Something drastic

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And so, having shut my company, I'm here in Hyderabad at a 10-day vipassana retreat

OK, I have pre-written and scheduled this post, for it is impossible for me to communicate anything or with anyone now.

Silence

Assuming everything has gone well between the time I wrote this post and it has gone out now, I am at Dhamma Khetta, a Vipassana centre in Hyderabad. This afternoon, I handed in my mobile phone, and then took a vow of “noble silence”, where I’ll refrain from talking or making eye contact with or even acknowledging the fellow students of my course.

This “noble silence” will go on for another 9 days or so. And then on the last day of the course we will be allowed to talk as we readjust to “normal life”.

For those of you who know me well, you might imagine how difficult it might be for me. I’m someone who constantly needs stimulus, someone who loves talking (though occasionally I do like my own space), someone addicted to social media (I remarked last week that “twitter is like my cigarette”), someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD and someone who generally doesn’t like to follow any kind of rules.

Yet I’ve signed up for a 10 day meditation course where I not only have no contact with the outside world, but I cannot even interact with my course-mates! And we will be living on a strict schedule, spending over 10 hours a day meditating - a task that I’ve tried a few times in life but utterly failed. I have this tremendous inability to sit still (and I’m told that in the course there will be a few hours where we will resolve to absolutely not move at all - not even to sneeze or cough).

A few weeks ago, my daughter declared, “appa, there is a 90% chance that you will go absolutely insane in this course, and will be absolutely unbearable after that. 10% you will come back feeling calm”. She basically expects this course to be transformative, one way or another.

So, why am I subjecting myself to this? Well, desperate times call for desperate measures.

The last year has been especially hard.

Work

As most of you know, I started Babbage Insight towards the end of 2023, after a three year stint at Delhivery. We started off slowly, and 2025 was the year when we were supposed to hit some kind of an inflection, in terms of product, traction, investment and everything else. The year started off well, with us closing a fairly decent angel round. However, everything beyond that was a slog.

Customer acquisition was painfully slow, as we (I can admit now) struggled to effectively communicate the value proposition (there was also the chat bot demand problem). Once acquired, customer servicing was slow - it took way too long to get the product into decent enough shape for the customers to start seeing value from it.

We didn’t do particularly well on the hiring front - this meant that one the one hand, product development was painfully slow, and on the other I had to step in to write production code, something that I’ve never been good at, never enjoyed doing and never wanted to do.

I find it hard to multitask with deep work, which meant that the time I spent deep in the weeds coding, I couldn’t effectively build the business. And I couldn’t build the business until the product was in place, which, given our hiring (or lack of it), wouldn’t happen unless I spent a significant amount of time coding.

We are shutting down Babbage Insight, and returning the remaining money to our investors. Once I return to civilisation after this course, I’ll start looking for a job.

Home

Work wasn’t the only thing that didn’t go well in 2025. If you read my wife’s blog and have read this post, you’ll know that family life wasn’t great as well. My wife and I fought a lot and went long periods without talking to each other. I couldn’t be available anywhere close to as much as I wanted to for the kids, and drifted away from them as well. As my stress increased, my old anger issues started flaring up once again, and obviously not to good effect.

Work and home troubles influenced each other, and neither in a good way. I took my home stress to work and my work stress home. They compounded each other, and collectively took a toll on my health, both mental and physical. Things were literally starting to fall apart.

Notice the first peak. That was my peak craziness during my time at Delhivery when I ended up taking on too much. Most of 2025 was as anxious as, or more than, that

I don’t want to post bad photos here, but if you see any recent pics of mine, I look much worse than I did a year ago. Sunken eyes, dark circles and all that. I remember coming across a photo of my father from when he was 42 and wondering how he could look so old at “just 42”. I started off 42 looking good, but by the time I ended 42, I was surely looking old - as old as my father looked when he was 42 (except maybe my hair is less grey).

I must mention, however, that I’m lifting well (hit my 2025 target of bench pressing more than my body weight) and my last round of blood work (in November) came out okay, but those are the only positives.

Measures

I have tried several things to improve my mental health. Gone on antidepressants twice (2012-13 and 2020-21). Taken ADHD medications multiple times. Tried therapy four times. They’ve all had their impacts, but issues keep coming and going.

A long time ago, I had thought that “when I can afford the time, I should do vipassana”. That time never came. About a month ago, I was calling up all my angel investors to inform them about the company’s shutting down, when one of them suggested that I should try Vipassana. He had done it a year or two ago and found it “transformational”,

Coming on the back of others having recommended it to me in the past, and yet another flare-up at home, I decided I should use this time around my company’s shut down by trying vipassana. And so here I am.

I’ve spoken to a few people about their experiences with this but I’ve consciously not tried to overthink it. I find that whenever I prepare for something, it makes me anxious. It makes me expect things. It makes me less able to go with the flow, and makes me think of meta (not metta!) stuff. So I’ve just taken the plunge (a train, rather - I booked my tickets around the time of the Indigo crisis, and so booked by train both ways) and come here!

Let’s see how it goes! Please leave your replies and comments. I promise to read them once I’m back in action.