Ernest Hemingway writing at a table.

How to Avoid Procrastination and Write Productively

Not a great way to start your day, I’ll admit. In my defense, I was half asleep when I stepped outside to begin the morning school drop-off. If it hadn’t been for my daughter—bright and alert after an hour of Roblox while I drooled all over the couch in my bid to catch a few more z’s—I would’ve humiliated my Rafa tennis shoes, already relegated to school and grocery runs, with the occasional tennis match thrown in. Thankfully, the danger was averted. Whatever creature made the effort to climb over our motion-detecting gate and then position its posterior on the small, worn-out welcome mat—talk about taking things literally—outside our door to leave its opinion on the sudden change in London weather, has my grudging respect. […]

An elderly couple talking to a young man.

How to Raise Your Parents 101

After more decades than I care to recall of rinse, lather and repeat, I can now say for a fact that mornings are not my thing. Clarity has no fixed timeline. But this much I know; if waking up is hell, Monday mornings are the cherry atop the icing on the awfully-tasting cake, I prefer to call office. But it’s all good. I’m a pro by now. Even if my physical body consistently rejects the process, muscle memory helps me do the bare minimum to make it through the day. Heck, way before ‘quiet quitting’ was a thing, I was already doing the beta ​version. But I digress, back to the morning ordeal. Before I decide to haul myself out of bed, my mind is the […]

Man sleeping on couch

Love in the Time of Corona

As love affairs go, ours wasn’t the ‘love at first sight’ mushy-mushy type. Heck, I hadn’t even helped my wife pick her out from the furniture store that had just announced a ‘Black Friday’ sale that transformed genteel ladies into blood-thirsty Amazonian princesses. I had instead, followed the line of my fellow caught-with-no-excuse-to-get-out-of-it-husbands as they made a bee-line for the nearest corner, away from the eye-gouging and cloth-tearing feeding frenzy. Even when it had been delivered to our apartment the next day, I hadn’t paid much attention as I munched down my double patty beef burger with a glass of lemonade. Our love had evolved more organically, as all true romances do. And for that, I had a bat to thank for. While Corona raged […]