SG's Meditations - Issue #52
Hi!
Welcome to this edition of the week gone by.
No, wait.
This edition will be for the last two weeks. I did not write anything last week. I mean I did write but I did not publish. Lemme delve into the reasons and on other things.
TW.
Subsequent text talks about death and all that. So if that's not your thing, please do NOT read ahead.
😊 "Good" thing from the week
I typically want to start with the good thing of the week. But I dont have any good things to talk about. Rather, I have a "bad" thing.
Over the last two weeks, I have had quite a few memorable and interesting and good moments but I really think the last two weeks have been not the best. Lot of reasons but guess the biggest one is that two different people that I consider myself close to (they may or may not be close to me) lost family close members.
While I did not lose anyone directly, these people did and I saw their pain and I did not know what to do about it.
The lesson I am taking away is that I need to get stronger when it comes to saying goodbyes. And I need to ensure that once it's my time to go, I dont leave a lot of people in pain. I dont know how to do that, but that.
In continuation, I saw this thread from Jitha (someone who I met once in a while, while he was in India) and it reminded me of two things that I must probably get tattooed - this too shall pass and memento mori.
The other thing that I have been thinking about is that death when it comes will come unplanned, unannounced and like Jitha said, too early. And thus I need to do the cliched thing of living each day as if it were my last. And this means that I need to close threads often. I need to not delay things for tomorrow. And while I must continue to play the long-term games with long-term people, I need to prepare them for the eventuality.
And to close this "good" thing of the week here is a tweet that I posted (inspired by Harivansh Rai Bachchan).
Saurabh / SG on Twitter: "#whenIDie https://t.co/EsaLswNLJj" / Twitter — twitter.com “#whenIDie”
🔀 Random thing of the week
I have been in Mumbai for the last two odd weeks and I finally have a house that I can call my own.
I mean I dont own it but I have possession of it, thanks to the generosity of VG. While having a roof over my head in Mumbai is a thing (and it probably counts a lot), I also realised that my heart is in Mumbai. The roads are bad, there are too many people, the weather sucks and I am mostly poor when it comes to comparison with others, I love Mumbai! As they say, Mumbai Meri Jaan!
I need to thus find a way to get back to Mumbai (till the time I don't find a way to get out of India).
Thing is, I think it's people in Mumbai that make this place like nothing else. For some reason, I seem to find a way with people here. Not in Delhi. Not in Goa. Not in Bangalore. Plus, Mumbai made me realise that I want to be here. Even if people leave. I mean VG left. And I was somehow able to build deep connections with P, NV, AK, et al. Now, these may not be like VG and may not give rooh ko sukoon, but these are like tiny saplings that I am shining a tiny speck of torchlight on (and they are anyway getting a lot of sunshine and all that) and I get the validation of having contributed to something larger than myself! And here is my articulation of that!
So that! Mumbai.
💭 Thought of the week
Most of my thoughts revolve around work and the thought is no different.
So, sometime in the last two weeks, I stumbled onto a blog post that I wrote sometime in 2009 about building a network of friends that would help me in my business (at that time I ran Cyntax with Kunal).
Here...
And when I was reading it, I realised, I want to do exactly the same thing for C4E. And thus I went ahead and created a WA group of people that I call "friends of C4E". I am yet to act on it in terms of what I will use it for.
Please lemme know if you want to be on that WA group and help me scale C4E as a business.
And this, ladies and gents brings me to the end of this newsletter. This is a short one. The next one would come from Bangalore (as I write this, I am at a lounge, waiting for the flight) and hopefully, that would have a little more meat.
And like I said in the beginning, I am sorry that I couldn't send it last week. There was way too much muck in my head.
Finally, if you enjoyed reading this, please share this with your friends and family and help me expand the reach of my weekly newsletter. Remember, I am gonna go big on distribution?
It will mean a lot to me :)
Over and out! 👋
- SG / 28 Aug 2022 / Mumbai