Category Archives: Daily Prompts

What are five simple exercises to do at home?

The deeper idea is:

When exercise has an “address,” you don’t have to decide each day whether to do it; the routine itself tells you when it happens.

Every Exercise Needs an Address

Ask for five simple exercises to do at home and the internet will hand you five hundred. The lists are not the problem. Most of us already know how to stretch, breathe, and do a push-up. What we lack is not instruction but a place in the day. An exercise without a fixed time is only a good intention, and good intentions are the easiest things in the world to postpone.

So here are my five, each with the excuse it answers and the address where it can live.

1. Five minutes of freehand stretching, for “I have no time”

Neck rolls, shoulder circles, a gentle twist, a forward bend, and a set of calf raises to finish. Nothing heroic. Five minutes is small enough to survive a tired morning, and that is the point. A short routine done daily outlasts an elaborate programme abandoned in the second week. Give it an address: the minutes spent waiting for the kettle to boil.

2. Ten minutes of yoga, centred on the pelvis but reaching the whole body, for “I have no gym”

A mat and a floor are enough. Hip openers, the bridge, the cat-cow stretch, and a deep squat work the region where much of our movement begins, and the rest of the body follows. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the classical Indian text on yoga, define posture in three Sanskrit words: sthira sukham asanam. A posture should be steady and easy. Not strained, not punishing. Easy. Give it an address: straight after the morning bath, on a mat that stays unrolled. A mat rolled up in a cupboard is an argument you will lose.

3. Ten minutes of breathing, for “I have no energy”

This is the exercise that looks like doing nothing, which is why it is so often skipped. Sit upright, slow the breath, lengthen the exhale, or try alternate-nostril breathing. The Tamil sage Thirumoolar admits in the Thirumanthiram [1] that he once thought the body a defect, until he found something precious within it. In a neighbouring verse he writes: “Udambai valarthen, uyir valarthene.” I nurtured the body, and so I nurtured life. Give it an address: before the phone is picked up in the morning.

4. Five minutes of dumbbells and push-ups, for “I have no equipment”

A pair of light dumbbells and a floor. Curls, presses, rows, and as many push-ups as come honestly; wall push-ups are a respectable start. Nearly two thousand years ago, the Stoic philosopher Seneca advised his friend Lucilius to prefer short, simple exercises such as running, lifting hand-weights, and jumping. They tire the body quickly and leave time for the mind. The advice has aged well. Give it an address: the five minutes before the evening news.

5. The walks and the cycling, for “I have no routine”

This is my fifth exercise, and the proof of everything above. A fifteen-minute walk half an hour after lunch. Fifteen minutes of cycling in the evening. Another fifteen minutes of walking before bed. These happen without fail, and not because I am unusually disciplined. They happen because lunch, evening, and bedtime never fail to arrive, and the movement simply rides along with them. “At home,” I have come to think, means within the rhythm of the household day, not only within four walls.

Other traditions knew this long before habit science did. In Japan, Radio Taiso has been broadcast every morning since 1928. It is a few minutes of simple calisthenics at the same hour each day, and it became a national habit through a fixed time, not a hard routine. In Islam, the five daily prayers, with their standing, bowing, and prostration, give movement an appointed place in every day. The lesson is the same: an appointed hour keeps what willpower alone cannot.

Add it up and the day holds about seventy-five minutes of movement, yet no single block runs longer than fifteen. Nothing is intense. It is simply distributed.

A fair objection

Is this too easy? Perhaps. Simple is not the same as sufficient forever. Over time the dumbbells can grow a little heavier and the push-ups a little more numerous. And anyone with back, pelvic, heart, or joint conditions should consult a doctor before starting yoga or strength work. But for most of us, the danger is not doing too little. It is planning too much and doing nothing.

So, five simple exercises to do at home? Any five will do, as long as each one has an address. The best exercise is not the hardest one. It is the one that knows what time it is.

[1] The Thirumanthiram is a Tamil work of about three thousand verses by Thirumoolar, a Siddhar (mystic-sage), and it is foundational to the Shaiva Siddhanta tradition of South India. Scholars date it variously, but it is generally held to be well over a thousand years old. The lines referred to are verses 724 and 725 in the standard numbering.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 30 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:909

Which relationship has taught you the most about yourself?

Some relationships teach us about other people. The deeper ones teach us about ourselves. They reveal how we respond to love, conflict, disappointment, trust, change, and uncertainty—and sometimes show us a version of ourselves we had never noticed before.

Which Relationship Has Taught Me the Most About Myself?

At first glance, the question seems simple:

Which relationship has taught me the most about myself?

My first instinct might be to think about the person who has been most important in my life—the person I have loved most, depended on most, or spent the most time with.

But that is not really what the question is asking.

It is asking something deeper.

It asks me to look beyond the other person and examine what the relationship has revealed about me.

A relationship can become a kind of mirror. I may enter it thinking I am learning how to understand another person. Over time, however, I may discover that I am also learning about my own character, expectations, fears, strengths and limitations.

Perhaps I discover that I am more patient than I thought.

Or perhaps I discover that I am not as patient as I imagined.

I may learn how much I value loyalty, honesty or independence. I may discover that I have a strong need to be understood, appreciated or accepted. I may realise that I sometimes expect others to think the way I do.

These discoveries are not always comfortable.

Some relationships reveal qualities I am proud of. Others expose weaknesses I would rather ignore. A disagreement may show me how I react when challenged. A period of silence may reveal how much I depend on communication. A misunderstanding may teach me whether I listen to understand or simply listen to respond.

That is why the most meaningful relationship is not necessarily the easiest one.

Sometimes the relationship that teaches me the most is the one that makes me look inward.

It may teach me that I cannot control another person’s thoughts or behaviour. I can only control how I respond. It may teach me the difference between compromise and surrender, between forgiveness and forgetting, or between caring for someone and losing myself in the process.

And sometimes, the greatest lesson is that I still have room to change.

Looking back, I may realise that the relationship did not simply teach me something about another person. It changed the way I see myself.

It showed me who I am when I am happy, disappointed, misunderstood, appreciated, challenged or hurt.

That may be the unexpected gift of relationships.

We often enter them asking, “Who is this person?”

Perhaps, with time, we begin asking a more important question:

“Who am I becoming because of this relationship?”

That question turns a relationship from merely an experience into a lesson.

And perhaps that is what makes some relationships unforgettable—not because they were perfect, but because they helped us see ourselves more clearly.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 29 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:534

If you could start a new business right now, what would it be?

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I wrote a full business plan today: members, rules, running costs, the lot. Then I gave it away for free. No, I have not lost my mind. Yes, you can have it too.

Turning the giveaway into the closing twist.

A Business Plan, With One Condition

If you could start a new business right now, what would it be?

I have an answer, and I have worked it out in some detail: what it is, who it serves and how it pays its way. Let me lay it out plainly, the way a founder would. There is one condition attached, which I will come to at the end.

1. What it is

A neighbourhood time bank.

Members trade skills by the hour. One hour spent teaching someone to use a smartphone earns one hour of learning to cook, play the keyboard or fix a leaking tap. Every hour is worth the same, whether it belongs to a surgeon or a student.

The currency is time, and nobody gets more than twenty-four hours a day.

2. Who it serves

It serves retired people with skills and time but fewer opportunities to be asked for either. It serves young people with energy and technical skills but little money, and newcomers who know nobody on their street.

A Tamil saying traditionally attributed to Avvaiyar puts the case in one line: what we have learned is a handful of sand, and what we have not learned is the size of the world.¹ A time bank lets a street pool its handfuls.

3. How it runs

A simple app, or even a paper ledger, records hours given and received. A part-time coordinator matches requests with offers and checks that members are who they say they are.

The coordinator’s pay comes from a modest annual membership fee. Local businesses can sponsor the initiative, and schools or other institutions could use it to support approved community-service activities.

Costs stay low because the value comes from the members’ time, skills and willingness to help one another.

4. What it refuses

It would take no commission on hours. It would not sell members’ data or rank them with stars.

And it would never let anyone buy hours with money, because the moment time can be bought, the rich will own the calendar.

5. An old principle behind a modern design

The idea that knowledge grows when shared is very old.

A popular Sanskrit verse describes the ways learning surpasses other forms of wealth.² Thieves cannot steal it, kings cannot seize it and brothers cannot divide it, and unlike material treasure, it grows through use and sharing.

An Islamic teaching holds that when a person dies, their deeds come to an end except three, one of which is knowledge that continues to benefit others.³

The Panchatantra shows how stories and knowledge can travel across cultures. Its fables moved from India into Middle Persian, then Arabic, and subsequently into other languages through translation, adaptation and retelling.⁴

6. The honest objection

Time banks are not new. Versions of time-based exchange have existed for decades in many countries, and some have struggled to remain active once the founding enthusiasm faded. Hours can be difficult to balance fairly, and generous members can tire of giving more than they receive.

Every founder also knows the old saying that ideas are cheap and execution is everything.

All of this is true.

7. The condition

That is exactly why I would not start this business myself.

I would give it away.

Everything above is yours to copy, rename and run on your own street, with no licence, no fee and no credit required.

When Jonas Salk was asked who held the patent on his polio vaccine, he famously replied, “Could you patent the sun?“⁵

A time bank belongs to the neighbourhood that runs it, and a founder who does not live there would be the wrong owner.

If ideas are cheap, giving this one away costs me little. If execution is everything, then it belongs to whoever lives on the street and is willing to knock on the doors.

At this stage of life, I am less interested in owning things than in seeing them used.

My contribution is the blueprint.

Yours can be the first hour.

What idea are you holding on to that might do more good if you gave it away?

Notes

¹ “Katrathu kaimann alavu, kallathathu ulagalavu”, a saying traditionally attributed to the Tamil poet Avvaiyar.

² A well-known Sanskrit subhashita, or verse of wisdom, widely taught in Indian schools.

³ Recorded in the hadith collection Sahih Muslim.

⁴ The Panchatantra is a collection of Indian animal fables. Its stories were transmitted through Middle Persian and Arabic and later reached other languages through translation and adaptation.

⁵ Jonas Salk is widely reported to have used the phrase “Could you patent the sun?” when discussing ownership of the polio vaccine.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 28 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:863

What are your best healthy eating habits?

Every morning at seven I eat the same breakfast: a handful of soaked nuts and a glass of warm water. Nothing about it would photograph well, but it taught me something I had missed for years. We talk about healthy food as if health were stamped on the ingredient. Yet the same food can nourish or burden depending on how much, when and why we eat it. 

In today’s post I share five habits that changed my relationship with food, including the hardest one: stopping before I am full. I also look at how a Buddhist king, a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, the elders of Okinawa and the ancient Greeks at Delphi all arrived at the same lesson. 

What is one eating habit that has served you well over the years?

The Trouble with the Word “Healthy”

At seven every morning, my breakfast is the same: a handful of soaked nuts, walnuts among them, and a glass of warm water. Nothing about it would photograph well. Yet this plain routine has taught me more about healthy eating than any list of superfoods.

What it taught me is this: we have put the word “healthy” in the wrong place.

We ask which foods are healthy, as if health were stamped on the ingredient itself. But a kilo of almonds eaten at one sitting is not healthy, and a festival sweet pressed into my hand by a neighbour is not a moral failure. The same food can nourish or burden, depending on how much, when, why and how it is eaten. Health is not a property of food. It is a property of the relationship between a person and a plate.

Seen that way, my best habits concern less what I eat than how I conduct that relationship.

1. I do not eat simply because food is available. The open packet, the buffet, the plate refilled without asking: none of these is hunger. Before I reach, I try to ask whether I am hungry or merely near food.
2. I do not rush a meal. Hurried eating is absent eating. When I sit down, chew slowly and notice what I am eating, I need less and enjoy more.
3. I do not treat every craving as a command. A craving is information, not an instruction; often it is boredom or tiredness wearing the mask of appetite. Sometimes I honour it. I simply no longer obey it by reflex.
4. I do not reinvent my plate every morning. The same simple breakfast at the same hour removes one daily negotiation with myself. Consistency, I have learned, outlasts enthusiasm. Even the soaking helps: tomorrow’s breakfast begins with a small decision made the night before.
5. I stop before I am full. This is the hardest habit and, I suspect, the most important.

That last habit is hardly my discovery. It appears in strikingly similar form across traditions that never consulted one another.

In a Buddhist discourse, King Pasenadi of Kosala came to the Buddha panting after an enormous meal [1]. The Buddha offered him a short verse on knowing the measure in eating. The king had a young man recite it at every meal and reduced his portions gradually until the heaviness left him. The teaching named no forbidden food. It taught measure.

A hadith, a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, puts it in memorable arithmetic: a third of the stomach for food, a third for drink, a third for breath. Older Okinawans speak of hara hachi bu, eating until eight parts in ten full. And in ancient Greece, “nothing in excess” was inscribed at the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Four traditions, one striking lesson. the measure matters as much as the meal.

Is this too tidy? Perhaps. Food is not merely fuel. It is hospitality, celebration, memory and comfort, and a life that treats every meal as a calculation has lost something worth keeping. So I add a sixth habit, the one that protects the rest: I do not punish myself for enjoying food. Moderation that forbids all pleasure is only another kind of excess. I will also concede the obvious: measure cannot redeem everything, and what goes on the plate still matters. My claim is only that it is not the whole story.

When we are young, we eat for pleasure and for the moment. As we grow older, we begin to understand that every meal is also a conversation with our future self, the person who will inherit the habits we are shaping today.

The Tamil poet-mystic Tirumular [2] confessed in one verse that he once regarded the body as a flaw. Then he found something precious dwelling within it, and from that day he began to tend it with care. I recognise that turn. My handful of soaked nuts at seven o’clock is not a diet. It is a small daily act of respect for the body I have been given, and for the years it still has to carry me.

That, finally, is my best healthy eating habit: not a food, but a way of sitting down to one.

Notes

[1] The account appears in the Donapaka Sutta of the Samyutta Nikaya, part of the Pali Buddhist canon. Pasenadi ruled Kosala, a kingdom in northern India, and was a contemporary and lay follower of the Buddha.

[2] Tirumular was a Tamil Siddha poet whose Tirumantiram, some three thousand verses composed well over a thousand years ago, forms the tenth book of the Tirumurai, the canon of Tamil Shaiva devotional literature. The Siddha tradition treated care of the body as part of spiritual discipline.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 27 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:979

What are some life hacks that you practice?

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Confession: my best life hacks are mildly annoying. Each one costs me a minute today and saves me an hour of searching, worrying and apologising tomorrow. Curious which five inconveniences I swear by? They are waiting on the blog.

My Best Life Hacks Make Life Slightly Harder

A life hack, as the internet sells it, is a clever way to skip a step. Peel the garlic by shaking it in a jar; fold the shirt in two seconds. Save time, money, effort and stress. The promise is always subtraction.

Yet when I list the small practices that have genuinely improved my days, I notice something odd. Almost every one of them adds a little effort rather than removing it. They do not skip a step. They insert one, deliberately and early, so that I am spared many steps later.

That, I have come to believe, is what a real life hack is. It is not a shortcut but a small inconvenience chosen in advance. Here are five I practise.

1. A fixed place for everyday things

My keys, spectacles and pen each have a home. Returning them there costs something every time, especially at the end of a tiring day when it would be easier to drop them anywhere. But that small discipline has nearly abolished one of life’s most pointless activities: searching. The friction is paid in seconds; the saving is paid in calm.

2. Writing things down

Trusting memory feels faster. It is not. A task held in the head does not sit quietly; it keeps tapping the shoulder. Writing it down takes a moment longer, but a written list does more than organise the day. It gives the mind permission to stop remembering everything and start thinking about something.

3. Doing the small task at once

A two-minute reply, a bill to file, a call to return. Postponing each seems harmless, but small tasks do not stay small once they gather. A pile of trivial things weighs far more than the sum of its parts. So I do the small thing immediately, even when I would rather not. The reluctance lasts a minute. The relief lasts the day.

4. Taking a moment before responding

This is the hardest of the five, and the most valuable. When a message or a remark irritates me, I let it wait before answering. Most irritations lose their heat within the hour. The reply I would have sent in the first minute is rarely one I would still defend by evening. Centuries ago, the Tamil poet Avvaiyar compressed this whole practice into two words: “Aaruvathu sinam”, let anger cool. [1]

5. Saying no

Agreeing is the easy path. Refusing costs a moment of awkwardness, perhaps a flicker of disappointment on someone’s face. But every unconsidered yes is a loan drawn against my future time, and the interest is steep. A courteous no, given early, is kinder to both sides than a reluctant yes honoured badly.

Old counsel, new name

None of this is new. Aesop’s tortoise did not win by cleverness; it simply kept going while the hare, sure of its speed, lay down for a nap. The Book of Proverbs sends the idle to study the ant, which gathers its food in summer though no one compels it. A saying often associated with Zen observes that before enlightenment one chops wood and carries water, and after enlightenment one chops wood and carries water. A well-known hadith advises tying the camel first, and then trusting in God. Across these traditions the counsel is the same: attend to the small thing now, and the larger things grow lighter.

A fair objection

Not every shortcut is a vice. The washing machine, the calendar reminder and the recipe that halves the cooking time are gifts. Refusing them out of pride would be its own kind of foolishness. The question I ask is simple: does this shortcut remove drudgery, or does it remove attention? The first deserves a welcome. The second usually returns later, carrying a bill.

What a life hack really saves

A clever hack saves a few minutes. A good habit shapes the person who spends them. None of my practices is ingenious; a child could follow any of them. Their value lies in choosing a small inconvenience early, so that life does not hand me a larger one later.

Perhaps that is the only life hack worth passing on: pay the small price now, willingly, before a bigger one arrives unasked.

Note

[1] The Aathichoodi is a collection of single-line moral maxims in Tamil, traditionally attributed to the poet Avvaiyar. Its lines follow the order of the Tamil alphabet and have been taught to children for generations. “Aaruvathu sinam”, its second line, may be rendered as “anger is what should subside”.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 26 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:835

Do you believe in karma?

We have all said it, usually through gritted teeth: karma will get them. I have said it too. But while writing today’s post, I noticed how rarely we say it about ourselves.

So I went back to what karma meant in the traditions that gave us the word. I looked at a Tamil epic about a king who condemned an innocent man without hearing him, and at the Bible’s surprising refusal to read suffering as punishment. Where I landed may not be where you expect.

I would love to hear how you see it. Is karma about justice for others, or responsibility for ourselves?

Do I Believe in Karma? Yes — Which Is Why I’ve Stopped Wishing It on Others

“Karma will get them.”

I have heard that sentence in offices, at bus stops and in family quarrels. I have said it myself. It is almost never said about the speaker. So before I answer today’s question, I want to look at how the question is usually asked.

1. The Phrase We Reserve for Others

Karma may be the only law most of us believe in on someone else’s behalf. We invoke it when a rude colleague is promoted or a dishonest neighbour prospers. In that mood, karma is less a moral principle than a postponed revenge, a debt collector we hope will one day knock on another person’s door. If that is what belief in karma means, then I do not believe in it.

2. What the Word Actually Means

The Sanskrit word karma simply means “action” or “deed.” In the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions that shaped it, karma describes how what we do leaves its mark on us and on the world. The Bhagavad Gita asks us to act rightly while giving up any claim on the results. The Buddha placed the weight on intention: “Intention, I tell you, is kamma.” Neither text gives us a scoreboard for tracking our neighbours.

3. The Epic That Made Karma Its Thesis

The Tamil epic Silappatikaram [1] opens by announcing three truths it will show. One of them is that past deeds return in full force and make us taste their fruit. The story that follows is, at its heart, a courtroom tragedy. A king condemns an innocent man, Kovalan, on the word of a thieving goldsmith, without hearing him. Kovalan’s widow, Kannagi, breaks her anklet before the throne and proves his innocence. The king cries out, “Am I a king? I am the thief,” and dies where he sits.

4. Why We Built Courts Anyway

I spent most of my working life drafting and reforming laws. I have come to see every penal code as a quiet confession that we do not trust karma to deliver justice on time. Law is organised consequence. It insists on evidence, a hearing, and a verdict within a lifetime. The king’s failure in the epic was a failure of natural justice: he never heard the other side. Yet law has limits the old traditions noticed long ago. A statute can reach only what we do. It cannot reach what we intend, and it has no power over who we become.

5. The Hardest Objection: Innocent Suffering

Any honest essay on karma must face the child born into misery and the cruel man who dies in comfort. Here the Bible offers a rebuke rather than a parallel. When the disciples asked whose sin had caused a man’s blindness, Jesus answered that it was neither his nor his parents’. When a tower fell at Siloam, he denied that its eighteen victims were worse than anyone else. Job’s friends lose their argument precisely because they read his suffering as payment. Even the Buddha counted the exact working-out of karma’s results among four things no one should try to calculate. These traditions disagree about whether karma exists, but they agree that I have no licence to read another person’s pain as a verdict.

6. Where Consequences Land First

If karma is not a cosmic ledger, what remains? Something closer to home. Aristotle observed that we become just by doing just acts. Paul warned that whatever a person sows, that they will also reap. The Qur’an says that anyone who does an atom’s weight of good will see it. Read together, these point to the same place: the first person my actions reach is me. A lie repeated becomes a habit, a habit becomes a character, and character, far more than fortune, is the harvest I can be certain of gathering.

7. So, Do I Believe in Karma?

Yes, but only in the version I am permitted to apply to myself. I cannot audit the universe’s books, and I should stop trying to audit my neighbour’s. What I can do is look at the seeds in my own hand.

The next time you are tempted to say that karma will catch up with someone, ask yourself this: if it caught up with you first, what would it find?

Note for readers

[1] The Silappatikaram (“The Tale of the Anklet”) is one of the Five Great Epics of Tamil literature. It is attributed to Ilango Adigal, traditionally described as a Chera prince who renounced the throne, and is dated variously between the second and sixth centuries CE. Its prologue names three truths the story will show. First, dharma turns into death for a ruler who errs in governance. Second, the great will honour a woman of true virtue. Third, past deeds return in full force to be lived through; in Tamil, ūḻvinai uruttu vantu ūṭṭum.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 25 September 2026

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Word Count:963

How do you write what people actually want to read?

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The real test of writing is not whether the writer enjoyed writing it, but whether a reader finds a reason to keep reading. That reason is rarely found in the writer’s cleverness. It is found in the reader’s life—in a question they carry, a concern they revisit, or a thought they have not yet found words for.

 Across traditions, from Rumi to the Letter of James to the Tamil poet Avvaiyar, the counsel is remarkably similar: listen first, then offer something that matters. When a writer’s curiosity meets a reader’s need, content becomes conversation.

 Listen to What They Want, Write What They Need

 People read because they want something: a useful answer, a fresh perspective, a moment of recognition, a little encouragement, or simply the feeling that someone has put into words what they themselves were thinking.

 The usual advice follows naturally: find out what people want, and give it to them.

 I believe that advice is only half right.

 Good writing does begin by listening to what people want, but it ends by giving them what they need—and the two are not always the same.

1. Writing begins with the ear, not the pen.

The writer’s first task is to listen.

Listen to conversations. Listen to questions. Listen to the concerns people repeat. Listen to silence. Listen even to the subjects people avoid, because what goes unsaid is often what most needs saying.

Before a writer can speak meaningfully to readers, the writer must first learn to hear them.

2. What people ask for is only the surface.

Readers may say they want quick tips, short lists, and headlines that promise everything in five minutes. But look beneath the request, and something deeper often appears.

The person searching for “ten ways to sleep better” may really be asking how to quiet a worried mind.

The request is the door. The need is the room behind it.

Good writing does not stop at the door.

3. An old Indian teaching tradition wrapped the need inside the want.

The Panchatantra, the ancient Indian collection of animal fables, is traditionally framed around a problem every writer understands. A king had three sons who would not learn, and conventional study would have taken years. A teacher named Vishnu Sharma promised to make them wise in six months—and he did it through stories of jackals, crows, lions, and tortoises.

The princes wanted entertainment.

They needed statecraft.

He gave them both, and the lesson arrived without announcing itself.

That is a powerful lesson for writers. Sometimes the most effective way to give readers what they need is to begin with something they already want.

4. Every tradition places listening before speaking.

Rumi opens his great Masnavi not with instruction, but with a command to the ear: listen to the reed as it tells its tale of separation.

The Letter of James counsels believers to be quick to listen and slow to speak.

Traditions that agree on little else agree on this: those who wish to be heard must first learn to hear.

For a writer, listening is not a preliminary exercise. It is part of the writing itself.

5. Write to offer, not to display.

The Tamil poet Avvaiyar is remembered for a line of striking humility: what we have learned is a handful of earth; what we have not learned is the size of the world.[1]

A writer who writes chiefly to show what they know is writing to a mirror.

A writer who writes to offer something useful, meaningful, or illuminating is writing for another human being.

Those who draft laws learn the same discipline. A statute is not written for the person who drafts it, but for the citizen who may one day have to read it, understand it, and live by it.

Writing, at its best, is an act of service.

6. Listening is not the same as obeying.

Here the argument needs a counterweight.

A writer who merely echoes what the crowd wants becomes a vending machine: press a button, receive a product.

Popularity is not proof of value, and the most-clicked article is not always the most-needed one.

Yet the opposite error is just as real. A writer who ignores what readers want becomes a preacher in an empty hall—correct perhaps, but unheard.

Vishnu Sharma did neither.

He did not lecture the princes, and he did not merely amuse them. He listened to what they would accept and used it to carry what they required.

That may be one of the finest principles of writing: meet readers where they are, then take them somewhere worth going.

7. The real test belongs to the reader.

The question is not, “Did I enjoy writing this?”

It is:

“Will someone find a reason to keep reading?”

That reason may be an answer that works, a thought that stays, or a sentence that makes someone say, “Yes, that is exactly what I felt.”

Every one of those reasons lives in the reader’s life, not in the writer’s pride.

So, how do you write what people actually want to read?

You listen long enough to discover what they want, and you care enough to give them what they need.

Because readers may click for curiosity, stay for relevance, and return for value.

When the writer’s curiosity meets the reader’s need, writing becomes more than content.

It becomes a conversation.

 

Note for readers

[1] Avvaiyar is the name given to one or more revered women poets of Tamil literature across different centuries. The line quoted here, “Katrathu kaimann alavu, kallathathu ulagalavu” in Tamil, is traditionally attributed to her and is widely taught in Tamil Nadu as a lesson in intellectual humility.

 

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 24 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:999

What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?

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Ask people about the most spontaneous thing they have ever done, and you usually hear about a trip, a purchase, or a ticket bought at midnight. Mine is quieter. One morning I set aside a carefully planned day and followed a single thought instead.

In this post I argue that spontaneity needs a plan to depart from, and that a prepared mind improvises best. I also admit that not every abandoned plan is spontaneity, because some of it is plain avoidance.

I would love to hear where you draw that line.

The Day I Did Nothing on Purpose

Perhaps the most spontaneous thing I ever did was not doing something at all. I abandoned a carefully planned day and followed a thought that had no appointment in my calendar.

I had arranged the day the evening before, as I usually do. There were calls to return, a document to finish, an errand in town, and a letter that could not wait another week. The list sat on the table, neat and reasonable. Then, over the first cup of tea, a thought arrived. It was not urgent, and it was not useful in any way the list would recognise. It simply asked to be followed.

I followed it. The calls waited, and so did the document. By evening the list was untouched, and I had spent a whole day walking behind an idea.

When people answer this question, they usually describe a sudden trip, a reckless purchase, or a ticket bought at midnight. I want to argue for something quieter.

1. Spontaneity begins in the mind, not the feet.

We think of spontaneity as movement: getting up and going. But the body only carries out a decision the mind has already made. The truly unplanned moment is the one in which a thought is allowed to change the shape of a day. The trip is only the part other people can see.

2. You can only abandon a plan you have made.

This is the paradox. A person with no plan cannot be spontaneous, only adrift. Spontaneity needs a structure to depart from, just as a detour needs a road. My day felt free precisely because it had been so carefully arranged. The list did not prevent spontaneity. It made spontaneity possible.

3. The prepared mind improvises best.

The Tamil poet Kavi Kalamegam [1] was renowned as an aasu kavi, an extempore poet, and for his ingenious silēḍai verses in which words or lines could carry more than one meaning. It looks like pure impulse. Yet no one can play with two meanings in an instant without already holding the whole language in hand.

In the Zhuangzi, the Chinese classic, Cook Ding carves an ox for Lord Wenhui so smoothly that it looks like a dance. He explains that after years of practice he stopped seeing the whole ox, and his knife now simply finds the spaces between the joints. His blade, in use for nineteen years, is still as sharp as the day it left the grindstone.

What we call spontaneity is often preparation that has finally forgotten itself.

4. A thought followed is an appointment kept with oneself.

Our calendars are full of other people’s claims. Rarely is there an entry for the question that has been waiting quietly in our own minds. The Book of Ecclesiastes says there is a time for every purpose under heaven. Some of those purposes never make it onto a list. They have to be given a day anyway, or they are never given one at all.

5. Not every abandoned plan is spontaneity.

Here I must be fair to the other side. Sometimes we drop a plan not because a thought has called us, but because the task is hard and we want an excuse. That is not spontaneity. It is avoidance wearing a better coat. The difference lies not in the leaving but in the returning.

Avoidance comes back empty. A true thought, followed honestly, comes back with something.

What was the thought? It was a question I had carried for years and never given a single morning to. I will not name it even now. The question matters less than the fact that, for once, it was given a whole day.

I returned the calls the next day and finished the document, a little late. Nothing collapsed. But I still think of that day as the only one I can remember that was not written in advance.

I have come to believe that a well-planned life needs at least one such day: a blank space the plan did not foresee, where something unplanned is allowed to happen.

What is the most spontaneous thing you have ever done—and how do you know it was spontaneity rather than avoidance?

Note

[1] Kavi Kalamegam was a Tamil poet usually placed in the fifteenth century. He is remembered as an aasu kavi, a poet who composed verses instantly on a theme set by others, and for his silēḍai verses, in which each line can hold two meanings at once. His name means “dark rain-cloud”, a tribute to the way verses poured from him.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 23 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:906

How do you make time for self-care?

How do you make time for self-care? I tried answering that honestly and realised the question itself was part of the problem. Every time I “scheduled” rest, it became one more task on the list. So I turned it around and asked what I could take away instead. Less noise. Less pressure to reply at once. Less guilt about an hour that produces nothing. What was left surprised me: a quiet morning, a good conversation, a few pages of a book. 

In today’s post I explore this idea, drawing on the Sabbath, Buddhist and Sufi traditions, and an old Tamil classic. I would love to hear what you have removed from your own day.

The Wrong Verb: Why Self-Care Is Found by Subtraction

The question asks how I make time for self-care. I want to begin by quarrelling with the verb.

Nobody makes time. Each day arrives with the same twenty-four hours, most of them already claimed before we wake. To “make time” for self-care is to treat it as one more appointment, one more box to tick. And once care becomes a task, it quietly becomes another source of pressure. The wellness industry understands this well. It sells schedules, subscriptions, retreats and routines, and it calls the purchase rest.

So I have stopped thinking of self-care as something I have to fit into my day. Instead, I ask a different question: what should I remove from my day so that I can hear myself again?

1. Remove the noise. Much of what fills our hours is not work or duty but sound: notifications, background television, the scroll that begins as a glance and ends as an hour. None of it asks much of us, and that is exactly why it takes so much. Silence is not empty. It is the room in which our own thoughts finally become audible.
2. Remove the pressure to respond immediately. Not every message needs an answer within minutes. The expectation of instant reply is a modern habit, not a moral obligation. A thoughtful answer given tomorrow is usually worth more than a hurried one given now. Delay, rightly used, is a form of respect for the question and for ourselves.
3. Remove the belief that every minute must be productive. This is the hardest removal, because the belief feels like virtue. We measure our worth in output and feel guilty for an idle hour. But a walk without an agenda produces nothing you can count, and it can still restore the whole person who does the counting.
4. Remove borrowed urgency. Many of our emergencies belong to other people. Their deadlines become our anxieties, and their haste becomes our pace. Learning to tell a real obligation from an imported urgency is itself an act of care.
5. Notice what remains. When these things are removed, what is left is modest: a quiet morning, a thoughtful conversation, a few pages of a book, a walk, or simply sitting still. None of these needs to be scheduled. They were always there, crowded out.
6. The old traditions knew this before we did. The Hebrew Sabbath is rooted in the idea of ceasing. It is not a holiday filled with leisure but a day marked by what is not done. Buddhist teaching speaks of renunciation, the letting go of what binds the mind, as the path to clarity. In the Sufi tradition, khalwa, a period of withdrawal and seclusion, is undertaken so that the seeker can hear what the world drowns out. The Naladiyar[1], the classical Tamil collection of quatrains, returns again and again to the passing nature of wealth, youth and worldly striving, and reminds its readers that clinging to them only deepens the unrest. Across faiths and languages, the pattern is the same: the self is recovered by subtraction, not accumulation.
7. A necessary concession. Subtraction is not equally available to everyone. A daily-wage labourer, a single parent working two jobs, or someone caring for an ailing relative cannot simply remove duties from the day. To preach stillness to the overburdened can sound like privilege dressed as wisdom. Yet even in the fullest life, some small removal is usually possible: one message left unanswered for an hour, five minutes left unaccounted for, one worry set down before sleep. And those of us who can subtract more have a quiet duty not to load our own noise and urgency onto those who cannot.

Perhaps self-care is not always about doing something for ourselves.

Sometimes, it is about stopping long enough to remember who we are.

Note [1] The Naladiyar is a collection of four hundred quatrains in classical Tamil, traditionally attributed to Jain ascetics. It belongs to the Pathinenkilkanakku, the Eighteen Minor Classics of Tamil literature, and is known for its ethical and didactic verse.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 22 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:838

What’s a place you visited that felt like home?

Plot twist: the place that felt most like home was one where nobody knew my name. No one asked what I do. No one remembered what I did. Bliss. New post is up, and it may change how you define home.

What’s a Place You Visited That Felt Like Home?

Some questions return to us year after year, and each time they ask something slightly different.

In December 2023, I wrote about Alexandria, Virginia, the place that stirred my mind. In December 2024, I wrote about Silent Valley in Kerala, the place that stilled my soul:
https://riseandinspire.co.in/2024/12/05/why-do-some-places-leave-a-lasting-mark-on-our-souls/

In December 2025, when the same prompt returned, I chose not to rewrite what I had already said from the heart:
https://riseandinspire.co.in/2025/12/05/lasting-places-impact/

Today’s prompt is not a repeat. It asks a new question. A favourite place is one we admire. A place that feels like home is one where we stop performing. Beneath the words, the prompt is really asking: where did you unexpectedly feel that you belonged?

My answer surprises even me. The place that felt most like home was one where I was a complete stranger.

1. Home is usually where we are known, and that is its hidden weight.
   At home, people know our titles, our history, our mistakes, and our expected roles. Every greeting carries a record. Being known is a comfort, but it is also a quiet demand to keep being the person others remember.
2. In Alexandria, I was known by no one.
   Walking its old streets, near the slow water of the Potomac, I carried no designation and no reputation. No file followed me into the room. For the first time in years, nobody needed me to be anything, and I found I could simply be. That release, not the architecture or the libraries, is what felt like home.
3. An ancient Tamil poet understood this two thousand years ago.
   In the Purananuru, the Sangam poet Kaniyan Poongundranar begins with a line every Tamil child learns: “Yaadhum oore, yaavarum kelir.” Every town is my town; all people are my kin (1). He does not say home is the place of our birth. He says belonging is a posture of the heart that we carry into every town.
4. Other traditions reach the same insight by different roads.
   In Buddhist teaching, the seeker “goes forth from home into homelessness” (2). This is not a loss but a liberation from the claims that tie us down. In the Islamic tradition, the Prophet is reported to have advised, “Be in this world as though you were a stranger or a traveller” (3). The Letter to the Hebrews describes the faithful as those who “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). Four traditions, one pattern: the stranger is not the one who has lost home, but the one free enough to find it anywhere.
5. So belonging is not something a place gives us. It is something we recognise in ourselves.
   A place feels like home when it lets us meet the person we are beneath our roles. That is why the feeling can come upon us unexpectedly, in a foreign city, on a hired bench, in a borrowed room. The place does not create the belonging; it removes what was hiding it.
6. A fair objection deserves an honest answer.
   It is easy for a traveller with a return ticket to praise being a stranger. For the refugee, the migrant labourer, and the exile, strangeness is not freedom but wound. Their longing for home is not a failure of spiritual maturity; it is a just claim on the world. The insight of Kaniyan and the pilgrims is not a licence to romanticise rootlessness. It is a call to make every town truly a town for all, so that no one is a stranger by force.
7. What this means for the rest of us.
   We need not travel far to test it. Ask where you feel least required to perform. That place, whether a city, a chapel, a quiet library, or a friend’s kitchen, is showing you something about home that your own address may have forgotten.

Silent Valley taught me the power of stillness. Alexandria taught me something quieter still: that home is less a location than a recognition, and that sometimes we must become strangers before we can recognise ourselves.

Where did you unexpectedly feel that you belonged?

Notes for readers

(1) The Purananuru is one of the eight anthologies of classical Sangam Tamil poetry, composed roughly two thousand years ago. Poem 192, by Kaniyan Poongundranar, is among the most widely quoted verses in Tamil literature for its vision of universal kinship.

(2) In the Pali Buddhist texts, the phrase describes renunciation: leaving household life to pursue liberation.

(3) Reported by Abdullah ibn Umar and recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari, one of the principal collections of hadith, the sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 21 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Word Count:873

What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?

Today’s prompt asked what I wish I had started doing earlier in life. My answer surprised me. I wish I had started measuring the invisible: curiosity, kindness, courage, attention, the health of my relationships. Then I discovered that the moment you score these things, they begin to change into something else. Seneca, the Islamic practice of muhasabah, the Ignatian Examen, Buddhist mindfulness and an old Tamil work called the Thirikadugam all found a better instrument long ago. It takes five minutes a night and needs no numbers. I have shared the four questions I now ask myself. What would you add to the list?

The Ledger I Never Kept

Asked what they wish they had started earlier, most people reach for something countable: saving, exercising, learning a language. My answer sounds similar at first. I wish I had started measuring the invisible. The regret turned out to be stranger than I expected, and its truer version is almost the opposite of what I first believed.

1. We measure what is easy to hold. Money, marks, weight, promotions and followers all arrive with units attached. Curiosity, kindness, courage, attention and the quality of our relationships arrive with none, so they go unrecorded. Over decades, what goes unrecorded quietly goes unattended. I kept careful files for most of my working life. I kept no file on whether I was still listening to people.
2. My first instinct was simple: measure these too. Count acts of kindness. Rate the day’s courage out of ten. Log minutes of undivided attention. Our age makes this easy, and there is an app for almost every virtue.
3. That is where the trouble begins. Economists know it as Goodhart’s Law, usually summarised this way: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Count your kindnesses and you begin performing them for the tally. Score your attention and you start watching the score instead of the person. The invisible qualities are exactly the ones that die when they are turned into targets. A kindness done for the count has already become something else.
4. A line often credited to Einstein says that not everything that counts can be counted. He almost certainly never said it. It traces to the sociologist William Bruce Cameron, writing in 1963. The misattribution is a small lesson in itself: we trust a thought more once a famous name is attached. That is the visible ledger at work again.

So the real regret is not that I failed to count. It is that I failed to examine. The older traditions knew the difference.

1. The instruments already existed, and every one of them is a practice of attention rather than arithmetic.

The Stoic Seneca describes ending each day by reviewing it. He asked what fault he had cured, what temptation he had resisted, and in what way he was better.

Islamic spirituality calls the practice muhasabah, or self-accounting. A saying attributed to the Caliph Umar urges believers to take account of themselves before they are taken to account.

Ignatius of Loyola gave his companions the daily Examen: a few quiet minutes to notice where the day’s gratitude and failures lay.

Buddhist teaching speaks of sati, or mindfulness: a steady noticing that watches the mind without grading it.

The Tamil ethical work Thirikadugam [1] takes its name from a traditional remedy of three pungent spices. Each of its verses names three things that heal or harm a life, as if conduct were medicine, prescribed in small and careful measures.

1. Notice what these share. None of them counts. All of them attend. They measure the way a physician takes a pulse, not the way an auditor totals a column. The instrument is a regular, honest, unhurried look, repeated daily, because the invisible changes quietly.
2. The honest objection is that, without numbers, this is only vague self-reflection, easily flattered. It can be. A private review lets us grade ourselves generously. The traditions anticipated this, which is why most of them set the review before a standard outside the self: God, a teacher, a community or a precept. Such a review is not a mirror. It is a witness. Some light counting can help too, provided the number stays a servant. Noticing that you have not called an old friend in six months is data worth having. The danger begins only when the number becomes the goal.
3. So here is what I would tell my younger self. Keep your ledgers of money and marks, because they matter. But add one practice that costs five minutes each night. Where was I curious today? Whom did I actually see? What did I avoid out of fear? Which relationship grew thinner? Use no scores, only the questions, asked honestly and often.

I spent a career keeping records that no one would regret keeping. The record I wish I had started earliest is the one that fits on no form: a nightly account of the invisible, kept not to be graded, but to stay awake.

Note

[1] Thirikadugam is a Tamil ethical work by the poet Nallathanar and part of the Pathinenkilkanakku, a classical collection of eighteen shorter works on conduct and ethics. Its title means “three pungent spices”: dry ginger, black pepper and long pepper, which together make a traditional medicine. Each of its roughly one hundred verses follows that remedy’s pattern by naming three things that heal or harm a human life.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 20 September 2026

© 2026 Rise & Inspire.

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If you could pick any fictional animal to be your lifelong companion (like a Pokémon or fantasy pet), what would it be?

Today’s writing prompt asked which fictional animal we would choose as a lifelong companion.

Most answers reach for power or magic: a dragon, a phoenix, a Pokémon. I went the other way.

Looking back, my worst mistakes were never made in doubt. They were made in certainty, with everyone nodding along. So I chose a creature whose whole gift is to stop its rider in the road. The essay travels through Homer’s faithful Argos, the dog at the threshold of the Sleepers of the Cave, the brave vulture Jatayu of the Tamil epic, and a Panchatantra fable about a loyal monkey with a sword. The creature itself is named only at the very end. I would love to hear your guess, and your own choice.

The Companion I Would Choose Is the One That Stops Me

The prompt offers a generous bargain: any creature from any story, beside you for life. Before I accept, I want to read the terms carefully.

1. The bargain is flattering, and that is the problem. Pikachu brings courage, a dragon brings power, and a wise owl brings counsel on demand. Each one enlarges its owner. The companion becomes an accessory to the self, a way of saying “look what I command.” I decline that version of the offer.

2. The creature I would choose has three qualities. It sees what I cannot see. It refuses to move when I am heading toward harm. And it cannot be bribed, beaten or argued out of that refusal. It does not fly, and it does not breathe fire. Its gift is obstruction.

3. Obstruction is the higher loyalty. Most of my serious mistakes were not made in doubt. They were made in certainty, at full speed, with everyone around me nodding. Across years of drafting law, the colleague I came to value most was never the one who approved my draft quickly. It was the one who returned it with a single line in the margin: “Not agreed. Read clause four again.” A companion who only agrees is an echo with fur.

4. The world’s traditions quietly agree. The animals they honour are rarely the powerful ones. They are the ones who see through things or stand in the way.

a. In Homer’s Odyssey, the old dog Argos is the only one who recognises Odysseus beneath his beggar’s disguise. Men with eyes and reason are fooled, and a dying dog on a dung heap is not.

b. In the Qur’an’s account of the Sleepers of the Cave, the dog lies with its forelegs stretched across the threshold. Later Islamic tradition and commentary gave the dog the name Qitmir; the Qur’an itself simply refers to it as their dog. Its position at the entrance has become part of the enduring imagery of the story.

c. In the Kamba Ramayanam, the aged vulture Jatayu throws himself into Ravana’s path to stop the abduction of Sita. He cannot win, and he knows it. He obstructs anyway, and he dies in the attempt.

5. The Panchatantra supplies the warning. A king kept a devoted monkey as his bodyguard. While the king slept, a fly settled on his chest, and the loyal monkey struck at it with a sword. Loyalty without sight is not safety but danger with good intentions. The fable’s lesson is blunt: a foolish friend is worse than a wise enemy. The companion I want must see first and serve second.

6. Now the honest objection. A companion who always resists would be exhausting. It could become a nag, or even a tyrant. A life spent arguing with one’s own pet sounds less like companionship than litigation. The objection is fair, and it sharpens the choice. The creature I mean does not resist constantly; in the Balaam episode, it resists only when it sees the danger ahead. Its refusals are credible precisely because they arise in response to danger rather than from a habit of opposition.

7. So what does the choice reveal about me? The prompt suggests that our chosen companion mirrors the qualities we admire, such as courage, freedom or wisdom. My choice reveals something less comfortable: I distrust my own certainty. I have learned that I am most dangerous when I am most sure. A companion who can stop me is worth more than one who can carry me farther or faster.

8. The creature has a name, and it is no dragon. It is a donkey, Balaam’s donkey, from the Book of Numbers. Balaam was a seer summoned by Balak, riding confidently in a direction that would bring him into danger. Three times the donkey saw an angel standing in the road with a drawn sword. Three times it turned aside, and three times Balaam was angry and beat it for doing so. Finally it spoke and asked its master what it had done to deserve the blows. Only then were the man’s eyes opened. The man who was expected to see could not see, while the beast of burden could.

I would ask for no wings and no thunder. I would ask only that, on the day I ride confidently toward the sword, something beneath me stops.

Footnote

📌The Kamba Ramayanam is the twelfth-century Tamil retelling of the Ramayana epic by the poet Kambar, one of the landmark works of Tamil literature. Jatayu, the aged king of vultures, is among its most celebrated figures of self-sacrifice.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 19 September 2026

© 2026 Rise & Inspire.

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Word Count:949

If you had to switch lives with a fictional character for a week, who would you choose?

Today’s writing prompt asked which fictional character I would switch lives with for a week. I almost picked someone exciting. Then I noticed the word “switch.” If I take their life, they take mine: my desk, my calls, my dinner table, my promises. That changed everything. Suddenly the detectives, tricksters and superheroes looked like terrible tenants. I ended up with a quieter choice, and found that old stories from India, Greece, Baghdad and the Tamil country had worried about the same problem long before me. Have a read, and tell me: who would you hand your keys to?

Whom Would You Trust With Your Life for a Week?

Most answers to this prompt begin with envy. We pick the character whose life we want: the wizard, the detective, the hero who flies. I think the prompt hides a sharper question, and it sits in one word.

1. The word is “switch.” A switch runs both ways. If I step into a character’s life for a week, that character steps into mine. He sits at my desk, answers my phone, eats with my family, and keeps or breaks my promises. For forty years I drafted laws for a living, and that work teaches one habit above all: read every word, because the small word carries the large duty.
2. So the question changes. It is no longer “whose life do I want?” It is “whom would I trust with mine?” The first question is about appetite. The second is about character.
3. This test removes most favourites quickly. Sherlock Holmes would insult my neighbours by Tuesday. Odysseus would lie to everyone I know, brilliantly. Hamlet would postpone every decision waiting on my table. A superhero would be bored by my week and careless with it. Their lives are wonderful to borrow. They are poor tenants.
4. The old stories understood this danger better than we do. An Indian legend tells how the philosopher Shankara left his own body to enter the body of a dead king, in order to learn what a monk’s life could not teach him. His disciples guarded his empty body in a cave. The king’s ministers grew suspicious and ordered that every lifeless body in the land be burned. Shankara returned, the legend says, as the flames were being lit. The lesson is plain: the adventure is never the risk. The vacated life is the risk.
5. Homer knew it too. Odysseus comes home dressed as a beggar and sits in his own hall to learn what became of his house while he was gone. The whole ending of the Odyssey turns on one question: who kept faith with an absent man’s life?
6. Other traditions treat the borrowed life as a discipline, not a holiday. In the Arabian Nights, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid walks Baghdad at night dressed as a merchant, because a throne is a bad place from which to see a city. In the Buddhist Jataka tales, the Bodhisatta lives as a hare, a monkey, a trader, a king; each life is a lesson carried into the next. In the Tamil epic Manimekalai, the heroine is shown her former life, and the knowledge does not carry her away from the world. It sends her back into it with a bowl that never empties, to feed the hungry. In every case the traveller returns, and the return is the point.
7. My choice, then, is Atticus Finch. I choose him not because he is a lawyer but because of what a neighbour says of him in the novel: he is the same man inside his house as he is on the public street. That is exactly the quality a tenant of my life would need. He would read my files with care, speak gently to those who telephone, and sit patiently through a committee meeting. He is also the man who taught his children that you never understand a person until you walk around inside his skin. He would take the week seriously because he already believes in the exercise.
8. There is a fair objection. A swap chosen for safety is a swap that risks nothing. If I select my week as I would select an insurance policy, I have turned an adventure into a precaution. A week that cannot hurt me probably cannot teach me.
9. But look at what the trust test actually selects. Trustworthy characters rarely have easy lives, because trustworthiness is made by difficulty. Atticus’s week may include the night he sits alone outside a jail with a reading lamp, facing men who have come to do harm. It may include the afternoon he loses a case he should have won, and walks out of the courtroom with his back straight. I asked for a safe pair of hands and received a hard week. The safe choice and the harder life turn out to be the same choice.
10. Then comes the eighth day. I return to a desk in order, perhaps in better order than I left it. And I carry one uncomfortable question home from Maycomb. I asked whether a fictional character could be trusted with my life. The fair question is the reverse: could I be trusted with his?

Note for readers: Manimekalai is one of the five great epics of classical Tamil literature, a Buddhist work attributed to the poet Sathanar. Its heroine receives the Amudha Surabhi, a bowl that never runs empty, and uses it to feed the poor. The story of Shankara and the king comes from later traditional biographies of the eighth-century philosopher, and is legend rather than history.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 18 September 2026

© 2026 Rise & Inspire.

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Word Count:969

Have you ever liked a villain more than the hero? Who and why?

The villains we admire can reveal the qualities we have learned to suppress: anger, ambition, rebellion, and loyalty that survives judgement. The heroes we are taught to follow rarely show that inner conflict. Recognising this does not excuse the villain. It invites us to integrate what we hide, turning anger into honest objection and loyalty into loyalty that speaks before it follows.

A reflection on literature, leadership and the whole self.

The Villain I Preferred Was the Hero the Story Would Not Allow

Have you ever liked a villain more than the hero? I have. But I now suspect the question is slightly misdirected. I never liked the villain more than the hero. I liked what the story would not allow the hero to be.

Every hero is an edited self. Storytellers cut away his doubt, his appetite, his temper and his divided loyalties. They do not throw these pieces away. They hand them to the villain. So when we find ourselves drawn to the dark figure across the stage, we are often recognising what was trimmed from the character we were told to admire, and from ourselves.

Consider what the villain is permitted to carry.

1. Anger

The hero must be righteous, never simply furious. The villain may rage openly. Iblis, in Islamic tradition, refuses to bow before Adam and says plainly why: he was made of fire, Adam of clay. It is pride, and it is condemned. Yet it is also the voice of wounded rank that many of us swallow at work every week.

2. Ambition

The hero is called to greatness; the villain reaches for it. Milton understood this so well that his Satan in Paradise Lost receives the finest speeches, and generations of readers have felt their pull. The poem does not endorse him. It simply lets him say what ambition sounds like when it is not dressed as duty.

3. Rebellion

Duryodhana is the antagonist of the Mahabharata, the man who refused to yield even a needle’s point of land. Yet at Poruvazhy in Kerala, a temple honours him. Communities remember refusal, even when they know it was wrong.

4. Freedom from explanation

The hero must justify every act. The villain simply acts. Those of us who spend our lives writing reasons for decisions quietly envy that.

5. Loyalty that survives judgement

And here is the villain I have always preferred.

He is a giant who sleeps for months at a time. When he is woken for war, he does not rush to fight. First he tells his king, his elder brother, that the war is unjust, that the abducted woman must be returned, and that the king has brought ruin upon the city. He is rebuked. Then he goes out to battle anyway, knowing how it will end, because the brother who raised him should not face death alone. When his younger brother, who has crossed to the righteous side, pleads with him to follow, he refuses gently and sends him back.

He is Kumbhakarna, as the Tamil poet Kamban portrays him in the Kamba Ramayanam [1].

Why prefer him to the hero? Because Rama stands at the story’s moral centre, the conflict between duty and divided loyalty has to be carried by someone else. Kumbhakarna holds two truths at once: his brother is wrong, and his brother is still his brother. He speaks truth to power and then refuses to abandon it. Most of us live that conflict daily in families, institutions and offices, yet no hero is allowed to show it. The story handed it to a demon.

Now the concession, because this argument can be misused.

1. Liking a villain is a diagnosis, not a permission.

If I admire Kumbhakarna’s loyalty, I must also see where it led him: into a war he knew was unjust, and to his death in it. If Milton’s Satan stirs me, I must remember where the poem lets his ambition land. The villain shows what a suppressed quality becomes when nothing restrains it. My attraction tells me something about myself. It does not tell me what to do.

2. The right response is integration, not imitation.

The anger I hide can become honest objection. The ambition I disguise can be named and governed. The loyalty I feel can remain, but it should speak before it follows, as Kumbhakarna’s did, and it should be free to decline where his was not.

So yes, I have liked a villain more than the hero. But what I liked was not his villainy. It was the part of a whole person that the story, and often our own upbringing, found too inconvenient to leave with the good man.

The villain is not the enemy of the hero. He is the hero’s missing chapter.

Note

[1] The Kamba Ramayanam, also called Ramavataram, is a medieval Tamil retelling of the Sanskrit Ramayana by the poet Kamban. It is admired for its poetic richness and for the moral depth it gives to characters on the opposing side, especially Kumbhakarna, the brother of the demon king Ravana.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 17 September 2026

© 2026 Rise & Inspire.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:888

What’s the longest book you’ve ever read?

We often measure books by their pages. I have come to measure them by the years they stay with us. The Wealth of Nations was the most demanding book of my student life, and it quietly shaped how I read statutes, drafts, and arguments across a long career in law. Some books are long because they are careless. Others are long because they are trying to show us the world whole. Learning to tell the difference may be one of the most useful skills a reader ever develops.

The Longest Book I Ever Read Was the One I Loved Most

Ask anyone about the longest book they have read, and they will usually name the thickest one. I would rather name the one that took the longest to finish, and in one sense I never have finished it.

1. Length is not a matter of pages.
   A thin book can feel endless, and a thick one can pass in a weekend. A book feels long when it asks more of us than we planned to give. By that measure, the longest book of my life was on my syllabus as a postgraduate student of Economics: The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, published in 1776.
2. It was slow, and it was meant to be slow.
   Smith does not hurry. He builds his argument with examples, price records, histories of trade, and long side journeys. Just as you think a chapter is ending, he turns to another century or another country. A young student wants the conclusion. Smith wants you to earn it.
3. Here is the inversion: the book that tired me most is the book I loved most.
   We usually assume that love follows ease. The friends we treasure are rarely the easy ones, though; they are the ones who demanded patience and repaid it. The same is true of books. The effort I spent on Smith was not a cost against my affection for him. The effort was the affection.
4. Long books are long because they try to hold a whole world.
   Smith was not alone. Other traditions produced works of similar ambition:
   Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah, written in 1377, is called an “introduction,” yet it runs longer than most complete books, because it tries to explain how whole societies rise, trade, and decline.
   Kautilya’s Arthashastra, from ancient India, sets out the economy of a kingdom in great detail, from taxes to trade to the duties of officials.
   These books are not long by accident. Length is the price of seeing a society whole.
5. Smith’s length taught me to read slowly, and that skill outlived the classroom.
   Economics taught me to ask how wealth is made. Law later taught me to ask how it should be governed. The habit of patient reading that Smith forced on me became the habit of reading a statute clause by clause, and a draft word by word, over nearly four decades of legislative work.
6. The book did not end when the course did.
   Smith himself did not stop at economics. At Glasgow he lectured on jurisprudence, the principles of law and government, and he long hoped to publish a major work on the subject. Shortly before his death in 1790, he had most of his unpublished manuscripts destroyed, so that larger project was never completed. I find a quiet comfort in that. The economist who became, in part, a thinker about law left his own work unfinished. So, in my own path from Economics to Law, did I carry his book forward.
7. A concession is due.
   Not every long page is a good page. Smith’s digression on the changing value of silver across four centuries tested my patience more than once, and I will not pretend I read every table with delight. Some length really is excess. A reader who loves a long book should still be honest about its slow stretches. Love that cannot admit a fault is not love; it is habit.
8. So what is the longest book I have ever read?
   It is not the one with the most pages. It is the one I am still reading. I opened it as a student, I returned to it as a lawyer, and I still find in it something I missed before. A book that keeps growing as you grow cannot be measured in pages. It can only be measured in years.

Perhaps that is the real test of length. A short book ends when you close it. A long book begins again every time you return.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 16 September 2026

© 2026 Rise & Inspire.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:797