pools, stopping movement in places that usually never stop.

And still, it feels familiar in a way that is hard to explain.

Because somewhere in it is the same moment—standing still, waiting, looking up, not quite sure when it will pass.

The same rain. The same pause. Just different places.

I don't know

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Whatever Happened to “I Don’t Know”?

In a world of instant answers, we may be losing the simplest form of honesty.

“I don’t know” used to be an honest beginning. Today, it feels almost like an awkward pause we rush to fill.

Somewhere between ambition and authority, we quietly pushed “I don’t know” out of our vocabulary. It was once simply honesty. Today, it is often mistaken for hesitation.

As a young teacher at The Bishop’s School, Pune, I first taught Grades 5 and 6. A year later, I moved to Grades 7 and 8, and then, almost without ceremony, straight into Grades 9 and 10—the board classes. I hesitated, not out of reluctance, but from that familiar early-career doubt of whether one is truly ready for what is being asked.

But I took it on.

There was no Google then, no ChatGPT either—only Encyclopedia Britannica and a willingness to learn while teaching. It was a simple rhythm: teach, learn, adjust, and teach again. Slowly, confidence settled. The classroom became familiar, though never entirely predictable.

Then came poetry, Shakespeare, and questions that didn’t always offer neat answers. That is when I realised something simple but important: it is perfectly fine not to know.

If I didn’t understand something, I would tell the class, “I don’t know. Let me find out.” I never felt the need to pretend. The boys were sharp—they would have known anyway. More importantly, honesty mattered more than performance. And strangely, those were often the moments when the classroom felt most real.

Sometimes Britannica helped. Sometimes it didn’t. And when it didn’t, there was Mr Beeman.

Mr Beeman was a retired principal of Sherwood College, Nainital—a man of discipline, precision, and quiet authority. One did not simply walk in and meet him; one asked for time properly, as though stepping into a space where thinking itself had order.

At the appointed hour, I would climb the wooden stairs of Cambridge Block, knock on his door, and wait. He would have just finished corrections or listening to the BBC news, sitting in a short window of quiet.

I would ask my questions—often about poets, authors, or Shakespeare. Sometimes a line that resisted meaning, sometimes the background of a text, sometimes the world behind a word.

“Excuse me, Mr Beeman, I am trying to understand this—could you help me think it through?”

He would listen first—properly listen—and then respond with a clarity and patience that no textbook ever managed to replicate. I would take notes, go back, reflect, and reshape the lesson. The next day, I would walk into class and say, without hesitation, “I checked this with Mr Beeman, and here is what I understand.” No pretence. Just learning.

I still meet some of those boys now—working professionals, many far more worldly than we were then—and we often look back on those school days with fondness, amused at how life has unfolded for all of us.

Over time, I have noticed something subtle in professional life. Language has become more indirect—not to hide meaning, but to manage uncertainty. We “circle back,” “take it offline,” “align internally,” or “park it for now.” We “move things forward,” even when clarity is still forming. None of this is wrong, but it often replaces something simpler: the ability to say we don’t yet know.

This becomes most visible in interviews and professional conversations. Answers are structured and polished, which is important, but even when the question invites uncertainty, people rarely pause to acknowledge it.

Perhaps it is because information is so easily available today that we are expected to always appear prepared. In that process, social pressure quietly makes it harder to simply say, “I don’t know,” even when it would be the most honest response.

And I often wonder how it would land if someone simply said, “Sorry, I don’t know that yet—but I am willing to learn.”

Somewhere along the way, we began to equate certainty with competence—as though doubt weakens capability, instead of being the first stage of understanding.

But in real work—especially in education—certainty is rarely where things begin. It usually comes later, after thinking, trying, and sometimes failing.

It makes you wonder: when was the last time we, as professionals, said quite simply, “I don’t know”?

And when someone younger in a team or classroom says it, how do we receive it? Do we see it as honesty in the process of learning, or do we, even unintentionally, expect a more polished answer?

We rarely notice how quickly certainty gets rewarded—and how quietly openness gets pushed aside.

This matters deeply in schools. Children should feel comfortable saying “I don’t know” without hesitation—not as failure, but as thinking aloud. When received well, it is often the most honest starting point of learning.

Of course, honesty does not need an audience. Learning does not need declarations; it needs space, trust, and patience. Most understanding begins in that quiet space where thinking is still forming, not yet fixed.

Education, at its core, is not only about correct answers. It is about building the confidence to sit with not knowing, without rushing to fill the gap.

Which brings me back to those three words.

“I don’t know.”

Perhaps they have not disappeared. Perhaps they have simply gone quiet—waiting to be welcomed back into classrooms, workplaces, and conversations where they are not judged, but understood.

Because in education and leadership, the goal is not to remove uncertainty.

It is to create environments where it is safe to think, safe to question, and safe to be unfinished.

And sometimes, real learning begins right there—with the courage to simply say:

“I don’t know.”

When did life become a system

When Did Life Become a System?
A reflection on how life quietly moved from being lived to being managed.

I grew up in a rather simple world.

We didn’t call it a system then. In fact, we didn’t call it anything at all. There were no manuals, no frameworks, no structured ideas telling us how life should be lived. Life simply happened, quietly and without explanation, and we moved with it without any fuss.

School was just school—a bell ringing somewhere in the distance, a dusty playground filled with constant movement, classrooms with strict teachers, and a small infirmary, often without a doctor, where you went when you felt unwell. You showed up each day, and the day unfolded on its own. Nothing felt measured or managed; simply being there was enough.

Meals carried the same simplicity. Food was food. Coffee was coffee. Ghee was ghee. Lunch often meant sitting under neem trees or in open courtyards, sharing whatever had been packed from home. It wasn’t an “experience.” It was just lunch. No one spoke about nutrients or balance or protein or fiber . You ate, you were full, and that was that. Health, too, was straightforward. You were either unwell or recovering. Terms like cholesterol or hypertension rarely entered everyday conversation. The same clarity extended to emotions. Stress, sadness, pressure existed, but not as categories to be analyzed. They were felt, not framed. Support came directly—parents or teachers corrected you, sometimes very  firmly, sometimes quietly, with a steady expectation: adjust, continue, try again.

Family life had its own rhythm. Homes were full, noise was constant, play was aplenty  and responsibility was shared without being assigned. Even routines like vaccination were simple—once a year, no reminders, no alerts. Things were done because they had to be done, not because they were scheduled.

The world outside home and school felt equally unlabeled. Environmental change, pollution, melting glaciers—these were not part of everyday vocabulary. Trees were cut, and over time, they grew back. Consequences existed, but they were not organized into systems of thought. Even animals were simply part of life, not part of structured care. Pets lived within homes, not within schedules.

Movement was just movement. Walking to school, cycling through streets, running, jumping ,  climbing stairs, playing until dusk—that was simply how bodies lived. It was not called exercise, and it did not need to be named. Self-care, too, was unstructured. There were no routines built around optimization, no wellness calendars, no quiet pressure to improve the self. Care was practical, not packaged. You lived in your body without constantly observing it through data or devices.

And yet, life was full. People studied, worked, travelled, raised families, fell sick, recovered, argued, laughed, and continued. Life did not need to be explained to function. It simply unfolded.

But over time, something subtle shifted. Life began to be described more than it was lived. Sleep became data. Work became structure. Health became monitoring. Habits became tracking. Even emotions started to be arranged into frameworks designed to make them easier to understand and manage.

Please don’t get me wrong . It’s not that life has become worse but  It has certainly  become much faster, more connected, smarter, more informed, and more efficient—but also more demanding of visibility than human memory can comfortably hold.

Still, a quiet unease remains.

We now measure so much of life that we often experience it in fragments—tracked, labelled, optimized, reviewed—as if living itself feels incomplete without evidence that it was lived properly. And yes we do seem to be living for approval !

So the question lingers: when did our lives  stop being something we simply lived, and start becoming something we constantly managed?

 

When Everything Becomes a Reward

 

On praise, expectation, and what children learn to take for granted

Children do not simply achieve — they announce it.

Yesterday, my granddaughter came running to me, eyes bright, over the moon with pride, holding out two small stickers she had received from her piano teacher. She was ecstatic, and so was I, in that quiet way adults sometimes are when a small moment stays longer than expected.

Now, she is not the next Beethoven — at least not yet.

But that was never the point. In her world, those stickers meant something simple and powerful: she had tried, she had improved, and someone had noticed.

It took me back, quite suddenly, to my own school days at St Joseph’s in Allahabad, where acknowledgement looked very different. There were no stickers or smiley stamps, no colourful charts celebrating small steps. We did not grow up in a culture of frequent rewards. What we did receive, on rare occasions, was a pat on the back from a teacher — brief, understated, and for that very reason, memorable.

What we had instead were coloured report cards. Above 80 per cent meant a pink card: “Very Good.” Between 65 and 80 was blue: “Good.” Between 40 and 65 was yellow: “Fair.” Anything below that was red — the dreaded “Unsatisfactory.” The colours were few, and they were not handed out lightly, which is exactly why they carried weight.

Today, the approach has changed, and rightly so. We now understand far more about confidence, wellbeing, inclusion, and the importance of children feeling seen while they are learning. A well-timed word of encouragement can genuinely shape how a child sees themselves, and most parents and teachers are now far more conscious of that responsibility.

Yet somewhere along the way, something subtle has shifted. Acknowledgement has become more frequent and immediate, and it has begun to lose its sense of distinction. As with many things in life, too much of a good thing can quietly dilute its meaning.

“And when everything is marked, very little feels earned.”

This is where leadership quietly enters — not as instruction or motivation, but in shaping what people come to see as normal. People do not grow only through reassurance; they grow through clear, calm expectations, without too much noise.

Good leaders understand this balance. They know we must be careful with praise and reward — not stingy, but deliberate — so that it remains meaningful rather than routine. They also know when to step back, allowing effort to exist without constantly turning it into acknowledgment.

Because not everything that is done needs to be immediately seen.

Over time, it is rarely what is formally communicated that shapes people most. It is the quieter signals — what is noticed, what is overlooked, and what is allowed to pass without comment. These signals slowly form a person’s understanding of effort, value, and success.

My granddaughter’s joy brought this into focus. The issue is not the stickers themselves. It is what they quietly begin to train us to expect — that effort will always be noticed, and quickly returned.

Once they step out of the cocoon of school, the world feels different. It is less responsive, less generous with feedback, and far more silent than many are prepared for. When that familiar reassurance no longer comes, the reaction is often uneven — frustration for some, and for others a quiet dependence on external validation that no longer arrives so easily.

And perhaps that is the real question. Not whether we should stop acknowledging effort, but whether we are preparing children for a world that constantly marks everything they do — or one that quietly expects them to keep going even when nothing is marked at all.

Because in the end, the most lasting form of approval is not the one that is repeated often, but the one that is earned once — and stays long after the moment has passed.

I am a priority customer

 Priority Banking: A Short Story

“Thank you for your patience. As our priority customer, we are happy to serve you.”

Haven’t we all heard this before—and for a second felt a little elated? Especially the first time we were told we’d been promoted.

I’ve been trying to fix a simple issue with my bank in India for about a month now.

I thought it would be simple. How wrong I was.

It’s a straightforward problem. Nothing complex. The kind of thing you assume gets sorted in a few minutes if someone just looks at it properly.

I’ve mailed. I’ve called. I’ve followed up—again and again.

Every call starts the same way.

First five minutes: card number, account number, date of birth, address, OTP… my entire life story, lightly interrogated and cross-checked. Somewhere in between, they start using my first name too—like we’re old friends catching up instead of going through security clearance.

And while I’m typing all this in, the automated voice just keeps going—calm, robotic, almost indifferent—slowly frying my brain in the background.

I’m going cross-eyed trying to enter everything before the system times out.

I’ve spoken to so many call centre agents across India now that I genuinely worry one day someone will recognise me—by name, account number, or just the sheer frequency of my suffering.

A close friend even tried to help.

He got nowhere.

Quietly. Politely. Efficiently. He did everything right—but it just came back to me and the whole thing started looping again.

And now I’m locked out of my own account, which is where all of this started. I’ve spent hours—days—fretting, fuming, pacing around like I’m negotiating a hostage situation, breathing like that’s somehow going to fix the system.

Then comes the familiar line:

“Thank you for your patience. As our priority customer, we are happy to serve you.”

To be fair, the call centre people are polite. Almost too polite. Always calm, always composed.

They’re somewhere in an office I can’t even place on a map, doing their best inside a system that doesn’t seem very clear even to them.

And that’s the strange part—everything is polite, everything is patient… and nothing really moves.

It’s like watching a very well-dressed orchestra in slow motion, where everyone is smiling and nodding, but somehow playing completely different songs.

And still, they say it again:

“You are a Priority Customer.”

Priority? Seriously ? 

And you just pause at that word.

Because you can’t help wondering—what does non-priority look like?

If this is priority, what on earth is normal service? Smoke signals? Carrier pigeons? A letter that arrives next financial year?

Or maybe the real question is simpler: shouldn’t everyone already be priority if they’re a customer?

Because right now, “priority” doesn’t feel faster. It just feels… nicer words around the same waiting.

Same delays. Same escalations. Same loop. Just better manners.

The issue is still not solved. I’ve been fully verified, repeatedly thanked, reassured, and officially prioritized. And yet, as I finish writing this, I’m told it’s resolved—again as a priority customer.

It hasn’t.

Somewhere in the background, it feels like a bugle is being played off-key—confidently, loud, and completely out of sync with reality.

If everything is a priority, what does priority even mean?

Is success really a moment ?

 Is Success Really a Moment?

Behind every “sudden success” is a long, unseen climb.

We often assume success happens in a moment.

A young cricketer scores a century, a champion wins another title, a singer starts filling stadiums. And almost immediately the comments begin.

“How lucky.”
“What timing.”
“She was always destined for it.”

From a distance, success can look sudden, but that is only because we usually arrive at the end of the story.

When Virat Kohli walks out to bat, we see control, not the years of failure and rebuilding that came before it. When Roger Federer played, everything looked effortless, though that effortlessness was built through endless repetition. Even outside sport, Adele fills global stages today, though she once performed in small rooms where some nights ended in silence—there was little applause, if any. That is usually how life works.

We see people on the top floor, sometimes even on the helipad, but rarely the journey that took them there. Social media makes this illusion even stronger. We see the achievement, the award, the promotion, the celebration. We rarely see the years that came before.

The truth is that most of life happens there—not at the start, not at the finish, but somewhere in the middle.

It is the place where you keep showing up every day and wonder if any of it is making a difference. Where the work feels repetitive, the progress feels invisible, and the destination seems no closer than it did yesterday.

I know this because I have lived it. In my early thirties, I was already a Headmaster in a large school in Pune, India. The title sounded impressive. The reality felt very different because most days I felt I was learning as fast as I was leading.

I made mistakes. Some could have had serious consequences if I had not adjusted quickly. I learnt from people older and more experienced than me. I watched them closely, listened carefully, and absorbed whatever I could. Looking back, I probably learnt as much from observation as from formal training.

Late evenings became routine, but so did self-doubt.

There were days when I questioned whether I was ready for the responsibility that came with the role. Long before I knew the term “imposter syndrome,” I understood the feeling. Deadlines, expectations, difficult decisions, and the fear of getting things wrong all arrived together.

It wasn’t smooth, it wasn’t glamorous, and it certainly didn’t feel like success in any form. Looking back, that was probably the most difficult stage.

You keep moving forward, but there is no applause, no visible breakthrough, and no reassuring sign that all the effort is leading somewhere meaningful.

That is where frustration creeps in, and disappointment follows close behind. Some days you even wonder whether it is worth continuing.

Most people experience those moments, but few talk about them.

Perhaps that is why comparison can be so misleading. We compare our struggles with someone else’s results. We compare our beginning with someone else’s ending. What looks sudden is usually the result of years of persistence that nobody noticed while it was happening.

As an educator and a father, I have come to believe that encouragement matters most during this stage. We naturally celebrate people when they succeed, and there is nothing wrong with that. But often the greater need is earlier, when confidence is fragile and progress is difficult to see.

That is when a word of encouragement, a helping hand, or a pat on the shoulder matters. Sometimes these are the very things that keep us going.

Then, often when you least expect it, something changes.

What once felt difficult becomes manageable. What once felt unfamiliar becomes second nature.

You do not always notice the change immediately. You notice it later, when you look back and realise you have travelled much further than you thought, and there is a deep satisfaction in that realisation.

Not because you reached the top, but because you kept going when it would have been easier to stop.

The top floor gets noticed—it always does.

But what deserves equal attention are the years before that—the mistakes, the doubts, the late nights, the tiredness, the setbacks, and the moments when people almost gave up but didn’t.

Success is not the moment you arrive at. It quietly takes shape over time, long before anyone else notices, and long after you yourself have stopped wondering if it will ever happen.

When I look back at my own journey, it rarely feels like arrival—just a quiet understanding that those ordinary days were never wasted; they were simply taking me somewhere.

The packet

 

THE PACKET

 

It was an evening in late July

When he saw him sitting under the gnarled banyan tree,

Wizened and apparently gasping-

A maniacal look on his face

Clutching an earthy brown, cloth bag 

Under his sweaty arms.

His rasping cough made him breathe heavily.

 

“Who are you”? asked the young boy- 

Just all of eight- marbles jingling in his pockets.

‘Are you waiting for someone’?

What’s in your bag’?

There were no answers forthcoming,

But the silence was broken with a ‘pechak’

As the old stranger spat his betel juice, into the dust around them.

 

He smiled- a red toothy smile and whispered- 

In almost a threatening growl

‘My boy – don’t ask me those questions- ever again’.

He bowed his head, which sunk deeper

Into the depths, of his seemingly, hollow torso

And gasped aloud.

 

There was a pregnant pause-

And the young lad was terrified.

 

In the distance the ‘kik- kik- kik’ of the ‘Koyal’ could be heard. 

Summer was coming to an end. 

Lines of soft, grey Nimbus clouds 

hung low and spelt rain- later that night.

An eerie stillness prevailed.

 

The old stranger looked crestfallen,

-utterly broken. 

But wait -there was something else-

Were those tears, amidst the wrinkles?

He fumbled with his belongings –

A bell and some beads strung together.

He took out a tattered paper bag,

And laid it on the ground. 

His scaly hands trembled and beads of perspiration- 

Appeared unexpectedly- trickling down,

His seemingly, scrawny neck

Losing themselves in his grimy garments.

 

They both stared at the bag in complete silence.

The ‘kik- kik- kik could be heard, in the distance. 

The echoing voice of his mother calling him home- 

‘ Balaaaaaa’- roused them from the reverie.

 

The stranger hurriedly picked himself up- 

Dusted his garments and shuffled away-

Pulling a ragged shawl 

Tightly over his long, matted hair.

He didn’t look back.

 

The young lad sat mesmerized-

Staring at the abandoned packet for a few, 

Agonizingly long moments.

This couldn’t be his birthday present in advance?

His father and twin brother

Had left for the market early that morning. 

He willed them back, as night 

Was fast approaching.

He had always been petrified of the dark 

 

The tension was palpable and 

He could contain himself no longer.

‘Balaaaaa ’- shouted the mother once again.

It was now or never.

 

Stretching his right hand forward-

He reached gingerly, for the creased packet- 

Pulling it towards himself, hesitatingly. 

Taking a deep breath – he opened it warily.

And took one furtive look

 

Screaming in abject terror 

Bala bolted towards his little thatched hut- 

At the edge of the large paddy field.

He collapsed into his mother’s arms- 

Sobbing inconsolably 

Pointing vaguely to nowhere

Muttering unintelligible sounds- 

hysterical and incoherent.

 

The family rushed out-

Just in time to see an old stranger-

Board the last bus out of the village that night. 

The lad led them to the banyan tree- 

Still sobbing and gesticulating towards the crumpled bag.

The pale crescent moon illuminated the sky-

And bathed them all in a silvery glow.

Then the skies opened and the tempestuous rain

Came down in torrents.

 

Packet in their hands- they walked home

Their sobs mingling with the thunder