Delhi-Gurgaon commute, in its truest sense, demands patience. A test of endurance, an exercise in shared suffering. You sit, you wait, you form a silent kinship with fellow travelers who have been with you for the last three kilometers and thirty minutes – same cars, same exhausted faces, same dull acceptance of fate. The only thing moving is the digital meter in the auto-rickshaw ahead. Progress is a myth; movement, an illusion.

And then, like an apparition through the smog, he appears. A guru. Just not the Himalayan kind. No saffron, no matted hair – just polyester, sandals, and the dead-eyed determination of a man with quotas to meet. In one hand, a tin can. In the other, a laminated image of God, edges curled from years of handling. But it is what dangles from his neck that catches my eye. A QR code.

Faith, now contactless. God, available on Paytm.

He stops by my window, shaking the can with the practiced rhythm of a man who has done this dance a thousand times before. I wonder if he takes Bitcoin.

Spirituality was once a personal pursuit. Now, it’s an industry, complete with market segmentation. The man at my window is not alone. They are everywhere. On the roads, on our screens, in our inboxes—self-anointed prophets of wisdom and wealth. Some sell salvation for spare change. Others package it into online courses and e-books, their gospels retweeted into virality. He asks for ₹10, they ask for ₹10,000, but the promise is the same: salvation in installments.

Once, wisdom was sought in silence, whispered beneath banyan trees or written in palm-leaf manuscripts, passed from teacher to student in an unbroken lineage of learning. Knowledge was slow, earned, pondered. The rishis of the Upanishads spoke of self-inquiry, of shedding illusions, of seeking truth in austerity. The guru was not a businessman, nor a brand.

But time has a way of rewriting scripture.

Even the British were not immune to India’s spiritual salesmanship. In the late 19th century, Swami Vivekananda took Vedanta to the West, standing before an American audience that had never heard of Advaita but was eager to buy wisdom from the East. His words – eloquent, electrifying—sold a vision of India as the land of spiritual treasures, an antidote to the industrial West’s material excess. A hundred years later, Osho would refine the formula, packaging enlightenment with a Rolls-Royce.

Then came Yogananda, whose Autobiography of a Yogi became the gospel of the Silicon Valley elite, a book that Steve Jobs reread every year like a financial report. What was once whispered in caves became a keynote speech at a wellness summit in San Francisco. The rishi became a brand, and self-realization became a best-seller.

And then, the real breakthrough: the algorithm.

The rishis once meditated in the forests for decades. Now, enlightenment arrives in 15-second clips between a Tesla ad and a protein shake sponsorship. Today’s gurus do not sit in Himalayan caves. They sit before ring lights, recording reels on dopamine detoxing and circadian rhythm optimization. Their lectures are not spoken in temples but broadcast in high-resolution, complete with thumbnail clickbait:

“This ONE habit will rewire your brain for success!”

If Vivekananda spoke of self as infinite, today’s gurus speak of the self as a biohacking project. If Yogananda sold enlightenment in books, today’s gurus sell neuroscience-backed morning routines. If Osho built communes, today’s gurus build subscription-based wellness ecosystems.

Enter Andrew Huberman, the new-age rishi with a PhD, whose gospel is dopamine fasting, sunlight exposure, and cold plunges. His sermons arrive not through disciples, but through clips clipped by faceless Twitter accounts with handles like @PeakMaleOptimizer. Every “high-value man” swears by him.

“Huberman says five minutes of morning sun will fix my sleep cycle.””Huberman says an ice bath will turn me into a monk.””Huberman says I should delay my coffee by 90 minutes. This, I cannot forgive.”

And lo, the commandments are followed.

The new guru does not tell you to renounce the world; he tells you to “hack” it. No meditation, just “habit stacking.” No enlightenment, just “high-performance optimization.”

The forest has been replaced by a YouTube studio. The sacred chant has been replaced by ‘Like, Comment, Subscribe.’ The student has been replaced by a 30-day free trial.

Knock on the window brings me back to reality. The guru stares at me expectantly. I have no cash, just a phone full of financial wisdom threads and life-coaching reels. I scan the QR code. A second later, my karma is processed.

The car behind me honks. The light has turned green. Movement! A miracle!

I put my phone down. The LinkedIn prophet has posted again. “Your network is your net worth.”

Is it spirituality anymore, or just capitalism with a wellness filter?

The traffic inches forward. I still don’t have the answer.

But at least I’m moving.

Dungeons & Dragons seem like the nerdy wetdream resonant of living a life not yours, completing adventures you wouldn’t dare embark on, swinging swords and dicks in equal measure – a Tolkien fan fiction wrapped in math homework. It’s the kind of thing I imagined being whispered about in high school lunches between kids who wore capes unironically and collected dice like talismans. A trade to the grim monotony of reality for a world where you could slay dragons or seduce elves – if you could calculate the probability of success first.

But here’s the thing: D&D isn’t just a game – it’s a goddamn art form, a cultural time bomb that’s been detonating in the minds of dreamers and misfits for decades. It was born in the smoke-filled basements of 1974, conjured up by two Midwestern maniacs, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, who decided wargaming wasn’t enough – they needed storytelling, chaos, and a little bit of wizardry to really mess with people’s heads. What started as a fringe experiment, played on coffee tables by guys with pocket protectors and big ideas, mutated into a full-blown phenomenon. It survived lawsuits, moral crusades, and a mountain of bad press, only to rise again like some chaotic phoenix. And now? It’s a cultural juggernaut, a weird little game that somehow became a mirror for the collective imagination.

In the 1980s, Dungeons & Dragons got slapped with the label of Satan’s favorite pastime, thanks to a perfect storm of clueless parents, fire-and-brimstone preachers, and media hysteria that couldn’t resist a good witch hunt. Apparently, rolling dice and pretending to be a wizard was a one-way ticket to hell, or at least to a basement full of candles and goat sacrifices. It didn’t help that a college kid named James Dallas Egbert III disappeared, and everyone decided D&D was to blame, instead of, you know, his real-life struggles. Churches held D&D book burnings, televangelists lost their minds on live TV, and suburban moms clutched their pearls over spellcasting and imaginary demons. The Satanic Panic was less about dice and dragons and more about boomers panicking over a generation that wanted to dream bigger. The irony? All this moral outrage only made the game cooler – a badge of rebellion for nerds who suddenly found themselves cast as the devil’s accomplices, just for wanting to slay orcs and drink mead.

Away from the glitzy Americas, my first brush with Dungeons & Dragons came at the ripe old age of 28, in Bangalore, of all places – a city more famous for tech bros and traffic jams than elves and wizards. Maybe it was the best place for my grand initiation into nerd nirvana. But it happened because a once-social-butterfly friend, the kind of person who throws dinner parties just to keep their life from spiraling into existential dread, decided there was no better way to “build community” than by gathering a bunch of misfits around a table and rolling dice. A party, but make it medieval.

We met in the balcony of a hippie cafe, the smell of bad coffee and potpourri mingling in the air as my friend, the Dungeon Master, unfurled character sheets and explained the rules with the manic energy of a TED Talker who’d finally found their niche. I wasn’t sold. But what started as awkward small talk and dice rolls slowly morphed into something magnetic – each person’s character, story, and choices layering like the pages of a novel we were all writing together. By the time the night ended, I wasn’t just playing a game. I was hooked.

And it’s not just me. In the post-pandemic years, D&D has crawled out of its parents’ basement and waltzed into the mainstream like a rockstar on a comeback tour. Blame lockdowns or the collective need for escapism, but suddenly, everyone – from Hollywood A-listers to your cousin’s yoga teacher – is playing. Shows like Critical Role turned it into must-watch entertainment, streaming platforms cashed in with campaigns like Stranger Things, and Joe Manganiello made dungeon crawling look like the new CrossFit. The game went from being a nerdy secret handshake to a pop culture flex – something cool kids and celebrities could flaunt while still pretending to be dragonslayers and bards.

D&D wasn’t just resurrected; it was rebranded. It’s no longer just a game for awkward teens – now it’s therapy, improv, and a goddamn social revolution, wrapped in the guise of dice rolls and wacky character voices. If the Satanic Panic of the ’80s made it forbidden fruit, the post-pandemic world turned it into a communal balm for fractured souls.

And Bangalore, well, Bangalore lives for the weekend like a junkie waiting for the next fix. It’s a city running on caffeine, chaos, and 12-hour days, where people trade their sanity for a paycheck and try to fill the void with overpriced craft beer and Instagram brunches. By Friday night, the collective burnout is so palpable you can almost see it hanging over the city like smog. That’s where things like this – games, gatherings, strange little pockets of human connection – step in. It’s not just a way to pass the time; it’s a lifeline. A chance to escape the grind, peel off the corporate mask, and step into a world where you can be anyone: a barbarian, a bard, or just a better version of yourself. In a place where life often feels like a never-ending quest for survival, rolling dice and building stories feels like a cure for the madness.

Maybe that’s the real magic of D&D – not the dragons or the dungeons, but the act of gathering. In a city that moves too fast, where everyone’s chasing something they can’t name, it’s rare to stop and create something together. Stories, laughter, camaraderie – they’re the antidotes to a world that often feels too transactional. So maybe the nerds had it right all along: sometimes the best way to live a better life is to imagine one first.

As Creedence Clearwater Revival tells me to run through the jungle, I carve a path through this concrete one. It rained a few hours back; the cold wind tickles my face as my shoes catch the grime and splashes of a post-rain Mumbai.

Perhaps Pheidippides, in his legendary marathon, had his own puddles to contend with. Maybe a splash of muddy water struck him mid-run, and he thought, I’m doing all this for a bunch of Athenians who won’t even invent coffee for another thousand years.

It’s my 24th birthday today, and I intend to run 24 kilometers. For the past few years, this has been my rite of passage into a new year. While I’m not sure how long this trend will hold, doing 50 kilometers at 50 would be pretty nifty. The original plan for the 24th was to run 1 kilometer an hour, but the logistics of it were far too cumbersome to fit into the day—maybe a challenge for a quieter year.

The first couple of kilometers go by easy; the legs are fresh, and there’s an enthusiasm that comes with starting a run. But by kilometer four, my legs revolt—heavy and sluggish, as though carved from stone. The body, it seems, takes its time to adapt. It’s burning through glycogen, gasping for oxygen, and leaving me in a fog of lactic acid. But running teaches patience: by the next kilometer, the rhythm settles, the breath evens out, and the body finally catches up.

From this point on, the next 10 kilometers are contemplative. Your body has the energy, all your muscles have thawed, and they’re working full steam ahead. There’s a moment—somewhere in the rhythm of the steps and the measured breaths—when a mythical runner’s high sneaks up on you. It’s subtle at first, like a shift in the wind. The fatigue that weighed you down begins to lift, replaced by a sense of lightness that feels almost supernatural. Endorphins flood your system, dulling pain and sharpening focus. The discomfort fades into the background, and what remains is pure movement—effortless and free. You feel as though you could run forever, carried not by your legs but by something bigger, something unspoken that connects you to the road, the air, and yourself.

What do people think about on long runs? The simple answer is: everything and nothing. You start with the checklist—work deadlines, dinner plans, the existential dread of an unread email. Then you move on to the deep cuts: regrets, old conversations that didn’t end well, the name of that kid from third grade who sat next to you but vanished into life. A few kilometers later, you’re somewhere else entirely. A kind of trance takes over—a rhythm of feet on pavement and breath in lungs. You’re no longer thinking; you’re unraveling. Life simplifies itself into forward motion: left foot, right foot, repeat. And in that simplicity, there’s clarity—a fleeting, almost sacred moment where the noise dies down and you’re just out there, alone, running toward nothing in particular but somehow still going somewhere.

Then the body turns mutinous. A knee twinges, the shoulder stiffens, and some invisible itch drives me mad. Slowing down feels harder than speeding up. Murphy’s Law sets in—an uneasy growl in my gut, the sting of sweat in my eyes. The bliss is gone, replaced by sheer, unromantic agony.

We are now entering the last leg, beaten upwards by the concrete but with a hope that the end is nigh. The mind settles into a quiet kind of resignation. The body is tired, sure, but it’s a good kind of tired—earned, honest, like the ache after a day of hard work. Thoughts, once chaotic and sprawling, shrink down to the basics: water, rest, a cool breeze on your face. You think about the shower that waits, the first bite of something salty, the satisfying weight of stopping. And yet, as you slow to a walk, there’s a strange reluctance to let it end. The road has taken something from you—sweat, pain, the miles—but it’s given something back too: a sense of completion, of quiet triumph. You leave behind a version of yourself out there on the asphalt, and you walk away a little emptier, a little lighter, and somehow, a little more whole.

Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due!

Another trip ‘around the sun. Another year spent juicing the last drops from the overworked well of dopamine. I have been down with fatigue and headaches the past couple of days, as my body tires of another cycle of indulgence. The screen, work, booze, smoke, exercise—all rejected, all impossible—so I sit in bed, unmade, much like the man at the moment. This has been a result of a 3-day bender starting last Friday—but the root cause started a minute back. For the first time in months, I’ve done nothing. The disgust of my brain, left unchecked, has run rampant. No distractions to quell my anxiety, no work to offer validation, no vices to numb the stress, and no routines to counter the toll my habits have taken.

Early Christian hermits, the desert fathers, had a word for this: acedia, an existential malaise that plagued monks when faced with idleness. Acedia was often seen as the “demon of the noontime”—when the work paused, they wrestled with this demon, describing it as a paralyzing force that left them restless, despairing, and questioning their purpose. Acedia was not simply boredom—it was a profound confrontation with the void, an encounter with the self without the usual distractions to obscure it. Their writings detail how this state could lead to disgust with the self and the environment—feelings the modern machine has made a dedicated effort to avoid. What once was a natural human experience—a pause in time—has been digitized, repackaged, and served as a 10-second anesthetic. A fleeting escape, now a product designed to deliver these microdoses of dopamine to soothe our restlessness in exchange for a deeper disconnection.

Eight hours in, as the back pain worsened, strangely, my restlessness finally gave way to clarity. It was a clarity, however, tainted—a brutal revelation of the time I had squandered—high, high on distractions, lost in films that didn’t move me, trapped in a job I despised, breakups not processed, and haunted by the memories of careless remarks made that now make my stomach twist in shame. I am sure there is a parable to be made with my previous argument on the listlessness of the desert fathers.

The Desert Fathers fled into the wilderness, seeking solace from the distractions of the world, but found instead a mirror of their own inner turmoil. They fled into solitude not only to escape the noise of society but to confront something far more insidious—the chaos within themselves. What they encountered, however, was a disorienting stillness, where the usual distractions—work, socializing, comforts—were absent, and only their own restless minds remained. A force crept in when the external noise faded, exposing the emptiness of their inner lives. It wasn’t the silence of peace they encountered, but the noise of their own dissatisfaction and unease.

Much like them, I find myself here, in the strange quiet of my own making. As the distractions fade—no work to do, no distractions to numb the discomfort—the mind begins to turn inward, and with it comes a clarity that feels more like a weight than a revelation. True solitude does not seem to bring instant peace or enlightenment; rather, it forces you to face the rawness of existence—the petty regrets, the unresolved guilt, the gnawing sense of time slipping away.

The disquieting sense of inertia continues to morph as I go deeper into the night, and sleep remains a step ahead. Pain pulses through my neck and head as I lay in the dark room, burritoed in my blanket. There is no comfort to be found—the room is simultaneously too cold to have my feet out but too warm to be covered up completely. There is no diplomacy between the blanket and the room. I think of Raoul Duke, lost in Vegas, having woken up from a bender of unimaginable proportions and dealing with the confrontation of the aftermath of a hollow life lived in a blur. I don’t want that for myself. Too late, too late—maybe not. Maybe.

“I felt the familiar wave of nausea rise in my throat. A feeling I had known too well by now, like some kind of strange animal crawling up my spine. But it was different this time. A sudden clarity, a desperate urgency to make sense of all of this. I thought about the American dream, about the madness of everything we had done so far. And for a moment, I felt like I was seeing it all for what it really was—too late, too late.”

• Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

As the first slivers of light pierce through the curtains, there is no grand change in my circumstances, no miraculous transformation. But it does bring with it a certain calmness—a quiet but undeniable confrontation. I cannot stay suspended in this dissonance of awareness and loathing. The day beckons as it always has, with a promise of nothing more than the next step forward. Perhaps the key is not to seek resolution or the end of restlessness, maybe just to accept its presence, quietly, as I move forward—without grand epiphanies or promises, but with a steady sense of acknowledgment, and a calm, uncertain step into the day. I stumble out of bed in pain to make some coffee and start the next day of this misery.

Horns are going off competitively, each car trying to outdo the other in pitch and persistence—some sharp and abrupt, others drawn-out and wailing, creating a symphony so chaotic you have no choice but to wake up. I live on the third floor above a restaurant on a commercial street in Bangalore, alarms are for people living in apartment complexes; birdsong, for those near parks. I don’t complain—this chaos saves me from the true villain: Bangalore’s treacherous traffic. That trade-off, I assure you, is worth the morning headache.

I stumble out of bed and as usual my slippers play the usual mischief; they change sides whilst I slept. It’s almost reassuring in its predictability – I hate being barefoot in the washroom! I am a creature of habit for all the basic human experiences, my mornings, predictable as clockwork – indistinguishable from one to next. I find great solace in ritualising it – helps me gather myself for the long day ahead.

As I step out the floor feels cool to touch as a contrast to the tippy toe gymnastics I just did. The sun is sunning today as the kitchen beckons, and I shuffle toward it, drawn by the promise of caffeine and the quiet solace of a ritual that never fails me.

The kettle hums its familiar tune as I contemplate the cupboard—a shrine to my morning choices. Blue Tokai’s Hidden Falls Estate or the bright, floral Chelchele from Ethiopia? My hand hovers, indecisive yet hopeful, and finally settles on Chelchele. Its promise of vibrant berries and floral notes feels right for today. But life, in its infinite mischief, throws its curveball—the French press, my trusted companion, sits forlornly in the sink, coated in the remnants of yesterday’s brew. Alas, Chelchele retreats, replaced by the steady reassurance of Blue Tokai and my aeropress.

Such is life, I think, as I setup the aeropress on my counter. Plans, no matter how small, are rearranged by the day’s whims. But perhaps that’s the charm—the unscripted moments that steer us toward unexpected pleasures. The water comes to a rolling boil, an impatient crescendo, before I silence it, letting it rest for just a breath. As I pour it over the grounds, the coffee blooms in a tender swell—a ritual as fleeting as it is profound. And then, it arrives: a fragrance so vivid, so achingly pure, it seems to awaken something primal within me. It’s not the caffeine—no, that’s merely an afterthought—but this sacred aroma, this olfactory hymn, that truly pulls me from the fog of sleep and into the day.

I let it seep for a few minutes and turn to worship at the altar of the mobile phone gods. It is, as always, an exercise in futility—friends, dispatching reels of absurdity from their porcelain thrones; managers firing off emails with the urgency of kings, no doubt from the same throne; parents, ever diligent, delivering their dutiful good mornings with toilet-bound solemnity. Zepto, intrudes as a faux-friend, cajoling me toward some unnecessary purchase. And there it is, the final offering: the stock market, once again wallowing in its own shitter. Such is modern devotion, banalities masquerading as connection.

It’s been fifteen minutes, and I’ve completely forgotten about the coffee, ensnared by the seductive clutches of my phone. Finally, I set it aside, guiltily making my way to the kitchen. The aeropress awaits, its plunger perched precariously, ready for the final act. I push it down, slowly, deliberately, listening to the gentle drip of coffee hitting the cup below. The aroma rises, potent and audacious, hijacking my senses—an olfactory orgasm.

With coffee in hand, along with my smokes and the morning paper, I walk to the balcony. The hall stretches before me, a passage not just to the balcony but to a moment of clarity. I settle into my chair, a willing spectator to the animation of the city below—hustlers, dreamers, and the resigned, all stitched into the fabric of Bangalore’s morning bustle. The weather, as always, is a gift—a brisk wind, cool and rejuvenating, paired with the sun’s gentle caress. The clouds hang immense, their grandeur almost cartoonish—plucked straight from an episode of The Simpsons.

I light my smoke, the first drag of an exhale of yesterday’s remnants. Then comes the sip—the coffee’s warm embrace, a liquid affirmation down my throat that my ritual has borne its reward. In that moment, as the universe aligns with the rhythm of my morning, I feel it: everything will be okay today.