Whispers

Responding to today's prompt Friday Writings #248: Noisy!, my initial thoughts were to write about the bangs that are happening above our skies these days—missiles and the interceptors. But then decided to stay with whispers

“This is about shadows and spirits of dead people, I am guessing,” Ana said, keenly.

“Somewhat, but not exactly,” Ron continued.

“And then?” Ana said, impatient.

A few years back I had an assignment in a city close to where my sister Anita had relocated, and I grabbed the first long weekend.

“Let’s move to the sofa,” Ana suggested, grabbing a bottle of water.

I reached Anita’s on a Thursday but had to spend the evening alone, as she and her husband were unable to cancel a prearranged engagement.

I took to the couch, multi-tasking between watching TV, reading and dozing off, an art I have mastered over time. By 10:05 I was very hungry.

Anita had left my dinner on the table arranged in bowls, with detailed instructions on how long to warm each in the microwave.

Once the television was off, silence descended on the apartment except for the mild humming of the air conditioner. Sitting at the table, I wondered if I missed the noise of constantly moving vehicles and their sporadic honking back home.

Then I had an uncanny feeling that someone else was sitting at the table. Even thinking of it makes my hair stand on end.

I tried to ignore it and concentrated on the delicious food.

It sounded like a man and a woman were talking at the far end, whispering in a language I could not recognise. Every time I looked in their direction, it stopped. I resumed dinner and so did the whispering, until an irritated “argh” came, followed by an extended pause.

Trying not to panic, I kept gulping the food, planning to wander outside till Anita returned. Then I heard them faintly from the sofa. They had moved to avoid my stare.

I was on the verge of collapse when Anita walked in.

Laughing, she said, “I should have told you about the non-intrusive couple living with us since we moved here. A very peaceful coexistence, and no need to be scared. You know, here people bury their dead, and many a soul hangs around, unable to detach from the body they cared for so long!”

Fortunately, the station chief called the next morning, asking me to return immediately because of an emergency. Never in my life was I so happy to get the holiday curtailed.

Living With What Cannot Be Changed

Our society wishes us to believe that, given enough time, everything eventually heals. Pain is expected to soften, memories are supposed to lose their sharpness, and the scars left by difficult experiences are expected to fade away as life moves forward. 

But this is not how our universe shaped us over the millennia.

There are experiences from which we can never completely recover. The grief of losing someone we deeply loved may remain with us as long as we remain conscious. 

A betrayal may permanently alter the way we look at a relationship, while a failure or humiliation may continue to occupy a small corner of our memory long after the event itself has lost its relevance.

Yet the permanence of a wound does not necessarily mean that our life has to remain defined by it.

Accepting that it has become part of our story is perhaps a more difficult form of healing than making the pain disappear. We can never return to being the person we were before a particular loss or disappointment, and trying to do so may simply keep us looking backwards when life has already moved forward.

Life has moved on, and so have we.

Acceptance does not mean giving in or simply putting the experience out of our mind. Rather, it means refusing to let the event—or the person involved—continue to control or affect our lives. Something can remain important without remaining in control of our lives.

Some things are simply painful, unfair or irreversible. Accepting that reality can nevertheless free us from the exhausting expectation that we must somehow repair what cannot be repaired.

In that sense, acceptance can become a form of moksha: a kind of liberation, a breaking free from the cycle of pain and attachment.

An authentic life is not one in which everything has been healed. It is one in which we recognise what cannot be changed.

This is in response to the prompt: Friday Writings #247: Reframing Negative Concepts

1,000 Days of Showing Up

Last month, my phone buzzed with a small celebration.

“1,000 Move Goals — You earned this award for reaching your daily Move goal 1,000 times.”

On the screen, it was just another badge in the Fitness app. But I found myself looking at it for a little longer than usual.

One thousand.

That number represents 1,000 separate days when I managed to show up and move enough to close my Move ring. It represents 1,000 decisions—some big, many very small—made over a period of more than three years.

My first closed Move ring was on 7 June 2023, after a few half-complete and semi-complete days. The 1,000th came on 28 September 2026.

That is 1,209 days in between.

So, clearly, there is still room for improvement. There were 209 days when I did not reach the target. Some were travel days, busy days, tired days, bad-weather days, or simply days when exercise was not on my mind.

There were days when I could complete my walking routine, and days when I just didn't feel like starting.

The Move ring does not ask whether we ran a personal best or completed an impressive workout. It asks a much simpler question:

Did we move enough today?

Over time, I realised that the answer does not always have to come from something dramatic.

Taking the stairs counts. A short workout counts. So does deciding to walk a little farther instead of stopping where we normally would.

And somehow, all those ordinary decisions accumulated into 1,000.

Across those 1,209 days, I have consistently completed the Move ring at least five times a week.

It is not a record of perfection. There were plenty of days when I didn't make it. What it represents instead is something much more ordinary, and perhaps more important: the habit of returning to the effort.

Because that is how real life works.

The real challenge is not in never missing a day. It is starting again when you do.

The achievement, if there is one, is not really the number 1,000. It is the 1,000th time I made the choice to show up.

And tomorrow, there is another ring waiting.

A Rather Strange Walk

A Rather Strange Walk

Sometimes words have more than one personality. Look closely, and they may surprise you.

I walked the forest, green and grand,
The most jovial soul in the land.

Singing my tender, brand-new song,

Smiling in my favourite beer hat. 

I searched for weeds beneath the trees,

Gathering herbs with greater ease, 

For nothing gives me more delight

Than an afternoon cup of herb tea.

I am brave enough to face them all,

Though I must admit, I fear the call

Of someone lurking among the trees—

Something rather grisly: the bear.

I mailed and paused beneath those trees,

And felt the freshness of the breeze.

"To stay alive and be happy,

I need to fill my lungs and ... breathe"

This post is in response to prompt  Friday Writings #246-light-hearted-words

How Far Do You Think Electric Aviation Is?

Today, it is not difficult for me to imagine a world where a tiresome ten-hour road trip is replaced by a thirty-minute flight. No long drive to the airport, no long airport queues, no expensive jet-fuel surcharge, no deafening engine noise—just a quick, affordable journey from one regional airport to another.

Until recently, that still sounded like something from the future.

A few days ago, I watched a documentary about Heart Aerospace and its X1 electric aircraft. The aircraft has a wingspan of 106 feet, and seeing something that large lift off using electric propulsion made the idea suddenly feel much more real. The electric aviation revolution may not have arrived yet, but it is clearly no longer science fiction.

So what might this actually mean for the way we travel?

Electric Aviation Is Finally Taking Off

The attraction is fairly obvious. Electric motors are mechanically much simpler than conventional aircraft engines, and the cost of the energy required to operate them can be dramatically lower. When Heart flew its X1 demonstrator entirely on battery power in August 2026, the electricity used for the 27-minute flight reportedly cost only around five dollars.

The real problem, however, is not the motor. It is the battery.

Jet fuel contains an enormous amount of energy for its weight. Batteries contain far less, which means an electric aircraft has to carry a much heavier energy source for the same journey. And unlike fuel, which an aircraft progressively burns and leaves behind, the battery remains on board from takeoff to landing.

That single difference explains much of the current limitation of electric aviation. We are unlikely to see battery-powered aircraft replacing long-haul jets anytime soon. The first meaningful market is much more likely to be short regional journeys.

This is where things become interesting.

Heart's ES-30 is being designed as a 30-seat regional aircraft. It is intended to fly approximately 125 miles on battery power alone and up to 500 miles using its hybrid system. In other words, it uses electric power where it makes the most sense and another source of energy when the distance becomes too great.

This is where the current hybrid solution makes sense—the battery can handle take-off, landing and shorter journeys, while sustainable aviation fuel provides the additional range when the journey gets longer. Heart's earlier description of the ES-30's reserve-hybrid system specifically identifies sustainable aviation fuel as the fuel for its turbo-generators.

Electric Aviation Could Transform Regional Airports

If these aircraft become commercially viable, the implications could extend beyond cheaper flights.

Imagine being able to travel between cities without first driving for an hour to a major international airport, parking, checking in, going through security and then waiting for a flight. Smaller regional airports could become more like transport hubs, connecting places that today are considered too close to fly between and too far to drive conveniently.

An aircraft designed to operate from shorter runways changes the equation even further. It does not need to compete for space at the giant airports that handle hundreds of flights a day. It could operate from smaller facilities closer to the communities it serves. Heart Aerospace has specifically developed the ES-30 around shorter-runway operations, opening up more possibilities for regional air travel.

That starts to make the idea of a "flying bus" more rational than the even more ambitious possibility: flying taxis.

We may see an "Uber Fly" sooner than we think.

The technology behind many of these aircraft is based on Distributed Electric Propulsion, where multiple smaller electric motors and propellers are distributed across the aircraft rather than relying on one large engine or rotor. The arrangement offers engineers new possibilities in aircraft design, noise reduction and redundancy.

This is also where the progress we have seen in drones becomes relevant.

I am not talking about the military drones designed to carry weapons. I mean the sophisticated, unmanned aircraft that can navigate, stabilise themselves and perform increasingly complex tasks with very little direct human intervention. They have demonstrated something important: much of what we once thought required constant human control can now be managed by software.

Who Will Fly the Electric Aircraft?

The obvious question is where this eventually takes us and who will actually fly these aircraft?

A person sitting in the cockpit? A pilot supervising from the ground? Or, eventually, an AI system that manages the flight while a human remains responsible for overseeing it?

Heart currently describes the ES-30 as being designed for single-pilot operations from entry into service, with autonomous flight introduced over time.

The transition will not happen overnight simply because the technology exists. Aviation, as we know, is conservative and governed through regulation and certification. Public confidence will probably move much more slowly than the technology itself.

But the direction is becoming difficult to ignore.

The aircraft are becoming more electric. The control systems are becoming more autonomous. The batteries are improving. The motors are becoming smaller, lighter and more efficient.

None of this means that the conventional jet is about to disappear. It simply means that there may be an entirely new layer of aviation developing underneath it.

And that is what I find most fascinating.

Electric aircraft may eventually make some distances feel almost trivial. A ten-hour drive reduced to thirty minutes is not merely a faster journey. It changes our perception of how far away a place really is.

The skies may indeed become busier. But if the engineers get this right, they may also become considerably quieter.

Manifestation

For anyone visiting India, whether as a foreign tourist, a traveller from another part of the country or even a local, there is one place that is difficult to avoid—the temple.

Some go to admire the architectural work and skills of the people who built them centuries ago, others to appreciate the remarkable abilities of our ancestors, while some are drawn by religious faith. For others, it may simply be another place to visit and tick off the list.

For me, it is a little bit of all of these.

The last time I visited one such temple in southern India, I had a rather strange realisation.

But before I get to that, let me bring up something else that has become remarkably popular around the world today, particularly among coaches, motivational speakers and self-help gurus.

Manifestation

The basic idea is quite simple: what we repeatedly think about, believe in and consciously work towards can influence what eventually becomes our reality. The concept has found a huge following, with people being encouraged to define what they want, visualise it, believe that it is possible and keep their focus on the desired outcome.

Whether we call it the power of intention, positive thinking or manifestation, there is something compelling about the idea that our thoughts and beliefs can shape the way we live and, in turn, the reality we create.

And that brings me back to the temple.

Sitting there that day, watching people pray, make offerings and being part of this culture myself, I became aware that many devotees are there to ask the Lord for something they deeply want.

I could also see some coming back with their promised offerings, perhaps because their wishes had been realised and they now wanted the Lord to accept them.

No wonder some of these temples have accumulated such enormous wealth from devotees who considered their wishes to have been blessed.

And suddenly I wondered whether we had been practising something remarkably similar for centuries to what the world is catching up with now.

Could our prayers, faith and rituals be another form of manifestation?

Could it be that we got what we asked for simply because we believed we would?

Family And The Godfather

This post responds to a prompt Friday Friday Writings #245: Family

One of the greatest movies of our time is The Godfather, frequently referred to when masters discuss cinematography and direction. For us it is the story, characters, performances and sheer brilliance of the filmmaking.

I wonder if there is another way of looking at The Godfather—through the lens of family life.

The obvious reaction will be: but it is about guns, crime and violence. Can we put those aside and look at the family itself?

The Corleones are remarkably close. They celebrate together, protect one another, respect their elders and have a powerful sense of belonging.

But there is a catch.

Family first—but at what cost?

The strength of the Corleone family comes largely from loyalty. When one member is threatened, the others rally around. Nobody is expected to face a crisis alone.

Every family needs the confidence that someone will stand beside us when things go wrong.

The burden of protection

Michael Corleone's journey shows how one person becomes the protector—the parent carrying the financial burden, the elder sibling looking after everyone, a person the family depends entirely on them.

Responsibility is admirable, but a family is healthier when it is shared.

When loyalty becomes silence

Their world also operates on secrecy and silence. Certain things are not discussed, questioned, and loyalty demands obedience.

Our families are worlds apart from theirs, but during difficult times, some decisions may need to be taken unilaterally, and everyone's views may not be useful.

But silence does not always protect a family. Honest disagreement does.

Love without control

The Corleones genuinely care about one another, which makes the story more interesting. Their bonds are not entirely artificial. There is affection, pride, tradition and belonging.

Yet those same bonds become controlling. Love should give us roots, not chains. A healthy family is one where everyone feels safe enough to be different.

So, what can we learn?

The Godfather gives us an interesting mirror. It shows the immense strength that can come from loyalty, belonging, responsibility and mutual protection. It also shows what happens when those virtues lose their moral boundaries.

Family matters deeply—but so does doing what is right.

The Corleones understood the first part exceptionally well, but they forgot the second.