Every now and then there comes a tread on Reddit that’s a true goldmine. Yesterday I stumbled upon one such great thread. It was an AskReddit thread with the question - “What is the harshest truth you’ve ever learned?”. The answers were truly astounding. Some were things I already knew but most were things that I knew but didn’t realize how deep they went.

Here are the top 10 points from the thread which I wanted to document for myself and share with everyone. Links to original reddit comments are provided with each point.

Today as I was getting ready for work I heard a loud crash and then a pitter-patter of tiny feet running. I come out just in time to see that Meera, my 1.5 yrs old, had dropped my laptop and was now running away from “scene of the crime”. My fully decked out MacBook Pro way lying on the floor and my child was running away trying to distance her from the “mistake” to avoid the scolding.

Here are 4 quick tips I personally follow to make my life a little simpler. These are not pro-tips to make your life super-efficient and highly performant. Well not directly but once you start making your day-to-day life simpler than how it is right now you will yourself start seeing efficiency and productivity creeping in.

This post is in continuation with my previous post where I describe who 2019 was for me books wise. In that post I also list out the top non-fiction books I read in 2019. You can find that post here (https://akhil.me/2019/best-non-fiction-books-i-read-in-2019/).

I actually like reading fiction a lot. I have mentioned many times that audiobooks are my primary medium of consuming books and in those terms listing to fiction is the best. Not only does it require less concentration compared to a typical non-fiction but also is more enjoyable with the voice acting done by the narrators.

This past year was a mixed one for me, book-wise. Last year I had read a personal best of 55 books and wanted to continue that streak this year as well. Unfortunately I could not meet that target this year. As a matter of fact, I don’t even have an exact number of books that I read this year. But. And that’s a pretty major but. I feel this year was much better in terms of the kinds of books I read. Last year was dominated by fiction which I wanted to change up this year. I am pretty happy with the mix of books this year which I felt was pretty balanced between fiction and non-fiction. I read some pretty amazing books and can only hope that this streak also continues in 2020.

Here’s a list of the top 5 non-fiction books that I read this year. These are the books I personally loved and more importantly would want my friends to read and enjoy. I am providing Amazon links to each of the books with them so that you don’t have to work too hard to find them. Full Disclosure - These are affiliate links.

This is clearly not the best title for this small write-up because if it was it would have been something like “Important lessons learnt..” or “What you should know…”. Something really assertive that would have been a more, let’s just call it compelling click. But it is not and here we are. The reason for this is simple. I do not think that what I have experienced or rather any father could have experienced in mere 4 months can be lessons that can be shared with others. I will go to the extent that this domain, parenting, is almost always learned by self-discovery and no about of reading parenting books and watching youtube videos will prepare you for what will actually happen in your life. Hence there are all what they truly are. Observations. Observations of the impact and the changes that have been brought in my life by my baby girl. Although one can say that there is always some learning in all experience, as you read ahead, I do not make any such claims. These are just my observations.

This new Supreme Court National Anthem thing is basically worthless. Jab banda shiddat se pit chukka hoga to Supreme Court kuch nahi kar paegi. (The Supreme Court would be able to do jack-shit once the person has been beaten by the public for not rising for the National Anthem)

There is a change.org petition making rounds which is asking for a ban on a TV serial “Pehredar piyaa ki” on grounds of it being a bad influence for “our kids”. A quick summary for the fortunate ones who don’t know what it is. The story is basically a 10-year-old getting married to an adult woman, who is basically his bodyguard. The perpetrators of this petition have problems with the visuals of the kid “flirting”, “stalking”, and other related negative words this grown ass woman. They have a problem with this being a) aired and b) aired at prime time which might affect “our children”. Just be clear, whatever is in quotes in this writeup is that way deliberately.

First, my thoughts on this. All of this. If this show is bullshit and regressive, this petition is bullshitter and regressiver (yup, i made words). If you put a gun to my head and ask me to choose one to defend I will defend the show against the petition.

Today is Women’s Day (2017). So Happy Women’s day. Now I would not wax poetic about the importance of women in our lives in all the forms and how we all should be thankful. I could, but I don’t think I’d have anything new to say which hasn’t already been said, so I won’t. Instead, I would want to discuss a topic, an issue, which I feel needs a lot more discussion and I think I can contribute to it. Lets discuss the gender pay gap. According to the Monster Salary Index (MSI) on gender for 2016, women in India earn 25% less than men. The number is huge yet totally believable. Now instead of looking at it from the gender angle, let’s try and look at it from a pure capitalist angle. The relationship between an employee and an employer is a very special form of buyer-seller relationship. The specialty in this relationship is that the employer and the employee keep interchanging the roles of the buyer and the seller. The employee is the buyer in the case where he “buys” a job and compensation from an employer in return for his work and the employer is the buyer in the conventional way where he buys his employees work in exchange for compensation and perks. All buyer-seller relations are about negotiations and bargains. From a capitalistic point of view, a person will want to pay as little as possible for something he wants to buy. If multiple sellers are offering the exact same product, it’s only logical to go with the one with whom you can negotiate the least possible price. This is all economics. This is exactly what is happening with women when it comes to the wage gap. They are, in most certainty, being out negotiated into accepting lower pay. The usual bargaining chips that most employers use for such negotiations are

1. Most women might not want to travel far from home.
2. Most women might quit or be on long leaves for marriage and maternity
3. Most women are not ok with working long or extra hours or hard enough and similar reasons.