👋🏼 Oh, Hello

"Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise." — Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

If you're familiar with Fernando Pessoa and his Livro do Desassossego – or, Book of Disquiet – you will notice flagrant references to it, including the subtitle, Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating, used in a slightly ironic sense.

I was born in Goa, India, grew up in Bombay, and spent much of my adult life in San Francisco and New York City, where I currently reside, and have explored cities in over 35 countries. I'm equally comfortable on the streets of Kozhikode in Kerala as I am in San Francisco's Mission, but I attach little to no significance to my nationality or that of my adopted home.

I have a love for languages, which really is a love for human interaction and a deeper understanding of humankind; in addition to English, I speak Hindi, Malayalam and Marathi, and I can hold conversations in Italian and Spanish. I am a voracious (but slow) reader: I enjoy reading fiction (like Borges), philosophy (both Eastern and Western, particularly focused on identity, morality, and epistemology) and theology (I'm an atheist). But perhaps a better descriptor of who I am might include: openness, insatiable curiosity, an introvert who loves engaging with people, honesty, and always doing my best to be empathetic and nice to people.

Despite having written more than a few lines about myself (at least in first person, thank goodness), I don't take selfhood (and consequently, myself) all that seriously.

In these pages I write about coffee, food, wine, travel, and... metaphysics.