Author: Anuj Gosalia

Marriages are made in hell. You only see glimpses of heaven.

Partners need time away as much as they need together.

Sweat win > Phone win.

Until it’s done, tell none.

1. If you want something, let it be known. Ammmma.
   
2. Water should be around you. Mim mim.
   
3. Up-down, jump, yoga, bhaagi-bhaagi, slide, gulati – seek movement.
   
4. I am ready to focus if the adults let me.
   
5. Obsess about wanting to skill-up.

You a river.
Me, giving a dam.

You flow.
Me, stay.

How heartbreaking.

To love you
Is to get out of your way.

with creative work, ‘nice’ is not enough. nice is easy. nice is safe. nice is ‘hmm, but better’.

nice doesn’t cut clutter. nice doesn’t make you lean in. nice doesn’t pop.

nice is when art dies and content takes over.

but

nice does the job. so, it’s easy to ship nice. i’ve said ok to nice a million times. because it was efficient. ah, efficient! nice’s elder cousin.

when you settle with nice, you never see great. you never sit in the sands of time. you never live in culture.

because nice is just that.

NICE.

1. If you’re not selling, you’re not serious

2. If you’re not gaining market share *or* creating a new market, you’re not serious

3. Your team rallies behind your actions, not your words

History will remember TTT as many things – everyone with their own narrative. But let this echo in the annals of time that TTT and I wouldn’t be here, had Sharanya Rajgopal not walked into my life in 2012.

Her faith, her love, her music, her words, her connections, her persistence and her skill and fortitude has made TTT what it is today.

Dance and music are core to childhood

As is curiosity, movement and exploration

Create and destroy and create are all natural

Applauding oneself is the best gift we’ve forgotten

Playing with self > Playing with others

Clear articulation of what I want. Babies know their shit.

Sharanya knows her rhythm. She can sense when a beat is off – in a song, in a story, in a person. Maybe it comes from her years with music.

Sharanya knows her time. She can see a memory in a moment. It’s why she chases the making of it so furiously. If you can’t storyboard a life – what do the days add up to? It’s why she marks them with song, colour, costume and pictures. It’s infuriating and valuable.

Sharanya knows her truth. “People will never forget how you made them feel.” She lives this truth with every person in her life. I guess it’s why it’s impossible to forget her. And also, because she’s very loud.

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Happy Birthday, Sharanya. It’s a special kind of luck to have run into you. And another, to be here, by your side tonight. (Technically not – I’m in another room).

I love you!

Saw Sumedhas’ insane sugar stash from London. It had so many of my favourites. It took a special force of will to say no to it.

One easy way to get put off from sugar is to read the ingredient list. Just can’t cannot no way do it anymore.

Another superpower is water. It’s such a quick way to feel good in the body.

Sleep is still mitigating my ability to feel on-top-of-my-game but this has been great so far.

Tomorrow’s Day 21. We’ve successfully stayed off processed sugar (except for 2-3 tiny cheats).

I have no playbook on how to eliminate dairy and gluten. Seems brutally hard.

While we continue no-sugar, I’ll think through a method before saying bye-bye to gluten (first).

Had some virgin mojito which had sprite and some sugar syrup to accompany my lunch.

Baby carrying got a bit intense.

But I was proud of not succumbing to tons and tons of delicious options at bakeries. Especially the fucking cheesecakes.

Life without sugar has certainly lowered mucus production. And I also feel slightly less inflamed.

Energy levels are also slowly improving. I can feel a surge of consistent energy instead of the manic highs and lows.

At one level, I don’t miss sugar in a way it consumed me. Fasting is magical for awareness.

I recommend it to myself (and you) for all things that have consumed me.

Fast from work to recognise how much of it is just a pavlovian action.

It’s only 12 days but it feels so much longer.

Now the hard task of giving away all the sugar at home. May be it won’t be that hard.

Beginning to glimpse a world where less is freeing, and easy.

It’s travel week. We’re in Rishikesh.

Flight day (28 Nov) was great. Had lunch at home and satvik dinner at the hotel. I could do a lot with limited food.

In fact, it was a reminder we’re surrounded by way too much food.

Yesterday was an over-food day. With breakfast, lunch and two dinners. Also ended up having a little beetroot halwa.

The body didn’t need it at all. But it was all too tempting in this weather.

Sugar is great if you microdose but that’s not possible in today’s food culture. And so, we tread on with our mission.

We’re still on course.

I realised gluten, dairy and sugar are everywhere. It’s going to take a big push against the norm to be regular with it.

But we get there when we get there.

For now, it’s another day of saying bye-bye to sugar.

Oh, by the way – I did go to the gym the day before. It was hard but felt so good.

So that’s a win!

There’s a gnaw. A tension that doesn’t let me be easy. Why have I suddenly become so stuck up?

It’s the work. Growing at a certain pace. Unlocking X amount of revenue every month. It’s the founder stress that has stayed in the background but is now louder.

It’s so hard to articulate it. I am no victim. I love what I do. I’m grateful for it.

But I can’t hide that it’s hard on many days. My work keeps pushing me to be brave, to do the difficult thing first. And that in itself is not easy.

How can I switch off from the responsibility of growth? Can I say this month will fix itself? Salaries and expenses don’t wait.

A startup is a daily reminder of how hard and how much effort it takes to earn money. That to never take income and growth for granted.

I think I’m unable to manage this phase well. The zen version of me is crumbling.

And the first step to change is to recognise it and make peace with it.

Eating early and drinking water helps stave off sugar.

The rest of my life is still gluten and carbs.

I’m just shocked at the absence of workouts and protein in my life.

I had one bite of a chocolate cake made in olive oil and almonds.

I still need to visualise more a life and home without any sugar.

Big change is driven by visualising. Seeing a future in my mind is the biggest driver of desire.

I’m still to see the upsides of doing this. May be, just may be, I’m in a little more control of my moods.

Could be a placebo though.

Water is a great substitute for sugar.

Was really craving an ice cream before bed but had nice big glugs of warm water instead.

No other big noticeable change yet.

Will start gentle weights and protein with water tomorrow onwards.

Feel like taking away one habit, must be replaced by a healthy dopamine inducing one.

Sad as it is, marriages are saved by children. Especially in the early days of caregiving.

What angers you today?

Once you consume less, once you start walking lightly on the earth – do you find room to ask the harder questions? Do we need so much?

How to live in the mountains?

On a 500 year timeline, the enduring things are inventions and stories?

Contrarian positions are liberating. I just realised I’ve done it my whole life (in a way).

Started with loosies and broken sleep.

Sleep is the big one. It just puts my nervous system out of whack. Wanting me to eat even when the body doesn’t need it.

But that’s the hard and challenging bit. Sugar makes this same battle 10x harder.

That’s why we’re on this challenge.

Ends okay. I craved sugar at 7 pm ish. But the night has been much better.

Need to figure a way to ensure high fuss-free protein every morning.

It’s heady, all consuming and hard. Raising Aria has the potential to isolate me from the people I care most deeply about.

Part operations, part life stage and part the rush of having my own outside of me. I’ve been so in-my-own-head that this opportunity to find joy outside of me feels god-sent. There’s a relief that life’s not only about me.

The last two months, especially, have been incredibly intense. I’m in a bootcamp. there’s tons of joy and moments of sheer delirious delight.

But also feels like I’m stuck on another planet. One that is private, unique and too specific.

And while I’m in the trenches, I want to write about the things I long for.

5 Big Aches:

1. My friends mean the world to me. It’s the only family I’ve felt. I’m raised and trolled and comforted by their presence. But right now, it’s all words and desire – not much action. This hurts a lot.
   
   
2. Energy and time are the most valuable resources in the world. Use it wisely, judiciously and to do big and brave things. I keep telling myself this as days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months keep tumbling. How will I write that book and make that film and build this large and enduring company? When will I lose myself in work again?
   
   
3. I miss me, and the version of myself that’s consumed by work, in the warm hug of my friendships, in the quiet of a late morning doing nothing, the me that’s bored and over-slept and slow and aimless. Okay not the aimless bit. But I miss irresponsibility, sometimes.
   
   
4. Who’s running their fingers in my hair? Comforting me? Telling me you’ve done well. That I’m proud of how far you’ve come. As we grow older, touch becomes absent. I just end up huggy-pooging Aria. I miss lying in my mother’s lap, resting and being in the presence of my father.
   
   
5. Where’s Sharanya? Where are we? The two that bought in the third. How ironic and sad and scary that a child leaves you with precious little to fill each other. I’m to blame for not having planned enough dates and time-outs for the both of us. But I can barely, just about, with all my might – do my current things.

1. Risk reputation to say something you deeply care about.

2. Write to find. Everything is not in your mind.

3. Be a receiver of truth. Listen to yourself and others.

4. Stare at ceilings. Watch your stories unfold.

5. You’re paid for how you say it. Craft is everything.

When Aria goes to Thathi’s home, Sharanya and I are left open, exhausted and crab-like. We have 6 hours to think about dreams, patch old wounds, make new plans, sleep and recover, find ourselves. It’s unfair and too much and we get little done, really. But we try.

And this, this tiny thread, is a recognition and reminder of how much we value our lives outside of this shared, magical and tiring pilgrimage.

 

This phase of life feels very hard. It’s for the first time in the last nine months where Sharanya and I have departed in our parenting.

While she’s always trusted me with the reading and knowledge, (red light at night lowers cortisol levels), and me with her intuitive and playful connection – it’s only now where we’re finding it hard to meet each other.

In my attempt to become an active, attentive caregiver – I’m not being able to look at the toll it’s taking on our relationship. Mothers and women do so much visible and invisible work, as a man and partner I’m just struggling to see.

In all of this, I remind myself that I can only do my best. I can only show up and care in the best way I know. It may not be enough, may not meet a benchmark – it doesn’t matter.

But this assurance coexists, with fatigue and sleep deprivation and anxiety and a longing – to find time.

It’s all a bit hard and rough and all consuming.

Tulsi raised one baby and two adults.

She made us parents.

She’s always on. She’s been on for 9 months now.

She is the grandparent who stayed with us.

Tulsi is playful, meticulous, chatty, homebody, a small girl.

Tulsi is particularly gassy.

Her dancing is god awful.

She makes the biggest sacrifice in the world, to make the biggest sacrifice in the world – she leaves her grand kids, to eventually leave a kid she’s raised for 9 months.

Cook like Tulsi. Clean like Tulsi. Be a stickler, like Tulsi.

Lead with the heart. Manage with the mind. Like Tulsi.

Tulsi wakes up at 4 am and cleans like it’s 4 pm. No cutting corners, no dropping the ball, no easy mode.

If you love what you do, it shows in the doing.

What’s the driving force for a marriage? I wish partners called each other lovers. Only to remind themselves of what got lost.

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The more you play, the more you learn.

Staying in the arena is everything.

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Be so good they come to you. 

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Steal every minute in the universe for your dream. Life’s short in the rear view mirror.

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If it doesn’t sing in your gut, it’s not real. 

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Watching a well-rested baby wake up with a smile is sleep goals for me.

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Who’d think that therapists in India compete with Arijit Singh.

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Midjourney prompt:

Young, broken-hearted, Indian men clamouring over a chemist shop all asking for Arijit Singh capsules.

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