Laughing at Life’s Spills with TipplersPuke

Identifying your strength is still the key thing. Not the kind you list on LinkedIn, but the one that quietly shows up after you’ve messed up enough times to stop pretending. I found mine recently. Yes, it could be the Dunning–Kruger enthusiasm phase. That brief 90s-movie moment where you feel unstoppable, like you’ve just learned karate in a montage and suddenly believe you can beat the villain. But the vision is clear. Not loud. Not dramatic. More like the calm confidence of a character who already knows how the movie ends. I didn’t get here by planning. I got here by flunking. By failing. By running into walls repeatedly until the walls stopped feeling personal. Then came a month of solitude. Not the romantic kind. No background score. Just long stretches of nothing. No thinking. No deciding. Just existing in the void until the mental junk cleared out on its own. Turns out the void is better than therapy. No advice. No judgment. Just silence doing its work. And something unexpected ...

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...

What Is Priority in Life? Priority is that slippery little thing that keeps changing clothes at every stage of life. When you’re in your 20s, priority is simple: party, friends, late nights, and convincing yourself that instant noodles are a full meal. By the 30s, priority suddenly shifts—now it’s about sleep. A full 8 hours feels more precious than a luxury vacation. Party? Only if it ends by 9 PM. In your 40s, peace becomes priority. Not world peace, not even neighborhood peace—just the peace of sipping chai without someone asking, “What’s for dinner?” By the 50s, priorities get funnier. A quiet walk, a good medical report, and a WhatsApp group where people actually reply on time feels like winning a jackpot. And honestly, does it ever end? Nope. Priorities don’t end; they just keep rebranding themselves like a new season of Netflix. Here’s the funny part: priority isn’t always about what we have, it’s about what we lack. Sleep when we’re tired, money when we’re broke, peace when we’...

It’s been years since I stopped blogging. I even deleted all my old posts. After 15 years I am starting fresh. Why now. A lot has happened in me over these years. I reached an age where I can’t really express in person so I wanted to find a space where I can just write. Somewhere with a pseudo name where I can be open without bias. I still remember the time when I wrote on Orkut almost 20 years back. Then it drifted into Facebook and later into this blog. At some point I deleted all of it. Recently when I read those old words again I felt something. I really loved that person. A carefree guy with zero worries. Lived the moment. Never thought about future. Never thought about anyone else. Never thought before speaking. No polishing words. Just me. That was me then. Maybe I want to find that again now. So here I am. I am planning to blog once a week. Mostly about how I see the world. My perception in my own way. I will try my best to stay unbiased. This feels like the best way for me to ...