Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🌼 Words of the Buddha 🌼
Dhammapada 14.183
> “The entire teaching of the Buddha can be distilled into three simple movements: refrain from what is harmful, cultivate what is wholesome, and purify the mind.”
🪷 English
Abstain from all unwholesome deeds,
perform wholesome ones,
purify your mind —
this is the teaching of the Buddhas.
Dhammapada 14.183
💫 The message:
Spiritual life is not complicated. First, stop doing what causes harm. Then, consciously cultivate goodness, kindness and compassion. Finally, turn inward and purify the mind, for our actions and words ultimately arise from the mind.
—
🌿 हिन्दी
सभी अकुशल कर्मों से विरत रहो,
कुशल कर्मों का आचरण करो,
अपने चित्त को शुद्ध करो—
यही बुद्धों की शिक्षा है।
धम्मपद 14.183
🪷 संदेश:
बुद्ध की शिक्षा का सार बहुत सरल है—बुराई से बचें, अच्छाई को अपनाएँ और अपने मन को निर्मल करें। केवल बाहरी आचरण को बदलना पर्याप्त नहीं; वास्तविक परिवर्तन तब होता है जब मन शुद्ध, करुणामय और जागरूक होता है।—
🕉️ Pāli
Sabbapāpassa akaraṇaṃ,
kusalassa upasampadā,
sacittapariyodapanaṃ —
etaṃ buddhāna sāsanaṃ.
🌸 In essence:
Do no harm. Do good. Purify the mind.
Three simple steps — and a whole path to awakening.
A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
(Captain Pravin Raghuvanshi—an ex Naval Officer, possesses a multifaceted personality. He served as a Senior Advisor in prestigious Supercomputer organisation C-DAC, Pune. He was involved in various Artificial Intelligence and High-Performance Computing projects of national and international repute. He has got a long experience in the field of ‘Natural Language Processing’, especially, in the domain of Machine Translation. He has taken the mantle of translating the timeless beauties of Indian literature upon himself so that it reaches across the globe. He has also undertaken translation work for Shri Narendra Modi, the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, which was highly appreciated by him. He is also a member of ‘Bombay Film Writer Association’.
Heritage ~ A DREAM SET SAILS…~
☆
We’re happy to inform that yesterday, on the timeless, sacred Ganga at Varanasi, a dream finally touched the waters… Our ship MV RAGHUVANSH was launched. What began as an idea has now taken shape in steel—and found its way to the river. From imagination to creation… from a dream to a ship… from a ship to a journey. And this is only the beginning… The dream has not ended… it has only begun to sail— hopefully, with many siblings to follow, upon the timeless, sacred Ganga… and many more waterbodies…!
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🎶 USTAD HARJINDER PAL SINGH MATHARU 🌌
The Master of Santoor — From the Lanes of Ranjhi to the Concert Halls of the World 🌍
There are some friendships that belong to a particular period of our lives.
And then there are friendships that seem to have forgotten the passage of time.
My friendship with Harjinder Pal Singh Matharu belongs to the latter kind.
Even today, whenever I hear the gentle, silvery notes of the santoor, I am transported back to the days of our childhood in Ranjhi, a suburb on the outskirts of Jabalpur—our beloved Sanskardhani, the “Cultural Capital” of Madhya Pradesh, a name bestowed upon the city by Acharya Vinoba Bhave.
Harjinder was my schoolmate, my neighbour and, in many ways, a member of my extended family.
We were young, carefree and blessed with the extraordinary wealth of having very little to worry about.
And we walked.
Oh, how we walked! 🚶♂️🚶♂️
We would set out on what can only be described as marathon walks, covering miles and miles without any particular destination. There was no Google Maps, no fitness tracker and certainly no thought of counting steps. We simply walked, talked, laughed and wandered.
And after every such expedition, Harjinder would make the same grand announcement:
“I have broken all my previous and future records!” 😂
I am not sure what those records were, or who was keeping them. But the declaration was invariably made with the confidence of an Olympic champion.
Those were the days of innocent mischief, endless laughter and small pleasures that now appear disproportionately precious.
We played pranks on each other. We shared doughnuts, cream rolls and bananas. And I spent so much time at the Matharu household that I never felt like a guest there.
I felt at home.
🏏 THE CRICKET GROUND AT HOME
Some of my fondest memories are of the cricket matches we played inside their house compound.
There was no proper cricket pitch, naturally. We had a tennis ball, a bat, a chair for stumps and the walls of the house as boundaries.
And, wonderfully, Harjinder’s father and his brothers joined us.
It was cricket in its purest form—before television commentators, sponsorships, technology and third umpires had managed to complicate the simple business of hitting a ball.
The chair stood bravely as the stumps.
The walls suffered heroically as the boundaries.
And we considered ourselves international cricketers. 🏏😄
Looking back, I realise that these were not merely games. They were little fragments of a shared childhood, quietly stored somewhere in the heart, waiting for old friends to bring them alive again.
🎵 AND THEN, THERE WAS MUSIC
Harjinder’s journey, however, was destined to take him far beyond the familiar lanes of Ranjhi.
Born in Jabalpur in 1953, he developed an interest in music at an early age. At fourteen, his father, Sant Mela Singh Matharu, sent him to learn tabla from Bhai Labh Singh Ji of the Punjab gharana. He later learnt the pakhawaj style of tabla from Ustad Nihal Singh Ji.
Alongside music, he continued his academic studies and earned a Bachelor of Science degree.
But destiny had something much larger in store.
Recognising his musical potential, Satguru Jagjit Singh Ji, the spiritual head of the Namdhari Sikhs, took the young Harjinder to Bombay and placed him under the tutelage of the legendary Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, the maestro who transformed the santoor into one of the most celebrated instruments of Indian classical music.
That meeting changed the course of Harjinder’s life.
Under the rigorous guidance of his Guru, he immersed himself in the demanding discipline of the santoor.
The instrument itself is mesmerising—a trapezoid-shaped instrument carrying around a hundred strings, played with light wooden mallets. In the hands of a master, those strings seem to cease being strings. They become voice, prayer, meditation and poetry.
And Harjinder learnt to make them speak.
🎼 A GURU, A DISCIPLE AND A TRADITION
His first public performance came in 1986 at the prestigious Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar Jayanti Samaroh in New Delhi.
Thereafter came scholarships, festivals, concerts, lecture-demonstrations and educational programmes. He travelled extensively with SPICMACAY, taking Indian classical music to schools and colleges across Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab and Maharashtra.
He performed at distinguished music festivals and venues in India and abroad, including the Darbar concerts in the United Kingdom, the Solstice Festival in Leeds and the Masters of Indian Classical Music concerts at Trafo Budapest.
At the Darbar Festival in 2007, his solo recital received tremendous appreciation and culminated in a standing ovation. The performance was subsequently televised on Sky Arts.
In 2013, he returned to the festival to perform Raag Patdeep, accompanied by tabla maestro Yogesh Samsi.
The little boy from Ranjhi had travelled a very long way.
🌏 FROM RANJHI TO THE WORLD
Today, I feel a special sense of pride whenever I see or hear Harjinder performing at prestigious halls across the world.
For others, he is an accomplished santoor player—a senior disciple of Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, a graded artist of All India Radio, a respected performer and teacher, and an exponent of the Guru–Shishya tradition.
For me, however, he is still the boy with whom I walked those endless miles.
The friend who proudly announced that he had broken all his previous—and future—records.
The companion with whom I shared cream rolls and bananas.
The boy with whom I played tennis-ball cricket in a family compound, with a chair pretending to be a set of stumps.
Perhaps that is the strange magic of friendship.
The world may see the artist.
The heart continues to see the friend.
❤️ A FRIENDSHIP THAT TIME COULD NOT AGE
I remember staying with Harjinder at the Namdhari Dharamshala in Matunga, Mumbai. He even accompanied me when I went for my job interview at the State Bank of India.
And, through him, I had the extraordinary privilege of meeting his Guru, Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma Ji.
I could never have imagined, in those youthful days, that the friend walking beside me in Ranjhi would one day introduce me to a musical legend—and that his own name would eventually become part of the glorious story of the santoor.
Yet, perhaps, that is how life unfolds.
We begin with small steps, unaware of the roads waiting ahead.
🎶 THE MUSIC CONTINUES
What touches me most about Harjinder today is not merely his international recognition.
It is the joy he derives from teaching.
Now settled at Sri Bhaini Sahib, the headquarters of the Namdhari Sikhs, he devotes himself to teaching and mentoring young musicians at the Sri Satguru Pratap Singh Ji Music Academy.
There is something deeply beautiful about this.
A musician receives a tradition from his Guru.
He nurtures it through years of sadhana.
And then, instead of keeping it to himself, he passes it on to another generation.
That is how music survives.
That is how culture survives.
That is how the Guru–Shishya Parampara remains alive.
The musical legacy of Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma thus continues to flow through Harjinder’s students, including Leeds-based Eesher Singh, and through many young aspirants who have had the good fortune of learning from him.
The river that began flowing from his Guru now finds new channels.
🌿 THE SANTOOR AS PRAYER
Whenever I am free, I love listening to Harjinder playing the ragas on his santoor.
There is an elegance in his playing that is difficult to describe.
Perhaps because the santoor, in his hands, is not merely a musical instrument.
It becomes a medium of contemplation.
Its hundred strings can create a cascade of sound, yet within that abundance there is serenity.
And when that music flows into Gurbani Kirtan, alongside his work in Hindustani classical music, the instrument seems to acquire another dimension altogether.
Music becomes devotion.
Performance becomes sadhana.
And art becomes a pathway to the spiritual.
🙏 MY FRIEND, MY PRIDE
Harjinder has travelled a very long distance—from the lanes of Ranjhi to the world’s great concert platforms.
But strangely, whenever we speak, we seem to return effortlessly to those school days.
We talk as if we were still sitting together in the classroom.
Perhaps that is the privilege of an old friendship.
Years disappear.
Grey hair becomes irrelevant.
Achievements become incidental.
And for a little while, two old boys meet again.
One of them happens to be a celebrated santoor maestro.
The other happens to be his old friend.
😊
I feel immense pride when I see Harjinder performing before audiences around the globe.
But alongside that pride there is something softer—a deep affection for the boy I knew, the friend who walked those endless miles with me, the family whose home felt like my own, and the companion who has remained unchanged in the one place where it truly matters: the heart.
🌸 A WISH FROM THE HEART
My dear Harjinder,
You have spent a lifetime in the service of music.
May the music continue to flow through you.
May your santoor continue to enchant audiences, soothe hearts and carry the fragrance of Indian classical music and spirituality to generations yet unborn.
May the Guru’s blessings always remain upon you.
And may you be blessed with robust health, inner peace, abundant happiness and a long, fulfilling and worthy life—a life in which you continue to teach, perform, inspire and pass on the sacred tradition you received from your Guru.
As you have often done with your music, may you continue to turn strings into sound, sound into music, music into emotion—and emotion into something that touches the soul.
🎶🙏❤️
And whenever the santoor plays, somewhere in its shimmering notes, I shall perhaps hear an echo of those long walks in Ranjhi.
And I shall smile.
Because somewhere, my childhood friend is still walking beside me.
“I have broken all my previous and future records!” 😄
Some friendships, after all, do not merely survive the years.
They become music.
🎵 With love, affection and immense pride for my dear childhood friend, Ustad Harjinder Pal Singh Matharu. ❤️
A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🌅 THE THREE GOLDEN HOURS 🌌
Begin your day with yourself, before the world begins to claim you.
There are three hours in the day that can quietly transform the remaining twenty-one.
They are the first three hours of the morning—those precious hours between waking up and getting fully caught up in the demands of the day.
Most of us give these hours away rather cheaply.
We wake up, reach for the mobile phone, check messages, scroll through news, respond to notifications—and before we have even met ourselves, we have entered everybody else’s world.
What if you did something different? 🌿
What if, for just three hours, you chose to belong to yourself?
These are your Golden Hours. And how you spend them can influence not only your body and mind, but also the quality of the day that follows.
🌄 1. Rise before the world awakens
If possible, wake up early—preferably before sunrise.
There is something wonderfully intimate about being awake when most of the world is still asleep. The air feels fresher, the surroundings quieter, and the mind less crowded.
You don’t have to fight with the day.
You meet the day before it meets you.
Step outside. Go for a gentle walk or jog. Let your feet touch the earth. Allow your body to awaken naturally.
🚶♀️ Walk.
🏃♂️ Jog.
🌿 Breathe.
🌅 Watch the sunrise.
Don’t hurry. This is not a race.
It is a rendezvous with life.
🤸 2. Let your body move
Your body has remained relatively still through the night. Give it the joy of movement.
Stretch. Bend. Twist. Turn. Whirl. Jump.
Do some simple yoga, mobility exercises, Surya Namaskar or whatever form of movement suits your age and fitness.
The purpose is not to become an athlete.
The purpose is to remind every cell of your body: “We are alive!” ✨
Move gently, consciously and joyfully.
🌬️ 3. Breathe as though you have all the time in the world
Now slow down.
Take a deep, comfortable breath in.
And breathe out slowly.
Again.
And again.
🌬️ Breathe in peace.
Breathe out tension.
Don’t merely breathe mechanically. Feel the breath entering your body. Feel it leaving.
For a few minutes, let your breathing become slow, deep and relaxed.
You may discover something beautiful:
When the breath becomes calm, the mind often begins to follow.
🌳 4. Look at nature. Really look.
How often do you actually look at the world around you?
Not through a camera.
Not through a mobile screen.
With your own eyes.
Look at the trees. 🌳
Listen to the birds. 🐦
Feel the morning breeze. 🍃
Watch the changing colours of the sky. 🌅
Notice the flowers, the clouds, the sunlight and the quiet movement of life.
For a few moments, simply stand there.
You may feel that the universe is not something distant and mysterious.
It is right here—breathing, moving and unfolding around you.
And when you become still enough to notice it, you may experience something that cannot easily be explained in words:
bliss, gratitude and a quiet sense of Divine blessing. 🙏
🧘 5. Sit in silence
After the body has moved and the breath has settled, sit quietly for a while.
Meditate.
You need not make meditation complicated.
Sit comfortably. Close your eyes. Watch your breath. Let thoughts come and go without chasing them.
And, as far as possible, maintain silence.
Silence is not emptiness.
It is space.
Space in which you can hear yourself.
Space in which the mind can settle.
Space in which something deeper within you can be felt.
🕊️ Meditation brings calm.
Silence brings grace.
You may not solve all your problems in meditation.
But you may discover that you don’t have to carry all of them into the morning.
😊 6. Let your first words be smiles
If you meet people during your morning walk, don’t feel obliged to begin the day with conversation.
A smile is enough.
A gentle nod.
A wave of the hand.
A warm glance.
😊 Sometimes a smile says more than a sentence.
Protect the peacefulness of the morning.
There will be plenty of time later for talking, debating, explaining and reacting.
For now, simply be.
💧 7. Give your body water
After your walk and quiet time, drink water.
A glass—or more according to your needs.
💧 Let hydration be one of your morning rituals.
There is no need to turn it into a complicated health prescription. Just make drinking adequate water a simple, conscious part of beginning your day.
🍋 8. Nourish yourself gently
If you enjoy it, have a warm cup of ginger, lemon and honey tea.
🍋🫚🍯
Sip it slowly.
Don’t gulp it down while rushing through messages or news.
Let even your morning drink become a small act of mindfulness.
📵 9. And now comes the most important rule…
NO GADGETS.
Especially no mobile phone.
📵 No WhatsApp.
📵 No social media.
📵 No breaking news.
📵 No emails.
📵 No endless scrolling.
Your mind has just emerged from the quiet of sleep.
Why should the first thing you feed it be somebody else’s opinions, anxieties, arguments, advertisements and notifications?
Don’t allow the mobile phone to become the first voice you hear each morning.
Let the first voice be your own.
Or better still—
let it be silence. 🕊️
🍎 10. Have breakfast peacefully
Finally, sit down for a healthy and balanced breakfast.
🥣🍎🥛🌾
Eat slowly.
Eat mindfully.
Taste your food.
If possible, eat without a screen in front of you.
Breakfast need not be elaborate. What matters is that it nourishes you and is eaten in a peaceful atmosphere.
Don’t merely feed the body. Nourish the mind while you feed it.
—
🌞 And then… enter the day
By now, something subtle may have happened.
You have moved your body.
You have breathed deeply.
You have witnessed nature.
You have meditated.
You have been silent.
You have smiled.
You have nourished yourself.
And, most importantly, you have not allowed the world to invade your mind at sunrise.
You step into the rest of the day carrying something precious.
🌿 The fragrance of the morning.
It stays with you.
You feel more relaxed.
More peaceful.
More energetic.
More centred.
More positive.
The problems of the day may still be waiting.
The traffic will still be there.
The emails will still arrive.
People will still disagree with you.
Life will still have its surprises.
But you will meet them differently.
Because you have already met yourself.
—
✨ Your morning is not merely the beginning of your day.
It is the foundation upon which you build your day.
So, tomorrow morning, try something simple.
Wake up early.
Before the world starts talking to you, listen to yourself.
Before you look at the screen, look at the sky.
Before you respond to messages, respond to your breath.
Before you rush into life, pause and experience life.
Give yourself these three golden hours.
🌅 Walk.
🤸 Move.
🌬️ Breathe.
🌳 Observe.
🧘 Meditate.
🕊️ Be silent.
😊 Smile.
💧 Hydrate.
🍋 Nourish.
📵 Disconnect from gadgets.
🙏 Connect with the Divine.
And then walk into the day—not as someone who is merely awake, but as someone who is alive, peaceful, grateful and fully present.
🌅 Give the first three hours to yourself—and you may find that the rest of the day begins to give something back to you.
A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🌼The Fragrance of Onam and a House Full of Memories 🌌
Some friendships are not bound by distance; they live on in the warmth of memories. ❤️
Onam brings a strange, deep nostalgia to me.
There is the usual nostalgia that we summon on every festival—the “those were the days” kind. But this is something deeper. It spreads far beyond a few memories. It carries within it layers of feelings, emotions, friendships and moments that have quietly travelled with me through the years.
I see an old-fashioned house.
Wooden grills at the entrance. British-era roof tiles. A stone floor, with modest, hard stone tiles. Nothing grand, nothing ostentatious—but the house had something far more precious: warmth.
It was the home of my childhood friend, Mukundan.
We studied together from kindergarten right through to university. His little sister, Maa and Achchan made up the family. And somewhere along the way, I ceased to be merely a friend who came visiting. I became a familiar presence in that home—someone who belonged there. 🏡❤️
And then there was Onam.
Onam day transformed that simple house.
It was decorated almost like a temple. The family dressed in the traditional attire of Kerala. There was a sense of cheerful busyness everywhere, with a steady stream of guests arriving throughout the day.
And I was usually there too—quietly sitting on a chair in some corner, watching it all unfold.
A home witness, perhaps. 😊
I watched Onam come and go year after year—from our childhood to adolescence, from youth to adulthood, and even into our middle years.
And then came the Sadya. 🍃
Served on a banana leaf, it was a feast of colours, aromas and flavours. I loved every bit of it. But I had a particular weakness for the sweet dish—payasam.
Maa knew that.
So, with the affection that only a mother can bestow, she would serve me a second helping.
And then, quite often, a third.
This was not a one-off indulgence. It happened year after year, for countless Onams.
Looking back, I realise that what she was serving me was not merely payasam.
She was serving affection.
And some flavours, once infused with love, never leave you. ❤️
How swiftly good times fly!
The children we once were have grown into senior citizens, with greying hair and a lifetime of stories behind us.
So much has changed.
Yet, remarkably, our fondness for each other has not.
Mukundan has now moved back to his native Kerala—God’s Own Country—and this Onam he will be enjoying his Sadya with his family there.
And I shall be having mine here in Indore, at the good old Indian Coffee House, a place with its own Kerala connection. 🍃🥥
Geographically, we are far apart.
But I suspect that distance will count for very little today.
There, the banana leaf will carry the fragrance of Sadya.
Here, the same fragrance will arrive through memory.
There will be the bustle of family and friends.
Here, there will perhaps be a quiet smile as an old friendship comes alive in the mind.
And perhaps, at some point, when both of us taste that familiar sweetness, we will be transported to the same old house once again.
The house with wooden grills.
The British-era tiled roof.
The stone floor.
The little sister.
Maa and Achchan.
The stream of Onam visitors.
And somewhere in a corner, a young boy sitting quietly on a chair, waiting for Maa to give him just one more helping of payasam. 😊❤️
Years have passed. Lives have changed. Distances have grown.
But some friendships refuse to grow old.
They simply become more precious with time.
This Onam, Mukundan and I may be celebrating far apart, but perhaps our hearts will beat to the same old rhythm—and feel the same warmth we once felt when the fragrance of our childhood Sadya filled that beloved home.
A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🌌 The Accidental Cook and the Birth of Chikki Halwa 🤩
I have never tried my hand at cooking. In fact, my culinary achievements begin and end with tea. I can make tea with reasonable confidence, provided nobody asks me to explain the process scientifically.
But life, as Mark Twain might have observed, is full of surprises—and occasionally of kitchen emergencies.
The other day, I ordered some chikki online. When it arrived, I opened the packet with the anticipation of a man about to enjoy a perfectly respectable piece of childhood nostalgia. Alas! The monsoon had been at work. The chikki had become moist and lost its crispness. It was no longer quite chikki; it was a victim of the weather.
Most people would have sighed and abandoned it.
I saw what everyone was seeing—but thought something else.
Why not turn this moist chikki into something delicious?
That was the moment an accidental cook was born.
I entered the kitchen with the quiet confidence of a scientist whose experiment had not yet gone wrong.
I poured some ghee into a kadhai, lit the flame and added a few teaspoons of sooji. A little cardamom powder followed. I stirred the mixture patiently until the sooji turned golden and the kitchen began to smell suspiciously like a place where someone actually knew how to cook.
Meanwhile, I crushed the unfortunate chikki and soaked it in warm milk. Once suitably softened, I tipped the whole thing into the kadhai.
There was stirring.
There was cooking.
There was concentration.
There may even have been a moment when I looked like a professional chef.
I kept cooking until the mixture began leaving the edges of the kadhai. I added another little dash of cardamom powder and, lo and behold—
Chikki Halwa was born!
Not planned. Not inherited from a grandmother. Not downloaded from YouTube.
Entirely accidental.
I served my creation to the family and a few neighbours with the unmistakable pride of a man presenting his first invention to the world. I made sure everyone knew that this was my maiden venture into the noble profession of cooking.
They ate it.
They smiled.
They praised it.
They even asked for more.
Now comes the only unresolved scientific question in this entire experiment:
Did they genuinely love the Chikki Halwa—or were they merely trying not to discourage the newly discovered cook?
I shall never know.
But I have learnt something important.
Sometimes creativity begins when things don’t turn out the way they were supposed to.
A moist chikki may look like a culinary failure to one person. To another, it may simply be an invitation from the universe:
“Come on, chef. Do something with this.”
And so, after all these years, I finally cooked.
Accidentally.
And, quite accidentally, I discovered that every kitchen has a little bit of creativity waiting to happen. 😄
A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🪷Online Yoga or In-Person Yoga? 🤔
☘️Two approaches, two different experiences🍁
Yoga has entered the digital age. Online yoga classes offer convenience, flexibility and privacy, while in-person yoga classes offer personal attention, human connection and closer guidance.
Neither is inherently right or wrong. The choice depends on what a practitioner seeks from yoga.
🏠 Online Yoga — Convenience & Flexibility
✔️ Convenient: Choose a suitable time and practise from the privacy and comfort of your home.
✔️ Accessible: There is no need to travel to a yoga studio, making it useful for people with busy schedules or limited mobility.
✘ Limited personal attention: In a large virtual class, it is difficult for the online yoga instructor to observe every practitioner and correct incorrect postures or movements.
✘ One approach for many: Classes are often structured around a common sequence. The same instruction may not be equally suitable for people of different ages, physical abilities or individual needs.
✘ Less personal connection: A screen can transmit instructions, but it cannot fully recreate the warmth, companionship and human bonding that develop in a physical class.
✘ The traditional dimension:The virtual format naturally misses much of the lived experience of the traditional guru–shishya relationship.
🧘 In-Person Yoga — Personalised & Relational
✔️ Individual attention: A smaller class enables the yoga teacher or guru to observe practitioners closely, correct their postures and guide them appropriately.
✔️ Personalised practice: A teacher who knows the practitioners can modify the practice according to their age, physical condition, limitations and individual needs.
✔️ Greater safety: Rather than expecting everyone to perform the same asanas, the teacher can advise a practitioner to avoid or modify practices that may be unsuitable for them.
✔️ Human connection: Meeting face-to-face creates opportunities for personal bonding, encouragement, friendship and a sense of community.
✔️ Living tradition: For many practitioners, learning in the physical presence of a teacher brings alive an important aspect of the ancient guru–shishya parampara—learning not merely through instructions, but through observation, correction, experience and personal guidance.
🌿 One Simple Way to Look at It
An online class can sometimes resemble a doctor prescribing the same medicine to a thousand patients: convenient and useful for many, but unable to account for every individual’s needs.
A good in-person yoga teacher, by contrast, can observe each practitioner, understand their limitations and prescribe a practice more suited to that individual.
The Bottom Line🍃
Online yoga offers convenience.
In-person yoga offers connection.
Online yoga offers accessibility.
In-person yoga offers personalisation.
For someone who already understands yoga, practises safely and needs flexibility, an online class can be an excellent option.
For someone seeking close supervision, personalised guidance, correction, companionship and the deeper teacher–student experience, a small in-person class may offer something that a screen cannot quite provide.
Ultimately, the best yoga class is the one that enables you to practise regularly, safely, mindfully and meaningfully. 🧘♀️🌿
A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
(Captain Pravin Raghuvanshi—an ex Naval Officer, possesses a multifaceted personality. He served as a Senior Advisor in prestigious Supercomputer organisation C-DAC, Pune. He was involved in various Artificial Intelligence and High-Performance Computing projects of national and international repute. He has got a long experience in the field of ‘Natural Language Processing’, especially, in the domain of Machine Translation. He has taken the mantle of translating the timeless beauties of Indian literature upon himself so that it reaches across the globe. He has also undertaken translation work for Shri Narendra Modi, the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, which was highly appreciated by him. He is also a member of ‘Bombay Film Writer Association’.
~ Intelligence versus intelligence… ~
Dear Esteemed Readers,
I’d love to share a paper on futuristic warfare built around an AGI-based hypothesis—an “intelligence versus intelligence” scenario and its possible implications for India’s future security.
You may like to take the thought forward, challenge some of the assumptions, or give it a strategic direction of your own. The exact scenario may be futuristic, but I believe the need to start thinking about this is becoming increasingly inescapable.
Would value your thoughts!
Warm regards
~Pravin Raghuvanshi
☆
Futuristic warfare built around an AGI-based hypothesis-an “intelligence versus intelligence” scenario and its possible implications for India’s future security”
I find the scenario both provocative and thought-provoking. More importantly, I believe it deserves to be taken seriously—not necessarily because every element of the scenario is likely to materialise exactly as described, but because the technological direction underlying it is already becoming visible.
I would, however, offer a few mild deviations from the hypothesis—not as a challenge to the thought process, but perhaps as an extension of it.
The central analogy with Operation Safed Sagar is particularly compelling.
In 1999, India was confronted with severe technological and operational constraints. Yet men and machines were pushed to their limits, and human ingenuity compensated for what technology could not provide. Innovation became a necessity rather than a choice.
The next transformation in warfare could be fundamentally different.
Then, it was essentially men using machines against men using machines.
Tomorrow, it could increasingly become intelligence confronting intelligence—with machines capable of sensing, learning, adapting, coordinating and making decisions at speeds beyond human reaction.
That, in my view, is the deeper significance of your hypothesis.
A small deviation from the humanoid assumption
I am not entirely certain that the future threat necessarily has to take the form of humanoids.
Indeed, there may be a reasoned argument for expecting something quite different.
A humanoid configuration has obvious advantages—it can negotiate terrain and infrastructure designed for humans and can potentially use existing tools and weapons. But it also introduces complexity, weight, power requirements, thermal signatures, maintenance challenges and manufacturing costs.
An adversary seeking military effectiveness rather than human resemblance may therefore choose a much simpler configuration: specialised autonomous ground systems, quadrupeds, tracked or wheeled platforms, aerial-ground swarms, or heterogeneous combinations of all of them.
In other words, the threat may be less “100 humanoids on the ridge” and more “100 intelligent autonomous systems adapted specifically to the ridge.”
Paradoxically, that possibility may be even more consequential because such systems need not reproduce the human form at all.
A second possible deviation: AGI may not be necessary
The scenario assumes AGI-level intelligence. That is certainly conceivable as a long-term possibility, but I wonder whether we should make the argument dependent upon true AGI.
A sufficiently capable specialised autonomous intelligence—trained for terrain analysis, target recognition, navigation, logistics, electronic warfare and tactical decision-making—could potentially create a formidable battlefield effect without possessing anything resembling full human-level general intelligence.
That distinction matters because the military threshold may arrive before the AGI threshold.
We may not have to wait for machines that can do everything a human can do.
Machines that can do a limited set of battlefield tasks extraordinarily well, operate continuously, coordinate with one another and learn from battlefield experience could already alter the character of warfare.
The communications assumption also deserves a small qualification
The idea of a post-quantum-secured swarm that is effectively immune to interception or jamming makes for a compelling scenario. But perhaps “immune” is unnecessarily absolute.
In warfare, very few technological advantages are permanent.
A more realistic—and potentially more dangerous—possibility is a communications architecture that is highly resilient, adaptive and difficult to disrupt, with systems capable of continuing to operate with degraded connectivity and making local decisions when communication with the central command is lost.
That would make the swarm dangerous not because it is literally unjammable, but because jamming it may no longer be sufficient to stop it.
That is a subtle but important distinction.
Where I completely agree is the question of scale
This, perhaps, is the most consequential element of the scenario.
The real revolution may not be the humanoid itself.
It may be the possibility of cheap, intelligent, reproducible and rapidly deployable military systems.
The traditional equation of warfare has often favoured exquisite and expensive platforms—fighter aircraft, tanks, ships and missiles.
Autonomous systems could introduce a very different equation:
mass + intelligence + low unit cost + continuous learning.
I would therefore hesitate to put a precise ratio such as “one fighter equals fifty humanoids.” The actual exchange ratio would depend on mission, terrain, sensors, weapons, logistics and survivability.
But the underlying proposition is compelling:
«A relatively inexpensive intelligent system could potentially impose an effect disproportionate to its cost.»
That could fundamentally alter the economics of warfare.
Do we have a doctrine?
Here, I believe the question being asked is entirely legitimate.
India already has significant activity in defence AI, autonomous systems, swarm technologies, robotics, electronic warfare and advanced communications. We therefore should not frame the issue as though India has not begun preparing.
The more important question is whether these capabilities have yet been brought together into a single, coherent warfighting architecture.
What is not publicly evident is a unified tri-service doctrine specifically addressing a large-scale autonomous ground threat of the kind envisaged here.
If a hundred or more autonomous systems were simultaneously deployed in Ladakh and the North East, the questions would extend far beyond technology:
Who owns the response?
What are the rules of engagement?
Who controls the kill chain?
How are autonomous systems authenticated and distinguished from friendly systems?
How do we detect, deceive, disrupt or destroy them?
And what happens when communications with them—or with our own forces—are degraded?
These are questions of doctrine, command, technology and institutional ownership simultaneously.
The institutional question may therefore be more important than the technological one
India has DRDO, the armed services, AI initiatives, technology agencies, startups, academic institutions and several ongoing programmes.
The challenge is that autonomous warfare cuts across all of them.
Perhaps what is required is not another institution, but clear mission-level ownership—someone accountable for integrating AI, robotics, communications, electronic warfare, manufacturing, doctrine, testing and deployment.
In other words, we need to ensure that no part of this emerging threat falls into the gaps between institutions.
And perhaps the biggest lesson from Safed Sagar
In 1999, we demonstrated that India could innovate under extreme pressure.
But the next challenge should ideally be approached differently.
We should innovate before the pressure arrives.
We should not wait for the first autonomous swarm—or the first intelligent ground system—to appear on a Himalayan ridgeline before asking how to counter it.
A mission-mode programme could therefore be considered—not necessarily centred exclusively on AGI, but on the broader objective of autonomous defence and counter-autonomy.
It would need to combine:
– autonomous platforms;
– counter-swarm and counter-autonomy technologies;
– AI at the tactical edge;
– resilient communications and advanced cryptography;
– indigenous compute, data and manufacturing capacity;
– realistic testing in difficult terrain;
– and, equally importantly, doctrine, human control and escalation management.
Because the ultimate question is not merely:
“Can we build intelligent machines?”
It is:
“Can we fight alongside them, fight against them, control them and continuously evolve faster than an adversary?”
That, to me, is the real strategic question embedded within your hypothesis.
The 1999 experience was a contest of men and machines.
The emerging contest may become one of machine intelligence against machine intelligence.
And perhaps the nation that gains the decisive advantage will not simply be the nation that builds the first intelligent machine.
It will be the nation that develops the ability to build, deploy, counter, replenish and continuously improve intelligent systems at scale.
So, while the exact humanoid scenario may be hypothetical, I believe the underlying warning is entirely legitimate.
The question is not whether the future will arrive exactly as imagined.
The question is whether we will be prepared for it if it arrives in a form we did not imagine.
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🔥The Right to Protest, The Duty to Be Accountable 🌌
A democracy thrives on dissent, but it thrives equally on responsibility.
The right to protest is an essential democratic freedom. However, that right does not extend to paralysing public life, destroying public property, intimidating institutions, or coercing a duly elected government into submission.
Too often, protest leaders claim credit for mobilising crowds when all is peaceful, yet distance themselves from the consequences when violence erupts, blaming “outside elements”. Accountability cannot be so selective. Those who organise and lead a protest must also accept responsibility for its conduct and its consequences.
When barricades are breached, stones are hurled, public property is vandalised, and ordinary citizens are inconvenienced for hours or days, someone must be held accountable. The cost of repairing damaged public assets should not be borne by the taxpayer but recovered from those responsible for the violence and destruction, in accordance with the law.
Equally, criticism of the police must be fair and balanced. If law enforcement is compelled to act because protesters resort to violence or defy lawful restrictions, that context cannot be ignored.
A government elected through a democratic mandate has both the authority and the responsibility to govern in accordance with the Constitution and the promises on which it sought the people’s vote. The opposition has every right to question, criticise, and persuade—but not to replace democratic debate with coercion or disorder.
The freedom to protest is a constitutional right. The freedom to indulge in violence, destroy public property, or hold society to ransom is not.
Rights and responsibilities are inseparable. In a mature democracy, both the State and the protesters must remain within the bounds of the rule of law.
A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🌌 The Issue with Issues🤔😍 🌌
The world, I have discovered, has only one permanent issue—issues.
They existed when Lord Rama walked the earth. They accompanied Lord Krishna to Kurukshetra. If history is to be believed, even sages occasionally had issues, though they had the good sense to meditate before forming a WhatsApp group.
Now we have reached Kalyug, where issues have become so abundant that they seem to reproduce without parental supervision.
Broadly speaking, there are only two kinds of issues in life.
The first is the kind that every proud parent loves to announce.
“We have been blessed with an issue.”
The second is the kind every apartment resident loves to announce.
“We have an issue.”
The first issue is welcomed with sweets, songs and photographs.
The second is welcomed with emails, messages and extraordinary meetings.
Curiously, both demand sleepless nights.
Parents spend years lovingly nurturing their issues. They educate them, encourage them, and eventually dispatch them to distant lands, where these very issues begin solving the issues of multinational corporations. Some rise so spectacularly that they become CEOs—Chief Executives of Other People’s Issues.
Back home, however, another ecosystem flourishes.
The Residential Society.
Here, issues bloom with remarkable enthusiasm. Some are substantial. Some are microscopic. A few exist only in the fertile imagination of highly gifted observers. Yet every issue enjoys equal constitutional status.
Fortunately, every society has its elected committee, whose unofficial job description appears to be: “To receive every issue with dignity, discuss it patiently, revisit it repeatedly, and occasionally solve it.”
This is no ordinary responsibility.
After all, issues are renewable resources.
Some disappear.
Some merely change their hairstyle.
Others refuse to leave the premises.
I watch these delightful exchanges from a respectful distance, trying to remain what the Bhagavad Gita beautifully calls a tatastha drashta—a detached witness.
It is an extraordinarily entertaining position.
The issue remains exactly where it was yesterday, but the discussion travels through engineering, economics, constitutional law, environmental science, psychology, meteorology and, before long, international diplomacy.
One particularly charming feature of these discussions is that technical matters attract the largest number of non-technical experts. Their confidence is directly proportional to their distance from the subject. Every society, I suspect, contains at least three retired cricket selectors, four constitutional experts, five civil engineers, six financial advisors and an unlimited supply of management consultants—all conveniently discovered during committee discussions.
Knowledge, after all, is free.
Advice is even freer.
Yet amidst all this good-humoured bustle, one truth deserves cheerful acknowledgement.
Committee members quietly devote their own time so that the rest of us may enjoy ours. They coordinate maintenance, respond to complaints, negotiate with vendors, organise Independence Day and Republic Day celebrations, bring neighbours together during Holi Milan and Diwali festivities, arrange Ganesh and Durga Puja, and somehow continue smiling despite receiving fresh issues before breakfast.
For that, they deserve not merely criticism when things go wrong, but appreciation when so much goes right.
Of course, a gentle reminder applies equally to everyone.
Residents should occasionally ask not, “What is society doing for me?” but, “What can I do for society?”
And those fortunate enough to hold office may remember that every office is, in the end, a service centre rather than a command centre. The chair is meant to support the person occupying it—not elevate them above everyone else.
Mayors come and mayors go.
Presidents come and presidents go.
Committee members come and committee members go.
Residential societies remain.
So do their issues.
Every sunrise brings a brand-new issue to the society.
And every now and then, somewhere in a happy family, another brand-new issue arrives—wrapped in a blanket, greeted with applause, and destined, one day, to solve somebody else’s issues.
Such is life.
The issue, dear friends, has never been the existence of issues.
The real issue is whether we can handle our issues with good humour.
Because if we can laugh together, even our biggest issues become… considerably less of an issue. 🪷
A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
Heritage ~ 
