Laughing at Life’s Spills with TipplersPuke

It all started one calm evening when I decided to light the lamp at home. Nothing fancy, just the usual ritual my mother performs every day. I poured the oil, fixed the wick, struck a match, and there it was, that tiny flame dancing like it had just got Wi-Fi after a long outage. I stopped and stared at it for a moment. Out of all the five elements we talk about, earth, water, air, fire and sky, it is always fire that we end up using in worship. You can’t really focus on air, it disappears. Water won’t stay still, the sky is too big and the earth is too quiet. But fire, oh fire, it is small enough to sit in your hand and yet dramatic enough to make you feel like you are doing something divine. That’s when it struck me, maybe humanity and fire have been old friends, the kind that cause a bit of chaos together but still get invited to every party. Growing up, lighting the evening lamp wasn’t optional in our house. Amma ran it like a sacred schedule. The moment she lit the kuthu vilakku, ...

A lot went through me in just a week. My brain’s membership at the Crisis Gym is platinum level, . Time got all twisted, days  filled with calls and night with thoughts. Yes, I was in full crisis mode again. And as usual, my crisis mode means my brain is lifting emotional dumbbells it never signed up for. It’s heavy, but apparently it builds mental muscle. Been there a couple of times. I could practically start a course called "head first Guide to Surviving Yourself." Prevention sounds great in theory, but when life decides to add extra spice, logic just runs away. I can’t even say “why me?” anymore because I know. It’s me who creates half this chaos. At least I am self aware! I am being unfiltered here because honestly, pretending to be calm during a crisis is like trying to do meditation in Bangalore traffic  If Sigmund Freud met me, he would probably adjust his glasses and say, “Ah, you have repressed emotions.” And I would say, “Doc, these emotions are not repressed. They...

  The other day, while listening to Ilaiyaraaja’s music, a strange thought struck me. Why does his older music always feel so much more powerful, richer, and timeless compared to anything I hear now? That led me down a small mental rabbit hole—why does the present often feel dull, while the past seems golden? When I look at it carefully, it feels like this is how the mind works. The present moment is raw data,unfiltered, unpolished, and sometimes messy. Our brain hasn’t yet decided which pieces matter and which don’t. But the past is different. Over time, memory filters and compresses experiences, removing the noise and keeping the essence. What remains is a neatly packaged “sample of good data.” And naturally, that feels beautiful. Maybe that’s why Ilaiyaraaja’s old songs feel eternal. They have already passed through time’s filter, survived memory’s test, and carry only the richness of emotion. Today’s music, on the other hand, is still raw—still fighting to prove itself worthy o...