Ode To The West Wind

  [Courtesy: Craiyon AI. Link: https://www.craiyon.com/en/image/TNZiYqKKRgypA9BxhZhsVA] [Courtesy: Craiyon AI. Link: https://www.craiyon.com/en/image/FEnaXg5sTxWRxB0I3pbpOg] It has been roughly 200 days since I decided that I would work every single day without fail. Over that period, I have learnt a great deal from the experience. Background   More than 200 days ago, I was doing what is essentially known as “bed rotting”. More on that here (credit to Anu for sharing this tweet): https://x.com/hyderabaddoctor/status/1922519374902247775 Bed rotting is a subset of a neurological issue known as “behavioural shutdown”. That was my problem. I did nothing. I did not watch television shows or films, I did not go on social media — I did nothing at all. I was simply wasting away. Whatever attempts I made, whether work-related or personal ideas, all ended in futility. I could barely get anything done. I was effectively dead, even while alive. I used to rely heavily on motivation, sche...

 I watched the Malayalam movie Dies Irae recently, and honestly, I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about it. It's one of those films that sits uncomfortably in the middle—not bad enough to regret watching, but not good enough to recommend enthusiastically to friends either. You know that feeling?  The Excess Problem Look, I get it. Sometimes smoking and drinking are part of establishing a mood or showing us who a character is. But Dies Irae takes this to another level entirely. The characters smoke constantly—like, in almost every scene. At first, I thought maybe it was meant to show something about their state of mind or lifestyle. But after the tenth or fifteenth cigarette, I started wondering if someone on set got a really good deal on prop cigarettes. The drinking scenes were the same story. Everyone's perpetually holding a glass of something, and honestly, it started feeling less like character building and more like filler. I found myself thinking, "O...